Election Road Trip, Day 12: Palin Paling
Posted by Joe Klein
Time
September 18, 2010
Des Moines, Iowa
Event: Sarah Palin speaks to the Republican Party
Traveling Companion: Victoria Klein
"What's the big deal?" Victoria said after we listened to Mama Grizzly. "She sounds like a PTA president." And it was true. I expected, at the very least, to be entertained by Sarah Palin--she has been known to give a good speech--but last night's performance was weird and underwhelming, especially given an atmosphere dripping with presidentiality. Iowa. Two years out. A large crowd, itching to be blown away.
But no. There seemed no purpose to Palin's speech, unless the point was to lacerate members of the media and Republican establishment (like Karl Rove) who have been slagging Palin 2.0 surrogate Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. There was also no fun to it: Palin seemed testy, her delivery rushed. There was also not much of substance. There were constant repeated paeans to patriots (definition: people who agree with her), the military (definition: people who are out there for the right of journalists to lie--really, she said this) and the constitution, about which she seems profoundly ill-informed. She said several times that Republicans were going to provide Constitutional solutions to America's problems--as if the Obama Administration were providing unconstitutional remedies. (It's not enough to merely disagree with the President; you have to make him sound unAmerican in Palin's twisted little world.)
There was also a brief, hilariously simplistic section on foreign policy, provided, no doubt, by her neoconservative puppeteers. "There's a distinct pattern here--reaching out to our enemies, slighting our friends," she said, attempting to sound ominous, a quality that eludes her flat, chirpy voice. Obama had sent a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran (no mention of the crippling sanctions he had also sent). Imagine that! And he had opposed the Israelis on a "housing" question (the question of whether Israelis should be "housed" on internationally-recognized Palestinian territory). He opposed the surge which had brought "victory" to Iraq, even as "we are surging troops into Afghanistan." Wait a minute--is he a pacifist or a warmonger?
Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/
Time
September 18, 2010
Des Moines, Iowa
Event: Sarah Palin speaks to the Republican Party
Traveling Companion: Victoria Klein
"What's the big deal?" Victoria said after we listened to Mama Grizzly. "She sounds like a PTA president." And it was true. I expected, at the very least, to be entertained by Sarah Palin--she has been known to give a good speech--but last night's performance was weird and underwhelming, especially given an atmosphere dripping with presidentiality. Iowa. Two years out. A large crowd, itching to be blown away.
But no. There seemed no purpose to Palin's speech, unless the point was to lacerate members of the media and Republican establishment (like Karl Rove) who have been slagging Palin 2.0 surrogate Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. There was also no fun to it: Palin seemed testy, her delivery rushed. There was also not much of substance. There were constant repeated paeans to patriots (definition: people who agree with her), the military (definition: people who are out there for the right of journalists to lie--really, she said this) and the constitution, about which she seems profoundly ill-informed. She said several times that Republicans were going to provide Constitutional solutions to America's problems--as if the Obama Administration were providing unconstitutional remedies. (It's not enough to merely disagree with the President; you have to make him sound unAmerican in Palin's twisted little world.)
There was also a brief, hilariously simplistic section on foreign policy, provided, no doubt, by her neoconservative puppeteers. "There's a distinct pattern here--reaching out to our enemies, slighting our friends," she said, attempting to sound ominous, a quality that eludes her flat, chirpy voice. Obama had sent a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran (no mention of the crippling sanctions he had also sent). Imagine that! And he had opposed the Israelis on a "housing" question (the question of whether Israelis should be "housed" on internationally-recognized Palestinian territory). He opposed the surge which had brought "victory" to Iraq, even as "we are surging troops into Afghanistan." Wait a minute--is he a pacifist or a warmonger?
Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home