Preliminary thoughts on McCain's speech

Preliminary thoughts on McCain's speech.

First off, it was not very well delivered. There was no passion except during his description of his time as a POW (no surprise there). Basically, unless he's talking about how he was tortured for five years, he has all the charisma of a cheese log.

Secondly, there was a curious disconnect from the speeches theme of casting off the old establishment with its content which basically trouted out the same republican rhetoric that has been in use for thirty plus years.

On the issue of policy, the speech was notably weak. I can almost picture an add where some people sift through a stack of paper and then demand "where's the beef?" There were no specific policy points that we haven't heard from Republican candidates for years. Some Maverick, huh? Lower taxes, ok. Cut spending, ok. But how will you accomplish this? By vetoing every bill that comes across your desk? Why, wouldn't that effectively lead to a shut down of the federal government? How about talking to people and working out your differences instead of telling everyone how big our stick is, and then waving it threateningly at them. That goes for foreign policy to. I think you'll find, McCain, that the more you tighten your grip the more star systems....I mean supporters and allies, will slip through your fingers.

Foriegn policy. Holy crap. Did he just imply that he would consider going to war with Iran and Russia? I know he claim he doesn't want another cold war, but did his speech ever rule out the possibility of a hot one? "The Rebuilding of the Russian Empire" is way to close to describing the Russians as "the evil empire" for my tastes thank you very much.

On the issue of gaffes, I noticed he stumbled over simple words a few times in the speech, which didn't help his charisma, and only reminded me of how old and infirm this man truly is. Though he spent an unreasonable amount of time reiterating (for what, like the 12th time?) Sarah Palin's personal history, it doesn't make me like the choice any more than I did when it was first announced. If possible, I like it less.

Where was the discussion of the economy? Of Healthcare? Other than some lip service, no plans were presented.

On the note of education, did anyone else pick up the disturbing coding for school vouchers? That's right kids, all the rich folks who "opted out" of public school will now get a 2500 dollar check to boot! Go rich white people!

All in all, the speech was a wash for me, muddled in places and offensive to my intelligence in others. He claims to be a maverick, but he uses all the old Republican tricks. He may receive a mild poll bump, but I doubt it will put him over he edge.

I give this speech a B- for presentation (would've been lower without the POW portion, which was admittedly well delivered) and a D for content. I say again, Republicans, where is the substance? All I've seen so far is an attempt at style.

Time to do some research, Republicans......

Mike Huckabee said tonight that he was "pretty sure that Sarah Palin recieved more votes when she was elected mayor of Wasilla then Joe Biden did in the entire Democratic Primary."


Well, sir, you are incorrect, the records of the city of Wasilla show that she won the mayorship in 1996 by only 651 votes.

Source is to be found by clicking "City Documents - Recently Requested - Mayor Palin and then clicking on any of the pdfs relating to elections:

http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=136

It's impossible to know for sure how many individual votes Biden received in a caucus but by looking at the percentage of delegates, one can make an estimate, and I think it is safe to say that 1% of the democratic voters in Iowa is more than 651 people. Furthermore, how many votes has Biden received in his senate campaigns in Delaware?

In the last senatorial election in Delaware (2002) Joe Biden received 135,253 votes, or 58.22% of the vote.

Source:

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=10&year=2002&f=0&off=3&elect=0



So let's take a look at Sarah Palin's last political race. It has been stated on numerous occasions that Sarah Palin "blew everyone away" in the 2006 Alaskan Gubernatorial race, when in fact she recieved 114,697 votes, less than 50% of the popular vote (48.83 to be precise). That's less total vote and percentage of the vote than Joe Biden.

Source:

http://www.elections.alaska.gov/06general/data/results.pdf

Republicans, please do some research before smearing people.

Hypocrisy, Republican style.

So the news came out today that Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is pregnant. Repeatedly, the campaign has asked the media to leave the story alone because "the choice made by their family is a private matter". This strikes me as somewhat hypocritical, based on the campaign platform of the McCain-Palin ticket.

The question I have for Republicans is this:

How can you claim that choice to keep or not keep a child is a private matter that is not open for discussion when a main element of the campaign is the push to pass legislation to take that same choice away from the American People?