How good was Sarah Palin's speech?

[rellascout]

I don't care what she spent it on. If she claims to be against earmarks like McCain then she should not have been involved in getting them. This is a clear contradiction.

Basically she lied in her speech. If not an out right lie she at least directly contradicted her record.

 

[Evan Thomas]

Credit where credit is due

If she claims to be against earmarks like McCain then she should not have been involved in getting them. This is a clear contradiction.

Basically she lied in her speech.

Yes, she did. Nothing new there, for a politician, but it's naive to think that she (or Sen. McCain for that matter) isn't part of the political establishment.

It was a competent speech, very well delivered.

It should have been a good speech; according to Newsday, it was written by Matthew Scully, who has a lot of experience with this stuff.
http://www.newsday.com/services/new...ation/ny-usconv045828572sep04,0,3789387.story

From Mr. Scully's website:

Matthew Scully served until August 2004 as special assistant to the president and deputy director of presidential speechwriting. He worked for President George W. Bush a total of five years, including 18 months in the 2000 campaign, and was part of the team that drafted the President’s post-September 11th addresses and every major speech of the first term. Scully has also written for vice presidents Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle, presidential candidate Robert Dole, Arizona Governor Fife Symington, and the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey.
http://www.matthewscully.com/matthew.htm​

Yes, indeed, they're mavericks, McCain and Palin, the both of them...

 

[FireMax]

I can't describe it better than it has already been described in the media...

Newsrooms across America must be in abject despair. The unlikely VP nominee the media hoped to crush out of the gate is unaffected by their condescension and scorn — and is bent on giving better than she takes.

Miss Congeniality isn’t afraid to administer an old-fashioned beat-down. Annie Oakley brought a gun to a knife fight and made like the ObamaBiden ticket was a moose lazily meandering into her gun sights.

 

[FireMax]

Yes, indeed, they're mavericks, McCain and Palin, the both of them...

Well, Palin anyway.

 

[justwondering01]

Rela, you say Palin lied in her speech about earmarks but she did no such thing. She said she was against the "abuses" of earmarks, not earmarks themselves. An example of such an abuse was the bridge to nowhere. I did find a list of the projects that make up the $27 million over her tenure as Mayor and they all seemed reasonable to me. That total is also less than one tenth the amount she rejected. I would say that is good evidence of her claim of being against abusive earmarks. To stay on topic, I believe she gave an excellent speech. She listed some of her qualifications and beliefs and then focused on John McCain who is actually the one running for president. That is exactly what she was supposed to do.

 

[rellascout]

Palin's Embrace of Earmarks

Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, selected by Sen. John McCain as his running mate, has largely burnished her reformer image by repudiating wasteful spending.

But as a small-town mayor and a governor Palin did not hesitate to embrace the federal earmark process, according to a Washington Post report by Paul Kane that shows Palin helped secure almost $27 million in projects for her tiny hometown of Wasilla, Alaska.

Among the spending projects Palin helped obtain through the earmark process: $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs and $15 million for a rail project, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Palin, who was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, directed the town (which then had a population under 7,000) to hire the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh (The New York Times notes that earmarks are "close to sacrosanct" in Alaska).

(Note: The Times put a number for Palin's earmarks for Wasilla at "more than $8 million.")

And during Palin's tenure as governor, Alaska requested 31 earmarks worth $197.8 million in next year's federal budget, The Los Angeles Times reports, citing the Web site of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

A McCain campaign spokeswoman, referring only to Palin's record as governor, told The Times that "she took the lead in slashing wasteful spending." According to The Anchorage Daily News, Palin said she routinely met with Washington officials to discuss the budget and earmarks process.

"It was about being face-to-face with those who were actually writing the budget," she told the newspaper in 2006.

But, as the Republican National Convention began this week, the McCain campaign appeared to dismiss many of the reports of Palin's earmark prowess.

"When she got more involved in what these programs were, she has taken a strong and consistent stand against them and she's actually exercised what they estimate to be the largest line-item veto in Alaska state history," McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer told CNN. "I think what all that shows is that when you get in the governor's seat, where you have to do trade-offs."

 

[Saab1911]

One issue that Sarah Palin did touch on was energy.

1) Drilling for gas and oil.
2) Natural gas pipeline. I believe a lot of Natural gas is currently just wasted (burned).
3) Nuclear. Three mile island happened a long long time ago.
4) Clean Coal
5) Renewable energy

It wasn't just a pep rally.

 

[justwondering01]

rella, what earmarks in the article you posted do you consider abusive? I went to the website stated in the article and looked at all of them and again I can't find any I would call abusive. Earmarks in themselves are not a bad thing, they are in fact a good thing. All an earmark does is specify what specific project federal money must be spent on. I think that is a good thing. That keeps congress from allocating funds for some vague project. It spells out exactly what it must be used for and this gives us citizens the ability to see what our money is actually going to be spent on instead of having to dig through a bunch of bureaucracy to see where the money was spent. I just wish more of the budget spelled out exactly how the money is to be spent before it is spent. Again, a great speech.

 

[rellascout]

rella, what earmarks in the article you posted do you consider abusive? I went to the website stated in the article and looked at all of them and again I can't find any I would call abusive. Earmarks in themselves are not a bad thing, they are in fact a good thing. All an earmark does is specify what specific project federal money must be spent on. I think that is a good thing. That keeps congress from allocating funds for some vague project. It spells out exactly what it must be used for and this gives us citizens the ability to see what our money is actually going to be spent on instead of having to dig through a bunch of bureaucracy to see where the money was spent. I just wish more of the budget spelled out exactly how the money is to be spent before it is spent. Again, a great speech.

I find all of them wasteful. The federal Govt is not and should not be an ATM system where localities go to beg for their money back.

 

[JuanCarlos]

I find all of them wasteful. The federal Govt is not and should not be an ATM system where localities go to beg for their money back.

On this I think most of us can agree. The issue, however, is that the federal government is taking that money either way. At that point it's not necessarily fiscally responsible for a local official to turn them down when they're offering to return it, regardless of the form.

 

[justwondering01]

Quote: "I find all of them wasteful. The federal Govt is not and should not be an ATM system where localities go to beg for their money back. "

I agree with you on that one. I would much rather the State (or the people themselves for that matter) keep its money than send it to Washington to be redistributed but that doesn't make Palin a liar or a hypocrite.


edited to clarify

 

[shortwave]

Back on topic:I loved her speech. I also got a kick out of the summaries after the speech aired by a few known Democrat people saying Palin didn`t cover any issue`s which they felt she should have based her speech on since(as they claimed) nobody from Mccain camp has talked about key issues ,talked about her family(using them as props) which these people thought was very diss-tastefull, and in general just bashed Obama. What amazes me is these same people apparently didn`t attend the DNC cause when I watched Bidens speech I didn`t know the man at all. From start to finish his speech was about himself and family, occasionally taking his fair share of shots at Mccain camp. He for sure didn`t base his speech on issues.Was more about his (families)past. As far as comment that Palin using her family as props being diss-tastefull, please, Bidens speech was full of his and Obamas family(Michelle and kids on stage with kids talking to dad(Obama) via satelite). Seems as though whats diss-tastefull for some is not for others. IMO neither Biden or Palin speech involving family was done "diss-tastefully" but going into the kids family business on either side stoops way below being diss-tasteful. As far as isues being talked about Obama addressed issues and I`m sure Mccain will also. By the way for thoughs posting about Palins speech being nothing but cheerleading and preaching to the choir and trying do get Rep. camp fired up, thats what both conventions are for. So far out of both conventions, the only speaker that wasn`t interesting to me was Pres. Bill Clinton as I could tell he didn`t really want to even be thier. I don`t agree with his stance on many issues but he normally is a great speaker.IMO, Palins speech will go down in history as not only being a great one but the first woman GOP VP candidate as Obamas will also go down as being first black Dem. Pres. candidate but should have picked Hillary as his running mate

 

[JuanCarlos]

I agree with you on that one. I would much rather the State (or the people themselves for that matter) keep its money than send it to Washington to be redistributed but that doesn't make Palin a liar or a hypocrite.

Well, she was still a liar and a hypocrite.


First, liar. She didn't "tell Congress" anything about that earmark. The "earmark" portion (the requirement that the money be used for the bridges) had already been rescinded long before she was ever elected Governor. By the time she took office (and, looking at the dates, by the time she was seriously running for office) they were already no-strings-attached funds, which she gladly accepted and used.

Unless maybe she told them "thanks but no thanks" as mayor of Wasilla. Could be, I guess. But I doubt that Congress heard her, if that's the case.


Hypocrite is a bit more tenuous. You've got the "saying one thing in Scranton and another in San Francisco" (or whichever podunk city she used for the former) line. When, by what accounts I've read, she was supportive of building the bridge in Ketchikan, including the idea of using federal funds to do it. And, of course, I doubt she used the term "bridge to nowhere" when campaigning for Governor in Ketchikan. But now that her speech is being seen in...well, San Francisco, suddenly that's what she's calling it.

That seems at least a wee bit hypocritical to me.


Not that this makes her evil. It's politics, these things are normal and even expected. But please, let's not pretend she's somehow above it.

 

[shortwave]

Whatever views people have of Palin ,she`s sure made alot of believers in A laska. Her ratings there are very good.

 

[FireMax]

I don't support McCain. However, concerning Palin. After last nights speech, I suspect the only people who don't like Palin are;

1. Liberals
2. Those who had already made their mind up not to like her.

 

[JuanCarlos]

I don't support McCain. However, concerning Palin. After last nights speech, I suspect the only people who don't like Palin are;

1. Liberals
2. Those who had already made their mind up not to like her.

If you used dislike there, I'd probably agree. However, her speech last night was largely a "drum up the base" speech, and not the kind of thing that is likely to win over any independents. I'm guessing that a lot of people who watched her last night didn't like or dislike her before, and probably felt about the same after.

If you thought that speech would actually win over a lot of fence-sitters, it's probably only because you largely agreed with it.

This is in contrast to Obama's speech, which seemed specifically crafted to appeal to independents. Hers was a bit more like Biden's, which also had more of a "whip of a frenzy against the opposition" motif to it.

 

[duewest]

 

[Evan Thomas]

a "drum up the base" speech

Yes.

a "whip of a frenzy against the opposition" motif

Yes, again.

But I'll say it again: it was carefully crafted by a Republican Party speechwriter, and it's worth thinking about what else it was intended to accomplish. Aside from the discussion of the "earmarks" question, the specific things people here seem to have noticed are the "pitbull in lipstick" joke, and the remark about the rights of terrorists. I think both of these point to another thing this speech was intended to do: convince anyone who needs it that even although she's a woman, she's tough enough to do national security (it's debatable whether "toughness" should be the main qualification, but that's what Bush & Co. have traded on for the past 7 years...).

Good speech, well delivered. Did it make me like her? No better or worse than I did before. Many of her beliefs, in particular the Christian-fundamentalist, anti-abortion, anti-science (she'd like creationism taught in schools) ones, make me, as a libertarian, as a believer in the Constitution, and as someone who values science and reason, profoundly uneasy.

But then, I'm not part of the "base" she's meant to appeal to...

 

[Evan Thomas]

Re: Palin for President, 2012

Oh, and this:

One unintended consequence of Gov. Palin's nomination is likely to be that Hillary Clinton will start campaigning hard for Sen. Obama. She is no one's fool, and won't at all like the idea of another woman in a good position to run next time around.

 

[duewest]

Good so we can count on your vote for Mccain!