Palin: A Lust Story

This post is an excuse to show the pictures from a recent event where Sarah Palin had to resort to writing notes on her hand in a speech where she mocked President Obama for using a tele-prompter - presumably she prefers it old skool.

What could these notes possibly say? Must be pretty hard to remember stuff if she had to right them down on her hand.

No. In fact you can see she wrote three six words. "Energy" "Tax Cut" and "Lift American Spirits". It is surprising she didn't right down the word "Republican" lest she forgets everything she claims to stand for.

I wonder with Palin whether or not this is a folksy ploy to make her seem down to earth and homely. I hope that someone who has appeared on a Presidential ticket didn't need to write the basic tenants of their political reason d'être to know what on earth they are doing on that stage.

So either she's cynical or an idiot. I don't know which is worse. But I do know this will not do an ounce of harm to her with the base of the Republican Party.

So we come back to September 2008 and we're asking the question, "What makes Sarah Palin attractive to the base GOP"

I am drawn to conclude now something I didn't want to conclude back then - she's hot.

The Republicans lust after her image as a sexy George W Bush minus the intellect.

This has the potential to be extremely sexist and an insult to every successful woman in politics and beyond, but wait, I feel confident my theory can be tested.

If Palin doesn't run in 2012 she will not be a viable candidate ever again due to the fact her looks will fade.

Even is she runs this time round the campaign will age her enough that by the early primaries she won't be looking like she did in 2008. Barack Obama's own grey hairs are testament to the fact that campaigns take their toll physically. In 2008 Palin only got a few months of it - by contrast Mike Hucakbee and Mitt Romey probably put in a great deal more hours in their Republican Primary battles - if she runs like she'll need to run then her image as a glamour politician will begin to crumble.

If Palin loses her looks but keeps her following then I'll be more than prepared to say I was wrong - and while I hope that is the case I am always disappointed when I hope the American hard right will show a bit of decency.

Mass Appeal for the GOP

First of all let me state the obvious: No one saw this coming.

When Senator Al Franken won the recount in Minnesota at the end of June last year few would have expected that the newly minted 60 seat majority the Democrats held would be broken by a Republican winning a seat in Massachusetts.

Just a few weeks ago the Democratic primary recieved more press attention than the general election untill the last few days. It was that election that was seen as the deciding vote in the race to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat, the vote on Tuesday was widely seen as meerely a formality.

Even Republicans have been pushing the line that the Democrats ARE Washington. After the Minnesota recount GOP Chairman Michael Steele declaimed that Democrats owned the Federal Government in its entirity. Chairman Steele was trying to force the notion that the recession had become 100% a Democrat problem and they could shake the spectre of the incompetent Bush administration.

And it has worked. Scott Brown was not tainted at all by the toxic branding of that the GOP had 12 months ago. This branding had wiped out every single last Republican House seat in New England and only three when you included New York (or 3 out of 49 (which went down to two when the Democrats won the NY 23 disctrict special election as recently as November the 3rd))

Now with a Senate win in Massachusetts Republicans are a viable alternative and its the Democrats who will have to defend their record. Given how scant that is after a year with a fillibuster proof majority, which shockingly proved unworkable, the future looks bleak with a mere 18 seat Democrat majority.

Dana Perino: A lesson in revisionism

Spot the gaff.

Polls vs Pols

October 8 saw House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the Middletown Journal saying that he was, “still trying to find the first American who’s in favor of the public option, other than a member of Congress or the administration”.

October 8 also saw Quinnipiac University also released a poll that featured the question, "Do you support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans?"

The poll response was 61% supporting and 34% opposing.

Slim Line Elections US

I'm a busy man. I got things to do. But I miss this little blog. So now I'm going to make it more regular and less heavy - also reading back my 'analysis' I see I wasn't the Larry Sabato that I thought I was.

So I will mostly be linking interesting articles such as this one that shows Obama's approval rating has jumped for the first time since he has taken office. With Healthcare and Afghanistan not going his way this is a little surprising so we shall have to wait and see if this poll is an outlier or not.

The curse of bi-partisanship

The President right now is in the tricky posistion of being highly popular and yet has promised bi-partisanship - but are the two related?

Is Obama popular because he's seen as willing to reach across the aisle or have voters decided to ditch the ideas of the GOP and are supporting Obama in spite of his vocal committment to work with Republicans.

Barack Obama campaigned on a message of bi-partisanship but under the banner of the Democratic Party's nominee for president and won with a healthy mandate. His message might be partly the explanation for how Obama peeled off 9% of Republicans from McCain for himself, much like Howard Dean's 50 state strategy which argueably won votes in the more conservative parts of the country. However the fact remains these elections have resulted in a liberal congress (at the leadership level at least) and a liberal President who continues to have high approval ratings.

I believe if voters' cheif concern was bipartisanship then John McCain would be President right now. His record of working across the aisle was a reality while Obama only offered rhetoric. It was a record he had to distance himself from in the Republican primaries and to a large extent the general election. Much of his record angered intollerant GOP voters and demotivated his base. This is not an uncommon story, indeed McCain is not the only politician to be bitten by bi-partisanship.

The creature whose numbers were delpleted most in the 2006 mid-term elections was the moderate Republican, now more than ever an endangered species. The prime example of this was Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee. His father was a well loved Senator for the state and his political posistions should have ensured him an easy 60% of the vote as he effortlessly covered the centre ground. He lost because he was a running in an election cycle and a state that would rather see a highly partisan liberal Democrat become Senator than any Republican even if Chafee would end up endorsing Obama for President the following year.

These liberal or moderate Republicans were so because they were running in moderate districts and states, (Chafee's own Rhode Island last went Republican in a Presidential election in 1984) and it was in these 'swing states' that Democrats made gains. It was these districts that decided the fate of the House and Senate in 2006. It was the vast numbers of Independents who decided to register a Democrats and the dwindling numbers of Republicans that sewed the seeds of victory for Obama in November.

The Democrats are in their strongest posistion since Watergate or 1964. The Republican brand is tarnished after 8 years of Bush, The Whitehouse, Congress and State Capitals are full of Democrats and Barack Obama has an ambitious agenda that if he comes close to suceeding on could deliver him a comfortable reelection. Yet the administration is desperate to appear bipartisan by working with the last three moderate Republicans in the US, Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter (all top Democrat targets when the seats come up for reelection).

These three do not represent their party or even a wing of the GOP. Not one Republican in the House voted for the stimulus package. Yet work is getting done, bills are being passed. However the Republicans are screaming that the so called bi-partisan bill is no such thing. They are right but should it really matter? Obama is giving congressional Republicans a stick with which to beat him with and he needn't be so kind, especially as all the GOP needs to do is be obstructionist to deflate Obama's promise of bipartisanship.

For so long Republican beat the Democrats with the word 'liberal', turning it into a powerful symbol for weakness, incompetence and godlessness. Obama is worried that the GOP attacks could begin to stick again and consign the Democrats into the minority for another decade.

However the voters have spoken and while Obama may be looking to the next set of elections and doesn't want to give the impression the Democrats are on a runaway train he could do a better job keeping his own peope on the hill in line instead of making overtures towards the GOP that don't go anywhere.

With 1 in 2 Americans registered as Dems, getting some concrete and impressive legislation passed should be the red meat people are clamoring for.

The battle for ideas has been won by the Democrats and they need to start legislating on them.

A bit more house keeping

My apologies for the previous post. I think I was trying to squeeze three or four posts into one. I would have loved to have posted a 2,000 word essay like I wrote on my previous (and now non-existent) blog. I realised after getting almost half way there that this was what I was doing and ended it abruptly. I think there will be another medium for my more long-winded pieces.

This is what happens when I don't post as regularly as it should.

I do, however, have a problem and that is striking the balance between analysis and commentary. I want to delve deep into these issues but I want to keep it bite-size. In an ideal world I'll use old posts containing old ideas to frame new ones - that is after all how anyone gets their head around anything.

My goal is produce something that falls somewhere between MSNBC's First Read and Five Thirty Eight when it comes to pith. I think I fell a little outside of that range. I will try and aim for my posts to be a little bit punchier in future.