According to Nielson ratings for McCain’s acceptance speech last night clocked in at a record 38.9 million slightly beating Obama’s 38.3 million from a week before. Additionally VP nominee Sarah Palin brought in 37.2 million for her speech the night before trouncing Democratic candidate Joe Biden who was viewed by only 24 million a week before.

The ratings numbers help show a turning tide in the race which according to the media for over a year was heavily dominated by Democrats who were favored to defeat a Republican party that was being destroyed by apathy and an unenthused base.

Reacting to Senator Obama’s declaration that the surge had succeeded but had done so beyond anyone’s “wildest expectations” Sarah Palin had this to say today:

He said it was doomed to fail. But just last night, Sen. Obama finally broke and brought himself to admit what all of us have known for quite some time, and that’s that thanks to the skill and valor of our troops, the surge in Iraq has succeeded,” Palin said.

“I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it’s comforting to pretend that everyone else was wrong, too.”

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I honestly believe as I said a few months ago, the Dems are in deep trouble. They picked a candidate who appeals to a very specific group of African Americans, far left liberals, academia and college students. Hillary Clinton in her final days launched the campaign she should have had in the start, an aggressive appeal to blue collar working Americans who believe in God & Country but are tired of watching their jobs disappear.

The Republicans, who have been demoralized for two years now, got their groove back this week. McCain picked a candidate that has and will continue to unify the Republican base and give an equal amount of enthusiasm and interest to the Republican side that Obama generated until now. He is old news, we know his story, for the next six weeks the nation will be learning about hers.

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It all comes down to the debates. I believe Obama made the safest and worst choice for VP in Biden. He basically told the nation “I don’t have foreign policy experience, this guy does, so vote for me.” Palin is different for McCain. At his core McCain has always been a social conservative. The media built him into this thing he wasn’t. McCain has always been against abortion and always had a deep spiritual side. He never was the religious right though. All Palin does is give social conservatives the spunk and fight and attacks that McCain feels uncomfortable giving. At the end though, he has the issue already, just a difference on how you stand up for it unlike Obama who is filling in a hole.

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I noted just the other day my belief that the Republicans and the media should halt their attacks on Palin ASAP and that Obama is best not getting himself into an “experience” argument with the Alaskan governor and that is apparently the road he plans to take. From Politico:

As Sarah Palin transforms herself from obscure Alaska governor to
the Republican Party’s newest rising star and most effective attack dog, Barack Obama’s campaign will largely sit back, watch her rise and hope she falls.

The Obama campaign has no silver bullet to use against the Palin. Instead, Obama has decided to largely avoid directly engaging her and will instead keep his focus largely on John McCain and on linking the Republican ticket to President George W. Bush. The Obama campaign will leave Palin to navigate the same cycle of celebrity that Obama has weathered, and the same peril that her nascent image will be defined by questions and contradictions from her Alaska past.

The problem Obama faces is that every attack on experience only reminds people of his. My guess is that Palin will truly be an attack dog and a rising star doing everything possible to keep the Obama clan on the defensive. The problem is, attacking her only distracts the Obama team from the main target, McCain.

Wow as Kasey in the Election Geek Forum said “WOW! I was waiting for him to yell, “Bababooey, Bababooey, Howard Stern’s penis!,” after that.”

New/Full excerpts

On her experience as a public servant:

“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

On why she is going to Washington, D.C.:

“I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

On energy policies that the McCain-Palin administration will implement:

“Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems - as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we’re going to lay more pipelines…build more nuclear plants…create jobs with clean coal…and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers.”

On John McCain:

“Here’s how I look at the choice Americans face in this election. In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers. And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”

Earlier Excerpts

From FOX News:

“Some candidates use change to promote careers. John McCain uses his career to promote change.”

“I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups or voter profiles because I knew those voters and I knew their families too. Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska I was mayor of my hometown and since our opponents in this presidential election look down seem to look down on that experience let me explain to them what that job involves. I guess a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer except that you have actual responsibilities.

Before she was the Republican Vice Presidential nominee and under the spotlight of a hungry media, Sarah Palin was a popular Governor and rising star in Alaska. Interestingly enough Newsweek had a profile on Sarah Palin that paints a picture of the Governor that is surprisingly close to the one her defenders have been pressing over the last few days. From the article:

In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state’s political culture. “The public has put a lot of faith in us,” says Palin during a meeting with lawmakers in her downtown Anchorage office, where—as if to drive the point home—the giant letters on the side of the ConocoPhillips skyscraper fill an entire wall of windows. “They’re saying, ‘Here’s your shot, clean it up’.” For Palin, that has meant tackling the cozy relationship between the state’s political elite and the energy industry that provides 85 percent of Alaska’s tax revenues—and distancing herself from fellow Republicans, including the state’s senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, whose home was recently searched by FBI agents looking for evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation. (Stevens has denied any wrongdoing.) But even as she tackles Big Oil’s power, Palin has transformed her own family’s connections to the industry into a political advantage. Her husband, Todd, is a longtime employee of BP, but, as Palin points out, the “First Dude” is a blue-collar “sloper,” a fieldworker on the North Slope, a cherished occupation in the state. “He’s not in London making the decisions whether to build a gas line.”

Although she has been in office less than a year, Palin, too, earns high marks from lawmakers on the other side of the aisle. During a debate earlier this year over a natural-gas bill, State Senate Minority Leader Beth Kerttula was astounded when she and another Democrat went to see the new governor to lay out their objections. “Not only did we get right in to see her,” says Kerttula, “but she asked us back twice—we saw her three times in 10 hours, until we came up with a solution.” Next week in Juneau, Alaska lawmakers will meet to overhaul the state’s system for taxing oil companies—a task Palin says was tainted last year by an oil-industry lobbyist who pleaded guilty to bribing lawmakers. Kerttula doesn’t expect to agree with the freshman governor on every step of the complex undertaking. But the minority leader looks forward to exploiting one backroom advantage she’s long waited for. “I finally get to go to the restroom and talk business with the governor,” she says. “The guys have been doing this for centuries.” And who says that’s not progress?

If the Palin pick was meant to energize the base and bring media attention to a much ignored McCain campaign, it has easily done both for better or worse. With the unexpected announcement yesterday that Palin’s teenage daughter is pregnant, a large portion of the more left-leaning media, MSNBC, NY Times and large chunks of CNN, have been salivating over the opportunity to attack. This morning I actually saw a Democrat on CNN declare he was hearing rumors that McCain was ready to dump Palin. He also noted that “some” Republicans had told him they are ready to jump ship over the choice. The declaration is interesting not because such a decision would be an amazing political turnaround, but because reality seems so far away from his take.

Instead FOX News, the right blogs, the average Republicans I have been talking to and even the two morning right pundits left on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan, are beyond fired up over Palin. In over a year and a half of campaigning this moment right now seems like the first I have seen Republicans truly ready for a fight. Republicans are clamoring for an experience battle. Every argument made by those on the left against Palin only highlight the inexperience of the Democratic nominee. Every attack on Palin’s family only returns to an argument that liberals don’t value the family and strengthen religious conservatives belief that Palin and her daughter are making decisions based on “Christian values” that the culture of left Hollywood and academia don’t understand or praise.

Last night I witnessed James Carville on Larry King hitting Palin hard. He held up a picture of the Wasilla city hall as evidence of Palin’s 13 years of public service being somehow less than worthy. I thought about the look of the public buildings and party headquarters in this area. This weekend I drove by the Democratic headquarters in Geneseo, NY a small suburban college town in Upstate, NY. That building is little more than an old gas station covered in campaign signs but I cannot help but think those who volunteer their time to the cause are proud of it.

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Associated Press reports, “Protesters attacked delegates, smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday, a violent counterpoint to an otherwise peaceful anti-war march at the Republican National Convention. Police wielding pepper spray arrested at least 56 people.”

If you forget the GOP Convention was largely shut down today in the spirit of national unity during a time of crisis. I guess if you take the time to travel somewhere you have to protest something.

After a flood of vile Internet rumors spread over the weekend making claims about Gov. Palin’s latest child and her teenage daughters pregnancy, the Gov. came out today and told the press her 17 year old daughter is pregnant, will keep the baby and will marry the father.

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support,”

“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,”

Senator McCain knew about the pregnancy as did many people in Wasilla, Alaska.

Senator Obama responded to the rumors and the announcement by saying:

I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”

“I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I thought there was somebody in my campaign who was involved in something like that, they would be fired.”