Saturday, September 06, 2008

Pundit Round-up

Mike Murphy:

About the loneliest precinct in the GOP these days is the one reserved for troublesome Republicans who think Gov. Sarah Palin was a poor VP choice, even after The Speech. Well, here I am. Hello? Anybody else? Wow, there is a big echo in here...

Bob Herbert: The Republicans can run but they can't hide.

If there were any good ideas at this convention of mostly rich and mostly right-wing delegates about how to haul the country out of this mess that the G.O.P. has gotten it into, they were kept well hidden. Perhaps they were tucked away behind the more prominently displayed creationism and "just-say-no to global warming" documents.

Gail Collins:

John McCain is not actually running for president. He’s running for Senate majority leader. All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process. He’s been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life, and listening to him talk, you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee.

Bill Schneider:

To put it another way: Do people feel that their economic problems are caused by government spending and high taxes? They certainly did in 1980, but it's 28 years later.

It's always been an article of belief among Republicans that they lost the 2006 congressional elections because of their abandonment of one of these core Republican principles and their embrace of federal overspending.

That's simply not true; they lost because of Iraq. But they refuse to believe it.

Reuters:

"Everybody pays attention to the mobilizing affect on the right but equally important is the mobilizing affect that Palin's nomination makes for the left," said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston who has written extensively on the U.S. evangelical movement.

We can vouch for that.

Michael Gerson: Both conventions had pedestrian speeches, and worst of all, none were written by me, but McCain's was far better than Obama's because he was a POW and Obama's a Democrat.

Charles Lane: McCain's speech was awful even if he was a POW.

James Taranto: McCain completely refuted and destroyed his critics' claim he's a war-monger. In his acceptance speech in front of Walter Reed Middle School, he said he wasn't.

The Economist: "John McCain’s choice of running-mate raises serious questions about his judgment"

The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience.

Charlie Cook:

Given this year's strong "change" climate, Bush's unpopularity, the tendency for voters to want to give the other party a chance after one has controlled the White House for two terms, and the current Democratic advantage in voters' party identification, this race ought to be a sure thing for the Democratic nominee. But resistance to Obama is making it close--just as a stool with only three of its legs can stand but is shaky. Whether the fourth leg is defined as whites over 50, working-class whites, or whites over 65, McCain's challenge this week is to firm up his grip and keep Obama from adding the final leg to the stool.

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