Liberty MavenSarah Palin’s Speech Summed Up Perfectly
September 4th, 2008 1:25 am | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Libertarianism, Media, Politics, sarah palin | 0
Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine sums up my own thoughts on Sarah Palin and her rather impressive speech last night perfectly.
As an instance of political theater, I think just about anybody would agree that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech was pretty impressive. As Nina Easton of Fortune put it (somewhat regretfully) on Fox News Channel, “It was a home run in the first inning.” It was a well-delivered, red-meat speech, chock full o’ attacks on Barack Obama and Democrats in general.
For me, the lacuna at the heart of it all, a gigantic prolapsed valve big enough to punch your fist through, was the inability of the GOP to spell out exactly what John McCain’s great legislative accomplishments were/are. Palin kept intoning that McCain was a great American, apart form the torture he endured during the Vietnam War. But she wouldn’t quite spell out what his massive successes were. McCain-Feingold? Eh, not exactly. Earmark reform? Mebbe (except for the fact that Alaska pulls in much more dough than it sends to D.C.). He was against the Medicare prescription drug benefit—a totally awful and unnecessary expansion of the welfare state. But she didn’t call that out (which makes sense, given that a Republican president pushed the bejeezus out of it all and it seemed like the average age in the RNC hall was about 70 years old).
