RNC Convention Day 3: Sarah Palin overshadows McCain’s convention

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

On Monday the Republican talking point was today "we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats."  (Funny, I thought our American hats never come off.)

On Wednesday Republicans checked their American hats at the door and put on their partisan Republican hats. The RNC was serving up red meat on the menu to convention delegates. (Did you seriously believe they would not?)

In a Julius Caesar like moment, John McCain required his vanquished opponents in the GOP primary to supplicate themselves before him and sing his praises. This is a rather disturbing emotional need on McCain’s part. Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani dutifully read from the red meat script prepared for them by the McCain campaign.

It was also an opportunity to do what only Republicans know how to do best – engage in ad hominem personal attacks against Democrats designed to distract the TV audience from the fact that they have no accomplishments over the past eight years of which to speak, and they do not want to reveal their extremist GOP platform policies to the American people. You also heard no "vision thing" for the future.  All of the speeches were thin on policy or substance.  As McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis told an astounded media, "this election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates." McCain Manager: ‘This Election is Not About Issues’ In other words, all the earlier talk about a "serious debate about the issues" was just that – empty talk.

The only unifying theme of this convention is the Republican’s sense of God-given entitlement to lord over us all. Their sneering condescension, sarcasm, mockery, etc., was designed to reinforce the delegates’ sense of moral superiority and entitlement to govern, and to tell the rest of America – you know, the more than 50% of us who are Democrats and independents, the majority – "how dare you question our entitlement to govern this country?  It is our God-given right."  There was no thought by any Republican to simply apologize to the American people for their gross excesses and incompetence over the past eight years. Entitlement means never having to say your sorry.

These warm-up acts may have enthused the wild-eyed radicals who make up the bulk of convention delegates, but I think the audience at home will respond negatively to this act the way they did to Patrick Buchanan’s RNC Convention speech in 1992.  Americans saw that the Republican Party had been hijacked by its radical right fringe.  And they saw it on display again last night.

So much for John McCain’s "respectful campaign."

Which brings us to the night’s headliner act. 

There are two basic rules for a vice presidential nominee.  First, do no harm.  And second, never overshadow the party’s nominee. 

On this score, Governor Palin is already a failure.  First, those of you following the multiple story lines emerging about Governor Palin’s scandals, her flip-flop record, and her family’s melodramas as the media vets this candidate – something which the McCain campaign negligently failed to do – know that Palin potentially or has already caused harm to the GOP ticket.  There are Republican insiders who expressed dissatisfaction with her selection, and others who are quietly raising doubts that she may have to be replaced on the ticket depending upon "what else we don’t know" is discovered in the process of her vetting by the media.

Second, Sarah Palin has overshadowed her party’s presidential nominee.  This has become her convention, not John McCain’s – an ambition he has obsessively pursued for ten years.  McCain has become a supporting actor in in his own play.  It was painfully obvious last night when McCain joined the Palin family on stage and had nothing more to say than "aren’t they an attractive family?"  He stood there looking uncomfortably out of place, not knowing what more to say without a script from which to read. McCain knew that Palin was the GOP’s rising star that these delegates had come to see, not him.  It must have been an emotionally painful moment of realization for a man obsessively driven by ego and ambition.

Sarah Palin is an unknown to the American people (outside of political junkies and the Christian Right movement who has cast her as a rising star).  When McCain announced last Friday that Governor Palin would be his running mate, the media questioned each other on how to properly pronounce her name, she was that unknown. So this convention speech should have been an opportunity for Governor Palin to introduce herself to the American people.

It was not. This was a canned speech written weeks ago – before Sarah Palin was even under consideration – with spaces to "insert paragraph here" for biographical story about the eventual nominee.  This bifurcated speech lacked any sense of genuineness or speaking honestly from the heart.  Palin simply demonstrated that she is capable of reading from a teleprompter (unlike John McCain).

The McCain campaign may also have made a strategic error in having an unknown deliver the same ad hominem personal attacks on the Democrats as had the warm-up acts.  It is brash, arrogant, and cocky for an unknown to attack a well-known politician – in particular one who has earned over 18 million votes in fiercely contested primaries and caucuses in all 50 states – when one was selected by one man in a last minute moment of panic. Sarcasm is for pundits, not politicians. It should be used only rarely, and only to emphasize a critical difference or point.

But the string of ad hominem personal attacks that the McCain campaign had Governor Palin read from their script last night was over the top.  It sounded like the "popular kids" clique in high school making fun of non-members of their clique. Yes, the convention delegates loved it.  But Palin was preaching to the choir and likely did not convert any undecided voters. Again, I think the audience at home will respond negatively. Historically, when a female politician engages in ad hominem attacks and sarcasm, she is viewed more negatively by voters than a male candidate who engages in the same poor conduct. Hey, I don’t make the rules, that’s just the way it is.  I think the McCain campaign did a great disservice to Governor Palin by having her deliver this canned speech as written.

It was also a mistake for Palin to introduce herself to America by lying to us (although it appears to be a prerequisite in the McCain campaign). She repeated the lie already debunked after her introduction last Friday (Anchorage Daily News) that "I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere." (She supported the project and hired a lobbyist to secure other "earmarks" for Alaska). Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention

By demonstrating that Palin can be the "Sarah Barracuda" hockey mom "pit bull with lipstick," the McCain campaign has removed any doubt that she is a politician who is capable of withstanding the slings and arrows from her Democratic opponents and vetting by the media. I would hope so if she expects us to believe that she can stand up to world leaders. The attempt by the McCain campaign to cast the fictional "liberal media" as a straw man in their "culture war" is the same old politics that Republicans have used for decades. As Joe Klein said, "The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme."  Angry Amateurs – TIME