Friday, September 5, 2008

Time to Kick Butt

The numbers are in on what the public thought of Ms. Alaska Moose-Gutting, Gun-Totin', War-Mongering, Creationism-Preaching Sarah Palin's speech night before last. They have given the Republican party--a party bankrupt of ideas, up to its eyeballs in cronyism and corruption, and guilty of running the country into a ditch it will take maybe a couple of generations to get out of, if we're extremely fortunate--a huge rush. Glenn Greenwald reports that 60 percent of the people that heard the speech gave her an A, and 58 percent of the American people give her a favorable rating. Two weeks ago nobody knew who she was. (My fellow observer of the human condition over at Trench Warfare has some incisive observations about Ms Moose-Gutter. See her September 2 entry.)

Greenwald reports these numbers in the context of a piece that argues once again (he wrote at more length on the subject yesterday) that since the Republicans cannot possibly run on the issues, their campaign rests and will rest on relentless vicious personal attacks on Obama and his character. And the Democrats will just roll over and take it. The idea that Americans recoil from negativity in political campaigns is nonsense. These attacks work, especially on a people as uninformed and unsophisticated as Americans. They've worked since Reagan. Here's Greenwald:

The idea that Americans instinctively recoil from negativity or that there will be some sort of backlash against Republicans generally and Palin specifically because of how "negative" their convention speeches were is pure fantasy. Cultural tribalism and personality attacks of those sort work, especially when they're not aggressively engaged.counter-productive. And every four years, that belief is disproven.

Every four years, the GOP unleashes unrestrained personality attacks on Democrats and exploits cultural resentments. Every four years, Democrats tell themselves that such attacks don't work and are counter-productive. And every four years, that belief is disproven.

Look what these guys did to John Kerry, no less a war hero than McCain, and running against Bush-Cheney, a couple of war slackers! It is going to be far, far worse with Obama. It's high time that the Democrats "aggressively engage" the slanders and lies that will continue to gush from GOP campaign machinery. They will increase in frequency and intensity now that the campaign has officially launched. The Democrats not going to win this election playing patty-cake with a bunch of slanderous sharks. They need to take off the gloves, stop bowing to McCain's POW experience and kissing his ass, and start taking him to task for the low road he's taking. I really cannot believe the American people are going to choke in this smokescreen again!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fall into neither the 60% nor the 58% group on that one. Is there something wrong with me? I hated the sarcastic tone, the insult to anyone who has worked to make communities better or started grass-roots efforts.

In short, she sounded like a bitchy woman on the bleachers, which I think is so unbecoming to women. I will hand it to whoever wrote the speech; he/she sure knew that Ms. Palin could pull off the words in just that way.

What are women thinking?

I hear that Hillary is donning the gloves for the campaign trail. I'm not a big fan of hers, but hopefully she will make it clear to her supporters, and Obama's, that Sarah Palin could never represent them.

Palin may appeal to the so-far-out-there Christian right, but any woman who really looks at what's under the suit will see that she is not a good representative for women, and she'd not be a good representative for America.

Unknown said...

Thanks, Mare. I'm happy to hear from a woman who's not particularly impressed by this Palin phenom. I think about what cynical calculation went into her selection in the first place. She's a pretty face who's got all the right tickets for the up-till-now alienated religious right-wing of the party.

What I'm afraid of that her presence in this race is going to divert attention from the issues that cry out to be addressed and steer another campaign into a pointless concentration on all the social issues the right loves to wallow in: gays, abortion, etc., etc.

Tanya said...

Yeah. Among my group of moms there are a trickling of registered independents. Not one of them are impressed with Palin, so that gives me some solice.