I was at the CNN Grill last night and attended a breakfast with a panel that included Karl Rove this morning and people in both places touted Palin’s speech last night as a success of varying degrees. Despite the success, the group I was watching the speech with were constantly pointing out the inaccuracies and flat out lies that Palin was spewing while I was instant messaging with friends who were pretty disgusted with her overall. Was her speech still effective anyway? I think it will help McCain’s post-convention bump but I don’t think it’s lasting. She excited the McCain faithful but for independents I thought the speech was incredibly polarizing and negative.
In the panel, Karl Rove said that in the end the race will still be about McCain and Obama and the amount of influence the vice-president candidate will have is minimal. He did, however, quip about how when a vice-presidential candidate attacks a presidential candidate, the “vice-presidential candidate always wins.” (Overall though, the panel was a bit nutty as Huffington Post’s Rachel Sklar recalls.)
All day I was wondering if someone was going to have a piece exposing all the dishonesty from Palin’s speech and sure enough, the Associated Press gives the whole evening an abridged fact check. For example:
PALIN: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institutionand the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
Honestly, after Palin spent parts of her speech trashing our free press, she, more than anyone else right now deserves to have her dishonesty exposed in this critical time for the McCain ticket. She could have been a lot more honest.
Man, I can’t wait for the VP debate.
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Hmm, is the reason why “middle” income folks get more under Obama is becuse he is taking it from others and redistributing it?
And, since you mentioned the EIC and other breaks proposed by Obama, why not mention the doubling of the Federal $3500 Child deduction that Sen McCain has proposed?
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THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institutionand the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
That picture sums up the entire RNC perfectly. All that’s missing is the crowd returning the salute.
Trashing the free press? She said: “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.”
If that is trashing the press:
1) You all have thin skin, and
2) Clarifying that her job is to serve the people and not the press is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. I should only hope that our public servants are focused on the effects of their policy more than how they sound on camera.
I just don’t buy that she was trashing the press. She simply prioritizes constituents above the media, and can you really argue with that?
Richard,
For somebody with such an obsession with fascism I thought you would be interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Deal_and_corporatism
Can someone tell me how McCain plans to balance the budget, while he proposes new programs and yet cuts taxes for everyone? I think that running up the national debt it the surest way to make living harder on Americans by causing a boom in inflation. How’s it going to get paid down in a McCain admin?
Obama’s plan is a sort of redistribution of wealth. There are some definite socialist tendencies there, and in my opinion, it’s about time. Our taxes in percent are greatly regressive, and that’s a real debate that I hope comes up in the next two months.
This may sound rather radical to some, but it’s about time that we got to a flat income tax.
The tax system is not regressive. As it stands, the higher your income, the larger percentage of your income is paid in taxes. A flat tax would result in huge tax breaks for the rich, and equally huge tax increases for the poor.
I’m all for progressive income taxes, but how progressive? I think it is morally wrong for a government to take more than 50% of any dollar that one of its citizens makes.
The high earner should pay for a disproportionately high amount of government services. We are all in this together.
But Obama’s redistribution of wealth is simply shifting of dollars from those who earn it to those who happen to have the numbers to carry an election for him. Shifting money from one hand to the other does not increase prosperity. It just rearranges where the money lands.
Fred Thompson said it best: “They say they aren’t going to take any water from your side of the bucket, just the other side.” It is all the same bucket.
This is pretty cheap. First, the Brookings Institution is a liberal think tank. Citing their criticisms is like citing what someone says on Air America. Second, Palin’s comments about Obama were made with a lot of humor. Obama’s speech on the other hand was angry and his comments about McCain were mean spirited at times. I can see why the left is afraid of Palin - she’s great and she helped make the RNC the most watched political convention ever!
Chris I agree 100%,
Sarah Palin did the right thing when she incorrectly stated the positions of people who we Minnesota Republican bloggers disagree with. Her serving of red meat for we blood thirsty republicans at the convention was the right thing to do.
Now what everyone knows about Sarah Palin is that she is quite good at smearing and insulting Liberals, just like we Minnesota republican bloggers do. She is one of us.
She is exactly what the Republican party needed, someone who will carry on the Bush legacy of a never ending election campaign run from the White House. We are obviously now running the campaign of 2004 again, the culture war, that we must win. George W. Bush is obviously delighted that his torch has been passed.
Everyone knows Barack Obamas speech was full of nothing but anger and vitriol, because we Republicans say so. Luckily for us Minnesota Republican bloggers, these Liberals have already forgotten Baracks speech, and are going to be too lazy and stupid to read the text of Baracks speech and find out for themselves.
Great Job Minnesota Republican blogger Chris
People who think socialism is a good idea have not studied history and do not understand the inevitable consequences of wealth redistribution and such. We live in the age of instant gratification and entitlement, “I want goodies from the government and if the end result is the destruction of America I don’t care”. The government doesn’t have goodies though. The government does not produce anything, this should not be hard to understand.
Think people, think. How did America skyrocket from a band of settlers to the world’s single superpower in such a short period of time? Come to think of it, who did everyone blame for everything before America existed? But I digress. Freedom, capitalism, and free enterprise are how it happened and what makes us great. Please, if you love socialism please move to a socialist country — there are plenty of them — don’t wreck ours.