“At the risk of scandalizing my high school civics teacher, this might be the first presidential and congressional election I’ve sat out on principle,” wrote columnist Rod Dreher. He explained that as a pro-life social conservative, his voting for Barack Obama is “all but impossible.” But, he said, John McCain’s “hot temper and bellicose foreign policy instincts are deeply troubling. . . . And the more Gov. Sarah Palin shares her nitwit nostrums, the less confidence I have that she’s capable of running the country if her boss’s term were abruptly ended by illness or death.”
He also wrote: “Absent something extraordinary, I’m going to reject both the Republican and the Democrat. Say what you will, but that will be the first presidential vote I’ve cast, so to speak, that I can truly believe in.”
Democratic state senator and staunch Barack Obama supporter Hollis French of Alaska boasted in early September that he would provide an “October Surprise” which would upset the McCain-Palin campaign. The investigator he hired, Steve Branchflower, has given birth to a bloated and redundant 263-page report which boils down to two paragraphs that completely contradict one another. The Branchflower report is a series of guesses and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy. It contains no new bombshells in terms of factual revelations. It’s just Steve Branchflower’s opinion that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both the complete right to perform and other very good reasons to perform. – Hugh Hewitt, Townhall.com
Sarah Palin’s reaction to the Legislature’s Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation. She claims the report “vindicates” her and the investigation found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part.” In plain English: She did something “unlawful.” She broke the state ethics law. Palin trumpeted the report’s second finding: that she was within her legal authority to fire Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. But the report also said one of the likely reasons she fired him was his failure to get rid of her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten. Palin and her husband felt passionately about Wooten because the case was personal to them. They had no sense that the power of the governor’s office carries a special responsibility not to use it to settle family scores. – Anchorage Daily News editorial
It turns out that Jim Slattery’s “Hosed” commercial, which has garnered national media attention, is the brainchild of Bill Hillsman of Minneapolis’ North Woods Advertising. Hillsman’s credits include offbeat work for the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, posed by Hillsman as Rodin’s “The Thinker.” Noting Slattery’s weak polling against Sen. Pat Roberts, Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza called the “Hosed” ad “the definition of a Hail Mary pass.” Chicago Tribune blogger Frank James asked, “Does it get more outlandish than this?”
Much has been made of Todd Palin’s use of the title of “first dude” of Alaska. But Kansans heard it first, as Palin recently acknowledged on Fox News in crediting “the gentleman from Kansas who’s a judge” with coining the title. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gary Sebelius (in photo) told the Kansas City Star: “‘First gentleman’ just sounded a little too stilted for me. . . . I had a talk with Todd shortly after (Sarah) was elected when we were at one of the first spouse (conventions), and I suggested he may want to consider being the first dude of Alaska.”
“At the risk of scandalizing my high school civics teacher, this might be the first presidential and congressional election I’ve sat out on principle,” wrote columnist Rod Dreher. He explained that as a pro-life social conservative, his voting for Barack Obama is “all but impossible.” But, he said, John McCain’s “hot temper and bellicose foreign policy instincts are deeply troubling. . . . And the more Gov. Sarah Palin shares her nitwit nostrums, the less confidence I have that she’s capable of running the country if her boss’s term were abruptly ended by illness or death.”
