Anyhow, so, how ’bout that speech? Really, how ’bout it? Pretty much sucked, didn’t it? And I didn’t even get the full effect — I listened on radio, and didn’t get to see the moment when McCain was suddenly speaking in front of a green background that called to mind his disastrous June speech. And I really missed the best part of that — that the green was the lawn of Walter Reed. No, not Walter Reed Hospital, though that was what they were going for, but Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California. Good job, RNC interns! As it was, most everyone figured it was John and Cindy’s summer getaway.

McCain’s speech had a few moments in which the John McCain of 2000 appeared to show up, saddened by what had become of him. He was gracious in talking about Obama and his supporters, and appeared to be saying, “Hey, you remember Wednesday? Yeah, pretend that didn’t happen,” when he got into bipartisanship. But then he went and took a page from his vice presidential candidate and lied about Barack Obama’s support for nuclear power and lied about Obama cutting off funds for the troops. He gave a rambling, clueless attack on Obama’s health care plan that would evidently put a bureaucrat between you and your doctor, which I think is awesome, because right now with the health system America has, there are at least four bureaucrats between me and my doctor. And then he tied it up by talking about his time as a POW, which we all know he hates to talk about.

Ultimately, it was a bad speech. This isn’t surprising — McCain’s a bad speaker. But it was surprisingly bad, uneven and incoherent, with no common, overarching theme to unite it. Ultimately, there were no policy prescriptions given, other than that McCain feels bad for you if the economy’s bad, so he’ll cut taxes on the rich, and that we should engage in brinksmanship with Russia. Truly, it is dizzying.

As for the bounce, it may well show up in the next few days, though FiveThirtyEight.com seems to show that the daily tracking has been moving within the margin of error. But McCain should get a small bounce that should erode some of Obama’s lead, and then the McCain bounce will evaporate, and it’s game on.

But the RNC doesn’t seem to have been a radical game-changer. McCain picked Palin, and she’ll rally the base, but he already had the base. She’ll also rally the other base. At any rate, Palin intends to go hide in Alaska for a while, which will lock down the Last Frontier, but probably not help much overall.

In the end, the race will be about Obama and McCain, and McCain’s speech last night gave no indication that he’s up to the task. McCain seemed to be saying that if we elect him, he’ll do good things, mavericky things, and that we’ll find out what those things are if we elect him. It’s not about issues, it’s about McCain. And while McCain has a noble story of sacrifice, he hasn’t shown he has anything else to offer us. Unless he does, he will lose.

Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland used the racially-tinged term “uppity” to describe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday.

Westmoreland was discussing vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s speech with reporters outside the House chamber and was asked to compare her with Michelle Obama.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said.

Asked to clarify that he used the word “uppity,” Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

It’s what they’ve been saying for weeks — although they’ve been using words like “elitist”  and “cosmopolitan” because “uppity” is, well, racist. The rest of the GOP campaign is too.

Or download it here.

Look, Palin gave a well-delivered speech; good for her.  I’ve heard a lot of criticisms of Sarah Palin over the past week, but “bad public speaker” wasn’t one of them.  Oh, she didn’t really say anything, or deliver anything but ad hominem attacks on Obama, and for that reason, I think that this speech, while delivered effectively, will have limited appeal. The partisan right will eat it up — and should. The middle will decide she’s not a complete imbecile, but they’ll also wish she’d stop with the snide attacks on Obama. The left, of course, will hate it, but she doesn’t give a damn about us.

Ultimately, I think that Palin’s speech would have been extremely effective in 2004, when the GOP could win with a base strategy. This isn’t 2004. And the GOP needs moderate voters. And while I am well aware of my own ability to be wrong about things from time to time, my sense is that this speech won’t resonate with the moderates McCain needs. But we’ll see.

Gone is the last vestige of John McCain ca. 2000. There is no more appealing to America’s better angels. There is only fear — fear of the urbane black man who the cross-dressing, thrice-divorced Manhattan denizen (not that there’s anything wrong with that) claims is too “cosmopolitan,” because being aware of the wider world is bad. There is the fear that Obama will increase the flow of orders from Washington, said by the vice presidential candidate who later notes, with a sneer, that Obama would extend basic civil liberties even to bad guys. Because we always know who the bad guys are, and we only deny civil liberties to them, not to good people like you. There is the tax bogeyman, the terror snark, the “othering” boojum. And then the GOP turns to policy, and we find out that we should drill for oil, and…well, that’s all, folks! Good night!

No, neither of the featured speakers tonight — not Mayor 9/11, not Gov. Quayle — advanced any notion of what the Republicans stand for, what they support, how they’d govern, why they want power in the first place. For all their attacks on the Obama campaign as full of flash and emptiness, it was the GOP that spent tonight on glittering generalities. Did you know that Barack Obama will raise your taxes? That he wants to make us less safe? (Really?) That he hates small-town America? That he’s totally unqualified for the office, because he lacks executive experience (as does, one might note, John McCain)? That he was a…community organizer?

Meanwhile, you may not know this, but John McCain was also a community organizer…when he was a POW. And by the way, did you know that Republicans love America, Jesus, and everything you love? All righty then.

How will we fix our economy? Insert the same shopworn paean to lower taxes that has replaced fiscal policy in the Republican Party. How will we fix the health care crisis? Hey, Sarah Palin was against care for the disabled before she was for it. How will we turn things around in Afghanistan? Obama wants to quit in Iraq. How will we restore America’s image abroad? Make our country safer? Maybe, you know, find Osama bin Laden someday? Hey, how about you just shut up.

The GOP has declared, once and for all, that policy doesn’t matter. And it can’t, because they’re on the wrong side of it — from economics to social to foreign policy, America has turned against the Republican Party, which is what happens when your party screws up as badly as the GOP has. And so all they can do is try to rally that base, one more time, and hope that they can sell fear as the antidote to hope, just one more time. And that Americans will buy it, that they’ll buy it like they did in ‘02 and ‘04, or that it will be at least close enough to steal.

And it will be up to us whether we decide to embrace the politics of fear or the politics of hope, whether we make our choice out of a belief in the best America has, or whether we make our choice out of the fear of change.

In the end, my friends, we will get the president that we as a country deserve. If we pick McCain, it will be disastrous — but we won’t be able to say we didn’t realize what we were buying.

(What _____ Said concept shamelessly stolen from Duncan Black). 

Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing — who is really one of them and who is not — and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

She could, Nooners! Unless the media keeps tearing her down. Like, say, Peggy Noonan, this afternoon:

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And –

Peggy Noonan: It’s over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

Chuck Todd: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this –

MM: They’re all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives –

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah.

Damn media. They forgot the most important thing — those microphones can record things.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose:

(Via.)

Now, I frankly would be willing to give Palin a pass on this particular issue, at least on the merits of the issue. She’s Alaska’s governor; she’s supposed to try to wheedle federal money for her state, at least until they secede.  That’s part of the job. And if she’d been quiet about her support of the Gravina Island Bridge, I wouldn’t see it as a particularly surprising or negative development when the story came out.

But lying about that support — especially when you’re on record supporting it –  well, I seem to remember the GOP being really upset about lying politicians. I guess it really is okay if you’re a Republican.

Palin, of course, hasn’t just lied about the bridge. She’s lied about Troopergate. She’s lied about her stance as a pork-buster. She lied about visiting Ireland. Hell, she lied about being voted Miss Congeniality in the Miss Wasilla pageant — and who lies about something like that?

Palin has taken on the mantle of moral crusader, fighting against legal abortion, espousing conservative Christianity, and even going so far as to look into banning books during her tenure as mayor. But a moral crusader, one would hope, would at least be familiar with the foundational morality of their own faith tradition. It seems to me the Ten Commandments have something to say about bearing false witness — and if I recall correctly, they’re against it. Of course, what do I know? I’m just a Unitarian blogger. Maybe Christianity allows you to lie repeatedly, on issues of great import and issues of tangiential value, as long as it’s convenient. I don’t think it does, though, and moreover, I don’t think America wants a liar as its vice president. Then again, we’ve elected Cheney twice; maybe I’m wrong.