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.
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?
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.
Does that leave it to Romney? All the signs last evening were that it’d be Tim Pawlenty. The background chatter was Pawlenty. The phone calls were on Pawlenty.
I guess everyone was wrong.
According to the paper this morning, Pawlenty will, in fact, be at the fair and Pawlenty says he was happy to be considered.
So, I’m guessing Romney.
BTW, congrats to John McCain. The man can keep a secret very well. From the Fox panel, to me, to a host of others, the Pawlenty stuff yesterday really got us. Well done.
PS - The late breaking word is Palin. I give up though. She’d be really awesome and definitely something no one saw coming, but wow, that leaves my head spinning.
(You can access a PDF version of this post by going here)
From his official website:
Governor Pawlenty grew up in South St. Paul, Minnesota. The only child in his family to graduate from college, he attended the University of Minnesota (B.A., J.D.) and practiced law in the private sector. His public service career includes serving as a city councilmember and ten-year member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, including four years as House Majority Leader.
As Governor, he has balanced Minnesota’s budget three times without raising taxes, despite facing record budget deficits. Governor Pawlenty’s most notable accomplishments include proposing and signing into law significant new benefits for veterans and members of the military; enacting a property tax cap, eliminating the marriage penalty and cutting taxes; toughening the state’s education standards; reforming the way teachers are paid through a nation-leading performance pay plan; instituting free-market health care reforms that increase accountability and provide tax credits to encourage the use of health savings accounts; and implementing a plan to Americanize our energy sources by generating 25% of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025.
On specific issues that might be interesting to various people, I’ve broken out the categories.
I’m confident enough to put this up now, but willing to be wrong.
Right now though, every sign, signal, and background chatter indicates John McCain will pick Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota’s governor, as his running mate.
UPDATE: A source close to the campaign now confirms for me that it “more likely than not” is Pawlenty. He does, however, caution me that the campaign does not actually want to leak tonight lest the Obama camp get too much of a chance to play the victim card with a sympathetic media.
Below the fold, I’ve compiled data on Pawlenty that you might find useful.
Several reliable sources tell me, riffing off the Jonathan Martin piece, that the Obama camp is “mad as hell” at John McCain for stealing his thunder.
As Martin reports:
Tonight would be political malpractice,” Obama communications chief Dan Pfeiffer told Politico. “It’s one more piece of evidence that the McCain campaign is a war room masquerading as a presidential campaign.”
I’m told the Democrats, recognizing that their convention has been rather bland, are already agitated that the media has gone into “storm watch” mode on the eve of Obama’s speech and they are likewise exceedingly upset that so many reporters are covering the McCain veep pick today.
“We had a week of this s* last week on who Obama would pick. It’s our turn. Sucks for them it happens to be this week. The storm will distract from both,” one source tells me.
I’ve said for months it was going to be Tim Pawlenty. It is the most obvious choice, though I think Eric Cantor would be the more exciting pick. I am confident, based on conversations, that the top three picks are Cantor, Pawlenty, and Romney.
Who do you think it is?
BTW: It does look like it is Pawlenty. I expect I won’t have to admit to Rebecca Roberts on XM’s POTUS 08 that I was wrong. For months she’s been asking me and for months I’ve been saying Pawlenty.
Why does it look like Pawlenty? Well, about an hour after McCain’s campaign confirmed they’d made the pick, Pawlenty started canceling events, even some he had confirmed this morning.
