Liveblogging the Sarah Palin speech, for some reason. It's Ronald Reagan's birthday! She starts out with a shoutout to sweet tea, a "clever" tie into the name of the movement and a shout out to one of the few Southern traditions that doesn't directly involve racism.
She refers to a "conservative election sweep" of three off cycle special elections, and also drops the "good to be among real people" canard again. As opposed to those big city dwelling androids out there.
I never understood why the fact that Obama uses a Teleprompter has become such a punch line on the right. It feels like a completely insubstantial and superficial critique.
Now she's talking about national security and to be honest I can't understand what she's saying. She moves on to Abdulmutallab and the travesty that he was Mirandized rather than being immediately waterboarded and having his fingernails pulled out or whatnot. This despite the widespread reports that he was singing like a canary while in custody.
Side note: it's strange that in the talk about the Christmas day attempt and the systemic failures therein, nobody mentions that the directorship of DHS is vacant because Jim DeMint is obstructing a vote on Obama's nominee. Doesn't that make it a bit harder to ensure national security?
"We need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lecturn!" That gets a standing ovation. Words fail.
She follows by praising Obama for the Afghanistan surge and immediately moves on to attacking him for not undermining the credibility of the Iranian democracy movement by offering public support. She also suggests that we should be involved in more foreign wars, rather nonspecifically.
Now she's on to attacking the stimulus. I'm looking forward to hearing Palin's plan for economic turnaround.
"The foundational principles of this are pretty easy to understand, when you get into the red, cut back on your budget!" Worked for Herbert Hoover.
Now the solution: lower taxes! Big surprise! Hey, wasn't a third of the stimulus tax cuts on small business and the middle class? Oh, never mind.
On health care: why do the Democrats insist on cost controls and subsidies when clearly tort reform will solve all of our problems?
Calling for spending cuts now. Where? How about the record military budget that's a quarter of GDP? I doubt that's going to be floated.
"I've been thinking for the past year about what I can do to help the country." Apparently nothing could be done toward that end as a state governor.
Another question: when has Obama ever 'apologized' for American military strength? Did anybody see his Nobel speech? This is another common criticism that I don't see any factual basis for whatsoever.
Surprisingly, it took another 35 minutes for her to
mention Ronald Reagan again.
"Who can argue with a movement that is about the people?" Who indeed?
Now there's a Q & A featuring questions submitted by conventiongoers. Despite the fact that she's facing the friendliest possible audience, she still looks really nervous. I've never really gotten over Palin's tendency to answer questions with run-on sentences that bulldoze through several unrelated topics in a rambling fashion. She's seemingly always veering into incoherency.
Is "lamestream media" a Palin original or is it just something I haven't heard before?
She's now totally ducking a question about the "Palin plan" by giving a vague invocation of free market priniciples and saying that she wants to "win, not lose" the war on terror. Why hasn't anyone else thought of that?
Now people are cheering for the prospect of Palin running for president. Honestly, so am I; I can't imagine her getting 538 electoral votes with her record and general incoherence.
Even the conservative guest on msnbc is saying that Palin has no shot at the White House. I don't know who Neal Boortz is, maybe he's a straw man ringer or something.
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