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The anger felt by many Nebraska Republicans toward Sen. Chuck Hagel rose to new heights Thursday after Hagel questioned whether Sarah Palin has the experience to serve as president. State Republicans are "worn out" with Hagel and his propensity for controversial comments aimed at fellow Republicans, said Mark Quandahl, chairman of the Nebraska GOP. Quandahl went out of his way to distance the state party from Hagel's remarks about Palin, the party's vice presidential nominee. Quandahl said few Nebraskans would agree with Hagel, the Nebraska party's senior elected official. "The views expressed are his own and would not reflect the...

How qualified for the vice presidency of the United States could a Republican be who: Is young - under 45 years old? Speaks in favor of economic development of Alaska? Advocates and engages in exercise for personal fitness? Has lived in the wilds of the American Northwest? Fishes, hunts, and loves the great outdoors? Has a reputation, not as an environmentalist, but as a conservationist? Has at least five children? Is a moralist for whom every issue is a struggle between good and evil? Is a reformer who has taken on the GOP's "good old boy network"? Believes corporations should...

This poll asks if you think Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as VP of the US.

Just got this poll question from NRCC via email (fund-raiser after you answer the question)... I thought it would be interesting to hear FReeper responses...

Link only: http://www.kypost.com/content/middleblue3/story.aspx?content_id=e2d876aa-929e-4ed5-9e27-9165a2f2828b

Did John McCain ever believe that Sarah Palin would dominate the media spotlight to the degree that she has? Ever wonder what he has to do to get that spotlight back? Check out this new "Geeks On Caffeine" cartoon for the answer. NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thanks!

With just 15 minutes to go before Sarah Palin's event was to start Saturday, the Pony Express Pavilion was only about a quarter full. The hold-up: The Secret Service had just one metal detector to run a line of some 3,500 people through. At 4:45 p.m., they gave up. They moved the metal detector out of the way and the crowd flooded into the pavilion. As one McCain backer said, the Alaskan Governor isn't in serious danger in Carson City.

ARVADA — Trina Green said she worries about her lack of health insurance and the price of groceries. On her bookkeeper's salary, she needs cheaper gas to shuttle her baby and her 7-year-old around. She is concerned about the quality of her son's school and the war in Iraq. And vice presidential pick Sarah Palin is making her take a second look at voting for John McCain. "She's not soured; she's not influenced yet," said Green, a registered independent in Jefferson County, a key battlefield where there is a roughly equal measure of independent voters compared with Republicans and Democrats....

An Army of Sarahs by Hugh Hewitt Sarah Palin keeps collecting admirers. Her interview with ABC News Charles Gibson has added another legion, .... (excerpt) Manhattan-Beltway media elites are very slow to recognize anything completely new. This is why prior to 9/11 they were in the dark about Islamist extremism. It is why prior to $4 a gallon gas, they had never anticipated a huge majority of Americans would demand offshore drilling. And it is why they still don't understand the Palin Breakout. (excerpt) The Great Snarl that has arisen and is directed at Sarah Palin has registered at a...

CARSON CITY, Nevada – Sarah Palin made her debut in this swing state with many of the same well-rehearsed lines she’s used to excite Republicans across the country since her rocket rise to political prominence. This time, though, she didn’t have to appear as an opening act. After a week of campaigning side-by-side with John McCain, and often overshadowing him in the process, Palin made her first solo campaign appearance outside Alaska with an upbeat confidence, plainly comfortable being the main attraction. Introduced by Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki as “a hockey mom with attitude” to about 5,000 people in an...

Nearly a quarter of a century later, Sarah Palin is also being grilled about her capacity to negotiate with the Soviets (well, the Russians, but they are acting like Soviets at the moment), asked if she will still cook for her family if elected vice president and praised for her chic glasses and copper highlights. But this time, women are flocking to her, cheering her can-do attitude and her unabashed embrace of the hockey-mom label.

Obama interview: How does it feel to break a glass ceiling? How does it feel to “win”? How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling? Who will be your VP? Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP? Will you accept public finance? What issues is your campaign about? Will you visit Iraq? Will you debate McCain at a town hall? What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech? Palin interview: Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders? Aren’t you conceited to be...

I don't think so. Right away, the Left is trying to portray her as Cheney in a dress. This'll backfire, hopefully. She's able to connect with the populace in ways Cheney could not. McCain and Palin need to learn right away-don't cozy up with the news media. I really believe that, if Palin plays her cards right and sticks to her guns, she will be the first female President. I think a future Palin / Romney ticket would do fine.

The first cut of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin reveals someone embarrassingly unprepared. His name is Charlie Gibson. Here's the transcript: Gibson: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war? Palin: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote. Gibson: Exact words. Palin: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said--first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or...

Anyone who said that Charlie Gibson might go easy on Sarah Palin might want to quickly delete those comments. What the ABC newsman conducted yesterday was a serious, professional interview that went right at the heart of what we want and need to know about the governor: Could she be president? Does she understand the nuances of international affairs? Does she have a world view? He was all business, respectful but persistent. ~snip~ Lots of conservative ridicule for this sentence in a Wendy Doniger piece on Palin for WP/Newsweek's On Faith blog: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that...

Howard Kurtz's column in the Washington Post is surprisingly blunt and surprisingly revealing. The mainstream media, Kurtz says, are mad. Their anger, though, is oddly unidirectional: "The media are getting mad. Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches. Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there's anything new about that)." There certainly isn't. Barack Obama has been manipulating the press...

"South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin [yesterday], saying John McCain had chosen a running mate 'whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion,' " Politico reports. Fowler later apologized "to anyone who finds my comment offensive." We'll leave the offense to others. We find Fowler's comment revealing and disturbing. And she is not alone in striking this theme. Here is Andrew "Beagle With a Smear" Sullivan of The Atlantic: And then, because [John McCain] could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with...

The media is trying to make hay that Palin did not know what the Bush Doctrine was. Wikipedia is not a great source, but it does provide a consensus of sorts that tells us what terms mean. According to Wikipedia: "The Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush, created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The phrase initially described the policy that the United States had the right to treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups as terrorists themselves, which was...

South Carolina's Democratic Party chairwoman said Wednesday that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's top qualification seems to be not having had an abortion. She later apologized.(snip) "I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may vote based on a single issue."

Obama really is pretty clueless. Instead of hinting that Governor Sarah Palin is a pig with lipstick, he goes on Letterman and calls her just another pretty face - insinuating she has no brains, views or political force of her own: Obama: “It does. But keep in mind that, technically, had I meant it that way, she would have been the lipstick, you see?” (audience, Dave laugh) “But now we’re…” Dave: “I don’t know, you’re way ahead of me.” (audience laughs) Obama: “Yeah, the failed policies of John McCain would be the pig.” Obama keeps digging his hole, and laughing...

IT'S WIDELY ACCEPTED now that Barack Obama would be better off if he'd picked Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate instead of Joe Biden. Obama had his reasons, particularly his discomfort with her as his actual vice president if he's elected. Still, Obama sacrificed a stronger ticket by rejecting Clinton. Absent Hillary, the contest between Obama-Biden and the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin is throwing the Democrats into disarray. The consequences of Obama's veep decision appear mostly to favor McCain. And if Obama had picked Hillary? Here are a few of the differences. No Palin....

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party nominee for president, has invited GOP Congressman Ron Paul to be his running mate in the upcoming election. In a letter sent to Paul, Barr called Paul one of the “few American patriots” who exist in today’s society, and asked him to “seriously consider this final offer as an opportunity to show true, lasting leadership beyond party politics.” Barr cited Paul’s 1987 letter to then-GOP Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, in which Paul stated that, “after years of trying to work through the Republican Party both in and out of government…[Paul] concluded that [his] efforts must be...

Fairfax, Va. — If you’ve been to Barack Obama’s big public rallies, you know it’s not unusual to see lines of people stretched for block after block after block — seemingly mile after mile after mile — waiting to get in. That hasn’t usually been the case with John McCain’s rallies. Until now. When McCain and running mate Sarah Palin appeared this morning at Van Dyck Park, in the city of Fairfax, Virginia, the people spilled out of the natural amphitheater, over the sides, out the back, and nearly all the way to the Old Lee Highway. The rally had...

This is an email I received this morning from Democrat.com. I subscribed awhile ago to see what kind of things they are saying. This morning when I got in my Hotmail account this was in the junk mail, which is exactly where it belongs. Here is what the email said: Tell The Media to Call Sarah Palin a Serial Liar It is now thoroughly documented that Sarah Palin supported the $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere" when she ran for Governor in 2006, even though Congress cancelled the earmark in 2005. She only opposed it in September 2007 after her final...

When I wrote the email, I was merely responding to friends and clients in the lower 48, who were asking me about Governor Sarah Palin. I really didn’t mean for this email to go round the world, but it may already have. Kathy and I are simple folks and life time Alaskans who run a lodge on the remote Alaska Peninsula. I am a bush pilot and guide for the same operation that I started as the camp boy for, back in 1966. Kathy and I both pitch in to respond to emails and inquiries about fishing and hunting with...

No story in my lifetime has shown more bias, hypocrisy and incompetence than the political left-wing media's reporting of and reaction to John McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his Vice-president. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D_NY) greeted McCain's v-p choice with a statement that it would "put to rest any argument about inexperience on the Democratic team." Based on today's polls, it would appear that Sen. Schumer may right. Only, it appears that it is the inexperience of Obama that has been put to rest. Obama's "experience" as a community organizer who failed to actually succeed in getting asbestos removed...

As Sarah Palin hits the big time on the political scene, we are being told that her selection as the nominee for vice president is intended to appeal to women like me -- your ordinary working mom who balances work and family needs and still finds time for service to country and community. In fact, Palin and I have quite a bit in common. I, too, have worked outside the home since my children were 10 and 8 weeks old, respectively. I learned firsthand what it's like to work with a special needs child. When my younger daughter was 13,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Charles Gibson's producer says no issue is off the table for Sarah Palin's first TV interview as a vice presidential candidate, which ABC is hoping it can air in part on Thursday. Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, addresses supporters during a campaign rally in Lee's Summit, Mo., Monday, Sept. 8, 2008. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia) Gibson will travel to Alaska and will probably speak to Palin at least twice. The challenge for ABC will be making excerpts available in time for "World News" Thursday, which Gibson must broadcast live from that state at 2:30...

FLINT, Mich. — Barack Obama broadly accused his Republican rivals of dishonesty Monday, citing former lobbyists working for John McCain, Sarah Palin’s shifting stance on the “Bridge to Nowhere” and their promise to change Washington. With national polls finding the Democratic presidential nominee trailing or in a dead heat with McCain, Obama began the campaign’s final eight-week push by criticizing McCain’s popular running mate as much as the Arizona senator himself. He said Palin has an interesting biography — “Mother, governor, moose shooter. That’s cool,” he said — but the election should be about who can change people’s lives for...

(CNN) -- With Gov. Sarah Palin getting so much attention these days, Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, is being elbowed out of the vice presidential spotlight. The Alaska governor may be a newcomer to the national political stage, but Palin is drawing big crowds for her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and gracing magazine covers across the country. The sometimes tough-talking Biden has steered clear of a dogfight with a self-described pit bull in lipstick, instead tearing into both politicians on the Republican ticket. "I heard Sarah Palin and John McCain talk about change. Tell me one...

(Political Animal) WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE PALIN INTERVIEW.... Following up on an item from yesterday, the McCain campaign announced that Sarah Palin will sit down with ABC's Charles Gibson for her first interview this week. The AP added a few additional details as to what viewers can expect. ---snip--- From Gibson, after watching him with McCain last week, my expectations are considerably lower. I suspect part of him realizes he earned this special opportunity because the McCain campaign expects him to ask softball and/or predictable questions, and there may be some inkling to prove them wrong, but I doubt...

If Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention had been a heavyweight boxing match, the referee would have had to step in and stop the fight in the early rounds. Sen. Barack Obama was first systematically taken apart by Rudy Giuliani, in a speech that ridiculed his thin résumé, far-left track record and lack of substance shown thus far in the campaign. One could almost hear the late Howard Cosell's famous call from the Frazier/Foreman bout: “Down Goes Obama! Down Goes Obama! Down Goes Obama!” Then, after the delegates swallowed all that red meat (or, as Charles Krauthammer humorously put...

So the aging hippie-chick Wilson sisters of the 1970s-80s rock band Heart object to their song "Barracuda" being played at McCain Palin events. So what? Why not use another Wilson's (no relation, I think) song instead? Gretchen Wilson likely would not mind loaning her wildly popular country anthem "Redneck Woman" to Sarah Palin, I'll wager. Gretchen was a Fred Thompson supporter early on and performed at last week's RNC convention for the McCain-Palin ticket. She might even be willing to re-write a variation custom-tailored for the GOP vice presidential nominee. Just as an exercise in such speculative thought, here's one...

DEMOCRAT Barack Obama yesterday accused Sarah Palin of "making stuff up" and ridiculed Republicans for trying to co-opt his message of change. Senator Obama, in saying he expected Govenor Palin wanted to be "treated like one of the guys", accused her of a backflip on "earmarks" (pork-barrelling). "When you've been taking all these earmarks when it is convenient, and then suddenly you are the champion anti-earmark person, that is not change. "Words mean something. You can't just make stuff up," he said.

The Republicans are, to swipe a phrase from that other campaign, all fired up and ready to go. They are more fired up than they've been since Ronald Reagan's Morning in America in 1980, only this time their hopes are pinned not on a controversial former California governor but a controversial Alaska governor. The GOP, per its convention, is running a hiding-in-plain sight, anti-incumbent incumbent campaign that essentially has it running against itself, which isn't half as painful as its sounds and which, in many corners of America, may just work. In St. Paul last week, Sarah Palin won the...

Of course Sarah Palin is much cuter than Dick Cheney. As the must-have Republican political button from St. Paul put it: "Hottest VP from Coldest State." And it sounds like she's better with a gun than the vice president, who accidentally shot a friend while on a hunting trip in South Texas. But lots of folks are beginning to draw a parallel between Cheney, with his secret meetings on energy policy, and Palin, the pistol-packing soccer Mom who took on -- and beat -- the political establishment in Alaska. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, in an interview today with ABC's...

US Republican vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin took her first swipe at her Democratic counterpart today Joe Biden. She cast Biden as a Washington insider incapable of change. Snip . . .

Sarah Palin could be an elusive target for Democrats. The plan for Sarah Palin—rock-star Republican—was to do a series of swing-state events with John McCain, record the campaign's regular weekend radio address and then go home. "We kind of shanghaied her out of Alaska," Steve Schmidt, the McCain-Palin campaign manager, told me. "She needs to go back for a few days." There are personal reasons. Her son is shipping off for Iraq. With a newborn of her own, a pregnant daughter and a state to run, "Sarah Barracuda" has to get her affairs in order. But there are political reasons,...

Sarah Palin: northern star injects new life into lumbering campaign An extraordinary display of raw political talent could trump Obama’s ‘pretty speeches’ and rally the religious right Sarah Baxter in Detroit The enthusiasm generated by Sarah Palin, the Republican party’s new “northern star”, on her first tour of Middle America this weekend has revived Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign to such a remarkable extent that she is outshining her running mate. It is an unprecedented position of power for a vice-presidential candidate that carries great risks and rewards for McCain as he adjusts to operating in the shadow of a...

The trust-funded Beautiful People of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party are unanimous. Sarah Palin is a bad person. A very, very bad person. Here is a list - a very partial list - of the reasons that the governor of Alaska is not qualified to be vice president of the United States. She has never been on “Meet the Press.” She doesn’t - or didn’t - have a passport. She didn’t write her own speech Wednesday night. Her 17-year-old daughter is going to be an unwed mother - oh, scratch that, Bristol’s getting married to the young self-described...

At 5:20 A.M. Friday, August 29th, Bill McAllister awoke to the ringing of his home phone. McAllister had turned his BlackBerry off before heading to bed. He usually leaves it on, but "It was a slow news day here," he says with a laugh. McAllister, a former television news reporter in Anchorage, had become Alaska governor Sarah Palin's press secretary just two months earlier, in June, after covering her administration. At one point, he'd even done a story on her vice presidential prospects. "She really didn't think it was in the realm of likely," says McAllister.

Sarah Palin mania transformed John McCain's presidential campaign as the Republican duo made their first appearances after claiming their party's White House nominations. In a sweep through the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Mr McCain was met by the kind of near-hysterical crowds previously seen only at campaign events for his Democratic rival, Barack Obama. More than 6,000 exultant supporters turned out on Friday night in Sterling Heights, a town in Michigan's Macomb County, home of the Reagan-Democrats, the small town blue collar voters who propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House in the 1980s and hold the key...

AT THE Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota this week it was hard to remember the party has been in power for eight years and that George W Bush is still president of the United States. John McCain's populist strategy of distancing himself from Washington's elite by appropriating the rhetoric of political change, his fighting nationalism and, above all, his inspired choice of Sarah Palin as his running partner paid off in a distinctive platform and re-energised the party's conservative base to stand against Barack Obama. This is a remarkable achievement in a week which saw the convention nearly called...

Nothing in the attacks that Democrats or the media have made against Palin compares to the scandal that brought down Eagleton — a hidden history of severe mental illness he hadn’t disclosed to McGovern before his selection as running mate. And judging from the way Republicans have rallied to Palin’s defense, it seems highly unlikely she will be bumped from the ticket. Indeed, the spectacle of a media feeding frenzy over a working mother and her pregnant teenager seems to have produced a backlash that could have an effect quite the opposite of what Palin’s enemies originally imagined...

It was the loudest and most prolonged cheer since Barack Obama appeared on the podium last week in Denver. Very few people had heard of Sarah Palin when Mr Obama delivered his acceptance speech eight days ago. One vice-presidential announcement, several news cycles and countless debates about sexism later, Ms Palin had been catapulted into starring role at a rejuvenated Republican Convention. Given the fluid nature of this presidential race, most analysts say it is much too early to pronounce whether Ms Palin's widely praised acceptance speech was the "game changer" that some Republicans claimed on Wednesday night. But in...

The tone and placement of the spread is no accident. In selecting Ms. Palin, a down-home girl with her own National Rifle Association membership card and anti-abortion narrative, the Republican Party is targeting a demographic of suburban women and small-town evangelicals that is as specific – and crucial to the election – as the towns she will visit over the weeks to come. “Her role here is, to borrow from Rush Limbaugh, ‘Babies, guns and Jesus,''' said Kyle Saunders, a professor of electoral politics at Colorado State University. “Over the past couple of election cycles there has been a slow...

Gov. Palin is a true outsider, a real maverick. She lacks Washington, D.C. political experience. That’s good. No, that’s excellent. It is her lack of D.C. political experience that is the refreshing outsider change America so desperately needs and wants. Palin made it clear that she is like the rest of us, noting how Fedzilla is bloated, broken, ineffective, and wasteful. Our professional politicians no longer work for us, but instead represent K Street bandit lobbyists. These scoundrels deserve our scorn, anger and contempt, and, quite honestly, a big, old pink slip, and Sarah appears to be the tough leader...

Ok, so here comes my first vanity post! But before I start, here’s my deal: I’m a 44 year old white male from Cape Cod Massachusetts. I love guns, and own many. I hate unions, and took on the union where I work (I became known as “The decert guy”). My voting record here in Mass includes protest votes for Pat Buchanan in ’96 and Alan Keyes in 2000. In other words, I believe in America and The Constitution. I’m a huge Howie Carr fan (Don’t blame me, I voted for Muffy), and am considered as right wing as they...

Governor Sarah Palin's debut as Vice Presidential incumbent on the Republican ticket drew 37 million viewers, dramatically outstripping the 24 million that watched Senator Joe Biden, the VP incumbent on the Democratic side. Her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) also eclipsed the audience for Senator Hillary Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC), in which Clinton put full support behind Senator Barack Obama's bid for Presidency, Nielsen Media Research finds. In fact, viewership drew dangerously close to figures for Obama's acceptance speech for the Presidential bid on the Democratic ticket, which attracted 38.4 million viewers. Coverage...

If only Brian Ross, ABC News and the rest of the mainstream media would spend as many news minutes on Obama's dealings with Wright, Rezko, Ayers, et.al. Sigh..........