Thread: Palin Interviews Spark GOP Concerns

AP
posted: 23 MINUTES

WASHINGTON (Sept. 27) A conservative columnist who welcomed Sarah Palin's entry in national politics says she's proven to be a dud and should step aside as John McCain's running mate.
Kathleen Parker, writing in the National Review Online, says her "cringe reflex is exhausted" after watching the Alaska governor stumble through TV interviews and it's become clear to her that Palin is out of her league.

"No one hates saying that more than I do," Parker writes. "Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does."
Palin, new to national politics, boosted Republican presidential nominee John McCain in polls and excited the party's core conservatives when he chose the first-term governor for his ticket. Some of that shine has since worn off in polls.
Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, told Politico.com that Palin’s recent CBS appearance with Katie Couric was alarming, though not disqualifying. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.”
“I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s—t,” Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist, told Politico.com. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.”
But all that said, Palin still draws huge crowds on the campaign trail and remains a hit among rank-and-file Republicans. GOP insiders, however, fear that her shaky performance on CBS and other limited media appearances, may lead to a disastrous debate against Sen. Joe Biden next week, hurting McCain's chances of winning the election.

Writing in her column, Parker said she thought Palin was a "refreshing feminist of a different order" when she joined the ticket, but it's become clear she doesn't know enough about economics or foreign policy to be president should that become necessary in a McCain administration.
"Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves," Parker writes. "She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first."
Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says Parker's suggestion is "not a crazy suggestion" and that "something's gotta change."

Well, I haven't jumped on the Palin bandwagon and I don't really know why he chose her except to get the female vote. Someone asked in another thread how many people actually base their decision on who is running for VP. I do for one, I want to know who will be running this country in the event of the President's death.

I feel the same way. She seems like a nice enough woman but she definitely doesn't have what it takes to run a country if anything ever happened to McCain.

PALIN/GINGRICH 2012!
YEAH!

Originally Posted by jbbarn

PALIN/GINGRICH 2012!
YEAH!

You are joking...right?

Originally Posted by tngirl

You are joking...right?

I'd prefer someone more conservative, but Ghengis Khan is busy.

Originally Posted by candygirl

The GOP has reasons to be concerned,she showed her ineptness in the 2 interviews ( C. Gibson & K.Coric) I saw.

McCain's V.P. pick is starting to backfire on him

Personally, I think both camps have cause to be concerned.We the people have even MORE reason to be concerned.On the one hand,we have a bumbler, on the other,a liar.I guess I'll take the lesser of two evils.

Originally Posted by candygirl

The GOP has reasons to be concerned,she showed her ineptness in the 2 interviews ( C. Gibson & K.Coric) I saw.

I think what the People need to be concerned about was the display of manipulation and malice in those two interviews, in both the questions asked and in the editing of those interviews.


Bill from Ahwatukee Musings passed this along to me, from a Hillary Clinton forum, of all places : http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/d...ad.php?t=29535
I don’t know anything about the writer, Nancy Kallitechnis, but she makes some interesting observations about the difference between Charlie Gibson’s interview with Obama, when he became the presumptive nominee, and his talk with Gov. Palin:

Even the camera angle was designed to be prejudiced against Palin. She is filmed from the side and slightly with her back to the camera. …In contrast, the film crew placed the long shot camera facing Obama so at all times when he is speaking the camera looks him in the face rather than looking at his back.

…Obama was asked much easier questions mostly about feelings about winning, breaking the glass ceiling and 2008 campaign decisions. In contrast, Palin was asked numerous specific policy and military strategy questions that required extensive knowledge about treaties, U.S. anti-terrorism strategy and world history. And Gibson misquoted Palin…

The following is a breakdown of the questions asked of the nominees:

Obama interview:

How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
How does it feel to “win”?
How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:

Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?

Questions about foreign policy
-territorial integrity of Georgia
-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
-NATO treaty
-Iranian nuclear threat
-what to do if Israel attacks Iran
-Al Qaeda motivations
-the Bush Doctrine
-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan

Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]

There’s no doubt the Charles Gibson interviews showed extreme prejudice against Palin and extreme favoritism towards Obama…He constantly questioned her ability to lead but never questioned Obama’s ability to lead, all the more amazing considering that Palin was the only one with executive experience and the presidency is the highest level executive job in politics.


The Bush Doctrine: Josh Trevino has an exhaustive look at what it is, and decides Palin, not Gibson, got it right. http://www.joshtrevino.com/?p=666


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Meanwhile, Okie is taking apart Newsweek’s cover story on Palin. http://www.okieonthelam.com/?p=2310

What struck me, immediately, was that the press is using exactly the same script over Palin vs Obama that they used in Bush vs Kerry, that being the Democrat candidate is “the sophisticated world traveler who does nuance” while the Republican is “the backwoods simpleton too stupid to experience existential angst.” You do remember how they tied Kerry to “nuance” often that some of dubbed him Pope Nuance I?

Newsweek:

Palin is not regarded as an introspective or intellectual type—not the sort who likes to mull the deepest nuances of every issue. In that sense, she’s the anti-Obama. While Barack Obama of Hawaii, Indonesia, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Cambridge, Mass., Chicago and now Washington has been on a well-chronicled lifelong search for his identity, Sarah Heath Palin seems just fine being a woman of Wasilla.

Okie:

Maybe it’s because Sarah Palin has always known who and what she is, unlike the confused, confounded and still searching Obama? Maybe because she’s her own woman, and a damn strong one at that — and Barack’s looking in the national mirror to find out what kind of man he really is?

Do ya think? I just touched on this very theme the other day: http://theanchoressonline.com/2008/0...-authenticity/

…what I’m getting is a sense of man who is looking to satisfy something inside himself, and his satisfaction (or validation) cannot be found within, so he is looking externally - and taking action externally - to bring it about. He needs to “save” the whole country, to “save” himself.

People do this all the time on a small scale, but to want do it on a large scale - a “world-changing” scale, complete with grandiose pageantry - suggests an appetite that cannot be sated in “ordinary” and “authentic” ways.

And that is a little troubling.

So there, you have it - another utterly insane day in American politics, where “big time professional journalists” ask Presidential candidates how they feel about being so great while drilling vice presidential candidates on Russia, where old scripts that didn’t play four years ago are being hauled out and replayed because there is a dearth of both imagination and understanding in those same journalists. Where authenticity must rule the day because in the end, it is all there is left after this 19 month masquerade. Wherea a rich, privileged African-American woman with a successful American life can turn to a public servant who has never betrayed the least bit of racism in his whole career and declare that she’s worried about “becoming a slave again” (to a round of applause, mind you) while her white, even more privileged and successful boss-lady says, “us white people will take care of you…” Yeah, it’s just a stupid joke, but that’s some appallingly childish stuff before our eyes. All neutralized, of course, by the fact that the offenses are being committed by the elite, noble and morally authoritative Blue Americans. Meanwhile a candidate can get testy with a journalist who dares to bother him with actual investigative questions, and the country ignores its own substantial disruption of her enemies (probably because it is too busy misidentifying “the enemy” as “each other”) and also misses a seeming admission of election-results tampering in the last election. Troops are being withdrawn in Iraq by a most reviled president who - in the midst of this insanity - just keeps doing his job and avoiding the spitballs.

Oh, and there is a contingent out there - who apparently do not find things dramatic enough - who, watching The One travel hat-in-hand to The Don, have decided that the bottom of the Democrat ticket is about to be thrown under the bus. I don’t believe it, for several credible reasons. But it would certainly be the cherry on top.

That’s just one day - barely scratching the surface of one day - in the surreal election of 2008.

http://theanchoressonline.com/


MSM is NOT representing the interests of the American People. Nor are the Politicians.

The debate between Palin and Biden next week will have an even playing field so we'll then be able to make a judgement.

Originally Posted by candygirl

The GOP has reasons to be concerned,she showed her ineptness in the 2 interviews ( C. Gibson & K.Coric) I saw.

When you can control the edit ... you control everything ...

ABC Edits of Palin Interview Were Unfair

ABC did some extensive editing of that Palin interview. Now, some editing is necessary. But what they’ve done is really beyond the pale. Newsbusters has the unedited transcript. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gla...alin-interview

Here’s one example among many. The big story from ABC was this:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY

Now look at what they edited out:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We’ve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

. . . .

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

Incredible. They sent e-mails screaming that she’s a warmonger — and edited out her talk of not going to war.

Yet, is anyone truly surprised?

UPDATE: This part should also be highlighted. The bolded parts were removed:

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie. And I do believe, though, that this war against extreme Islamic terrorists is the right thing. It’s an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.

Charlie, those are freedoms that too many of us just take for granted. I hate war and I want to see war ended. We end war when we see victory, and we do see victory in sight in Iraq.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

Any hint Palin hated war was removed.

Editing should leave in the essence of the speaker’s responses. This edit cut out the heart of her antiwar sentiments. Then ABC sold a spin that she was pro-war.

This should be on the front page of every newspaper.
http://patterico.com/2008/09/13/abc-...w-were-unfair/

----

9/25/2008
CBS Has Horrible Transcript of Palin Interview
http://patterico.com/2008/09/25/cbs-...lin-interview/

From the CBS News transcript of Palin’s interview with Katie Couric:

Next, Couric asked about the $700 billion government bailout of bad debt - and whether she supports it.

Palin: I’m all about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout.

When I read that passage I thought: Jeez, what a ditz. I’m, like, all about the position America’s in, fer shure!

Except, that’s not what she said. I just watched it, and she said:

I’m ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout.

The incorrect phrase has been picked up by a host of morons. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22I%...ient=firefox-a

Here’s how the transcript reads:



P.S. They also completely leave out a part of her answer, with no ellipsis to note that it’s missing. Here’s what she actually says: I’ll bold what’s been left out of the CBS transcript :

Palin: I’m ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. At the same time, we know that inaction is not an option. And as Sen. McCain has said unless this — nearly trillion dollar bailout is what it may end up to be — unless there are amendments in Paulson’s proposal, really I don’t believe that Americans are going to support this and we will not support this. The interesting thing in the last couple of days that I have seen is that Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do on this proposal. They’re not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this [mimics holding her finger to the wind] and just see what way the political wind’s blowing? They’re waiting to see if John McCain will be able to see these amendments implemented in Paulson’s proposal.

Why did they skip over a whole phrase, about inaction not being an option?

As for Palin’s performance, I agree with Beldar that Couric was throwing gotcha questions at her — and that she didn’t bother to throw similar questions at Joe Biden. http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/...2-8669e5d74c70

But when Couric pressed her, Palin needed to be far stronger than her weak response of “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to ya.” I’m no politician, but I’d suggest something like this:

Couric: But he’s been in Congress for 26 years. He’s been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more. . . . I’m just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: Well, Katie, I don’t mean to belabor the point myself, but I just gave you a strong example of John McCain taking decisive action in the right area at the right time. We didn’t need 26 years of more regulation, we just needed it in one sector at a particular point in time. Now, if you had bothered to ask Joe Biden what Barack Obama has done, you wouldn’t get one example. Now, as it happens, John McCain and I don’t believe more government regulation is always the right answer to every problem. But in 2005, when the mortgage industry needed regulating, John McCain was pushing for reform while Barack Obama was building his record as the second biggest recipient of donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the Senate.

That’s what we need. Not “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to ya.”

Yes, Couric was being unfair. The media is almost always unfair to Republicans. So, Sarah, you have to throw it back in their face without looking like you’re whining.

And learn how fast, because they’re virtually always going to be that way.