This is, of course, a totally flaweed analogy and I tihnk you know it, Palin uses paper or prompter for speeches too, there's a reason to employ speechwriters, and of course one normally has a lot of back and forth with them. they tend to be one of the few people who can pretty much tromp into POTUS's office without an appointment. Nobody expects anyone to remember word for word a speech, nor is delivering one the least bit disingenious. No reasonable person expects someone not to put talking points, note, etc on notecards, and to point out that she had it on her hand is instead of a card is beyond silly. Why would you espect her to remember to bring up those points? One's ability to remember to do something like that isn't really based on intelligence. I'm a notorious digressor, my memory is fine, but I tend to wander off topic, scrawling my major points on my hand as a reminder seems pretty justified. Why did Palin do it? What were they specifically reminding her off? Don't know, but let's at least pretend she deserves benefit of the doubt and Occam's Razor.



Come, come, we know why she said that, it wasn't an ideal comment but she was pointing out that she lives near the border of Russia, not our ally canada or non-threatening mexico, but the country that for most of her life, and most of most voters lives, was our worst enemy. Need I remind you that Alaska and that area would have been where a lot of the battles would have happened, or that they are where a lot of our strikes would have originated from? Grow up in an area like that and it's likely to be something you take an interest in, let's apply benefit of the doubt and Occam's Razor again, comment translates as 'I've spent a big chunk of my life living very close to the border of our worst enemy, and as governor, I do in fact have to keep up on all the posts, installations, and forces that are or have been psotioned there to deal with the Soviets and now the Russians.' An ideal statement? Well, obviously not, but honestly it's as legit as Obama's living in Indonesia or visiting Kenya as a source of foriegn policy experience... which is to say not much, except it might have sparked a broader interest. She was not claiming expertise because she lived near Russia. She was saying her background was not that of a distant governor as implied but one from a state that is no more isolated from the world stage than Virginia or Maryland.



Not a huge Huckabee fan, but the only reason I didn't vote for Dole was I wasn't old enough. Nice example though, it was impossible to portray Dole as an idiot, so instead they pounded on him for his age and his tendency to refer to himself as 'Bob Dole' and implied he was senile. Another shining moment in liberal open-mindedness. Palin wasn't embraced by the fundie right, she was embraced by the populist right, this is no specific fundie right with a unified idealogy. The rest of us were just happy McCain picked a solid conservative who actually had some governing experience and crowd appeal. Which I'd point out 'relatively inexperienced but charismatic' may be a bad qualifier for VP but not something anyone on the left should really be lecturing us about considering POTUS.



It's not a cheat sheet, you keep saying that, all it shows is that you lack any objectivity on the matter. You simply can not acknowledge that she might have just wanted reminders to stay on point and those were her points. It's like RT said, this whole things speaks way more about her detractors characters than hers.



Kind of batting out of left field there, and I don't normally consider a vaccine known to prevent cervical cancer a bad thing. I also don't tend to think of toll roads and bonds as areas of public policy that tend to automatically reflect badly on someone's character, did you maybe want to list some specifics there? I'm not even sure if you are talking about Texas or Alaska.



We didn't ignore Dole, we nominated him for president and he lost. Huckabee's a good man but honestly I prefered Romney over him, and Huckabee would have been trashed at that time (maybe not in 2012) because of his being clergy. You know there are factions on the left that would have screamed non stop about how his nomination showed the right was trying to cram Jesus and rednecks down people's throats. We got McCain, we ran him, he lost. BE honest though, the GOP contestants were almost all vastly more experienced than the DEM candidates, what, I think only Richardson had much actual executive experience. You ran a pack of senators, the most experienced of which were gaffe-machine-biden and scandal ridden Dodd, and senator really isn't a good direct move to POTUS. After them, your remaining nominees all had equal or lesser experience to our vice-presidential nominee. You guys must have at least a dozen center-left governors you could have ran, where the heck were they? Bush Jr. was perfectly qualified to be POTUS and Quayle was no more a gaffe machine than Biden.