Like many political junkies, I flipped to the cable talkies tonight in between plays in the Giants game to see what the post-convention GOP bounce might look like in the epic Obama-Palin contest that holds a nation in leg-shivering sway.
But what's this? Is there some kind of post-convention rules committee gathering in St. Paul? Why are all those Republicans still hanging around after the Alaskan Governor laid some smiling smackdown on the Illinois Senator - don't they have, uh, work to do?
Turns out there's another speaker tonight by the name of McCain, formerly known as the Maverick, now known as falling into line with the most extreme elements of his party - the same people he's spent his entire public career battling. And this guy's at the top of the ticket...well, maybe for form's sake.
But it's Sarah Palin's party he'll be talking to tonight, if anyone's listening. Lance Mannion: "Think there isn't now a sizable chunk of his own supposed supporters who are secretly hoping he'll die in office or get old and sick enough that he won't be able to run for a second term, or, the more kindly among them, hoping he will just out and out lose to clear the path for their true heroine and saint?" And it's all because of the narrative - the culturally-divisive story they want told to peal off just enough votes to put Governor Palin one metastases away from the Oval Office.
Impossible? Not for this crew. "I'd think this situation was a complete joke and everyone would see straight through it," says Blue Girl, "until I remember the Republicans were able to convince people in this country that Bush, who saved Alabama from being bombed by the Vietnamese, and Cheney, who received five draft deferments, were the tough guys and were able to paint Kerry, a Vietnam Veteran with a purple heart, as the unpatriotic, french fry-eating traitor." Yeah.
Her "sneer and loathing" speech, as Jim Wolcott put it, was classic political offense, the kind of run and shoot set you use when you know the defense can't hold 'em. Sure, it was offensive to loyal Democrats and the Obama faithful: that's the way the coach drew it up. And Palin ran the play as diagrammed, though she did add some winning style flourishes, just as Brett Favre might freelance a bit on a play called from the bench.
You know, "commie" used to the right political epithet in the old Agnew days, but it's been lengthened to "community organizer" in the Palin era. Just yesterday, a commenter called me a "dirty America-hating community organizer" but I deleted it. We don't need that kind of language around here. Anyway, this rules committee thing is boring. Back to the game.
Open thread if you'd like it.
