When you get to watch Howard Fineman of Newsweek basically shut down Keith Olbermann, it is a wonderful night. Olbermann, who certainly doesn't belong behind the anchor desk of a major news network, was doing his best to berate and tear down Sarah Palin after her magnificient and show stopping speech to the Republican Convention. Fineman simply wasn't buying a single slanderous remark Olbermann tossed his way. Instead Fineman restated the obvious: Palin is clearly ready for prime time and the Democrats really do have a serious problem.
To paraphrase Fineman, since I don't have a video clip or transcript yet, Democrats have a very serious problem. Up until tonight Obama was the sole media star, now he has a serious rival. Palin has captured the attention, and in many ways, the hearts of the American people.
I would add that since the media and Democrat blogosphere have been so extremely unfair to Palin and her family, she also has the sympathy of almost all Americans. The Obama loving media really made a serious mistake on this one. Americans like the underdog to begin with. And Americans insist on fairness. When the media and underhanded Democrat operatives attacked and vilified Palin and her daughter in a manner that would never have been tolerated if it were a Democrat candidate, they screwed up big time.
The Wizard, fkap blog has had over ten thousand visitors today, That happened because our message rang so very true with the reading and blogging audience. Democrats absolutely surrendered their principles and their moral authority once they attacked Sarah Palin for the unforgivable sin of being a Republican while female.
I want to thank the over fifty blogs and bulletin boards that reprinted my essay and or linked to my blog. I want to thank all who have posted comments or sent me emails or text or Twitter messages. I'll try to visit and write to every one of you.
The unfairness of the media attack continues. It's appalling and embarrassing. Journalists have surrendered their objectivity and their honor. I am going to write a great deal more about this. But the bottom line is that the public hates what is happening. And they're not going to take it.
I hope and pray we'll get back to a campaign of issues and ideas, but I doubt it. I remain a strong liberal and advocate for women's rights, gay rights and civil rights. These are the topics we should discuss. But so long as misguided Democrat operatives and progressive yet unprincipled bloggers make the issue her sex, her family, her baby or her daughter, that is a debate we cannot possibly win.
And if we don't see a much stronger response against this lynching from Barack Obama himself and key Democrat leaders, Hillary Clinton in particular, then we will see Sarah Palin as Vice President in January, 2009.
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On a personal note, Sarah Palin may just have actually won the election tonight with a very genuine and heart felt comment totally overlooked by the major networks. I can personally assure you that these words are still ringing in the hearts and minds of the parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters every special needs child:
"Children with special needs inspire a special love. To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."
For a special needs parent, having an advocate in the White House trumps every single other issue. When Sarah picked up baby Trig after her speech, the election was over. Sarah won.
7 comments:
I wish all Liberals were like you. Conservatives and Liberals really want pretty much the same things: they just believe in different means to getting there.
For instance, both sides have great compassion for the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. Liberals believe government should do something about it. Conservatives believe people should individually do something about through charity. And conservatives put their money where their mouths are by giving far more to charity than Liberals.
If all Liberals were more like you, we could perhaps have a civilized discussion about how to achieve our common goals.
Wiz - ditto to all that you said - and that shoo just commented.
You are a liberal, Wiz - in the classic sense of the word ... Something that seems lacking in way too many purported "liberals" of today.
I thanked you yesterday - and again, today. You are setting the bar very, very high.
Wizard, each and every passing day I become a little more irritated at how you take such great pains to position yourself as entirely "fair" that you fly off the rails of fairness and end up delivering screed after screed against the party of which you claim to be a member. You claim to be "liberal," but all you are doing is enriching the cause of conservatism by bashing fellow liberals. You are throwing them under the bus in ways similar to how Giuliani, Palin, et al did last night at the convention. It was disgusting to watch them...it is disheartening to read you.
You know that I agree with the basic tenets of what you say--that we need to focus on the issues and debate our Republican opponents that way rather than resorting to the very smear tactics that the Republican party has patented over the last decade (and which they are still painstakingly employing to this day--last night's hit parade was nasty, vile sleaze that brought no substance to the table and only fanned the flames of hatred and fear within the Republican base). I have written many times on my blog and many others that if we take the high road and grill McCain-Palin on the issues, we can beat them easily. So I agree with that point.
But to that end, why don't I see you taking that advice? If you truly are, as you have claimed for as long as I've known you through this blogging community, a "strong liberal," and an "advocate for women's rights, gay rights, and civil rights," then why not use your precious and influential blogging space to focus on those issues? If you are so flustered with the media and others who are not staying above the fray, then do the job that you say they should be doing--drill the Republicans on the issues at hand, and help steer this ship back on course.
Instead of falling for the rhetoric that was empty save for the hefty dose of nastiness supplied by whatever speech writer was tapped to pen Palin's speech, why not expose the fact that the only real issue Palin mentioned in that entire 45-minute performance was "energy independence," and that the only reason she brought that up was to get a rise out of a crowd who wants achieve "energy independence" by drilling off-shore and destroying the environment? "Drill, baby, drill," the crowd chanted, cult-like and without a single shred of care for anything but the self-centered smugness of their own party's platform.
The Republicans have claimed ownership of the politics of heinous smears for as long as the memory serves. Now comes a moment where some liberals are resorting to similar tactics and, instead of calling them out and then getting down to the business they should be getting down to, you simply turn on them entirely. You call them out...and then call them out....and then call them out some more. Your schtick is getting as old as that of the people you are so angry with--and neither you nor they are focusing on the issues we need to focus on.
j.mckiernan
Liberal and democrate are two different things. The smear machine is equally used and disbaraged, as you just proved with this bashing post.
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Wiz,
on Shoo's blog you posted a comment about my post (confusing enough). Just wanted to say I have two boys with Autism. So yeah, I know first hand about special needs.
Thanks for your posting, it is nice to see straight talk, instead of sound bites.
J McKiernan I call them exactly as I see them. I will NEVER just regurgetate the latest Democrat talking points. First of all that adds nothing to the discussion. Second, I often disagree with the short sighted, self centered and self destructive nature of our party.
As much as you may hate it, I am a strong Joe Lieberman Democrat. The party's stupid and short sighted attack on Lieberman who actually had the courage to follow his conscience, proved to me that a person MUST remain true to his principles and not blindly follow his party.
In this case I am trying to wake up my party. Every minute of the last seven days party loyalists have adandoned all their most cherished principles and are driving votes to McCain-Palin. Palin is a rock star, not because of Palin, but because of the sexist ravings of a party that ought to know better.
You are urging me to join you in the band and play in tune on the deck of the Titanic. I am trying to keep the ship from sinking.
I have really appreciated your words here. I'm going back & reading your older stuff now. I love to hear honest thoughts from people who disagree with me on substantive issues. I respect you for what you have written, and I thank you for not hating me because of our differences. Great stuff here.
I will NEVER just regurgetate the latest Democrat talking points. First of all that adds nothing to the discussion. Second, I often disagree with the short sighted, self centered and self destructive nature of our party.
It's nice to find a Democratic-leaning blog to read without having to resort to the vitirol that is dailyKos.
I consider myself a pretty socially liberal Republican, but I'm still interested in hearing from both sides.
I read quite a few of the right-leaning blogs and some of complaints on the big ones are "Why are you so negative about x or y?" It really does seem some people want a simple sounding-board for their own ideas.
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