Motley Moose – Archive

“She’s Dynamite!” Or so thought Morton C. Blackwell, President Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the conservative movement, even though he couldn’t get closer than four feet from Sarah Palin at a Virginia fundraising dinner. Whatever has got into the right wing base of the Republican party, it’s pretty fundamental, and they are not alone in seeing Palin as the future of the party, win or lose

Governor Palin sees herself this way too.

The shocked silence of the McCain spokesman was a result of this segment of an interview recorded on ABC.

VARGAS: But the point being that you haven’t been so bruised by some of the double standard, the sexism on the campaign trail, to say, “I’ve had it. I’m going back to Alaska.”

PALIN: Absolutely not. I think that, if I were to give up and wave a white flag of surrender against some of the political shots that we’ve taken, that … that would … bring this whole … I’m not doin’ this for naught.

As far as I know this is unprecedented – an et tu Brute moment as the VP choice stabs the man who chose her in the back.

Palin is explosive all right. For the Republican party she’s a volatile mixture of glitz, folksy charm, utter ruthlessness and willing ignorance.

But it’s the ‘sexism’ part of that exchange I want to focus on, and what this means for the prematurely announced death of identity politics.

Blask!!! WTF??

Has been crackin’ me up all night.

Check out the Jerome version on MYDD. 😉

Enjoy.

GOTV

Madelyn Dunham, Barack Obama’s grandmother and the person whom he credits with much of his upbringing and character is in ill health, and Obama is taking several days off late this week to go see her in Hawaii.

Obviously Barack would not be traveling to Hawaii at this specific time unless there were grave concerns for his grandmother’s well being.

We wish Mrs. Dunham and all of her family well.

This morning Barack Obama received what may prove to be the second most important endorsement of his presidential campaign. For the sake of party unity, obtaining Senator Clinton’s support was quintessential, but in terms of reaching out to Independents and Republicans, this is perhaps the ultimate endorsement.  Despite having donated $2,300 to longtime friend Senator John McCain’s campaign during the primaries, General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the presidency today on Meet the Press.

Crossposted on Reapers Playground MYDD

I probably don’t need to tell many readers here that there’s a new and potentially divisive argument being mooted – that Obama is underachieving, and that ANY democratic candidate would be doing as well as him at this stage, if not better.

So you’ve heard this meme on other sites? It was actually first mooted by none other than Karl Rove on Face the Nation in early August:

With a restive electorate, with an economy that’s sort of chugging around, with a war in the background, at the end of eight years of Republican rule in the White House, Obama should be way ahead.

Well, people can have their motives to agree or disagree with the statement. But let’s not just rely on partisan pundits on the blogosphere. What does a noted polling expert have to say..?

So stock markets around the world are bouncing back this morning, mainly because Europe and the US are combining in a united effort to solve the liquidity crisis by buying equity in the banking system.

Unlike the US Treasury’s original bailout plan (which merely involved purchasing the toxic debt) this is a part emergency nationalisation of the banks. There are upsides and downsides. The main upside so far? The markets seem to believe it will work...

 

Straight talk.

Apparently it’s a dying art.

John McCain was never a maverick. He was a staunch Republican whose positions deviated from those of his party only on occasion. But the one thing he had going for him was honesty and sincerity. He told the country what he believed and why he believed it, firmly and unapologetically. He stood up for his beliefs even if they were unpopular. He defended his principles. But somewhere along the line John McCain gave up. He sacrificed his principles, he surrendered to the sordid tactics of his party, the tactics he once despised and vocally denounced. To fully understand the magnitude of his fall, one must look back — a glance at the McCain of a month ago, really, is sufficient to understand the duplicity of his statements and positions, but the differences between the McCain of 2000 and the McCain of 2008 are staggering. A brief list compiled by blogger Alex Valentine shows the stark contrast between the two McCains:

That’s right, the GOP is terrified. They’re skittish, they’re nervous, they’re running scared. Not from Obama, of course.

No.

They’re afraid of Sarah Palin.

Honestly, can we blame them? Her record is sad enough, but her performance in interviews is abysmal. Anything unscripted, and she’s in trouble. Here we have Ms. Palin seeming none too sure about what that mysterious “Bush Doctrine” might be:

It’s out. On popular request I’m letting you all know my ‘Journal of the Flame Wars’ has now been published in Prospect Magazine .

As with all such articles, they get cut for length, subbed and simplified, and this is even more true in a British publication where the Netroots has to be explained as Blogosphere 101. There are a lot of things – a history of snark, mentions of other bloggers that have been cut because of length and complexity.

Sorry guys. I tried to mention a lot of you. But the editors found it confusing. It really needs a longer piece to get the whole story. Maybe I should write a book

I hope you enjoy despite this. In the fierce urgency of defeating McCain Palin, I don’t want to reignite any unnecessary and ancient flame wars, so the only two issues I want to comment on are these…

You almost have to laugh watching this much outrage coming out of Hollywood. I’ve never been one to pay much attention to the sleazy tabloids or the innumerable useless factoids about celebrities, but I have to admit, I’m enjoying the smackdown they’re giving Sarah Palin. Since the primaries ended, Hollywood has remained relatively quiet about the presidential race — until, of course, John McCain decided to put Palin in the spotlight. She is anathema to everything our liberal stars hold dear: her political ideology is positively prehistoric, the sort of positions born of nightmares. So naturally, our stars are reacting accordingly.

Here we have Gina Gershon toting a gun and wearing some kind of bathing suit. Clearly a devastating blow to the McCain campaign.