I got in to St. Paul, MN earlier today and picked up full access credentials.
For the next week, eleven RedState bloggers will be covering the Republican Convention with all access passes to get you all the news, scoops, gossip, and fun in one place.
From here on out, we’re going to put the graphic accompanying this post at the top of the page and you’ll be able to track just the convention posts to your heart’s desire.
11 RedState bloggers in one location. This could get quite interesting.
GOP Officials just held a press conference here in St. Paul, Minnesota, to announce changes to the convention schedule in advance of Hurricane Gustav making landfall somewhere along the Gulf Coast. Sen. McCain has directed that all convention activities outside of necessary business be suspended until further notice.
RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said that the convention must meet tomorrow to constitute itself. But he said that the program will be restricted to gavelling the convention open, receiving the report of the Credentials Committee, establishing a quorum on the floor, electing officers, and adopting the rules of the convention. The session will then be adjourned with no further activity. All of the speakers set to address the convention tomorrow, including President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and First Lady Laura Bush, have ben canceled.
McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis said that there will be no “political rhetoric” as a part of tomorrow’s program, and that the campaign was heeding Sen. McCain’s call to “take off our Republican hats, and put on our American hats.” Asked about the possibility that Sen. McCain may not appear to accept the nomination at all, depending on the cours eof the storm, Davis would not speculate.
“The only thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no activities besides necessary business tomorrow. We will make a decision about Tuesday’s program then.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Palin selection, I wrote that Governor Palin has been a reformer and a change agent in Alaska, has helped clean up politics substantially in the state and could–if mainstream theories concerning the electoral appeal of Vice Presidential candidates are to be believed–tip a close race in John McCain’s favor.
But the judgment of the efficacy of a Vice Presidential pick does not, of course, end with electoral considerations. More pertinently, it does not even begin there. Rather, the efficacy of a Vice Presidential pick needs to be judged ultimately by examining the policy stances of a Vice Presidential candidate and by determining whether a Vice Presidential candidate is prepared to be President of the United States on a moment’s notice.
I stand by all that I wrote concerning Sarah Palin’s record in Alaska and the potential that she might be an electoral force to be reckoned with. But careful readers of my previous post will note that I wrote nothing about Governor Palin’s policy stances or her preparedness for the Presidency. I break my silence on those topics with this post.
The official Obama campaign site dedicated to defending Obama from smears (like his long time membership is a racist afrocentric church, his long time association with an unabashed terrorist, and his hand in glove dealing with convicted felons — vile smears all of them) looks to have been working overtime on a smear campaign of its own.
The details are at Little Green Footballs. It will give you a preview of what we will be up against for the next couple of months as it becomes obvious there is no lie too big and not smear too disgusting for the Obama campaign to spread.
Sarah Palin made a good first impression.
A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds 53% now have a favorable opinion of Palin:
Palin earns positive reviews from 78% of Republicans, 26% of Democrats and 63% of unaffiliated voters.
[. . ]
By way of comparison, on the day he was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, Delaware Senator Joseph Biden was viewed favorably by 43% of voters.
The following video of Governor Palin, speaking at in Dayton, Ohio following her introduction by John McCain as his pick for vice president shows why she made such a good first impression:
If you want to keep track of all our Sarah Palin coverage click here
Now, here are some key points worth remembering:
And again, the most important point is that the Obama campaign wants to compare Obama to Palin. Doing so is an admission that Obama should be their number 2 pick and Biden should be their number 1 pick.
Yesterday this post became the most widely read post at RedState in the past six months.
It’s important to note that the title “The Beauty of Sarah Palin” is very search friendly. Our post titles pick up pretty good.
Oh, and Josh, you’ve got RedHot posting privileges for the next week. Enjoy.
–Erick
No. Contest.
And why is it these Democrats feel compelled to YELL in the microphone?
The speakers are, in fact, turned up loud enough.
Has Joe been drinking?
Dare I say it? Palin reminds me of Reagan in one critical respect: she thinks and acts like most Americans do or would like to, and she does it with a smile on her face. She’s the ultimate “one of us.”
Whereas Hillary Clinton is a nagging harpy, Barack Obama is a sexually-suspect creature from another planet, and Joe Biden is a dirty old man.
The thing about people who come in promising “change” from the left/progressive side, is that they always seem to be something totally different from what most Americans really want deep-down, which is simply to get their work done, take care of their kids, be left in peace, and feel good about themselves at the end of a long, hard day.
The fantasy that this country should become a technocratic paradise for eggheads with advanced degrees and no robust experience of ordinary life appeals primarily to young people. And they mostly grow out of it.
The “change” America wants isn’t a brave new world. It’s a return to an older world, with all the modern conveniences. Sarah Palin is not ready to be President of the United States (yet). But along with her attractive family, she certainly sets the pattern for an eventual renascence of a genial, confident and self-reliant Conservatism.
And the biggest surprise for some people will be that the Democrats don’t have a monopoly on youth. Or women.
-Francis Cianfrocca
I find it more than a little amusing how the choice of Sarah Palin has given people on the other side of the partisan divide a serious case of intellectual whiplash. Up until now, anytime that Barack Obama’s experience was questioned, the reply from Obama partisans would be something along the lines of “Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had tons of experience and they ran the country into the ground!“
Now, with Palin, experience is evidently important again–unless the experience argument is used to criticize the Obama candidacy.
Get it? Heads, Obama wins. Tails, McCain and Palin lose. But of course. And to be sure, far, far, far fewer people were bleating on and on and on about how they were newfound devotees of experience when Tim Kaine’s name was in the running as a potential Vice Presidential candidate for Obama. I am sorry, do the people who have suddenly decided to lash themselves to the mast of Experience not know that we have Google and can call shenanigans on their hypocrisy?
Of course, there is a reason for all of this piling on Palin’s candidacy: I have often said that Vice Presidential picks carry little to no electoral weight but mine is a distinctly minority view and to the extent that my view is wrong, Palin’s selection could bode very badly indeed for Obama. It could help peel away disaffected Hillary voters and even if a minority are peeled away or become conflicted enough to want to stay home instead of vote for Obama, it could make all the difference in the world in a close election. As a dramatic choice, Palin’s selection helped stomp and tromp all over the news cycle–a news cycle that would otherwise have been devoted to waxing rhapsodic about Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday night. Needless to say, the Obama people are not happy about that–and it showed in their intemperate response to the Palin selection. Palin is a reformer and a change agent in Alaska, having challenged the state GOP on the issue of corruption and having beaten establishment Alaska Republicans in order to become Governor and implement her message of change. And as a fresh face who is not from Washington, DC, she messes with Obama’s “change” game significantly.
The election will be won by the two candidates at the top of their respective tickets. But in a close election–as this one is increasingly shaping up to be–little things can help win the White House. And if Sarah Palin’s selection is the game changer that a lot of factors indicate it could be, this surprise decision may well be the one that John McCain thanks in the event that he is able to win the Presidency.
Yes indeedy–you read that right.
The Obama campaign responded by attacking the DNC delegates for hewing so closely to the discredited economic beliefs of the Bush-Cheney-McCain Administration. “This isn’t change,” remarked David Plouffe. “This is more of the same!”*
*I made this paragraph up. But admit it: It’s plausible.
This has been fun, so let’s do it again.
Note by Jeff: And “Delegate” wins the dumkopf of the night award, for his accusation that Sarah Palin probably “can’t name the leaders of our top European allies”….”like New Zealand, Japan, [and] Australia.” Well, done, Delegate! Your prize is eternal scorn and ridicule.
Thanks again for playing, all. Have a good night!
I cannot tell you how excited I am about the Palin pick. McCain lived up to his maverick reputation and did well.
It is time to pony up to the campaign. Sure, we’re still going to have to put up with some of McCain’s McCainisms. Let’s just get used to it. But, he’s proven he listens to us. Today he puts us on the trajectory toward victory.
Now let’s deal with some of Obama’s charges. Mr. Hope and Change, who picked a 35+ year veteran of the Senate to cover his own inexperience has the gall to attack Palin for inexperience.
Were I Palin, I’d first point out that balancing the budget of a working family with five kids gives her more experience than Obama in relating to families out there.
I’d also point out that, in addition to being elected for five years before Obama was first elected to any office, Palin has been balancing local and state government budgets while Obama was relying on Tony Rezko to balance his budget.
As for foreign policy experience, Palin’s neighborhood has Russian and Canadians. Barack Obama’s neighborhood has unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers.
I’ll take Palin’s experience. She, by the way, did not run for President on her resume. Obama did.
Note how much she talks about her husband. Also big: women, daughter, mom.
It was a good speech.
David Brody is on the phone with CNN right now getting himself drummed out of the conservative movement.
Why?
Well, he’s on peddling what happened at a private meeting at the Council For National Policy with regards to Palin. This is a huge no-no, guests are invited under the condition that meetings remain private to keep conversations candid and open.
I’ve attended CNP and I know darn well to never talk about what went on.
Brody has just breached the biggest rule of CNP and burned a number of bridges along the way. He’s putting his own self-promotion and career building out there, while forgetting his promises to keep things said off the record, off the record. And reactions were off the record.
I suspect, frankly, that Brody has fallen for Obama and does not really care. Even factcheck.org has been tougher on Obama’s infanticide position than David Brody has.
Career is one thing, David. Integrity is something else. On the upside, I hear Brock is hiring.
Let’s get this out here right now. On experience: Sarah Palin runs the largest state in the nation and Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined run their mouths. That’s it in a nutshell.
Here we have a mother who is a governor. Throughout her career, Sarah Palin has broken up the good old boy networks. They hate her because she has opened the doors and turned on the lights in the smoke filled back rooms. So what does Barack Obama do? He releases this quote:
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.”
He cannot bring himself to acknowledge that she is the sitting governor of the largest state. And like Joe Biden and John McCain, she has a son at war. She has skin in the game Barack Obama does not have.
Oh, and she’s a whole lot closer to Russia than Barack Obama ever has been.
Jill Hazelbaker has broken it down succinctly:
It is pretty audacious for the Obama campaign to say that Governor Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. She has a record of accomplishment that Senator Obama simply cannot match. Governor Palin has spent her time in office shaking up government in Alaska and actually achieving results — whether it’s taking on corruption, passing ethics reform or stopping wasteful spending and the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ Senator Obama has spent his time in office running for President.
Barack Obama is bitter. Look at this guy. He had the chance to prove he was serious about his rhetoric. But apparently it was all just words. He picked a guy who has been in Washington longer than John McCain. That’s not change we can believe in.
Sarah Palin is change we can believe in.
And again, Sarah Palin runs the largest state. Barack Obama runs his mouth.
I’ve got to say, I don’t know a single person who was pushed in the Pawlenty misdirection who cares.
Pawlenty who? This is an epic win.
Sarah Palin is pro-life. She is a hunter and fisher. She is a mom. She is a reformer.
Obama has claimed the reformer mantel, but Obama embedded with the corrupt, entrenched politics of Chicago long before he went to Washington. When he got to Washington, he sent money home to his cronies.
Sarah Palin threw the cronies out of office.
And how can Obama combat the experience canard? Palin has more executive experience than Obama has had. And from what we’ve seen already, she is awesome.
The GOP is more united than the Dems have been. We just got more so. And we got a lot of new voters too.
Epic. Win.
MOVING THE LIVE BLOG HERE:
Holy cow, this is a game changer if, in fact, John McCain has chosen her. Serious game changer. Wow.
YES, IT LOOKS LIKE THIS IS IT. ON DRUDGE REPORT NOW.
Here’s what we know: Sarah Palin landed in Ohio last night with her two oldest kids. She landed thirty miles from Dayton on a plane owned by one of McCain’s fundraisers.
That’s all we know.
UPDATE: So now the media is moving beyond Palin.
Here’s the take away: John McCain is awesome. He has pulled a major head fake with Pawlenty and has gone for a bold, wildcard pick. Everyone will forget about Obama’s speech today.
Fox News is reporting Mitt Romney is no longer under consideration to be John McCain Vice President.
The buzz is swirling now around a serious wild card: Sarah Palin.
