Originally Posted By hopemax mawnck, I am right with you. We are talking about selecting the Vice President of the United States! This isn't high school speech class where you get points for not freezing at the podium! She has experience as a public speaker, she was never going to curl up into a ball or run screaming from the auditorium.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Please show me where I said "brilliantly".> They were sarcasm quotes, not direct quote quotes. You said "But people who support McCain will no longer question their vote because of her." (that IS a direct quote), which means you must think she did well, at least. <Also, SPP has NEVER said he supported McCain. He has said that he wouldn't have minded McCain being elected if it weren't for Palin. That is a whole different thing from voting for him. > I'll let him speak for himself. I think he said he considered voting for him, not just that he wouldn't have minded.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan Palin last night was always one follow-up question away from disaster. She had the same nameless platitudes over and over again almost without regard to the topic (and too bad if you don't like that, Ms. Moderator, I'm speakin' to America now, don'tcha know -- wink!). It was the follow up question that knocked Palin off the tracks with Katie Couric, and last night, there really weren't any. She has an assortment of go-to responses, and they've been drill, baby, drilled into her head. But if you scratch a little deeper, the well's dry. She is not qualified to serve, she is not fit to serve, as president.
Originally Posted By FaMulan One of the pundit panel members on CNN was Carl Bernstein (he of the Woodward/Berstein pair of journalists who broke the Watergate story) and he posed the question everyone should really consider if they're leaning toward the Republican ticket: Do you want Palin to become President if (heaven forefend) McCain were to die in office? And that question requires a lot of research into Palin and her positions on things as well as her limited executive experience and desire to follow in Cheney's footsteps of trashing the Constitutional limits on Vice-presidential power.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>Do you want Palin to become President if (heaven forefend) McCain were to die in office?<< We've posed that question repeatedly to the resident conservatives and other purported McCain backers. The two answers seem to be "oh heck yeah!" and "oh that's not gonna happen." We've argued at great length about the latter (VERY great length), but if you wish to continue it, then by all means ...
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder <<How about it, SPP? If you watched the debate last night, would you no longer question your vote for McCain because Palin did so "brilliantly?">> As long as Palin is anywhere near the ticket, no chance in hell. I also thought she did poorly. The next time she gives a direct answer, someone please point it out. I'm still trying to figure out how she can take a comment about the bankruptcy code and turn it into a little speech about her energy plan, something she obviously thinks she knows something about. I've lost a great deal of respect for McCain, especially since late summer. He's whored himself out in so many ways and I find that very disheartening. His choices, decision making, whatever you call it, especially with Palin and trying to justify the obviously untruthful and deceitful ads by saying Obama should agree to Town Halls for me, are indicative of a guy who has no resemblance whatsoever to the McCain of even a year ago. It's very sad, not to mention shameful.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip The actual question I asked… did you ever actually plan to VOTE for McCain, or did you just say (previously) that you wouldn't mind him winning? I don't think you ever said you were voting for McCain. My argument was that Palin did a decent enough job during the debate that no McCain VOTER would switch to Obama because of it. I still think that. Predictably enough, the great majority of McCain voters think Palin won, or at least held her own with Biden resulting in a draw (according to polls, not my opinion).
Originally Posted By SuperDry I think the OP asks a fair question. I think buried within it is the implication that no matter how well she does, she's not going to win the debate in the minds of some on LP. That in of itself might be a fair observation. My observation of the debate is that she came out on the attack with a very strong stature. The thing is, the strong stature seemed to not stand independently, but was scripted as if they were responses to attacks by Biden, which he didn't in fact make. Perhaps this was unexpected, but it seemed out of place and disjoint to hear her respond stridently to things that were not actually said, especially since it was a quite visible shift in her demeanor from prior public appearances. I think the best answer would be to put forth a set of policies that was clearly superior to her opponent's. At that, she failed. She made several references to the mistakes of the Bush administration, but made not one distinction as to how McCain/Palin would be any different. I think this is one of the key problems facing the McCain/Palin campaign: How to gain support of those that *still* think "everything's going just great!" under President Bush while at the same time not alienating people that are nominally Republican voters but are very upset with recent happenings. She left that completely unaddressed.
