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No Questions, Please. We'll Tell You What You Need To Know

According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads. Here's the exchange:

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Swampland, TIME
September 4, 2008 5:07
No Questions, Please. We'll Tell You What You Need To Know.
Posted by Jay Carney | Comments (137) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This


According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads. Here's the exchange:

Wallace's bash-the-media exercise has its merits as a campaign tactic. It certainly rallies the base. But the base won't lift McCain to 50% in November. More importantly, in her smug dismissal of the media's role in asking questions of the candidates, Wallace was really showing contempt not for reporters, but for voters. I bet there are a lot of undecided voters out there who were intrigued by Sarah Palin last night, but who don't yet know enough about her -- what she believes, what she knows -- to be comfortable with the idea of her as vice president of the United States. It's important to them to know if Palin can handle herself in an environment that isn't controlled and sanitized by campaign image makers and message mavens. Maybe she can, maybe she can't. As far as Wallace is concerned, it's none of their -- or your -- business.

It's like they're not even trying..

Hello 1984

"Ignore the man behind the curtain! listen to me!"

yeah..this is getting hilarious...

I'm sorry, I might be mis-reading this... but...

Did they actually SAY "All they deserve to know"?

Dear god... what is WRONG with these people?

Even if they didn't say it in so many words, have they divorced themselves from reality to the extent that they think they can run a completely untried VP and refuse to answer specific questions. Specificity is the only remaining thing that might save them in this campaign!

There has got to be something in the water up there...

I think it's ultimately an outgrowth of the same mentality as the 'It's Not About The Issues'. I think it spawns from Reagan, but not in a direct 'This is how we do it' sense.

Reagan won because he blended the charisma of a movie star to a savvy welding of Neocons, Paleocons, Theocons, Corporatists, and Libertarians into one whole. It wasn't a coherent whole, but he got them lined up and showed them they can get more of what they want if they'll work together.

The change since is that, followed HW Bush, the GOP seems to have picked up the idea that Reagan the Image won, less than Reagan the savvy dealbroker. And so we began down the path. 2000 and 2004 were heavy into this; Bush was the 'normal' guy, the guy you could 'have a beer with'. In the end, it didn't matter he had repeatedly crashed oil companies into the ground or had those embarassing empty spots in his brief stint in the Air Guard; they had made it into a personality contest, and against Gore(Intellectual who ran as someone who knew how to solve problems) and Kerry(Boring as toast), the majority flocked to the one they could identify with.

McCain is, of course, merely ahead of the curve. His political career has always been image. Specifically, an image of a war hero. When he performed the old trick of Carpetbagging into politics in Arizona, his response was, very simply, the only place he had lived for more than a year or two before that was a cell in Hanoi.

By pandering to the media, he's cultivated the image of 'Maverick', by being exceptionally sneaky. Any time it's harmless for him to go against the conservative majority, he'll do that. And spend the next few months milking that vote.

The question now becomes, after openly calling the media his 'Base', and being luvvy with them for so long, will they continue to kiss his wrinkly ass when he's made them the enemy and shut them down. And I don't know.

Obama must be the Devil incarnate to them then. The guy has a better image then McCain and has backed it up.

He's like some sort of Democrat Reagan meets Lincoln meets Theodore Roosevelt or something.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to see the parallels between Obama and Reagan, beyond merely the fact that they were both very good speakers.

I don't know, this entire strategy of the Republicans mystifies me in a way few political campaigns do. I cannot shake the feeling that they know something I don't, because all the math I do adds up to them getting killed in November.

If I were to judge by the leaked conversations, they're throwing McCain as a sacrificial lamb to the hungry wolves and battening down. They've really ramped up their 'Insurgents against the government' rhetoric, and seem to be quite fine with 2008 being a blowout if they can start agitating, Jan 20th 2009, that the liberal hippy communist Jew atheist terrorists MUST be stopped, VOTE REPUBLICAN.

That may be the case, Nitram, but I have this ugly feeling that it isn't. I worry that there's some aspect to this presidential campaign the Republicans are running that I simply am not taking into account, that they know something I don't. The last two presidential elections, on paper, should have been Democratic blowouts. I don't mean the Florida and Ohio shenanigans, I mean they should have been 20-point, 85+EV landslides, and they weren't. In both cases, the Republicans rolled out dirty tricks and character assassinations and exploited serious weaknesses in the two Democrat candidates, and caught up and tied them, and then squeaked by in the endgame. I'm worried that there's something I'm missing here that is pointing in the same directions.

Oh, they'll push every rule to the breaking point. They're already training people to challenge new registrations, and the registrations of Democrats in general(Think the Housing Crisis: How many people might be at different addresses?), there's new voter ID laws which ever the SCOTUS admits discriminates voting, but despite that pesky Constitution thing, clearly are still okay.

Oh, and Diebold's election machine company just admitted it's machines, still in use in several 'swing' states, will create false results, but no, your contract is still in effect.

Update: McCain's campaign has revealed the circumstances where Palin will answer questions.

Link

Rick Davis, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., just told Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin won't subject herself to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

You understand now, of course. You stupid people, you stupid anti-American commie fags, you have to give respect first, based on the fact she was picked by McCain, then maybe we might bless you with our words. If you behave yourselves. [/McCain Campaign.]

so nice of them to allow us to bask in her beauty queen presence for a few minutes, before shielding us from learning how incompetant she is.