Blogs For Victory

Indeed.

There is no doubt that the Obama campaign fears the impact Palin has on the election, and they’re doing anything they can to shame her off the ticket.

The latest attempt comes from Obama campaign member, Howard Gutman, lobbyist and defender of domestic terrorists. who attacked Sarah Palin on the Laura Ingraham Show.

An original member of Barack Obama’s finance committee said Friday that Sarah Palin is putting her career above her family by accepting the nomination as John McCain’s running mate.

Howard Gutman made the argument on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” telling the radio host that the Alaska governor should focus her energy on her unwed, pregnant teenage daughter.

“If my daughter had just come home at 17 years old and said, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant, we have a family problem,’ I wouldn’t say, ‘You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to take this private family problem … I’m going to go on the international stage and broadcast it to the world’,” he said.

Gutman later added: “If you take a daughter who’s got this emotional strife and subject her to the most intense scrutiny of the world at this time in her life, I think you’ve put your career above your family.”

Obama has previously said that “people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits,” and of course, Obama promised to fire anyone in his campaign who spread rumors about Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy.

Okay Obama, keep your word. Fire Howard Gutman.

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of Gutman’s comments are shameful. Has anyone ever criticized Obama for seeking the presidency while he has a working wife and two young daughters?

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Just wanted to pass this along from Gerard Baker:

The best line I heard about Sarah Palin during the frenzied orgy of chauvinist condescension and gutter-crawling journalistic intrusion that greeted her nomination for vice-president a week ago came from a correspondent who knows a thing or two about Alaska.

“What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”

“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let’s be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy.

“The other kills her own food.”

Now we know, thanks to her triumphant debut at the Republican convention on Wednesday, that Mrs Palin not only slaughters her prey. She impales its head on a stick and parades it around for her followers to jeer at. For half an hour she eviscerated Mr Obama in that hall and did it all without dropping her sweet schoolmarm smile, as if she were handing out chocolates at the end of a history lesson.

We interrupt this election campaign to bring you the latest bit of common sense to be spoken on the issue of global warming and its zealots:

The Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has angered green campaigners by describing their view on climate change as a “hysterical psuedo-religion”.

In an article in the News Letter, Mr Wilson said he believed it occurred naturally and was not man-made.

“Resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it,” said the minister.

Peter Doran of the Green Party said it was a “deeply irresponsible message.”

Mr Wilson said he refused to “blindly accept” the need to make significant changes to the economy to stop climate change.

“The tactic used by the “green gang” is to label anyone who dares disagree with their view of climate change as some kind of nutcase who denies scientific fact,” he said.

The minister said he accepted climate change can occur, but does not believe the cause has been identified.

“Reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists.”

John Woods of Friends of the Earth said Mr Wilson was “like a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer”.

Wilson is being a bit unrealistic here – I mean, to expect environmentalists to engage in “reasoned debate” is to set the bar too high…these are, after all, the people who told us we’d all die of famine and will suffer from a new ice age due to man-made global cooling in the 1970’s…people who can turn on a dime like that are not open to reason.

But it is good that some people are starting to have the courage to speak forcefully about the varied absurdities of environmentalism. If our enviro-whackos were only Luddites we’d be ok – Luddites just wanted to stop change…the whackos want to undo change and recreate what, in their view, the world must have been like before straight, white, Christian males wrecked it all because they are racist, sexist, homophobic, greedy imperialists (I know, very strange – work with me here, people; we’re dealing with what passes for thought on the left). While common sense dictates cleaning up messes and trying not to make new ones, only an idiot looks at stand of trees and says, “we must preserve this forever”…as if there is such a thing as a “forever” in this world. Pay attention, good people – whether you believe in God and the Last Judgement or believe in an entirely materialistic universe, the fact of the matter is that the death of our Earth is inevitible…preserving it “forever” is akin to putting water seal on the Titanic’s deck chairs.

We need to keep fighting these people off – for at least another 10 years or so they will continue to have the upper hand, but after the next decade has passed it will become increasingly difficult for them to hide the fact that “global warming” is just another in a long line of environmentalists scams designed to scare people into voluntary socialism.

As in Old Hickory, Andrew Jackson, as noted by Jay Cost:

McCain did three things: (a) Reminded us that he’s a maverick; (b) Told us what the maverick would do if we elect him; (c) Told us why he’s a maverick. [So, contrary to some pundits, it was actually a very well-organized speech.] The confession at the end was the “why.” He fights for the country, not for a party, because it was in Hanoi that his country saved him. Country first, party second.

This might not resonate with strong partisans who see their party as the protector of the national interest, but there is a huge subset of voters who see politics the way McCain describes it. Get average people talking, and sooner or later you’ll hear them say, “Nobody stands for all of us. Everybody stands for their narrow faction.”

Ultimately, this speech was very Jacksonian to me. It was Jackson, as much as anybody, who made the president the representative of all the people. This notion can be oversimplified, for sure, but at its root it is accurate. The president should not speak for a mere faction, but should articulate the true public voice. I don’t know whether McCain can actually do that, but he clearly sees this task as his top priority, which puts him a notch or two above many previous nominees of both parties.

Final point. Contrary to some critiques I read, McCain’s middle “laundry list” section of the speech definitely defied Republican orthodoxy at key points. There might be plenty of reasons not to like this speech, but lines like this are not the things we hear from Republicans:

-I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn’t even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That’s going to change on my watch.

-We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities.

-For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we’ll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.

That middle one is actually quite noteworthy. Just a few months ago, I heard the exact same policy proposal…during a keynote address of a Democratic think tank! I thought to myself, “Now…that’s a good idea! Why doesn’t somebody do that?”

It was the last bullet point quoted that struck me last night – both in how it will not go down well with some of my fellow conservatives – those who lean too far towards libertarianism – but also how well it goes down with anyone who wants to help out his fellows who are hard working, yet temporarily down on their luck. It was Thursday night, after the speech, that I, my father and my father-in-law were chatting about it when my father noted that McCain’s speech hadn’t been given in the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson. Dad, being an ancient Democrat, was naturally delighted – and, I imagine, also a bit amused that it will be the GOP which will become the party of the common man. The world turns in strange ways, and who would have thought that the GOP – reaching back to its roots in pre-Civil War America and turning towards TR’s vigorous battle against special interests – would start to develop a popular conservatism to strip the political left of its commanding position in American culture and government? Continue reading →

The nomination of Sarah Palin as Sen. John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee has set the cause of feminism back 100 years.

You read right. The feminists are so flummoxed and perplexed that a conservative woman is stealing their thunder, that they’ve resorted to denying their feminist doctrine!

Take Whoopi Goldberg, for instance:

Whoopi’s article concluded by suggesting Gov. Palin’s speech reminded her of a German-American Nazi rally: “This girl is dangerous to me. This is a very dangerous woman, because I believe for her intents and purposes, she’s OK if everybody lives a certain way, that is to say, the way God ordained men and women to be. Well, already she’s breaking that because she’s the daddy. She’s going to run the country and the husband is going to take care of the kids. I just found the whole thing sad and very musty and very much like a Bund rally, but maybe that was just me.”

Yes, Whoopi, I think it is just you. But I digress.

So Whoopi has her panties in a knot (ooh… that evoked a nauseating picture) because a woman is living a feminist dream, and she’s a– gasp!! conservative!!! How dare a conservative woman attain the acme of an egalitarian’s dream! Dammit–she’s supposed to be home baking cookies!

Ohh… sweet irony!

From Rasmussen:

During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don’t legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice. The number who agree with McCain is up from 55% in August.

While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.

In terms of how the Supreme Court currently makes decisions, just 42% of voters think the justices rule from what is in the Constitution. Thirty-percent (30%) say they are guided by a sense of fairness and justice. Democrats are more likely than Republicans and unaffiliated voters to believe the justices base rulings on the Constitution.

It is unsurprising, but still flabbergasting, that only 29% of Obama’s supporters believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution – showing how monumentally foolish liberal voters are; they don’t understand that what 9 justices give, 9 justices can take away…if we got a situation where a solid majority were activists from the right, then liberals would find themselves behind the 8 ball. Much better if we just have judges who look at the written law and apply it, and if its unclear they direct the legislative branch to clarify.

Meanwhile, this is yet another issue McCain/Palin can use to hammer Obama/What’s His Name – the people want judges who enforce the law, not make it up as they go along.

If true, this will be the most surprising bit of news for 2008:

During August, the number of Americans who consider themselves to be Republicans increased two percentage points to 33.2% while the number of Democrats was little changed at 38.9%.

That gives the Democrats a net advantage of 5.7 percentage points, down two points from a month ago and down significantly from the double digit advantage they enjoyed in April and May.

That poll was released September 2nd, which means it was pre-Palin speech, and one does wonder just how many people out there are saying, “If John McCain and Sarah Palin are the GOP, then I’m a Republican, too”? The Democrats still have a big advantage (and Rasmussen points out that over the past year the Democrats have maintained this strong advantage), but it does seem to be drifting downwards, and the effect of the past few days might have started to force it downwards quite fast – though we won’t know until Rasmussen puts out next month’s party ID result.

The GOP is being rebranded as the party of reform – and just as successful as that rebranding is by November will determine if the GOP – and not just McCain/Palin – comes out a winner. The GOP, as McCain pointed out, lost its way and was captured by the Washington ethos…now we have a chance to reclaim our outsider, insurgent reputation and really get to work on changing the way things are done.

Oprah, Oprah, Oprah…what are you afraid of?

Oprah Winfrey may have introduced Democrat Barack Obama to the women of America — but the talkshow queen is not rushing to embrace the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket!

Oprah’s staff is sharply divided on the merits of booking Sarah Palin, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

“Half of her staff really wants Sarah Palin on,” an insider explains. “Oprah’s website is getting tons of requests to put her on, but Oprah and a couple of her top people are adamantly against it because of Obama.”

One executive close to Winfrey is warning any Palin ban could ignite a dramatic backlash!

It is not clear if Oprah has softened her position after watching Palin’s historic convention speech.

OPRAH’S STATEMENT: “The item in today’s Drudge Report is categorically untrue. There has been absolutely no discussion about having Sarah Palin on my show. At the beginning of this Presidential campaign when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates. I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over.”(Emphasis added)

It’s your show, Oprah, and you get to choose who shall or shall not be on it – but someone like Palin who is both interesting and important, to block her because of a narrow-minded partisanship for your own personal preference? Really weak, Oprah, really weak.

Nevada Pundit has the details.

Mighty nice of him, don’t ya think?

Recent reports indicated that Sarah Palin drew more viewers for her convention speech than Obama did for his.

Well, now preliminary estimates show that John McCain last may have had more viewers than Barack Obama last week.

Presidential candidate John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention drew more television viewers than his rival Barack Obama attracted at the Democratic party’s event last week, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen Media Research.

Across all broadcast networks Thursday, Sen. McCain’s speech ended the night with a 4.8 rating/7 share, compared to Sen. Obama’s 4.3/7 average, according to overnight numbers from metered households in 55 U.S. markets measured by Nielsen. These ratings are preliminary, however, and are subject to change.

This is huge news if it in fact turns out to be true. For one thing, Obama, given his celebrity status and his gushing praise from the left-wing media, got a lot of credit for attracting a historic number of viewers for his speech. Sarah Palin, we know now, topped him, and she’s at the bottom of the GOP ticket. John McCain, who has arguable suffered from an enthusiasm gap this campaign season until recently, was not even expected to match Palin or Obama. If he tops that, that is huge. And when you consider the fact that unlike Obama’s speech, McCain talked specifics, he appealed to the center and not just the base.

It all comes down to a great kickoff for the general election season, and I’m confident McCain/Palin are on the road to victory.

UPDATE: It’s official… McCain defeated Obama in the ratings war.

John McCain has won the ratings race.

The Republican nominee beat Democratic challenger Barack Obama’s record-setting convention speech viewership by 500,000.

McCain’s address at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night was seen by about 38.9 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. Obama received 38.4 million.

That means McCain’s speech is now the most-watched in convention history — 41% higher than President Bush’s acceptance speech four years ago, and 1% higher than Obama’s address last week.