RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Sarah Palin for VP

Actually I agree that the Ayers stuff doesn't fall into the category of things that should be off the table of discussion. It of course diverts from issues that I hope voters are more interested in like the economy though.

If you follow the posts BSAMS brought it up in his arguement. I just pointed out that McCain's campaign has used it when BSAMS said they didn't.

no, in your brainwashed stupor you missed the entire conversation, i said Obama said one thing yet supports another tact. please pay attention.

as G-man pointed out one of his economic advisers was bashing her family, how can you breathe in the sand?

It isn’t clear what role Gutman still has in the campaign.

It's odd how you saw through Obama's smokescreen, but now that Hilary is out you think he is telling the truth. Just do what your political party masters tell you to think.

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush.

As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest."

That bet is about to be tested.

Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler, union husband, Todd.

"If you see him turning up in Appalachian Ohio and up in Canton and Warren and the old steel towns, I think he would play very, very well," said Ken Heineman, an Ohio University political analyst. "If they try to go after his DUI conviction, jeez, his whole up-from-the-blue-collar thing? He's going to resonate very well among swing voters and among male Democrats, the blue-collar Democrats that Obama did not win in the primary. He would be an incredibly appealing figure, and of course, she is herself."

Discussions are underway to deploy Todd Palin, a McCain aide said, even though he has taken leave from his oil-field job to care for the couple's five children. He joked at an event Thursday, "If I had a crystal ball a few years ago, I might have asked a few more questions when Sarah decided to join the PTA."

Scaling back

Just over a week ago at the Democratic convention in Denver, Obama campaign managers were touting their ambitious plans to compete in 18 battleground states. They have since scaled back plans to try to win such longshots as Georgia and are now focused on holding states that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, such as Pennsylvania, and nabbing a few that Bush narrowly won, including Virginia, Colorado and vote-rich Ohio.

With just eight weeks to go, both campaigns battled over the weekend in the Midwest, where Obama criticized McCain and Palin's self-described moniker as agents of change.

"Don't be fooled," he told a crowd Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind. "John McCain's party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge" for nearly eight years.

Taking a swipe at Palin, he said, "When you've been taking all these earmarks when it's convenient, and then suddenly you're the champion anti-earmark person, that's not change. ... Words mean something, you can't just make stuff up."

Obama advisers have long asserted that the linchpin of their strategy is the so-called enthusiasm gap between Democratic and Republican voters. Palin's candidacy has scrambled that equation by electrifying the conservatives who had been lukewarm about McCain. That has freed him to court the swing voters who have been his strongest supporters.

Independent swing voters make up about 15 percent of the electorate, and much more in battleground states. They are predominantly male and white and over 40.

"These are folks that may have a problem with Obama," said Gerald Austin, a Democratic strategist who worked for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. "They may say it's his experience, but we know it's because of his race. But they also have problems with George Bush, who they don't want for another term, and they see McCain that way, so they have a real dilemma."

Any McCain gains among this group could be offset, Austin said, by the huge numbers of young people, aged 18 to 31, who have flocked to Obama and are generally outside the reach of pollsters because they use cell phones.
Same game plan

"I don't think Obama's game has changed because they picked Palin," Austin said. "I think what Republicans would like is for Democrats to pay attention to Palin."

Besides, Austin said, "The last time I looked, she's not running for president."

Vice presidential picks have seldom had much effect on presidential races. Even Dan Quayle, who was clobbered in his campaign debate, did not stall President George H.W. Bush's victory over Michael Dukakis in 1988.

On paper at least, Obama has plenty of advantages. President Bush and the Republican Party remain highly unpopular, and Obama has excited and expanded the electorate while collecting record amounts of campaign contributions.

McCain, however, has managed to remain far more popular than his party or his president. Independent voters and even some Clinton Democrats, once called Reagan Democrats, are not sold on Obama. Several unaffiliated observers said Palin could appeal to these voters too, despite her conservative views.
Outdoor appeal

"I'm not talking about the 'hot governor' thing," said media strategist Bill Hillsman, who specializes in swing voters. "I'm talking about people, particularly in the Upper Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and the Mountain states who are outdoors people. They like camping, they like fishing, they like hunting, they own pickup trucks, they own ATVs (all-terrain vehicles), they own boats, they own snowmobiles. So they may really like this notion of having a rootin' tootin' governor from Alaska on the ticket."

"If those blue-collar voters see Palin and McCain as an expression of traditional American values, whatever the ideology is, it could be tough for Obama," said former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen. "My sense is McCain's got a real chance to win this election. Ohio is within a couple of points, Florida's within a couple of points. We're knotted up in the national polls and we're knotted up in key swing states."

Schoen's advice to Obama: "Attack, attack, attack. Hard, hard negative. McCain can't win if they're branded as right wing with the American electorate, and particularly swing voters. They have to make John McCain and George Bush and their agenda the issue."

When you take the sport out of it, it just becomes about killing things.

bitter much?

yeah id say most hunters you know dont live in places where its hundreds of miles between towns.

True but it sound like the same principle as using a vehicle on the road to hunt. Or throwing a stick of dynamite in a lake & calling it fishing.

so you want people in the open tundra to go out on foot and possibly die? you have to realize people live in different climates and topography dont you? you also realize they do other types of hunting dont you? look man, before you got all Obamamessiaed you seemed level headed, step away from the lefty blogs, and go back to thinking for yourself, you owe it to your sanity....

If clinton was still running she would claim that she was shot at by an aerial hunter.

How is hunting from a plane significantly worse than hunting from a duck blind or deer stand, both of which are remarkably common and both of which involve being above and/or hidden from the animal in a man-made object?

as G-man pointed out one of his economic advisers was bashing her family, how can you breathe in the sand?

It isn’t clear what role Gutman still has in the campaign...He use to be with the campaign but any reference to him seems to be past tense.

Aiming from a moving object is not as easy as you might think.

As Jim Geraghty notes:

• we're getting a rerun of something we saw earlier this year. Whenever we saw an Obama surrogate — say, Wes Clark, George McGovern, Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin, Democratic congressional candidate Bill Gillespie, Ed Schultz or Tony McPeak — attacking John McCain's war record, the response was always the same - a short, curt, pro forma "we disapprove" statement from a spokesman, with no real consequences for the surrogate who stepped out of line.

To the best of my recollection, none of those other "surrogates" were "official" Obama employees either.

There seems to be a pattern of Obama saying some sort of unwarranted personal attack is "off limits" and then a high-profile supporter just "happens" to make the attack anyway. And that supporter always just "happens" to be one that Obama can't fire because he or she isn't actually a paid employee.

FUNny about that.

Alaska Lawmakers to Seek Subpoenas in Palin Inquiry
By PETER S. GOODMAN and MICHAEL MOSS
Published: September 5, 2008
ANCHORAGE — Senior lawmakers in the Alaska State Legislature said Friday that they would seek subpoenas to compel seven witnesses to answer questions in an ethics inquiry into whether Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, improperly put pressure on state officials to dismiss her former brother-in-law, a state trooper.

The lawmakers overseeing the inquiry said the investigator would deliver a final report by Oct. 10 to allow both sides ample time to respond before the presidential election. Ms. Palin, after pledging for weeks that she would cooperate with the investigation, has in recent days begun to challenge the Legislature’s jurisdiction in the inquiry.

The list of people the investigator is seeking to question — including a top Palin aide, the state personnel director and the cabinet-level commissioner of administration — indicates that the inquiry is focusing on accusations that the governor’s office unlawfully breached the personnel file of the trooper, Mike Wooten. He has had a particularly contentious divorce and custody battle with Ms. Palin’s sister.

Separately, the state troopers’ union lodged an ethics complaint this week against Ms. Palin and members of her administration, alleging that they had unlawfully gained access to Mr. Wooten’s personnel file.

The pursuit of the subpoenas, which are scheduled for a vote before a joint hearing of the Alaska House and Senate Judiciary Committees next Friday, increased tensions in the ethics controversy embroiling Ms. Palin as she seeks to become vice president.

The case seems certain to play out under the glare of the presidential campaign and amid considerable rancor between the governor’s office and the Legislature. Lawmakers said they were forced to seek subpoenas after the seven witnesses abruptly canceled appointments this week to be deposed by the Legislature’s investigator, Stephen Branchflower, a longtime Anchorage prosecutor.

The lawmakers asserted that Ms. Palin’s lawyer, Thomas V. Van Flein, had forbidden members of her administration to have any contact with the investigator.
...

yet you feel being buddies with a known terrorist is a silly distraction, shows where you allegiances lie...

Are guys sure you really want to alienate the female vote further, by attacking Palin for (allegedly) going after a crooked cop who abused his wife and kids?

I'm interested in how she used her power. Shouldn't most people?

I'm interested in how she used her power. Shouldn't most people?

as G-man pointed out one of his economic advisers was bashing her family, how can you breathe in the sand?

It isn’t clear what role Gutman still has in the campaign...He use to be with the campaign but any reference to him seems to be past tense.

...There seems to be a pattern of Obama saying some sort of unwarranted personal attack is "off limits" and then a high-profile supporter just "happens" to make the attack anyway. And that supporter always just "happens" to be one that Obama can't fire because he or she isn't actually a paid employee...FUNny about that.

....

I realize Hillary is no longer running, but she was until very recently.

I don't recall you being particularly interested in how she abused her power.

Furthermore, even if you accept the two stories at face value, there's a world of difference between trying to get a crooked cop fired and misusing FBI files to spy on political enemies.

This election is turning the Democrat Party into Bizarro World: supporting crooked cops and wife beaters while attacking unwed teenaged girls and working moms.