My, my, my...the campaign that seemed so predictable and dull just one month ago has begun to snap, crackle and pop up a storm. And while most of the excitement is certainly because of Sarah Palin's electrifying entrance (and the ominously ugly responses to it by the MSM and the Obama campaign), there are other issues helping to drive voters towards -- can you believe it? -- the Republican ticket.Among those "other" issues are the inexplicably weak selection of Joseph Biden as the Democrat's V.P. hopeful; Senator Obama's poor performance at the Saddleback Forum (especially the glib "above my pay grade" reference to abortion); the highly exaggerated, almost comic grandeur of Senator Obama's football stadium acceptance speech; the lukewarm reactions to that speech even by a press corps who had been so fawningly positive throughout the campaign; the arrogant anti-Catholicism of so-called Catholics Nancy Pelosi and Biden; the tough, timely and very potent political ads being run by the McCain campaign; and so on.
There are stories all over cyberspace this morning exploring various angles of this surprising and suddenly sizzling campaign. And, always thinking of your busy schedules, I point out just a few for you here:
* When an over-the-top feminist writer like Camille Paglia writes this kind of piece about Sarah Palin (published over at Salon, no less), even the most disinterested observer realizes that a major shift in thinking is occurring in American politics.
* Joe Biden's clumsy performance on Sunday's "Meet the Press" included a rambling and terribly distorted justification of the Democrat's support for abortion. Here, a couple of notable Catholic bishops explain how Biden blatantly contradicted Church teaching in that performance.
* Long a Democrat powerhouse in Congress, Charles Rangel is facing the possibility of losing his chairmanship of the Ways & Means Committee. Why? Well, it just doesn't appear very seemly (in an election year, anyhow) for a fellow who has illegally evaded paying his own taxes to run the Committee that writes the nation's tax laws.
* Obama friend and supporter Bill Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist, went public yesterday in a weird and absolutely awful internet cartoon that, quite naturally, connects to the reeling Obama campaign. Said Ayers, "During the Vietnam war, the Weather Underground took credit for bombing several government installations as a dramatic form of armed propaganda. Action was taken against symbolic targets in order to declare a state of emergency. But warnings were always called in, and by design no one was ever hurt....
I don't think violent resistance is necessarily the answer..."
* Joe Lieberman is facing not only the anger but the vengeance of Washington's Democrat leadership for his appearance at the G.O.P. convention in support of John McCain for president. Senator Daniel Inouye who sits on the Democratic Steering Committee which makes recommendations on committee assignments, is pretty forthright in his threat: “The Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, but he should remember he’s a member of this caucus.”
* The recent responses of the Democrats to the Republican surge in popularity have become downright ugly. Whether it's Obama's snide use of pigs and stinking fish to mock his opponents (Where did Mr. Nice Guy go?), Biden's insensitive remarks about parents of disabled children, or New York's Democrat Governor David Paterson's ridiculous paranoia (Governor Paterson is arguing that references to Obama's work as a "community organizer" are examples of racism) -- the Dems are floundering badly...and in public.
