He really cut Obama down to size last night, making good use of Barack's many "Present" votes in the IL legislature. I thought for sure Rudy was setting up this line:
"So the choice is clear: "Present," or President."
Chris Matthews on Sarah Palin's speech:
“At no time during her entire presentation, did I think of Hillary Clinton,” Matthews said. “They have nothing in common.”Um, yeah, safe to say I wasn't thinking at all of Hillary Clinton during Sarah's speech. Not one bit.
The Reagan tribute video tonight at the GOP convention was... not as good as it could have been, or should have been, given its subject. I think the problem was the writing.
The "B movie actor" line was graceless. And the line summing up his accomplishments was clumsy and missed a great opportunity. The before/after construction was something like "when he took office, unemployment was up, inflation was up, and the Soviet Union was on the march. But by such and such a time, unemployment was down, inflation was down..." but then they forgot to add the clincher, "and by the end of the decade we witnessed something unthinkable to everyone but Ronald Reagan himself, and unthinkable without his leadership -- the fall of the Berlin Wall."
Don't know how significant this might be, but after Palin was unveiled (but before the pregnancy story), I saw Susan Estrich on FOX and thought this revelation was interesting (close paraphrase):
"I've heard from a lot women, and my email is split. There are of course lots of women saying Hillary supporters can't vote for a McCain-Palin ticket, she's anti-choice, we're not stupid enough to fall for this. But the other half is saying, listen, this is an impressive woman who worked her way up from the PTA, a working women balancing career and family, isn't this what we've been wanting to see this whole time?"
From a George Will piece on political populism:
A story, perhaps apocryphal but certainly plausible, is that a child once began a school essay with this sentence: "Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin he built himself."
The New Republic's Jonathan Chait's "quick response" to Sarah Palin's speech in Dayton:
I agree that we don't know how she will ultimately play (I'm very optimistic). But regarding his impression of Sarah Palin -- we really do live in different worlds. Right-wingers see Obama and think he's like some kind of motivational speaker (world-class, no doubt), or some Master of Feelings combination of Oprah and Deepak Choprah (hey, they rhyme) until he says "... and that's why I'm running for president."It sort of seemed like one of those regular person testimonials where somebody gets up and talks about their family and their blue-collar job -- except then she says that she's on the ticket. Maybe it will help McCain connect with blue-collar voters. Maybe she'll come off as someone you can't possibly imagine as president. I don't know. It's really different.
It's interesting how Obama himself won't criticize Palin's experience. His surrogates are certainly taking their best shot at her, but Barry is of course in a bind on this one.
From Ben Smith's blog at Politico:
Asked at a press conference Saturday night to respond to McCain's argument that Palin has more executive experience than the Democratic ticket, Obama and Biden laughed. "I think you guys can take a look at Gov. Palin's record, Joe Biden's record and make your judgment in terms of who you think has what it takes to be an outstanding vice president," Obama said after a rally in Dublin, Ohio. "I feel confident about my choice."This was about as far as Obama would go, for a second day in a row, to cast a critical eye on Palin.
Barack Obama routinely reminds us how low an opinion he has of the US as an actor on the world stage. He apologizes for our conduct, feels "embarrassed" around Europeans, etc.
He hesitates to see the US as the "good guys" because "the danger of using good versus evil in the context of war is it may lead us to be not as critical as we should be about our own actions.”
Yes, send these guys into battle, where they lose life and limb, but for God's sake don't tell them that what they are sacrificing for is "good."
Why would we elect a President so ashamed of America? How did we get to the point in this country where one of our major parties nominates somebody who gets his panties in a bunch wrestling with the question of whether the US is the good guys or the bad guys?
And tell me again why we question his patriotism?
I am gratified to see John McCain sharpen his attack on Obama to make exactly this point. From an Aug. 26 AP story:
Republican John McCain on Tuesday questioned rival Barack Obama's belief in American leadership in world affairs with two days to go before the Democratic senator accepts his party's nomination for U.S. president.
McCain, 71, suggested Obama, 47, had failed to express confidence in America as "the greatest force for good on this earth" when he gave a speech in Berlin last month before more than 100,000 people.
"He was the picture of confidence. But in some ways confidence itself and confidence in one's country are not the same," McCain he told a group of American war veterans.
McCain, himself a war veteran imprisoned for more than five years in Vietnam, accused Obama of appearing to link the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to Russian military action in Georgia in recent weeks.Obama last week condemned Moscow's actions in Georgia and said Russia could not "charge into other countries" but he also said: "Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point." His remarks were widely seen as a criticism of the war in Iraq, which Obama opposed. McCain used the comments to raise broader questions about Obama, suggesting he lacked the clarity and vision to lead America and the world. "If he really thinks that by liberating Iraq from a dangerous tyrant, America somehow set a bad example that invited Russia to invade a small, peaceful and democratic nation, then he should state it outright because that is a debate I welcome," McCain declared."Confusion about such questions only invites more trouble, violence and aggression," said McCain, who as a senator has specialized in defense and foreign affairs issues and has put national security at the center of his campaign.He and Obama are running neck-and-neck in opinion polls.
This new Obama ad is terrible. Why would he raise Bill Ayers?
Here's McCain's latest ad, using Hillary's words against Obama, similar to the Biden piece they posted on Saturday.
I wasn't sure initially whether McCain's run-and-gun, wacky ads were going to be effective, but they seem to keep Barry on the defensive, so something must be working.
McCain has surprised me with his new message discipline and those crazy, risky "celebrity" ads -- in both cases, he is clearly deferring to good advice, rather than doing his unpredictable McCain-of-the-day jog through the China shop. If he ends up picking a guy he clearly hated in the primaries -- Romney -- rather than following his Liebermanesque impulses, we'll know that McCain is really playing to win.
In remarks to some reporters, McCain's manager Rick Davis said:
"We've got to get the Republican Party excited about his candidacy," Davis said of McCain. "I think that’s one of the things that is probably more important for us to do than contrast with any of the Democrats. We have to show them that there’s a chance to succeed."As I have previously argued, I think Davis has that exactly backwards. McCain should be drawing clear contrasts with Obama, and begin painting him as the left-winger he is. It is an article of faith among conservatives -- and it also happens to be true -- that when the GOP candidate runs an ideological campaign, touts unifying conservative ideas, and defines the Dem as a liberal, we win.
Well, at least in the fevered mind of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, which made a little video broadcast on Iranian television. As summarized by Jim Geraghty at NRO's Campaign Spot:
Courtesy of MEMRI, it was put together by the Iranian Intelligence Ministry, and was broadcast on Iranian television, encouraging Iranians to report spies. It features a computer-generated "John McCain" masterminding a Velvet Revolution in Iran from the White House.
Kate O’Beirne & Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online:
This is exactly what McCain needs to do, pronto. I've been listening to these talk show folks lately; almost nothing he says to conservatives will work right now. He has to start talking about liberals.What McCain Should Say at CPAC
Democrats think they have John McCain in a trap. He is going to have to spend the time immediately following his clinching of the nomination trying to win over Republican voters to his right. That’s time he won’t spend appealing to independent voters. He could even alienate those independents while courting conservatives.
McCain should prove this theory wrong, and he should do it starting at CPAC tomorrow. There are two temptations to resist. The first is for McCain to spend the bulk of the speech burnishing his conservative credentials. He has tried doing that, and a lot of conservatives are still left cold. Besides, what they want to hear isn’t that McCain has a conservative voting record but that he will fight for conservative ideas. The second temptation is to provoke bitter-end conservative resistance and triangulate against it. That would be a dangerous strategy, one that could make fence-sitting conservatives turn against him. What McCain should do instead is to take the fight to the Democrats, explaining why he’s against Harry Reid’s defeatism, Hillary Clinton’s health-care plan, Nancy Pelosi’s obstructionism on intelligence gathering, Barack Obama’s tax increases, and even Dennis Kucinich’s Department of Peace.
Conservatives know that McCain can be a tough political combatant. They want to see him turn those skills on the Democrats. They’re tired of being on the defensive. Even McCain’s opponents in the CPAC crowd will have to applaud as he lays into the Democrats.
Not according to the latest USA/Gallup poll:
McCain wins over Romney as the second choice of Huckabee voters by more than a 2 to 1 margin, 64% to 28%. Indeed, McCain beats Romney 42% to 24% with Huckabee in the race (Huckabee gets 18% of the vote, Ron Paul gets 5%, and Alan Keyes gets 2%). With a narrowed-down ballot focused just on McCain and Romney (forcing Huckabee voters to choose between the two front-runners), McCain wins 53% to 30% -- a slightly expanded margin.I am surprised. Must be a residual anti-Mormon vote out there, particularly in the South. Or maybe people just don't like Mitt Romney.
From the WSJ we have Karl Rove's "New Rules For Politics," which includes some old rules he believes are proving true as well.
Perhaps most interesting is Rove's analysis of the new media landscape:
-Television ads don't matter as much as they used to. Going on the air with the earliest and most ads doesn't count for nearly as much as it once did. Campaigning this time has been so intense, long and geared toward retail politics that people -- especially in the early states -- form opinions that are difficult to alter by early and voluminous advertising. Mr. Romney, who spent $2.4 million on TV ads in Iowa beginning last February, found that out.It's certainly the case that more people are hearing more things about politicians through more ways than ever. By "things" of course I mean documented facts, rumours, complete fabrications, what have you. Rove is describing a changed battlefield wherein yesterday's big Death Star weapon may be too slow and cumbersome to fend off a swarm of attacking sticks and stones coming from every direction, 24/7. Perhaps big TV ad buys will be most effective in injecting attacks into the media bloodstream (otherwise known as -- close your ears, children -- "negative ads"), rather than playing defense or for soft-focus, "meet the candidate" introductory spots.
Voters are discounting advertising. They may be blocking out ads, relying more on personal exposure, information from social networks, alternative information sources like talk radio and the Internet, and local media coverage. By Feb. 5, when it costs $16 million to burn one television spot in every state that's voting, it's simply too expensive to be on air everywhere at once.
The 20th century's closing decades saw the rise of the TV ad man as the most potent operator in presidential campaigns. The 21st century's opening decade is seeing the rise of the communications director and press spokesman as the more important figures on a campaign staff. It is the age of the Internet, cable TV, YouTube, multiple news cycles in one day, and the need for really instantaneous response. Ads and ad makers are still vital -- but not nearly as much as they were just a few years ago.
Politico has an interesting -- and depressing -- piece suggesting that "Rudy Giuliani's distant third-place finish in Florida may put an end to his bid for president, and it seems also to mark the beginning of the end of a period in Republican politics that began on Sept. 11, 2001."
Giuliani's national celebrity was based on his steady, comforting appearance in Americans' living rooms amid the terrorist attacks, and his campaign for president never found a message beyond that moment. The emotional connection he forged that day, it seems, has proved politically worthless. After months of wonder that the former mayor seemed to have no ceiling to his support, he turned out to have no floor, trading fourth-place finishes with Ron Paul, a little-known Texas congressman. "There's a paradox for Rudy," said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission. "One of the things he did very well on 9/11 was say, 'We've got to get back to normal.' And that's what's happened. We've gotten back to normal."[...]
After growing accustomed to tapping into fears of terrorism and faith in Republican strength, Giuliani's failure will force a major shift in Republican campaigns, some GOP strategists said. "Between the trauma of 9/11 and the civil war we had over the present policy in the Gulf — people have reached a point where they're just exhausted by it. I think that's a terrible, terrible thing," said Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP adman who produced perhaps the iconic post-9/11 television ad: Saxby Chambliss' searing attack on the willingness of Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero, to keep America safe — a spot illustrated with the visages of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. "Americans want to watch 'America's Top Model' — and they really, really don't want to be reminded that bad people want to kill them," said Wilson, who worked for Giuliani's 2000 Senate campaign and advised him informally this year. "Talking about 9/11 now is like 'Remember the Maine.'"
According to Information Week, "spammers have a new way to vex computer users: printer hijacking."
Building on the concept of cross-site scripting, whereby an attacker canOh, good grief.
inject malicious code in Web pages viewed by others, security researcher Aaron
Weaver has demonstrated how an attacker can inject spam messages into a Web site visitor's printer.
Weaver's research is available in a paper published online. It describes
how the attack could be initiated by creating a hidden iframe -- a block of code
inserted into a Web page and often served from a different domain than the Web
page -- and a Web form that submits the spam message to the printer. An attacker
could also send the spam message as a fax, if the printer has fax capabilities.
"The end result is that by visiting a Web site on the Internet you could
end up sending printer spam to your printer without even knowing that anything
happened," Weaver explains in his paper. "Since most printers don't have any
security set, it is possible to print anything, control the printer, change the
print settings, and even send faxes."
Time has a terrific map of all the primaries across the country, with dates, delegates, etc.
Putting Hillary's NH victory in perspective, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post writes:
Crowds swelled at Obama events throughout New Hampshire and a sense ofThat would be the sense of inevitability that inevitably replaced the sense of inevitability that surrounded the Clinton campaign all last year.
inevitability seeped into the media coverage of the Democratic race.
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