The Speech To Nowhere

By BlackJack

The conservatives are excited, if that's what you can call it (I try to turn away from the TV in between speakers so I don't have to watch them attempting to dance). It's hard to tell the difference between conservative excitement and frothy bitterness. I got a bit sick when the delegates on the Target Center convention floor turned a chant of 'USA... USA...' into some kind of an angry mob. Are they mad at the USA or maybe they're angry at the Olympians for not bringing home enough gold medals?

It turns out Sarah Palin is just an ordinary fundamentalist right-wing Governor, like you and me. Just like us, she hunts moose and bear from a helicopter, fires fully-automatic assault weapons for fun, is proud of her pregnant underage daughter, and uses her publicly paid position to get her former in-laws fired. Just like you and me.

It's been an interesting week for the Palin clan, not to mention the whole McCain campaign, to say the least. Watching the McCain camp interact with the press over the last few days has been an education in how far the campaign has gone in adopting Karl Rove's strategies - and in the process abandoning McCain's traditionally press friendly nature. Gone are the days when John Sydney McCain was the media darling who courted an love-struck press who labeled him 'maverick'.

From it's surprise announcement of Ms. Palin's name on Friday through this mornings spin on her speech last evening, much can be learned. The three part Rove daily plan they've adopted is simple and effective:

1. Attack the media: They threw Palin to the press and then pulled her back, letting them build up a froth and then lamented - on the convention stage - that the press was being mean to her by asking who she was. Call the media 'left-wing' or 'liberal', even though large media is mostly owned by the same corporate giants who fund the Republican party. Attacking the media will fire up the base and will cause the press to treat the candidate lightly for fear of being labeled 'unfair'.
2. Disarm the Dems using the old labels: Tax & spend, Hollywood, elite liberals from the coasts. The Godless liberals want to take your guns! 'Them versus us' has worked since the civil war. Activist judges (as opposed to the more conservative comatose kind), celebrities and hippies, are all evil inventions of the liberal movement.
   
3. God and country: God is a Republican. At least the Christian God is. Reference the troops like you own them. Prayer in schools, gay marriage and abortion. Make several indirect references to your lord and savior.
   

So how does this work in actual practice? Although campaign spokespeople announced Bristol Palin's pregnancy to the media on Monday morning, they immediately began to criticize the press for attacking Ms. Palin's family.

As the press began to self-censor their comments and question, the campaign began to roll out a succession of surrogates who repeated the message throughout the afternoon and into the evening, commending the Palin's for their decision to keep Bristol's baby (as if anyone had asked that question). By Tuesday morning the old media had forgotten the original question: How could Ms. Palin explain the fact that, while she had vetoed sex education education in Alaskan schools and promoted an abstinence-only doctrine, her own family proved that such non-secular hard-line policies had failed within her own family. Instead the newspapers and morning talking heads were asking themselves if it was fair to ask questions.

From Tuesday morning until Ms. Palin's speech last evening the media hadn't poked it's head out from it's shell. Introspective journalism is a failure of the system. Once the press starts asking itself questions in the mirror the politicians can pretty much run free in the streets.

Time and again, following her speech, the media by and large failed to analyze the speech for it's lack of policy or agenda and instead fell over each other to find stories within the spin. A star is born, said they, forgetting all at once that in accepting her parties nomination, Ms. Palin had said nothing of substance.

Barack Obama is nothing more than one good speech at a convention claims the McCain campaign. But since that speech in 2004, Senator Obama has become the leader of a political revolution. He has fundamentally changed the way we elect an official and has caused thousands of Americans to come back to the electoral process and rebuild a true feeling of patriotism and duty to country.

Before we crown Ms. Palin as the 'Republican Obama' let's see how far she comes in the next 4 years. Let's hear more than biting sarcasm from a safe stage. One speech doesn't make a career.