I'm not sure we're ever going to see Gov. Sarah Palin tested by our world class media (ahem), so, in the absence of access to Palin, people need to be directed to her Charlie Rose appearance from Oct. 2007, where she pales in comparison to Gov. Janet Napolitano. While Gov. Napolitano addresses Charlie's questions and followups directly and in detail, Gov. Palin demonstrates a weakness on the issues, redirecting issues back to "energy" (i.e. oil) and avoiding substantive responses.
My take... Sarah Palin is very personable, well-spoken (no Bush, here), telegenic..... but is woefully thin on issues (at the time of this roundtable) -- for which she uses her media skills to compensate.
... and echoes their "Wal*Mart moms" usage, as well.
Video of CNN's John King, while discussing target McCain voter demographics with Wolf Blitzer & sidekick (Gloria?)...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ltKDrTfGJs"Another big constituency ... are what they're (McCain campaign) now calling 'hockey moms.' We used to call them 'the soccer moms'; we're calling them 'hockey moms' in this campaign because of Sarah Palin."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ltKDrTfGJs
"Another big constituency ... are what they're (McCain campaign) now calling 'hockey moms.' We used to call them 'the soccer moms'; we're calling them 'hockey moms' in this campaign because of Sarah Palin."
So CNN is adopting the McCain camp terminology for the previously-labeled "soccer mom" demographic, and is jumping on-board with the new McCain camp "Wal*Mart mom" term. (To King's minimal credit, he at least qualified his use of "Wal*Mart moms" as McCain campaign terminology, and didn't, within this particular segment, commit it into the official CNN lexicon.)
Given much of the political battle is about creating bonds between voters and a candidate, it comes across to me as the height of unprofessionalism for CNN to adopt McCain campaign terminology in their coverage, effectively doing mass media canvassing for McCain.
Good to see our media standing strong and holding fast to their objectivity.
http://www.cnn.com/feedback
Based on what I've learned about Sarah Palin's record and from what I've observed in her two introductory speeches, Palin's addition to the McCain ticket turbo-charges the Obama/Biden "more of the same" argument against McCain.
A McCain Administration seemed certain to simply extend Bush policies, with McCain having compromised his alleged principles on so many critical issues... but Sarah Palin is apparently the embodiment of the hyper-partisan, fact-averse, loyalty-over-competence, abuse of power, cancerous politics we've seen in abundance from the Bush Administration and the Republican Party for the last 8 years.Truly, Sarah Palin completes McSame.
These are symptomatic of the behavior of Right Wingers and political opportunists, not of a candidate that I will be enthusiastically voting for in November... nor a candidate to whom I'll be donating any cash or energy.
More and more and more of the same... so. very. disappointing.
