Sep 5, 2008 | 12:11 PM
Category:
Political
A GOP CONVENTION WITH VERY NOTABLE DIFFERENCES
Another Republican Convention is history. It was different on a lot of scores, being indirectly buffeted on the front end by Hurricane Gustav, and then making history in the middle with the confirmation of the party’s first female VP candidate, but it also set a different standard throughout.
The Republican Party runs the White House now but acted through most of the week as if it doesn’t. Senator John McCain was variously described as a “restless reformer who will clean up Washington” and as a future president going to the capital to “drain that swamp.” Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin describes her mission with McCain as “change, the goal we share.”
McCain accepted the Republican nomination for president as he and his prime backers invoked the call to topple the establishment, even though their party heads the establishment. The present occupant of the Oval Office received nothing much more than a backhanded salute. George W. Bush was given an eight minute satellite TV appearance on Tuesday (which played to the hall before the broadcast networks began their live coverage) and Vice President Dick Cheney was ignored.
In his speech last night, McCain thanked “the president” for leading the country “in those dark days” and for “keeping us safe from another attack” but never named him. And he never made either a direct or indirect to Bush again. As for the improved situation in Iraq, he credited that remarkable general, David Petraeus.
It was fascinating but of course, McCain had little choice. The Bush Administration is an albatross he needs to free from his neck if he is to defeat the Democrats. His acceptance speech was honest and straight forward. I found it refreshing that he didn’t use the specially elongated stage as the place to take on the role of attack dog. After all that had been left to the other GOP bright lights – including Gov. Palin -- who took the stage earlier in the week. Instead, the Republican standard-bearer portrayed himself as a fighter, and he brought some fight to a party that had seemed unsure of its footing.
Overall, the week saw the Republican Party set off on the right foot – playing heavily to the base while trying hard to attract new voters. No one was better at it than the woman relatively few in the country had heard of until a week ago today (Friday). Sarah Palin – depending on your party – can be seen to have accomplished much on two fronts. She lit a fire under smoldering delegates with her life story, then a solid bombardment of the Democrats and a bashing of the media. At the same time, she was motivating Democrats, who – according to their party – pumped $10 million more dollars into the Obama-Biden campaign war chest in just one day after she spoke.
Palin is an attractive woman who really knows how to deliver a speech. Sneering and smiling at the same time. There are few politicians in the world who can bring that off so well. Palin and her Republican supporters held back little in their dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president.
But the Associated Press has taken a close look at what she and others said this week and how in some cases both their attacks and their praise stretched the truth.
The rest of this blog is from that AP account, which effectively cites these examples:
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.
MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.
MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.
FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.
The AP's take on the facts versus the rhetoric.
