A video of the full debate:
Michelle Malkin on the Sarah Palin’s performance at the vice-presidential debate on October 2nd:
She was warm, fresh, funny, confident, energetic, personable, relentless, and on message. She roasted Obama’s flip-flops on the surge and tea-with-dictators declarations, dinged Biden’s bash-Bush rhetoric, challenged the blame-America defeatism of the Left, and exuded the sunny optimism that energized the base in the first place.
McCain has not done many things right. But Sarah Palin proved tonight that the VP risk he took was worth it.
Her performance also underscored the underhandedness of the hatchet job editors at ABC News and CBS News, which failed to capture her solid competence on the whole array of foreign and domestic policy issues on the debate table tonight. (I didn’t care for all the “greed” rhetoric, but I understand they are trying to appeal to independents and Dems. They’re trying to win the election.)
Pause to reflect on this: She matched — and trumped several times — a man who has spent his entire adult life on the political stage, run for president twice, and as he mentioned several times, chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sarah Palin looked presidential.
Joe Biden looked tired.
Sarah made history.
Biden is history.
Andy McCarthy at NRO:
I admit: the bit about predatory lenders infuriated me, and I am concerned about her seeming adoption of Condi foreign policy. But both those positions are McCain’s positions — it’d be impossible for her to criticize them if she believed they should be criticized … I just wish she didn’t seem so enthusiastic about them.
All that said, though, she OWNED the last half of the debate, and when she — as a representative of normal people outside Washington — laughed at Biden for being for the war then being against the war. [...] (And how moronic of Biden to counter that McCain voted against funding for the troops — does anyone on the planet earth . . . think McCain didn’t want the troops funded?)
I love Palin, her unapologetic conservative values, her devotion to the pro-life movement, her wonderful lack of Ivy League degrees, but I must concur with McCarthy’s fury at Palin’s references to “predatory lenders” :
PALIN: Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that.
As anyone of this blog will know, blaming the lenders as “predatory” is like blaming the rape victim for attracting the rapist. Lenders were forced to give those mortgages thanks to P.C. Democrat policy. Even if Palin was 100% correct that lenders “tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house,” would that not be a really bad business move on the part of banks? To give an exaggerated example in the other direction, would you give $300 to a homeless person expecting it to be paid?
Palin refers to Wall Street pejoratively more than once:
PALIN: [T]here have been so many changes in the conditions of our economy in just even these past weeks that there has been more and more revelations made aware now to Americans about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street.
PALIN: What I would do also, if that were to ever happen, though, is to continue the good work he is so committed to of putting government back on the side of the people and get rid of the greed and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington.
PALIN: We have got to win the wars. We have got to get our economy back on track. We have got to not allow the greed and corruption on Wall Street anymore.
Corruption and greed.
Greed and corruption.
How much of it is true, Governor Palin?
Sadly, McCarthy is correct. Palin is pretty much forced to follow in McCain’s footsteps. What McCain SHOULD be doing is tearing the Democrats a new one on the causes of the mortgage crisis, but for all his military heroism, on some issues, McCain remains a political coward. Disagreement with Democrats for McCain is “partisan.” Godforbid we’re “partisan.” (Democrats are NEVER “partisan”!) Backstabbing your own party and your supporters, however, is not partisan at all. What a flake.
True to Democrat form, when Senator Joe Biden wasn’t looking like an asshole, he didn’t miss the chance to engage in some class envy. He refers to Wall Street going “wild” 3 times:
BIDEN: If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don’t think you needed any more evidence than what you see now.
BIDEN: John McCain while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do was literally giving an interview to “The Wall Street Journal” saying that I’m always for cutting regulations. We let Wall Street run wild.
BIDEN: It’s a bogus standard it but if you notice, Gwen, the governor did not answer the question about deregulation, did not answer the question of defending John McCain about not going along with the deregulation, letting Wall Street run wild.
Whatever you do, Joe, never blame government. For anything. Ever.
Victor Davis Hanson is shocked by the long string of gaffes and embarrassing statements by Sarah Palin, er, I mean, Joe Biden…
American Prowler: The Barracuda Bites Back By J. Peter Freire
Some responses from the McCain campaign:
1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.
2. AHMEDINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.
3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”
4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.
5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.
6. ALERNATIVE ENERGY VOTES: According to FactCheck.org, Biden is exaggerating and overstating John McCain’s record voting for alternative energy when he says he voted against it 23 times.
7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Biden falsely said McCain will raise taxes on people’s health insurance coverage — they get a tax credit to offset any tax hike. Independent fact checkers have confirmed this attack is false
8. OIL TAXES: Biden falsely said Palin supported a windfall profits tax in Alaska — she reformed the state tax and revenue system, it’s not a windfall profits tax.
9. AFGHANISTAN / GEN. MCKIERNAN COMMENTS: Biden said that top military commander in Iraq said the principles of the surge could not be applied to Afghanistan, but the commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force Gen. David D. McKiernan said that there were principles of the surge strategy, including working with tribes, that could be applied in Afghanistan.
10. REGULATION: Biden falsely said McCain weakened regulation — he actually called for more regulation on Fannie and Freddie.
11. IRAQ: When Joe Biden lied when he said that John McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq”, because Joe Biden shared the same vote to authorize the war and differed on the surge strategy where they John McCain has been proven right.
12. TAX INCREASES: Biden said Americans earning less than $250,000 wouldn’t see higher taxes, but the Obama-Biden tax plan would raise taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more.
13. BAILOUT: Biden said the economic rescue legislation matches the four principles that Obama laid out, but in reality it doesn’t meet two of the four principles that Obama outlined on Sept. 19, which were that it include an emergency economic stimulus package, and that it be part of “part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20.”
14. REAGAN TAX RATES: Biden is wrong in saying that under Obama, Americans won’t pay any more in taxes then they did under Reagan.
Article 1: Don’t Ask Joe
SEN. BIDEN: “Vice President Cheney’s been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. He has — he has — the idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the executive — he works in the executive branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.”
Article 1 of the Constitution does not, in fact, define the role of the Vice President of the United States. It defines the role of the legislative branch, otherwise known as the branch in which Joe Biden has served for the last 36 years.
Filed under: Barack Obama / The Messiah, John McCain/Sarah Palin , debates, Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, vice-president
