Big Dogs Weblog

Palin Shines In VP Debate

by Big Dog on Oct 3, 2008 at 10:01 Political

I watched the VP debate anticipating that Sarah Palin would do better than many thought because the debate is live and cannot be edited to make her look stupid. I am not indicating that she has not had less than stellar moments in her interviews only that the MSM has edited out some of the material and not shown the more flattering items. In the debate Palin was fresh and on the attack. She left Senator Joe Biden looking tired by the end of the night. She was so effective that he went on a rant to show John McCain was not a maverick. His rant was not factual and this added to the list of factual errors he made all night. My first thoughts were that he had a better grasp of the substance and she had better style and presentation. But Biden took liberties with the truth and told America that Barack Obama had not done some of the things he had and he gave Obama credit for some things with which he had little or no involvement.

There were no gotcha moments (thanks to Ifill’s book revelation?) and neither made a gaffe that will derail their respective campaigns but Palin continually chided Biden for looking to the past instead of the future. This is how she parried his attempts to connect McCain with the Bush administration. Amazingly, the very people who chide McCain for voting 90% of the time with the President (read his party) have voted with their party over 95% of the time and then turned around and supported the Bush bailout plan. Is it fair to say that they have sided with bush as well (and no Obama did not demand and get changes, he just claims he did)?

I think that Palin’s performance out shined Biden who has gotten little attention with regard to his weekly gaffes as the media casts its attention on whether Palin knows every vote John McCain ever cast.

She did well and I think this will tighten the polls a little bit. I don’t think the recent drop was very much attributable to the constant mocking of Palin that has occurred in the recent weeks and is more a reflection of the news about the Democratic induced economic crisis. However, it is likely that the constant video of her problems in her Couric interview caused some folks in traditionally red states to pause. I think last night’s performance will strengthen the Republican support in those areas.

CBS and other media outlets have Biden as the winner but that should come as no surprise. A large number of their viewers are left wing and many of the votes come from IPs outside the country. The Drudge report poll (where greater than 95% of the IPs in the last poll were in country) shows her with a 70-28 win (as of this post). The more accurate polls will come out in the next few days and then we will see how it played out. It should come as no surprise that the MSM is working hard to ensure a Democratic win in November so they will harp that Biden won no matter what.

Sarah Palin shocked many of the wingnuts and they are really unable to form a rational argument to show she lost. They continue to say she and McCain represent 4 more years of Bush and fail to make any other reasonable argument about why they should not be elected. McCain will not be 4 more years of Bush but Obama will be 4 years of worse than Carter.

Biden tried to say that he Obama was the true candidate of change but he must have meant the acronym CHANGE (Come Help A Nobody Get Elected).

One last thing. Pundits dismissed Palin by saying that Biden commanded the subjects (if you ignore his factual errors) and that Palin showed she was good at memorizing her talking points. I heard one person last night say that America wants a person who has command of the subjects and not one who can memorize them from a book.

Did anyone hear that argument made when Barack Obama debated John McCain? It is obvious that Obama spent a few days memorizing things to attack McCain with and it is obvious that McCain, though not as dynamic as Obama, had command of the subjects. Yet the wingnut pundits want us to dismiss the VP nominee as unqualified for the office because she learned her talking points but in the same breath expect us to vote for the guy at the top of their ticket who did nothing more than memorize his talking points.

To be sure, Palin had some facts wrong but isn’t Biden the guy who is supposed to have had command of them? He must have spent too many hours watching the tapes from FDR’s televised debates.

This will be fun. I just hope that McCain goes on the attack once this bill gets passed (not that I want it to pass). He can then start tying Obama to the crooks in this mess.

Tags: biden, lies, loser, palin, vp debate, winner