The American Spectator

I hate to say it, but I think conservative activists have become like hometown sports fans who so desperately want their team to win that they see EVERYthing through the lens that shows their team as being the best — and that therefore sees ANY loss or setback as the result of an unfair third party, like a bad referee, or something.

Exaggerating only slightly for effect, this was Sarah Palin’s message last night, except that just written down it doesn’t capture the cloyingness of the nasal “all” and the long drawn-out “o” in her “also.”

“Well, awl-so-o-o [also] in Alaska, mavericks in Alaska, also, where we produce a lot of oil, also, we know that we’ve gotta reform Washington, also, you-betcha!”

Sorry, but if the Democratic candidate had put forth this sort of performance, we would all be yelling about how the MSM was giving that candidate a pass on their utter lack of knowledge, depth, specifics, and coherence.

This IS an actual quote from last night from Palin: “I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.”

And: “Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.”

And: “Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It’s not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very, very concerned about where we’re going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.”

Again, if Joe Biden had talked like this last night, we would be blasting him unmercifully. We would be yelling to high heaven that he can’t put thoughts together in coherent sentences.