More Friday Freeper Fiction From Philly.com

(I’m going to try and tackle two conservative pundits here for the price of one.)

In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Jonathan Last tries to tell us here that the presidential race is tightening because both sides have “ditched their playbooks”…

To understand the change in strategy, let's first go back to the Democratic convention in Denver. There was much concern at the start of the convention over whether Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would endorse Obama.

Of course she would. But Clinton did so by the smallest degree politically permissible.

She touted the importance of putting a Democrat in the White House and urged her supporters to work for Obama. What she didn't do was issue a single word of specific praise about Obama.

Really? That’s news to me. I’m sure you can find more than “a single word of specific praise for Obama” from this excerpt of Senator Clinton’s speech (transcript is here)…

Barack Obama began his career fighting for workers displaced by the global economy. He built his campaign on a fundamental belief that change in this country must start from the ground up, not the top down. He knows government must be about "We the people" not "We the favored few."

And when Barack Obama is in the White House, he'll revitalize our economy, defend the working people of America, and meet the global challenges of our time. Democrats know how to do this. As I recall, President Clinton and the Democrats did it before. And President Obama and the Democrats will do it again.

He'll transform our energy agenda by creating millions of green jobs and building a new, clean energy future. He'll make sure that middle class families get the tax relief they deserve. And I can't wait to watch Barack Obama sign a health care plan into law that covers every single American.

Barack Obama will end the war in Iraq responsibly and bring our troops home – a first step to repairing our alliances around the world.

And he will have with him a terrific partner in Michelle Obama. Anyone who saw Michelle's speech last night knows she will be a great First Lady for America.

Americans are also fortunate that Joe Biden will be at Barack Obama's side. He is a strong leader and a good man. He understands both the economic stresses here at home and the strategic challenges abroad. He is pragmatic, tough, and wise. And, of course, Joe will be supported by his wonderful wife, Jill.

They will be a great team for our country.

Continuing…

The McCain camp followed suit the next afternoon. Since June, the McCain campaign had positioned itself as, to put it simply: Not Obama.

That worked pretty well. Through a series of attacks on Obama's celebrity status, his credentials and his readiness to lead, McCain closed the gap in the polls. The race was even as the conventions began.

But then McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate and changed the entire narrative of his campaign.

I don’t know about the “narrative,” but the selection of “Governor Hottie” definitely changed the polling (here), and her attempt at a “full Zell” on Wednesday also impacted the Obama fundraising (here – I don’t have any numbers on that for McBush).

With that, I’ll leave Last and turn (reluctantly) to Christine Flowers (here)…

Sarah Palin said a lot of things during her acceptance speech, and all of them proved her fitness for office.

She talked about national security. She talked about energy. She talked about taxes.

Utterly knowledgeably.

So says Flowers; however, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times tells us the following (from here, and if Palin isn’t going to get the benefit of the doubt from him, then she won’t get it from anybody)…

In (Palin’s) speech, she tried to address (the media perception that she had become a bigger story than McBush) by belittling what she disparaged as the Washington elite and the news media — a sure-fire applause line at these kinds of events — and invoking her own experience as a reformer. Yet she made no effort to say what she might do as a vice president, no small question when her lack of a national or international portfolio suggests she would not slide easily into the kind of full partner role enjoyed by Mr. Cheney and Al Gore.

“The Gore-Cheney series of vice presidencies have changed the nature of the job,” said Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator from Colorado and a friend of Mr. McCain. “What McCain has done is to try to revert to the 19th-century model, early-20th-century model of vice president — the ‘job isn’t worth a warm pitcher of spit’ model, which means you don’t do anything.”

“But we don’t live in that kind of world anymore,” Mr. Hart said. And, he said, that is a particularly relevant question given Mr. McCain’s age — 72 — and health problems. “I’m sure John thinks he can live forever, or at least for eight years,” Mr. Hart said.

In an interview a month ago on CNBC, Ms. Palin went so far as to disparage the job of vice president, saying, “What is it exactly that the V.P. does every day?”

Flowers also tells us…

Palin rose above all of the dirt and innuendo thrown at her by the liberal peanut gallery, nutroots and Obama surrogates and showed the kind of character that can't be supplied by campaign managers or conjured up in pretty speeches. Unlike the senator from Illinois, who has based his entire candidacy on dreams and ambiguity, the governor of Alaska spoke the language of real life. Fluently.

Unlike Obama's perfect family, whose greatest challenge seems to be affording piano lessons and camp for his daughters, Palin talked about her youngest child, a 4-month-old with Down syndrome.

…

Unlike Obama's record of "community service," Palin explained just what it meant to be a municipal and then a state executive who needed to be on call 24/7, 365 days a year, without the luxury of being able to vote "present."

I’m so glad that that Flowers doesn’t traffic “in dirt and innuendo,” aren’t you? Also, she notes twice that Palin’s youngest child has Down’s Syndrome – I don’t know why even noting it the first time was relevant (let alone having the child onstage, which is bizarre) but that’s just me, I guess.

And how’s this for a laugh?

I'm not a person who likes to play identity politics. It doesn't matter to me what color you are, what gender, or with whom you're likely to fall in love. Substance matters more than the irrelevancies of race, sex and the color of your hair.

Her quote about “identity politics” is pretty odd, to say nothing of disingenuous, considering that she once concocted this nonsense not so long ago (from here)…

There is that sense among people with college degrees, 401(k)s and wine cellars that those who never made it to their educational or economic level have a stunted existence that makes them much more susceptible to racism and sexism and all the other -isms (except, of course, "multiculturalism") that make them unworthy of the vote.

And oh yeah, Flowers also sticks in a note about “flaws” of Palin that are “updated hourly” at The Daily Kos (and speaking of which)…

Now allow me to return to Last again to close this...

Now the campaigns are on parallel tracks aimed at actively competing for the swath of voters in the same handful of swing states.

True, but this tells us what Michael Gerson, the ultimate “Dubya’s-inner-circle” insider, thinks (if HE isn’t on board with McBush and Governor "Gidget's Got A Gun," then there REALLY IS a problem)…

(The) policy in the speech was rather typical for a Republican. Pretty disappointing. It didn't do a lot of outreach to moderates and independents on issues that they care about.

And just for emphasis, here’s CNN's Jeffrey Toobin once more.