William Safire was the token conservative on The New York Times opinion pages for years and it was a sad day when he retired. His successor David Brooks is such a pale imitation that the new editor of the opinion pages added Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard for once-a-week commentary.

However, for today, the Times asked Bill Safire to comment on the speeches at the two conventions. The most moving speech for the Democrats was Joe Biden's son tribute to his dad. Obama didn't live up to his Greek god temple settng.

He thought Joe Liberman was especially effective speaking directly to Democrats and indepdependents at home as to why in this time of increasing danger the battle-scarred man of judgment John McCain was the leader America needs. Safire noted that McCain has never been a very good orator, but what came through was "trust" in what he says and promises to do. As for Sarah Palin, Safire had this to say:

[T]he St. Paul convention was hit by Hurricane Sarah and her admirable family. The cliché is that — faced by part of a party long troubled by McCain’s different drumming — the governor of Alaska was able to “energize the base” of social conservatives. The more salient fact is that her skillful speech and joyful demeanor was even more impressive than Obama’s introduction to the Democratic Party four years ago. The establishment-shaking candidate was a happy warrior in the glare of major-league scrutiny. Most of the huge, uncommitted audience at home enjoyed this strong woman’s national audition.(emphasis added)

In a bipartisan aside, he warned the media that their ferocious attacks on McCain/Palin and "media adulation" of Obama would backfire. Public opinion of the media is now about as low as that of the Democratic Congress and polls show that substantial majorities know they are being treated like sheep and fed pro-Obama fodder by the mainstream media (led, of course, by The New York Times).

To read it all, click here.

Monday, September 8
Chatham Republican Town Committee meets Monday , September 8th (and every second Monday of the month) at the Chatham Community Center, 702 Main Street, Chatham, MA 02633. We welcome and urge to attend anyone who wants to help elect John McCain and Sarah Palin as President and Vice President and Jeff Beatty as U.S. Senator. For additional information, contact Chairman Walter Bilowz waldad@aol.com or Republican@ChathamRepublicans.com.

See the Events page for a map showing the location of the Chatham Community Center.

There is a contested primary election for the Republican nomination for Barnstable Couny Register of Probate on Tuesday, September 16th between Priscilla Young and Anastasia Walsh Perrino. Be sure to vote.

Everyone is invited to the Chatham Wayside Inn Sunday afternoon, September 21, from 3 to 5, to hear and speak to representatives of John McCain and Sarah Palin and to the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate against John Kerry, Harwich's own Jeff Beatty.

Also attending will be Don Howell of Harwich, who is seeking to unseat Democrat Sarah Peake of Provincetown as State Representative from the Fourth Barnstable District.

Rounding out the field of candidates will be Brad Crowell and Ric Barros, who are contending for two seats on the Barnstable County Commission, and the Republican candidate for Register of Probate, who will be chosen in the September 16th primary, either Priscilla Young or Anastasia Walsh Perrino.

Bumper stickers, photos and buttons will be available. There will be food, music, a cash bar and a silent auction and a fun time for all.

We believe John McCain and Sarah Palin, both fearless fighters against corruption and special interests, are best able to clean up Congress, where both Biden and Obama, unfortunately, have been part of the problem. John McCain hates war, but knows that a strong defense is essential to keep us safe in these dangerous times of Russian adventurism and Islamic terror. Obama says he will slash our defense capabilities.

Jeff Beatty has a real chance to knock off John Kerry this November. Kerry's undistinguished 24 years in Washington have resulted in Kerry fatigue in Massachusetts. Jeff can't match Kerry's enormous wealth, but in courage, real experience, dedication and accomplishment -- and determination to fight for the people of Massachusetts, this former Army Delta Force Officer, former FBI agent,former CIA Counter-Terrorism Officer and small business owner comes out way ahead.

Don Howell has proven his worth serving his town of Harwich. Now he's ready to restore a sane voice for the people of the Fourth Barnstable District – one not beholden to any special interest -- to the State House.

Our county needs experienced, capable people who will value every taxpayer's dollar. Come hear why the Republican candidates for the county commission and the Office of Register of Probate are the ones on your side.

The Lower Cape Republican Roundup event is sponsored by the Lower Cape Republican Council (Don Howell, Chairman). Anyone may attend, but a special welcome will be out for voters in Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet. Tickets are $30 each and can be obtained by calling Pat Klammer at 508-432-2963, Diane Bronsdon at 508-945-9218/945-3733 or Don Howell at 508-430-1672 or from a member of any of the Republican town committees or Howell headquarters at 14 Haskell Lane, Harwich.

Oh, my, the Brits are fascinated by Sarah.

Here's the London Sun's take (highlights bolded liberally):

NEWS
SHANAHAN
Palin shows us how it's done
From FERGUS SHANAHAN
in St Paul, Minnesota
Published: 05 Sep 2008

WHY, why, why can’t WE have a Sarah Palin?

That was the question churning in my mind as I witnessed this astonishing American presidential race.

A week ago few in Britain had heard of Palin.

Today, the moose-huntin’ mom is the most talked-about woman in the world.

And with good reason.

Her sensational performance at the Republican convention may turn out to be the moment the White House slipped from Barack Obama’s grasp.

She was an electrifying mix of passion, energy, optimism and plain speaking. The exact opposite of the slippery, two-faced, depressing bunch of third-raters who parade on our Westminster stage.

In Palin and the Democrats’ Barack Obama, America has two hugely charismatic people offering distinctly different roads.

Palin is sidekick to Vietnam war hero John McCain. He isn’t short of fame and glory either. But as I look closer to home, which giant British personalities are making news on the Westminster scene today? Er — Charles Clarke. A lumbering, grumbling tub of resentment, Big Ears snipes at Gordon Brown while lacking the courage to do anything about it. ....

Where is someone with the X-Factor mass appeal of Palin and Obama?

It’s grim. And sad, too, because I have seen here how exciting a political battle can be when slugged out by huge characters before an enthralled nation.

Democrats and their Lefty media backers had been sneering that Palin is a small-town nobody, a hick from Alaska put into a job way beyond an inexperienced woman.

Believe me, you will not be hearing that again. [Wrong there; they're still trying.]

Full of self-assurance and aggression, super Sarah popped Barack’s balloon big-time.

From the moment she walked on stage in this cavernous bear pit, smart in cream jacket, trim black skirt and black heels, she proved that McCain knew exactly what he was doing when he picked her as running mate.

The first thought was that here was America’s youthful Maggie Thatcher, minus the swinging handbag. Hair piled into a slight beehive — more Sarah White House than Amy Winehouse — she blinked and smiled behind her geeky specs as the vast crowd went ballistic.

She is popular with voters for the very reason America’s snooty political establishment despises her: She isn’t one of the Washington gang.

She’s a mum of five from icy Alaska with a sledge-load of problems behind her own front door that workaday Americans can relate to.

A child with special needs. A daughter of 17 pregnant. A constant juggle between family and career. Compared to the career politicians dominating both parties here she seemed fresh, natural — one of us and not one of them.

She revelled in being an outsider.

She spoke to America as one working mum to another. She cracked good jokes.
Showing steel beneath her magnolia jacket, she slaughtered Obama’s lack of experience, his vanity, his emptiness beneath the windy waffle.

It was the most powerful demolition of the Democrat hero I have heard in two weeks on the US election trail.

The wagons have been drawn up and the Republicans are ready for battle.

The McCain-Palin ticket now looks in exciting shape. A war hero and a heroic mum. Experience and optimism.

And when McCain joined the Palin gang — babies and boyfriends and all — on stage after her speech, there was a sense of cheeky fun absent from Obama’s solemn coronation.

How the Democrats must be regretting Hillary isn’t running with Obama. Barack’s sidekick, Joe Biden, looks a dull old dog compared with the ball of fire that is Palin.

And consider this: If Obama loses, Hillary Clinton will run for the Democrats in 2012. Opposing her is sure to be Sarah Palin. That would guarantee America its first woman President.

And my fistful of dollars, having seen both in action here, would be on Palin. Most of all, though, the Palin sensation makes our own Westminster politics look as grey and dull as the leaden September skies. It’s dire.

We need a moose loose in our Hoose.

John McCain had a hard act to follow coming after Sarah Palin. But he did a masterful job of expressing his commitment to serving America, fighting waste, earmarks and special interests while making sure America is safe.

His personal story of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam was told to a quiet, teary crowd. He confessed he had been broken by torture, but credited his cell mates with raising him from despondency to determination. It was in that Hanoi prison cell that he came to realize how much he loved America and dedicated his life to serving his country. All of this was delivered in a matter of fact manner, but his emotion broke forth as he called for all Americans to fight with him to make a great America even better than it is.

The audience responsed with a rising crescendo of yes, yes, we are with you, John and Sarah. We will stand up and fight with you for an even better America for our children and grandchildren. As you have, John McCain, we will put Country First.

It's pretty sad when you have to read a British newspaper (or the Jerusalem Post) to get a fair view of the McCain/Palin ticket. But Gerard Baker, the U.S.correspondent for the Times of London, thankfully continues his objective commentary about the campaign that is now entering its final phase. (Excerpts follow.)

So here's why she matters.

First of all she offers an opportunity for an ailing Republican party to reconnect with ordinary Americans. She's conservative, but her conservatism is not that of the intolerant, uncomprehending white male sort that has so hurt the party in recent years. She is much closer to a model of the lives of ordinary Americans - working mother, plainspoken everywoman juggling home and office - than any Republican leader in memory.

(June 30, 2008, with her youngest, Trig, food shopping.)

The contrast with Mr Obama is especially powerful. The very fact that Mrs Palin didn't go to elite schools but succeeded nonetheless - the very ordinariness with which she so piquantly jabbed Mr Obama on Wednesday - is what will make her so appealing to Americans. And as a pro-life conservative she debunks in one swoop the enduring myth that all women subscribe to the obligatory nostrums of radical feminism.

But there's more to it than that.

The opportunity for McCain-Palin is not reaction, but reform - a reform rooted in a distant conservatism that could be due for a comeback.

Hailing from Arizona and Alaska, the Republican ticket has a chance to rekindle a western conservatism different from the old Yankee paternalist sort or the Bible Belt version. They like their guns out there (some still kill their own food) and they are pro-life and deeply pro-America, of course. But at a time of grave challenges, the themes of economic freedom and opportunity, the resistance to the idea that government holds all the answers, could resonate with voters.

This is an election, as the Democrats have realised all along, about an America on the cusp of change. With the moose-hunting, establishment-taunting Mrs Palin at his side, Mr McCain might represent a bigger change than the one that his opponents are offering.

More...

Rudy Giuliani was the keynote speaker of the Republican National Convention, but his excellent speech got overlooked in the excitement over Governor Palin's address. It's worth a look and a read.

The transcript is here.

The Middle East's most perceptive strategic analyst Caroline Glick wrote in the Jerusalem Post about the brilliance of John McCain in making a hard-eyed assessment of his own strengths and weaknesses and those of Barack Obama and in taking the bold action he did as a consequence. It's trite to say "Know thyself, know thy enemy," but too often that fundamental advice is forgotten or ignored.

What about Obama?

In Sen. Barack Obama, McCain faces a young, vigorous and charismatic opponent who has successfully energized his supporters and the powerful US liberal media establishment. Owing to that excitement, Obama has raised unprecedented amounts of campaign contributions. He has also rallied tens of thousands of loyal foot soldiers who have volunteered to serve his campaign. Both the donors and the volunteers are essential for winning voters and bringing them to the ballot boxes on November 4.

Obama's velvet tongue is also a formidable asset. His ability to mesmerize audiences with soaring rhetoric is compared favorably to president John F. Kennedy's eloquence.

Obama's other massive advantage is the liberal media. Since he first launched his primary campaign, the liberal media - which include the major US newspapers, television news networks and two out of three cable news networks - have been actively advocating on his behalf while downplaying his opponents.

But all of these formidable strengths are matched by countervailing vulnerabilities. While Obama's supporters are energized, the drawn-out primary election battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton splintered the Democratic Party base. Whereas most of Clinton's voters will no doubt vote for Obama in the general election, their support is more tenuous in swing states where Obama's cultural cache is less appealing.

And while Obama is a stunning speaker, his record of actual accomplishments is all but nonexistent. The combination of his extraordinary speeches and his ordinary empty resumé engenders a sense that Obama suffers from extreme arrogance.

Then, too, while the media has done its best to project a positive and credible image of Obama, his past political associations with radicals such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres and corrupt influence peddler Tony Rezko call both his patriotism and his honesty into question.

So how did McCain see himself?

On the other hand, McCain has been unable to generate excitement in his party. His reputation as a maverick has often been earned at the expense of his political base, which is overwhelmingly socially conservative and suspects him of being a closet liberal. This has made fund-raising a challenge, and raised concerns that many conservatives will simply not vote on Election Day.

Moreover, McCain has never distinguished himself as a great communicator. His war wounds, which prevent him from raising his arms above his shoulders, make him appear even older than his 72 years. When compared to the vigorous, handsome 46-year-old Obama, McCain tends to look and sound like an old man.

This age and rhetorical distinction is only magnified by the disparity of media coverage of the two candidates' campaigns. The media have a pronounced and documented tendency to play up McCain's weaknesses and Obama's strengths while downplaying McCain's strengths and Obama's weaknesses.

What did McCain have to do?

IN LIGHT of these realities, McCain's strategic challenge has been on the one hand, to transform Obama's strengths into weaknesses while bringing Obama's actual weaknesses to the public's attention in a persuasive way. On the other hand, McCain needs to unify his own party around his candidacy without alienating independents and Democrats whose votes can be won.

In recent weeks, largely through the well-conceived, satirical use of television ads, McCain sought to meet these basic challenges. By comparing Obama's speech in Berlin to Moses's parting of the Red Sea, he playfully yet effectively drew attention to Obama's arrogance and called the credibility of his rhetorical skill into question. Other ads effectively brought Obama's slim record of actual achievements into view. Still other ads sought to attract disaffected Clinton voters by using her own primary campaign denunciations of Obama's record and radical associations.

Most importantly, in the lead-up to Palin's selection as his running mate, McCain has successfully provoked a public debate about the fairness of the media's support of Obama.

McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate, then, came after he had set the conditions for a strategic assault on Obama by successfully weakening him and discrediting his support base. The surprise entry of a young, accomplished woman with a compelling personal story who was all but unknown to the national audience, placed the Obama campaign and particularly his media supporters in a state of shock. And in their shocked reaction to her selection, the liberal media destroyed their own credibility - not to mention likability - among the general public.

The media instantly attacked -- inexperience, they shouted, thus highlighting the very meager accomplishments of Obama -- two books about himself.

She shouldn't be running because she has a special needs child. That blew up in their faces immediately.

Then they trumpeted the fact that Palin's unmarried daughter was pregnant and created a media circus that totally destroyed any illusion that the media was being fair in this election.

The unfair attacks instantly angered, energized and solidified the base, because, after all, Sarah Palin was one of them, and John McCain had shown, by picking her, he was, too, putting to rest any nagging doubts.

Far from a gamble, his move was a stroke of brilliance that showed an acute understanding of who Palin is, how he himself is perceived, and what motivates both the media and his own party base.

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

McCain has weakened Obama and exposed the hypocricy of the media.

Now McCain and Palin have to deliver. But McCain has shown outstanding judgment and leadership in positioning for victory when all seemed to be going against him.

McCain's strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful presidential race provide an important lesson for policy-makers and political leaders. To win in politics and war you must be willing to acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses, and those of your opponent. It is never easy to look reality in the face. But unless leaders are willing to do so, they will never win

Column One: John McCain - master strategist
Sep. 4, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto (Best of the Web) met Massachusetts Republican senatorial candidate Jeff Beatty at the Republican National Convention and was wowed by his impressive credentials. As he notes, in oh-so-blue Massachusetts Beatty has an uphill climb. Kerry has been in the Senate for 24 undistinguished years, occasionally popping up in Massachusetts news for wind-surfing and bar hopping in Nantucket. Kerry fatigue is working in Beatty's favor and the idea that Massachusetts would benefit from two-party representation in Washington could be catching on.

For those who may have missed it or want to read it now or download it, here is the text of Senator John McCain's speech accepting the mandate to shake up Washington and protect the nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The video is courtesy of C-Span.

The morning after McCain promised he will win the election with a fellow maverick at his side, both determined to shake up Washington, Victor Davis Hanson observed that Palin Derangement Syndrome and overkill by the elites of the left may well make that happen.

When we consider. . .the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished, given where she began, is nothing short of remarkable.

In short, Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.

Instead this entire sorry episode of personal invective against, and jealousy toward, Sarah Palin is surreal. Given the rising backlash, Palin Derangement Syndrome may prove to be the one thing, fairly or not, that sinks Barack Obama.

Read it all.

Maverick John McCain made it clear in his speech to the Republican National Convention that he had chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his VP because she was a maverick, too. She fought the establishment to root out corruption and waste, as McCain has done throughout his career. He said that together they will "shake up" Washington. To underscore that message, the campaign released a new ad.

Power Line notes:

40 Million?!

The Associated Press reports that, counting PBS, over 40 million Americans watched Sarah Palin on television last night--more, by around two million, than saw Barack Obama in Denver.

I suppose we should say a word of thanks to the Daily Kos cesspool [a vicious far left blog that was universally condemned when it said "Screw them" about four American contractors tortured and killed in Iraq] and the mainstream media who, together, tried to destroy Governor Palin but instead created for her a virtually unprecedented audience.

The wild-eyed accusation that Governor Palin's new baby was actually the baby of her 17-year old daughter Bristol, which the family was covering up, first appeared on the foul left wing website Daily Kos. Unverified though it was, the mainstream media immediately picked it up and ran with it. That forced the Palin family to disclose the fact that Bristol was pregnant, thus destroying any semblance of privacy the teenager would have had.

While the Obama campaign said the right thing about leaving famiily members alone, it did little or nothing to halt the hysterical attacks that Obama supporters in and out of the media immediately began leveling at Governor Palin, making headlines around the world.

The sexist attack contnued -- how can a mother of five with a pregnant daughter be vice president -- led to the enormous audience for Governor Palin's debut on the national political stage, which can only be described as a triumph. As even Wolf Blitzer of CNN said (as did Chris Wallace of Fox News), "A star is born."

Palin and her family acted with courage and grace with instant support and love for Bristol. And viewers also saw John McCain, who entered the stage after Sarah's speech, give Bristol a big hug.

Most vitriolic of the elite women sneering at Sarah Palin was perhaps Sally Quinn of the Washington Post, whose eminence derives from her marriage to her boss at the Post, executive editor Ben Bradlee, 20 years her senior. Most recently, Quinn, a non-Catholic, was criticized by taking communion at Tim Russert's funeral. Quinn oversees a Post column entitled "On Faith," so she was fully aware what she was doing was a deliberate insult to the Catholic Church.

Support for the Palin family poured in from all other the country. Average Americans felt they had been attacked. The mean, politically driven attacks on the Palin famiily had backfired.

A video of Sarah Palin's rise was supposed to play at Wednesday's Republican National Convention program, but the schedule ran late. It may run tonight, but here it is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of the comments after the Palin triumph:

John Hinderaker the Power Line blog quoted from an AP story:

"One speech does not a campaign make. ... Even as she spoke, airplanes in Alaska were unloading reporters and political operatives sent to pore through her personal and public life."

John notes:

It's interesting, isn't it? Where are the planeloads of "reporters and political operatives" poring through Barack Obama's "personal and public life?" Those poor newspapers and other media organizations have been strapped for resources for so long that they just haven't been able to look into Obama's career and associations. Now, thankfully, planeloads of reporters have become available. Maybe when they're done investigating Sarah Palin's daughter's boyfriend, do you think they will turn their attention to the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States?

That was just a rhetorical question, of course. After all, news organizations have to have priorities!

A reader's email to radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt:

I work in a small manufacturing facility in the greater Syracuse NY area. It is pretty darn "blue" around here, but kind of a "centrist dem, labor-oriented, working class value blue-collar blue". Not the "fever swamp truther, BushCo kind of blue". Anyway, to the point. No one EVER talks politics here, but the place is BUZZING with Palin fever. Everyone's talking about her, and the most often used phrase I hear is "finally, one of us!"

The left is in serious, serious trouble. I myself wasn't enthused about McCain, though my respect for the man's sacrifice alone gets my vote. But now I will be writing my first EVER check to any candidate. And I will gladly support the McCain/Palin ticket because she inspires me.

--------------------------------------------------------

Some favorites from Sarah's speech:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

“What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to take more of your money…give you more orders from Washington…and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy… our opponent is against producing it.”

"With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers. To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies ... or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

"But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate. This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

"Some candidates use change to promote their careers. John McCain has used his career to promote change. "

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer. And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely. There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death ... and that man is John McCain.

How did some of the Obama supporters take it?

At Talking Points Memo they are stunned:

Yet if you didn't sense last night how deeply Sarah Palin channeled some of the country's deepest, most powerful currents of pent-up indignation and yearning, you don't sense the trouble we Democrats are in.
Rhetorically, she was the anti-Obama,. She was stirring precisely because she was so artless, matter-of fact, and "American" — with no cadences or grand, historic resonances, but with plenty of mother wit and shrewdness. Credit her as much as the speechwriters.

In Canada, Andrew Coyne at Macleans isn't necessarily predisposed to liking Palin, but he admits he witnessed something very impressive, calling her "the best natural speechmaker since Reagan":

It was that good. No, she’s not qualified, and the substance was thin, but my God — that was perhaps the greatest bit of political theatre I have ever witnessed. Her critics in the media and in the opposition may regret having piled on quite so enthusiastically, and with so little heed for who they hurt — or angered. Watching the tumultuous, ecstatic reaction in the hall, I was reminded of the famous words of the Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbour: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Showing that some decency still flickers in the Democratic Party, law professor Susan Estrich, campaign manager of the failed Dukakis presidential bid, expressed outrage at the hatchet job Sally Quinn of the Washington Post and other elites, particularly feminist elites, were doing on Governor Palin. On the Greta van Susteren Fox News show, Estrich fumed:

I’ve never seen anything this bad in my life, and, Greta, I was with Geraldine Ferraro in ‘84 – and this is worse.... I don’t agree with Sarah Palin on the issues. I mean, she and I are very far apart, but I have never seen from some of my friends such vicious and mean-spirited attacks on her most personal choices, which is what they are. We ask that our choices be respected. Hers should be respected. And this questioning of whether she should as a mother of five be running for Vice President, I don’t recall anybody saying that Arnold Schwarzenegger shouldn’t run for governor of California because he’s got four kids. I think this is just really unfair, really sexist, and very likely to provoke a backlash.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Though US Magazine is trashing Sarah Palin in its cover article out tomorrow with a lurid cover caption "Babies, Lies & Scandals," their online readers seem to be rejecting the attempted brainwashing. (The owner of the magazine is a Obama supporter and contributor who has maxed out.)

Poll of US Magazine online readers

Sarah Palin entered history last night at the Republican National Convention with a stirring address that filled the auditorium with applause time and time again. Poised, witty, down-to-earth, Sarah told her all-American story and began the election contest in earnest. Unshaken by the liberal media's onslaught of lies and innuendo and the suggestion that a woman in her position couldn't do the job, she showed that she was ready to take on the elite naysayers. As one worried leftwinger noted, her performance was "alarmingly strong."

This is the full video of her address, thanks to C-Span.

Excitement! You want excitement? It was there last night when Sarah Palin showed she belonged on the big stage of American politics. A jubilant John McCain congratulated Palin for her stirring performance and asked the delegates, "Didn't we make the right choice?" and received a roar of approval.

In an article entitled "Palin's Home Run," The Wall Street Journal's John Fund said it well:

Sarah Palin electrified the hall, and from what I can tell from my e-mail inbox that excitement is being replicated in living rooms across the country.

If John McCain wins the presidency, he believes

one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure.

The full report, with video.

Even the ever-sneering New York Times in its headline banner acknowledged the waves of excitement and welcoming approval that swept through the convention hall before, during and after Governor Palin's speech: "PALIN ASSAILS CRITICS AND ELECTRIFIES PARTY."

Delegates said they were enthralled by Ms. Palin. "I think she’s great; she’s giving it back to the Democrats for all the sorry things they’ve said about her and about America," said Anita Bargas, a delegate from Angleton, Tex. "She’s a conservative, and she has a great sense of humor."

ABC News quoted one delegate who made a telling point:

Oklahoma delegate Don Burdick was ecstatic after Palin's speech.

"I don't think anyone can deny that we saw a genuine person, she was great," Burdick told ABC News' Ron Claiborne.

While America still doesn't know who Barack Obama is because he is hidden behind the Daley machine's carefully crafted life story (and two Obama-written partly fictionalized autobiographies), Sarah Palin, who described herself as an "average hockey mom," is someone America can instantly relate to.

The text of Governor Sarah Palin's address to the Republican National Convention.

Just look at these covers of US magazine. Fair? Hah.

US Magazine is now owned by Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone . . . and a big-time donor to Barack Obama. In checking his contribution records to Obama, he seems to have maxed out. (It is not owned by Time Warner, as originally reported.)

The editor on Fox News this morning claims the article is really balanced, but Megan Kelly tore him apart on that; she had read it and went through several items to prove it wasn't.

But the major intended effect of the magazine was the cover. More people see US Magazine at the grocery checkout counter and it's the "Babies, Lies & Scandals" cover headline they knew millions would see who never read the article.

Disgusting.

The highlights of the evening were speeches by former Senator Fred Thompson and Senator Joe Lieberman. Just eight years ago Lieberman was the vice presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, but last night he was urging Democrats and Independents to vote for America, not for a party, and to vote for McCain/Palin.

Lieberman in one reference contrasted McCain and Obama very well:

Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But eloquence is no substitute for a record -- not in these tough times.

In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party.

Contrast that to John McCain's record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget.

Click here for Lieberman's speech (video and transcript).

Click here for Fred Thompson's remarks (video and transcript).

Thompson made many fine observations, but this is an unanswerable one:

It’s pretty clear there are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves: ‘Who is this man?’ and ‘Can we trust this man with the presidency?’

The media coverage of Sarah Palin has focused on her all-American story, but has neglected her long, deep and active involvement in the critical matter of energy security for the United States.

As a newly elected governor, Palin hit the ground running and, not waiting for Congress to act, had the state okay the building of a 1,700-mile natural gas pipeline to serve the lower 48 states. She's pushed ahead with all the environmental paperwork so that oil from offshore Alaska can be in the pipeline in the next two or three years -- if Congress lifts its offshore drilling moratorium.

Drill now.

Palin's Importance
By Investor's Business Daily
Tuesday, September 03, 2008

Security: The impact of prolonged high oil prices is moving well beyond economics. Russia now takes license to assault Georgia, and intends worse. John McCain's Alaska running mate has the only weapon.

When Alaska governor Sarah Palin was chosen for the McCain vice presidential ticket, most attention was on her beauty-queen past and down-home North Woods family life. In reality, she's the powerful governor of Alaska, the most pivotal state in the union for energy.

John McCain understood well that it's the one state that can liberate the U.S. not just from high prices but from increasingly threatening enemies whose power derives solely from high oil prices.

Alaska was purchased in 1867 explicitly to ensure America's energy future. Palin's leadership has done much to develop Alaska's energy resources, but the state is still stonewalled by Congress.

Palin's strong Alaskan presence in Washington will change that.

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe summarizes the "stark" difference between the Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin tickets on issues of life. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania earlier this year, Obama said that if his daughters made a mistake, he didn't want them "punished with a baby."

Jacoby goes on:

Obama advocates abortion rights even more sweeping than those enacted under Roe v. Wade. "The first thing I'd do as president," he assured the Planned Parenthood Action Fund last year, "is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." The measure would not only codify Roe, it would eliminate even restrictions on abortion that the Supreme Court has allowed - the federal ban on government funding of abortion, for example, or the law prohibiting partial-birth abortion.

Polls show that 75% of all Americans oppose partial-birth abortions, which Obama wants to bring back.

Jacoby again, this time on Obama's opposition to protecting babies who survive failed abortions:

As an Illinois lawmaker, he [Obama] opposed a bill making it clear that premature babies born alive after surviving a failed abortion must be protected and cannot be killed or simply left to die. Even after virtually identical legislation passed unanimously in the US House and Senate, Obama continued to oppose the state version. On abortion, no presidential candidate has ever been so extreme.

As for the McCain/Palin ticket, Jacoby says this:

And when has a Republican ticket ever been so unabashedly antiabortion? Senator John McCain, long one of the Senate's reliably antiabortion votes, is a father of seven, including an adopted orphan from Bangladesh. His running mate lacks McCain's voting record, yet her bona fides are even more impressive: When Palin and her husband learned last winter that she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome, they never considered not having him. More than 90 percent of pregnant American women in the same position choose abortion. Palin chose life.

Jacoby concludes:

The next president and vice president will be the most pro-choice in US history. Or the most pro-life.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

How does the leading analyst of the Middle East Caroline Glick view the Obama/Biden ticket? She asks whether the addition of Biden as VP nominee means Israel can trust Obama. Her unequivocal answer in effect is “Hell, no.”

OBAMA is currently receiving the support of some 57 percent of American Jews. Although this is less than any Democratic presidential nominee in recent memory, it is still disturbing that a large majority of American Jews support him. The Obama campaign no doubt hopes the Biden selection will shore up Jewish support.

It can only be hoped that despite their party loyalty and what they're telling pollsters, American Jews (indeed, American voters generally) will judge Biden and Obama by their records and positions.

Biden has consistently denied the threat emanating from Iran and Syria not only for Israel but for the U.S. as well. And Obama's statements and actions expose him as a man ill disposed not only toward Israel but America itself.

Here's her analysis.

With Biden On Board, Can Obama Be Trusted?
By Caroline Glick, Aug. 28, 2008

Many American Jewish observers welcomed Barack Obama's selection of Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. As a member of the Senate since 1973, and the serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is a seasoned political player and foreign policy heavyweight. His experience, it is argued, will make up for Obama's inexperience; his moderate liberal views will make up for Obama's radical liberal views.

Biden has a track record of often supporting Israel. And as he entered the Democratic presidential primaries last year, he stepped up his pro-Israel pronouncements. In an interview with the Forward for instance, Biden rejected the anti-Israel call to distance the U.S. from Israel in a bid to ratchet up Arab support for the U.S. As he put it, "In my 34-year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel. So the idea of being an 'honest broker' is not, as some of my Democratic colleagues call for, the answer. It is being the smart broker, it is being the smart partner.

But while Biden's rhetoric on America's relationship with Israel is firm, his positions on issues critically important to Israel's national security call into question his willingness to stand by Israel. He is a staunch supporter of an Israeli transfer of the strategically critical Golan Heights to Syria and has harshly criticized the Bush administration for its refusal to support Israeli negotiations with Syria. At the same time, he downplays the significance of Syria's strategic alliance with Iran and its sponsorship of terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Belittling those ties, Biden has claimed repeatedly and without a shred of evidence that the Syrians really want to put all of that behind them.

The selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to run with John McCain has generated enormous enthusiam and expressions of support. In the first hours after the announcement more than $7 million of new contributions rolled in.

Jeff Beatty of Massachusetts, who more and more looks as if he will defeat John Kerry for the U.S. Senate on November 4th, has issued a strong message of approval for the selection of Governor Palin. Such a strong ticket as McCain/Palin can only help Beatty achieve his goal and our goal of seeing two-party representation of Massachusetts in Washington.

Enthusiasm to be effective has to be translated into action. Go to the upper right of this site and click through to both the McCain and Beatty sites and contribute whatever you can to help their campaigns. You'll feel good if you do and America will be the better for your participation.

The Democratic attack machine is going into overdrive hitting on Sarah Pallin, making charges and creating false rumors, thus showing how frightened they are of the appeal of this corruption fighting governor.

McCain/Palin is working just as hard to rapidly transform Governor Palin from an unknown into a public persona, which means shedding virtually all vestiges of privacy. This contrasts sharply with Obama's stonewalling and intimidation to hide parts of his past that conflict with and undermine the campaign-scrubbed narrative put together by the guiding lights of the Chicago political machine running the Obama campaign.

However, today's big news, that Palin's 17-year old daughter is pregnant and will have her baby, doesn't concern Palin's politics at all. The news is being made public now to counter slimy rumors traced to the left wing Daily Kos website that the son Sarah had four months ago was really her daughter Bristol's baby and Palin was covering up for her.

Sarah Palin and her husband Todd released this statement:

"Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.

"Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family."

So the Democratic attackers succeeded in making it impossible for the 17-year old to have her baby quietly in peace.

Obama must be incredulous. Back in March he said this:

"Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old," he said. "I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.

The Palin family doesn't think the response to such a mistake is abortion, but protection of the life of the unborn.

Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family issued the following statement:

"In the 32-year history of Focus on the Family, we have offered prayer, counseling and resource assistance to tens of thousands of parents and children in the same situation the Palins are now facing. We have always encouraged the parents to love and support their children and always advised the girls to see their pregnancies through, even though there will of course be challenges along the way. That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances.

Obama said that if anyone in his campaign was found to be involved in spreading this false rumor or going after families of McCain or Palin he or she would be fired.

Here is the front page news item.

August 31, 2008

Sarah Palin: conservatives find the girl of their dreams
The Alaskan governor’s family life and political views press the right’s buttons

Sarah Baxter

When Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight as John McCain’s running mate in Dayton, Ohio, and promised that women could “shatter that glass ceiling once and for all”, it was an electrifying moment in a presidential election that had already produced its share of upsets and surprises.

History was on the march again the morning after Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept his party’s White House nomination. After the fireworks, the 80,000-strong crowd who had cheered Obama to the skies at the Mile High stadium in Denver woke up with a hangover.

“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Camille Paglia, the cultural critic. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.”

With her beehive hairdo and retro specs, Palin, 44, has a “naughty librarian vibe”, according to Craig Ferguson, the Scottish comedian who stars on late-night US television. However, the selection of Palin, the governor of Alaska and a mother of five, as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee is no joke for the Democrats.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio chat show host, exulted, “We’re the ones with a babe on the ticket” — one, moreover, with a reputation as a tax-cutter and corruption buster in her job as the first woman governor of Alaska.

Palin’s selection on the eve of the Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota, has set the stage for an epic battle for the votes of women, African-Americans, evangelical Christians and the young. The demographic wars that dominated the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton are now set to be replicated in the national election.

Will America fall in love with Palin or will she fizzle, like Dan Quayle, the vice-president to George Bush Sr who could not spell “potatoe”? Can she help McCain to defeat Obama, a modern political phenomenon, who drew a record-shattering television audience of nearly 40m — more than the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing — to watch his convention speech?

“Good Lord, we had barely 12 hours of Democrat optimism,” said Paglia. “It was a stunningly timed piece of PR by the Republicans.”

Whether Palin’s selection is more than a political stunt depends on how she handles the electoral pressure cooker. With the election in November, there is no time for on-the-job training. Karl Rove, Bush’s former aide, offered a guarded welcome to the “gun-packing, hockey-playing” governor, sayhing: “We’ll get a taste in the next five days of how well she does in the 62 days that follow.”

After Obama’s acceptance speech was wiped from the front pages, even he was forced to acknowledge that she “seems like a compelling person . . . with a terrific personal story”. Republicans are hailing their potential new vice-president as the all-American girl of their dreams.

Palin is gunning for the 18m women who voted for Hillary Clinton — a third of whom have not made up their mind to back Obama, according to the latest polls. McCain specifically deployed the language of feminism and civil rights when announcing her candidacy. “She stands up for what’s right and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down,” he said.

Palin’s parents learnt that she had been selected by McCain while they were heading for a remote camp in Alaska to hunt caribou. “I was speechless,” her father said. The skin of a grizzly bear that he shot drapes the sofa in her office.

The more Republicans examined Palin’s record, the more they liked it, although some are fearful of buyer’s remorse. She was born in the conservative heartland of Idaho before moving to Alaska as a baby. At school she was nicknamed Sarah Barracuda on the basketball court because she was so competitive and she led the prayers before each game.

She was a “hockey mom” who cut her teeth at the parent-teacher association before becoming mayor of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage with a population under 7,000. In 2006 she beat the corrupt male establishment in Alaska to win the governorship. She opposes same-sex marriage, but one of her first acts in office was to veto a bill blocking health benefits for gay lovers of public employees.

She hunts, ice-fishes and is a crack shot who knows how to fire an M16 rifle. “I was raised in a family where gender was not going to be an issue,” she said. “The girls did what the boys did. Apparently in Alaska that’s quite commonplace.” No softy, she sued to stop the federal government making polar bears an endangered species and favours drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge. However, she also levied a windfall tax on oil companies.

Palin was glamorous enough to have entered beauty contests to earn money for college. She was crowned Miss Wasilla in her home town and was runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. “They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts. I couldn’t believe it,” she told Vogue, more amused than outraged.

Counterbalancing McCain’s reputation as a political dinosaur, Palin smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska, admitting, “I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled”, and her children, Track, 19, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, Piper, 7, and Trig, four months, have hippie-sounding names. Track, who joined the US infantry in September last year, is about to be deployed to Iraq. “It has really opened my eyes to international events and how war impacts everyday Americans like us,” she said.

On stage in Ohio, the Palin family looked every bit as photogenic as the Obamas on their big night in Denver. Todd, her rugged husband, is part Yupik Eskimo and is four-time champion of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race. If that is not macho enough, he is a member of the steelworkers’ union and a seasonal oil production operator for BP, from which he earned $93,000 last year. He also helps to run the family’s commercial fishing business. They eloped in 1988 to avoid the cost of a wedding. “We had a bad fishing year so we didn’t have any money,” he said.

Like his wife, he is able to swap the traditional roles. “My husband loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom,” Palin said. “I’ve got great help there.”

She needs it. They “wanted enough kids for a basketball team”, she once said, but Trig was born this year with Down’s syndrome. Palin knew there were complications while she was pregnant but never considered an abortion. When he was born, she said, “I’m looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking: in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?” Undaunted, she held a meeting as governor three days after giving birth. “I just put down the BlackBerrys and pick up the breast pump,” she said of her life as a working mother.

Left-wing websites such as the Daily Kos are leading the chorus of disapproval for now. “Having had two children at home at the age of four months, I know how much help they need even without unfortunate medical conditions,” said one tut-tutter.

Republican women, however, are delighted by Palin’s example. Kellyanne Conway, 41, a Republican pollster and mother of three, said, “I really feel mother knows best without the peanut gallery giving unsolicited advice. She strongly conveys to women today that you don’t have to choose between a successful career and motherhood. You do have to make sacrifices, but you can have it all.”

Evangelical Christians could turn out in droves for Palin, a member of Feminists for Life who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, if she maintains her promise.

Deborah Fikes, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, said: “I would just trust that the child is not neglected in any way. There are millions of women who work. Why is it that the father cannot provide the same standard of care? There has been an evolving view of working women even in conservative Christian circles.”

Fikes said Palin was an inspiring choice: “I didn’t think the Republicans would pick a female candidate for another decade, but John McCain is not a typical conservative leader.”

Other conservative women have pointed out that Palin was a much more effective counterweight to the super-competent and glamorous Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican candidate.

Cindy, a beer industry heiress who bought the seven homes that McCain cannot remember and once said the only way to travel around her home state of Arizona was by private plane, was under fire last week from her own half-sister. She said she was voting for Obama after Cindy had repeatedly claimed to be an “only child” and never expressed regret that her father had ignored her half-sister in his will.

In fact, even though the Clinton aides could barely conceal their satisfaction when she was chosen, the woman who Palin upstages most of all is Hillary. If Obama wins the election, Hillary will have to wait until 2016 to stand again. And if he loses, Palin will be first in line to become America’s first woman president.

Raido talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who is a law professor specializing in environmental regulation and natural resources law, discusses an aspect of Sarah Palin's experience that the Obama folks and their adoring media are taking gleeful shots at.

[B]y a very large measure these mayors, council members and commissioners are genuine public servants –and they get very smart, very fast about the communities they serve and the real successes and failures that define American life, whether in Wasilla, Alaska or Dearborn, Michigan or Sharon, PA.

Spend a decade doing this work and you will have made tens of thousands of decisions –and votes—and seen the consequences of public policy decisions play out in a large way even though the stage is relatively small. And you will have developed style and insight into people and bureaucracy. And you will be skilled in performing in public.

Read it all.

Palin By Comparison
Hugh Hewitt
Sunday, August 31, 2008

Those who listen to my radio show know that I spend my mornings and some evenings practicing and teaching law. For the 20 years since I left Washington, D.C., I have been a land use and natural resources lawyer, guiding landowners –principally home builders but also churches and commercial developers—through the maze of federal, state and local regulatory permitting that blankets the use of land in the U.S. I have had clients throughout the west, and this has meant appearing hundreds of times before city councils, county boards and regional and state commissions and agencies. It has meant thousands of meetings with elected and appointed local government officials.

I provide this as background to a few comments on Sarah Palin’s decade as a city council member and mayor of a small town, Wasilla, Alaska. Don’t underestimate the enormous benefit this provides the governor in the campaign and beyond as she takes up the duties of a vice president. Local government experience means an immersion in the real problems of real people as well as with a myriad of issues from the details of budgets for road maintenance and police and fire forces, to the land use issues I mentioned above, to parks and recreation and school construction issue issues.

And, of course, snow removal, the bane of many mayors' lives.

It also means appearing at thousands of the events that define small town life, from the Rotary to the start of the local fund-raising 5K, and the hiring and firing of staff that has to make the traffic lights work and oversee the trash collection.

And mostly it means being able to connect with people who look to the local government to get the big things in small towns right.

Sitting on a dais week after week and listening to public comments and presentations from staff is the least glamorous of all elected offices, but very central to the functioning of the republic. Hundreds of thousands of Americans serve in these all-but-voluntary jobs and do so out of a sense of public spiritedness. Of course there are knuckleheads among the local electeds, and I have encountered many of them.

Gerard Baker is the Washington correspondent for London's newspaper The Times. He has developed his own comparison of Obama and Palin as the liberal media try to rip Palin apart. His calm look is worth reading every word.