This is how you make a negative campaign ad.
Great ad, uses facts to build a pre-existing narrative (political corruption) and voter anger (high property taxes, budget shortfall due to irresponsibility and administrative incompetence) in a way that also pushes a narrative (too corrupt even for Congress) that hurts the candidate’s party and sets the stage for the next election.
This ad is rockin’ like Dokken.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
Nice woman named Luisa posted on this site, and gave me an idea. Here is a question I’d like to see one of the polling agencies test:
What percentage of Americans who grew up in totalitarian countries support Barack Obama?
My guess is 5%. I imagine that his messiah schtick seems pretty familiar to them, and not in a good way.
Any guesses?
What the hell do you make of this?
?????????
I mean…seriously? There is a 13 POINT SPREAD in these polls. What the *^&*&!?
Also, it is not disreputable polls that are all over the place. IBD/TIPP and Pew were two of the best last time. Heck, Gallup only shows a 2 point between their normal Supersized Obamania poll. I’m puzzled…and confused…and not thinking about this any more.
My conclusion: regardless of who you are for, you had better get out and vote this year. I’m not saying the pollsters are recreating their famous 1936 “Alf Landon in a landside*” poll. But clearly, something is not right in pollster land.
*If, by chance, you do not know who Alf Landon was, there is a very good reason for that. His presidential election was a landslide, all right. He won Maine and Vermont.
The leftist blogs are atwitter about Governor Palin’s supposed gaffe about the role of the Vice-President in the Senate. For those who were paying attention to “distractions” like the economy, the War in Iraq, al-Qaeda and the rising tide of global authoritarianism (who says Obama isn’t changing the world), they have revealed their own ignorance and limited horizens.
For the record, Governor Palin said: “[[The Vice-President is] in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.”
The Vice-President is the presiding officer of the Senate when they are present in the body. There is not a damn thing that the majority leader can do about that if the V.P. shows up every day. The key phrase of Palin’s statement is “if they want to they can really get in there with the senators.” This is 100% true, as anyone who has studied the career of the first V.P., John Adams, can tell you. In fact, Adams was so effective at influencing legislation that the Republicans passed a rule to stifle his ability to speak during debate. However, there is no such rule to prevent the Vice-President from exerting as much influence on legislation as possible. What Palin is illustrating here is not ignorance of the office, but a clear and visionary understanding not only of the office, but of the untapped possibilities of the office.
Palin’s critics might want to pick up a history book, because it seems like they might benefit by actually learning something.
Please say a prayer today for Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama’s grandmother. Mrs. Dunham was ill enough to cause her grandson to suspend his campaign to be with her. Our best wishes go out to her for a speedy and complete recovery.
Regardless of one’s political differences with Senator Obama, all Americans should take a moment to say a prayer for one of our sister citizens who is experiencing a serious medical challenge.
May God bless and comfort Mrs. Dunham and her family.
Giving a new meaning to the phrase “The Big Zero Represents Progress.”
Rock on, Journal of Feminist insight!
http://journaloffeministinsight.blogspot.com/2008/10/gov-palin-knows-how-to-balance-us.html
A number of bloggers and commentators have been expressing their displeasure at Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama for the Presidency. This author has an enormous amount of respect for General Powell, is in agreement in certain respects with his critique of the Republican Party, and will trust his honor that the reasons he gave for his endorsement are honest and heartfelt. General Powell’s service to this country has earned him that. However, I will take issue with some of the points General Powell raised in his interview on meet the press.
1) General Powell alleviated his initial skepticism over Senator Obama’s qualifications for the Presidency by having two face to face meetings with him and discussing his concerns. Based on these conversations, Powell determined that Obama’s was qualified for the office. However, General Powell has not met with Governor Palin, has not spoken to governor Palin, and has not extended to her the same basic courtesy and consideration in evaluating her qualifications by rigorous personal testing. Based upon the criteria for evaluation that he himself set out for the other candidates, he failed to render a reasoned and unbiased decision on her qualifications for the office.
2) General Powell highlighted unfounded accusations about Senator Obama’s religion as part of a general denunciation of the poisonous political atmosphere which he claims is being generated by the Republican Party. He is correct that many Republicans have offered criticisms of Obama that are unfair and beside the point, and he is correct to take the stand that he took that even if Senator Obama was Muslim this should not disqualify him from the Presidency. I agree wholeheartedly with General Powell in this, and as a result you do not see these types of attacks offered in this blog. The problem is, however, that General Powell had no similar criticism for the people on the left who have likewise engaged in outrageous accusations, and I would argue have exceeded the right in unfair attacks. Where was the criticism of the Obama acolytes “Bros before Hos” T-Shirts, or the “Sarah Palin is a Cunt” T-Shirts, or how about the bloggers on Obama’s site who would rather burn Zionists than oil, or the mainstream Democratic columnists who claim that John McCain failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam because he was in prison, or the continuous attacks on John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s families. While John McCain has denounced these types of attacks, Barack Obama has not, and turns a blind eye toward them. By endorsing Obama without decrying these practices, these attacks presumably have the General’s sanction and are on his honor.
3) General Powell voices his displeasure about the tone of the Republican Party. Again, on the whole I generally agree with his critique. The problem is, of all of the people in America, there is no one with a greater ability than Colin Powell to do something about it. If General Powell had run for President, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have secured the nomination and won. If he had taken to the trail and used his moral authority in the party to reshape the party, he would have had a legion of willing allies. If Colin Powell would have stood up, Republicans would have followed. Instead of leading, he has chosen instead to back out. That is the most disappointing thing of all.
As I mentioned earlier, General Powell has done enough for America that I will bear him no ill will for this endorsement, even as I choose to respectfully disagree with his decision. My only regret is that those of us who seek to develop the same Republican Party that General Powell does now must do so without our most effective spokesman. To use a military metaphor, there is an army of Republicans who hope to move the party in a more centrist, inclusive and pluralistic direction, and our prospective general has just gone over to the other side. Like the brave men of the Union Army, which formed the soul of the early Republican Party, however, we will keep fighting until we find the right person to lead us.
Of course, Powell’s endorsement is part of a more significant trend in this election. Again and again we have seen Republicans from the intellectual and technocratic elites stalk off claiming that it is the grassroots Republicans who have betrayed the party’s principles. David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Chris Buckley et. al. claim that we are somehow responsible for the disintegration of the party’s reputation. Let me remind them that it was conservatives in the press who lobbied for President Bush’s expansion of government, that it was neoconservative intellectuals who developed the foreign policy prescriptions that they are now finding so disastrous, it was the financial elites who shaped economic policies that have led us into the current downturn, and that it was technocratic officials that launched the Iraq War. None of these initiatives were from the grassroots. All of these initiatives were from people like David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Chris Buckley, Richard Lugar, and Colin Powell who have now walked out, somehow comclding that the grassroots and Governor Palin are somehow responsible for the party’s plight.
As conservatives, the first principle of our actions should be to adopt personal accountability. If these folks want to expand the size of the Republican tent, as all Republicans should, they should do so by fighting for change from inside the party, by talking to and making alliances with those who, like Governor Palin, are trying to reshape and reform the party into a broader and more inclusive coalition.
There is a sad irony to General Powell’s identification of the need to engage your enemies as one of the reasons he is supporting Senator Obama. Perhaps if the General and those who think like him in the party had chosen to engage average Republicans instead of simply thinking the worst of us based on Democratic lies and media stereotypes, they might have found that we are every bit as interested in creating a broader and more culturally and intellectually pluralist party as they.
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