Conn Carroll's blog

Perhaps I spent too many years reading Chuck Todd's analysis at The Hotline, but I try to explain pretty much everything that goes on in Washington through sports. The Sarah Palin saga is no different.

First let me say that I love Gov. Palin, believe she is a top shelf political talent, and that she did adequate last night. But she could have been better. And the McCain campaign is entirely to blame for her underperformance.

Palin is like a highly talented first round baseball draft pick. She is going to be great someday, but when McCain picked her in August, she was simply not ready to face major league pitching the very next day. This is not to say she would not be ready to be VP on January 20th. Just that she needed some practice.

And the McCain campaign should have been getting her that needed practice from day one. The major leagues have a farm system for a reason. To develop talent. From day one Palin should have been on Hannity, Hewitt, Rush, and Laura. Is this group going to challenge her in the same way Charlie Gibson will? No. But they would give Palin the opportunity to answer detailed policy questions in a friendly environment, to hone her skills at explaining her world view, and to grow comfortable in the media spotlight.

But the McCain camp did not choose this route. Instead the sequestered Sarah with top McCain advisers who crammed her with McCain-answers instead of letting her discover Palin-answers on her own. Major league teams don't build pitching staffs by calling up their best talent and then leaving them on the bench. They send them to organizations where they are given an opportunity to develop their natural talents, so that when they do play in the bigs, they will be that much better.

McCain still can pursue this strategy. Palin did fine last night, but she could have done better. She should be out talking to every friendly media outlet the McCain camp can find. This would both rally the troops and give Palin some needed practice.

Remember, its not like Obama didn't get the same treatment. The media absolutely adore him, and protected him fiercely early on. He is now a much better politician for it. Unfortunately conservatives do not have a deep bench of Gwen Ifill's in the MSM that are writing books about how awesome Sarah Palin is. Quite the opposite. The MSM hates her with a red hot passion.

So let's get Palin on Rush and Laura and Beck as quickly as possible. Her future, and ours, will be better for it.

The left is in full hyperventilation mode over Sarah Palin's statements about U.S. policy towards, Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine. TPM blares: "Palin Foreign Policy: War with Russia" and then explains: "EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY"

Here is Palin's actual exchange with ABC News Charlie Gibson:

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO. Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

So to recap: if Georgia joined NATO, and then, if Russia then invaded Georgia, Palin would defend Georgia. This isn't news. This is decades old mainstream U.S. foreign policy. The real news would be if Barack Obama believed otherwise. So we look forward to ABC News asking Obama whether he would honor America's militarty commitments under NATO, or if he plans to abandon the foundation of post-WW II U.S. national security.

I sure hope the McCain campaign has a TV ad in the can on this Fannie/Freddie bailout. There is simply no better issue that better crystallizes why McCain's 'reform' is more needed now than Obama's empty 'change.'

Fannie and Freddie are exactly the type of New Deal/Great Society public-private partnership relics that would blossom under an Obama administration. And as the Fannie and Freddie meltdown show, they are also absolute disasters waiting to happen.

Conservatives haven been pushing for major reform of Fannie and Freddie for years. But we've been thwarted by a nexus of high paid lobbyists and Obama allies like ACORN. Remember, the first Washington insider the Obama campaign tapped to help them find a VP was Fannie CEO Jim Johnson. A man who personally made it easier for Fannie to help Countrywide Financial make billions of dollars in bad subprime loans.

And it gets betters: as Jonah Goldberg notes, Obama is the third top recipient of Freddie/Fannie cash (behind only Chris Dodd and John Kerry). Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has explicitly said: "[T]next administration must decide what role government in general, and these entities in particular, should play in the housing market." There is no way this can not be a major issue in this campaign.

So on the right we have proven reformer and Fannie/Freddie influence foe John McCain, and on the left we have top Frannie/Freddie cash recipient and ACORN lover Barack Obama. This is a sure winner.

Nothing proves what a threat the Sarah Palin VP pick is to Barack Obama better than the new depths Obama supporters have sunk to strangle the birth of Palin’s national profile in the crib. At the forefront of the left’s campaign to kill Palin’s reputation at any cost are two of The Atlantic’s most high profile contributing editors, Andrew Sullivan and Marc Ambinder. Sullivan has devoted the last year of his life to getting Obama elected President. When he is not testifying on his Atlantic blog about Obama’s Truth, he is writing fawning Atlantic cover stories about how Obama will ‘transcend’ our ‘distorted politics.’

So imagine Sullivan’s fear when he noted that Palin managed to do in 24 hours what John McCain had failed to do in 24 months: excite the conservative base. Desperate Sullivan threw everything he could conjure up against Palin. But when attacking her foreign policy credentials and attacking her decision to fire an uncooperative political appointee did not work,  Sullivan decided to take the low road.

I am surprised that no one here at TNR has written about Ross and Reihan’s recent effort Grand New Party, so I’ll take the first stab. First of all, go buy the book. But for some quick summaries, try here and here where Ross writes:

Grand New Party … is a book that spends a great deal of time arguing against two powerful narratives of recent American political history - one left-wing, and one right-wing. The left-wing narrative …holds that the migration of working-class voters … from the Roosevelt majority into the Reagan-Gingrich-Bush coalition has been driven by the GOP's ability to essentially trick these voters into casting their ballots based on symbolic culture-war issues, rather than on their economic concerns… The right-wing narrative, meanwhile, holds that the rise of the modern Republican majority represented a triumph of Barry Goldwater's purist small-government message, which failed in 1964 because the country wasn't ready for it, succeeded in 1980 when the country was ready for it, and could provide the basis for an enduring GOP today if Republicans are bold enough to stand, and run, on rock-ribbed Reaganite principle.

Against these two (often mutually-reinforcing) narratives, we argue that the left misunderstands the working class's present situation, and the right misunderstands its own history. ... This defense of the GOP broadly, and social conservatism specifically, coexists in the book with an argument that conservatives have achieved their greatest successes, both politically and on policy matters, when they've stood for a limited-government pragmatism rather than a small-government purism, and for efforts to reform and restrain the welfare state rather than frontal assaults that seek to abolish it outright.

I was particularly struck by the last paragraph quoted above, since it reminded me of a speech the Governor of California gave to CPAC in 1977:

Fabulous line from GW this weekend:

Enough, already, with the we-are-who-we-have-been-waiting-for rhetorical cotton candy that elevates narcissism to a political philosophy.

Obama's most recent flip-flop, this time on oil, is just more evidence the the energy issue is going to be a big winner for us this year. We need to both encourage our candidates to run on this issue, and do it in creative ways.

Businessman Luke Puckett is facing an uphill climb to defeat Rep. Joe Donnelly (IN-02) but not only is he running on energy,but he has been very active in using new media tools to get his message out. Check out his YouTube, and flickr pages.

My first job out of college was on a long shot congressional campaign out in California, so I am always a sucker when it comes to asks from challenger campaigns. But Puckett in particular is running on the right issues, and using the right tools. So please, do reward his good behavior.

We've seen the polls. Not only is energy rapidly becoming the issue this fall, the voting public massively favors the right's policy prescription. Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less is great, but we should also be working to prepare for the inevitable moment when Pelosi and Reid refuse to even allow a vote on the issue in their respective chambers. We need to use their obstructionism to show why Democratic control of Congress is a disaster for this country.

Democrats in tight races can not be allowed to escape accountability by promising to vote for more energy exploration. That it not enough. Pelosi and Reid will not allow those votes to happen. But even in the minority, there is something GOPers can do to force a vote: they can file a discharge petition.

If a majority of members sign a discharge petition, the bill's sponsors can steal the gavel from Nancy,  and control the House ... all be it for a limited time. We need to communicate to the American people this is the ONLY way they will ever see a real debate on energy as long as Democrats are in charge.

There a number of Democratic House candidates in close races who have come out in support of offshore drilling. Betsy Markey (CO-04), Dina Titus (NV-03), Reps. Don Cazayoux (LA-06), Joe Donnelly (IN-02), and Paul Kanjorski (PA-11) are all touting their support for offshore drilling.

We need their constituents to understand, that that support is not enough. These candidates most be pressed to promise to sign a discharge petition allowing for a vote.

The left has very succesfully used humor (think Daily Show) to drive Bush and GOP negatives through the roof among young voters. Obama's complete inability to take a joke will be his downfall too. NRO's Jim Geraghty has the best take on Obama's Berlin speech I have seen so far:

There was not a ton to object to, and indeed a lot to like, in Obama's speech in Berlin. Although I think I preferred it the first time I heard it, when it was sung by all those celebrities and rock stars back in the mid-80s.

Oh, wait, that was "We Are The World."

UPDATE: Pop quiz, hot shot. Pick out the "We Are The World" lyrics vs. Obama speech lines.

A: "We can't go on pretending day by day that someone, somewhere will soon make a change."

B: "This is the moment we must help answer the call."

C: "But if you just believe there's no way we can fall."

D. "The world will watch and remember what we do."

E. "Let us realize that a change can only come when we stand together as one."

F. "We cannot afford to be divided."

G. "These now are the walls we must tear down."

H. "This is the moment when we must come together."

I. "They'll know that someone cares, and their lives will be stronger and free."

The netroots are genuinely frightened about the success of conservative messaging on energy.

Open Left's Chris Bowers is ready to throw in the towel:

Maybe I am just too tired right now, but I am suddenly of the opinion that Democrats should just completely capitulate on the offshore oil drilling question. In fact, they should also capitulate on the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. While we are at it, let's institute a gas tax holiday, and release the strategic petroleum reserve. We should cave on all of these issues, but do so with an important, public caveat. We should state, as loudly as possible, that none of this will actually lower gas prices, but that they only way to prove to the American people that it won't lower gas prices is to let Republicans have their way.

Now Bowers hasn't been paying close enough attention to who is for what, because conservatives do not want to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. It is after all 'strategic.' But if he really wanted to make conservatives happy he would also have to acquiesce to killing all the law suits by environmental groups stopping new oil wells and refineries nationwide. Then we could really get energy prices down.

Open Left's Matt Stoller is reduced to just making stuff up:

The energy question is the question of our generation. If you drilled everything there is in the US tomorrow and oil started coming out of the ground tomorrow, gas prices would drop by about three cents.