I speculate Limbaugh will soon be lambasting the feminazis [as hes wont to call feminists] for voting for a [halfblack] black man from a white mother.

As for Palin I heard my Republican mother mocking the way Palin speaks.

Well whoopdeedo...and how long did it take for our illustrious media and largely uninformed public to GET IT about Palin?...this, like the unnecessary war in Iraq, should have been something that people who get facts and think critically SHOULD have been able to do much more quickly...but, first you have to care enough to inform yourself and then you need to use that information intelligently...it's quite depressing to see how seldom that scenario takes place (most especially in our media)...

One must suspend belief in reality to give any more credence than a wet finger in the air to test for wind direction to "polling" and "surveys" - and reporting on the "results"...

Regarding Palin, it strikes me that the Republican party did all this before with George W. Bush, so they're probably genuinely surprised that she's stumbled as badly as she has.

Remember:

* Bush was portrayed as a shit-kicking cowboy. A frontier man like Palin. Brush-clearing bronze-bodied manhood, etc. (I give Palin a pass on having a tanning bed installed in her mansion. It's dark up there a lot, and there's not really any brush to clear.)

* Bush was a buffoon in press conferences and when giving speeches. If anything, Palin's BETTER with a teleprompter than GWB ever was. Yes, she hurt herself badly in sit-downs, but I don't remember Bush excelling. Rather, I remember the press lowering the bar as low as Bush and Republicans told them to. (Think about that 'gotcha' interview when somebody asked Bush to name the leader of -- I think -- one of the newly formed ex-Soviet states.)

* Bush was governor of a state in which the governor's job was unlike most other states. If I remember correctly, they had a pretty slack schedule in the Texas state house, giving GWB lots of time for brush clearing and tanning.

* Bush was recognized as lacking in a lot of skills knowledge, but he made up for that with name recognition and associations drawing heavily on his father's presidency. If he hadn't had that cover, he probably would have been treated more like Palin.

The upshot is that the mistake the Republicans made is not recognizing that the bar has been raised by a series of disasters. Iraq, Katrina, the financial crisis, have all convinced people that it really does matter if the person flying the plane is actually qualified.

Good for us, bad for them.

As bad as Palin is, imagine if McCain had picked someone "reasonable," like Lieberman, who would appeal to moderates. A McCain/Lieberman ticket might be leading in the polls, even though most Americans disagree with McCain's policies. We cannot thank Governor Palin enough for her service to this country in torpedoing McCain's campaign.

OT: If McCain/Lieberman had won, that would have been the second time that Lieberman had been elected Vice President. Are there any other cases in American history where a Vice President was elected twice with a different President?

The story says "according to financial disclosure records". Would there be disclosure forms covering October yet, or am I right that all of this expense came in just September?

Heh. Indeed.

I'd always made fun of the "Does He Look Presidential" stories. But that does seem to have been a serious issue here--that Obama be presidential enough in the debates.

And that Palin is decidedly NOT presidential. It's hard to imagine her delivering a State of the Union address. The one happy Republican at this point is Dan Quayle, because now we have a new punchline.

The argument against Lieberman was that the base would never go for a pro-choice, pro-gun control Jew as veep. But that misses what really animates right-wingers. It has less to do with ideological purity than perceived loyalty to the team. In an Us vs Them world, Lieberman already established his bona fides by joining their team. Everything else was secondary, and as such, excusable.

We'll never know if Lieberman would have fundamentally changed the campaign's dynamic. Certainly Florida would probably be safely in the McCain camp. But the core arguments would still be in place. I suspect Palin is a scapegoat in this respect. This election was always going to be about change and fatigue with Republicans in general.

I think Huckabee would have been a very effective pick. He wouldn't have caused the same media flurry, but he would have sewn up the base and possibly charmed and impressed enough moderates to make the Republican ticket competitive.

Absolutely people are deserting the Repugs in droves because of Palin. No doubt about it that if McCain has chosen a qualified and dignified individual he would be doing quite alot better. But instead he went the route of picking someone solely for political purposes. This is INSULTING and people will not vote for McCain because of his coice of Palin.

To us Palin looked like an incompetent the first time she opened her mouth at McCain's rally that Friday morning. To the Right and a good portion of undecideds they wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt for as long as they could, possibly right up until election day. I still think they could've worked around the horrendous Couric and Charlie interviews if not for Tina Fey and Letterman mocking McCain. The press and a good portion of America are still looking past all her scandals which should be the reason she is a turnoff. People point to the economy but all the cultural detritous stuff happened at the same time. Giving people an excuse to mock Palin and McCain was huge tide turning.

Will this be the first time in history that the VP pick had such a large influence on the outcome of the contest? Will conventional wisdom become the VP can't win the election but CAN lose it?

I think she's just a sypmtom. She reflects on his poor judgement, age, health, eratic behavior and screwy temperment. She's a disaster in her own right, but she embodies all that's wrong with John McCain as candidate.

Yesterday seemed to mark a turning point in the polls. For a few days the dreaded tightening had been observed, and Pat Buchanan was positively crowing about it on Saturday. Then suddenly new poll data arrived, showing Obama's lead widening again. Today, even Reuters went up to ten points, the first time it's shown a double-digit lead for Obama.

I'm as pessimistic as they come, but it's really difficult to maintain such an attitude in the wake of such news and with only 13 days to go. The dynamics of the race seem to favor Obama from here on out. It's hard to imagine how something could go drastically wrong at this point.

We'll see. I am so hoping for that landslide that will give Obama the mandate that he ought to have.

These polls are all rigged by ACORN. It's called polling fraud, and it's done all the time in the anti-American parts of America.

A single $400 haircut was enough to end Edwards run for the Presidency. Let's the MSN gives this at least the same amount of coverage.

"Anchorwoman: The Legend of Sarah Palin"--coming to a theater near you!

These polls are all rigged by ACORN. It's called polling fraud, and it's done all the time in the anti-American parts of America. Posted by: GOPer on October 22, 2008 at 10:30 AM

The only anti-American parts of America are the (former) states of the Confederacy. They were the only ones to take arms against America and spit on our flag.

I'm sure that's who you're referring to, right?