by Blue Stockings | Josh Marshall calls it "finely aged whine." (TPM)
At WaPo, Howard Kurtz wants us to feel the pain of McCain's top campaign strategist, Steve Smith. Kurtz talks about the "gender... issues" swirling around Sarah Palin, on which I'm just gonna call bullshit right now. Nobody's implied that she's not qualified or less competent because she's a woman; and Alaska's meant to be a part of the US regardless of . what some Alaskans (including, at least at one point, Palin's husband) believe. (See Buck Naked Politics)
I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.
He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.
Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt -- a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist -- really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.
That doesn't make his accusations right. But it does suggest to me that a brewing conflict between McCain and his media chroniclers -- one that makes the ol' Straight Talk Express days a distant memory -- has reached the boiling point. (WaPo)
Oh cry me a river. The "strategist" is mad at the media for reporting unfavorable allegations? That's politics, old son. Obama and Hillary had to get used to it; now John McCain is getting his share. He had a long sweet ride of it for a long time. As Ezra Klein said back in April (h/t our lovely sister blog), "They know how to imply that Barack Obama has had bad friends, and Hillary Clinton tells lies, and John McCain -- well, they know how to doodle his initials inside a sparkly heart." (American Prospect; emphasis added)
As BN-Politics discusses here, he's getting "revenge" by canceling interviews. Your loss. Yes, that'll teach them.
Listen to this, would you?
Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life. (WaPo)
Yeah. Sucks to be her. And I didn't approve, any more than Barack Obama did, about some of the commentary. But she is going for the top job in the nation. If she attends a church where they believe the Iraq War is God's will, I want to know; and ditto if her husband was in any way associated, however briefly, with Alaskan separatists whose revered leader, Joe Vogler, was apparently murdered during a plastic explosives sale gone wrong. (NYT) Ugh, okay.
Incidentally, Vogler also said:
The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government," Vogler said in the interview, in which he talked extensively about his desire for Alaskan secession, the key goal of the AIP.
"And I won't be buried under their damn flag," Vogler continued in the interview, which also touched on his disappointment with the American judicial system. "I'll be buried in Dawson. And when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones home."(TPM)
In other words, and in effect, "God damn America."
As for Palin, she might not have been directly involved with them, but she did give a speech in which she said:
"Keep up the good work," Sarah Palin told members of the Alaskan Independence Party in a videotaped speech to their convention six months ago in Fairbanks. She wished the party luck on what she called its "inspiring convention."(the L.A. Times)
More on this at Buck Naked Politics.
I get to ask questions about any beliefs the president holds that might affect me or my country. Sorry, old son, but that's politics.
Kurtz quotes from an awesome piece by Alan Wolfe in The New Republic that I'd missed.
"Sarah Palin's nomination is a public service. No longer will we hear lectures from the likes of Newt Gingrich telling poor women on welfare how to conduct their sex lives. Focus on the Family will have to focus on a different kind of family. William Bennett has no virtues left to write about. At long last our national nightmare over sexual hypocrisy has come to an end, and we can all thank John McCain for that.
"And that is not all. In rushing to Sarah Palin's defense, the leaders of the Christian right have made it abundantly clear how they define a Christian. We don't care if you sin. We are not bothered if you put your ambition ahead of the needs of your children. If you have lied or broken the law, we will look the other way. It all comes down to your stand on guns and fetuses. Vote the right way, and you have our blessing. If any proof were needed that James Dobson is a political operative rather than a spiritual leader, his jumping on the Palin bandwagon offers it."
But I laughed and laughed when I read this fulmination from the National Review editors:
This shameful but predictable media performance stands in marked contrast to the rigorous 'hands-off' privacy policy dutifully honored by the press throughout the Clinton years for the president's then-teenage daughter, Chelsea. Indeed earlier this year, though Miss Clinton was now well into her twenties and an impressively poised surrogate for her mother's campaign, NBC News suspended reporter David Shuster for asserting that Sen. Clinton's campaign was 'pimping' her daughter -- a classless formulation, to be sure. But where's the hyper-sensitivity about a candidate's child now? (emphasis added)
Where was it on June 25, 1998? That was when John McCain, the current presidential contender, made this hilarious "joke" at a campaign fund raiser.
"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." [Salon; emphasis added]
Other bloggers feel McCain's pain here at Memeorandum.
RECENT POSTINGS
Real Time is Back! Bill's Aug. 29 Opening
Maureen Dowd on Sarah Palin: Fan Fic for Mean Girls (Continued)
McPrickles: McCain Snarls His Way Through an Interview with TIME
RECENT POSTINGS
Comments