Pitbull with Lipstick
Quick Palin roundup starts with Gloucester teen mom’s advice to Bristol Palin, via Boston Herald: “She needs to hold her head up.”
A teen mom from Gloucester - the seaside city thrust into the international spotlight for its high school baby mamas - is urging pregnant 17-year-old Bristol Palin to “hold her head up” - and praising John McCain for standing by his running mate’s family.
Lisa Spilman was 16 years old and a student at Gloucester High School when she learned she was pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, Julia.
“She needs to hold her head up,” Spilman said yesterday of Bristol Palin, who is unmarried and five-months pregnant. “She just needs to focus on herself, her baby and having a good environment for that child to live in.”
News that the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expecting has ignited fierce debate.
Spilman, an accounting major raised in a Republican home, said she had been undecided but the Arizona senator earned her vote with his VP pick.
“It definitely convinced me to vote for McCain,” said Spilman, who planned to watch Palin’s much-anticipated speech last night.
“This is a normal family. This is an American family and you can relate to these people,” Spilman said. “I’m glad he picked Palin.”
OK, back to Palin. More Herald: Pitbull Palin Unleashes on Barack
ST. PAUL, Minn. - A feisty Sarah Palin charged straight at Barack Obama last night as the virtually unknown governor of Alaska transformed herself into John McCain’s snarling campaign pit bull last night before cheering delegates and the eyes of the nation at the Republican convention.
In a high-stakes speech projected to be viewed by millions, the 44-year-old vice presidential pick turned the tables on those who have mocked her inexperience and family troubles - ripping the Washington insiders and media elite.
“Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,” she said. “I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”
Dressed in a conservative gray suit, the self-described hockey mom and PTA member who brought reform to her own state government quickly moved on to hammer away at Obama for everything from his flashy image to his policies on two critical issues: energy and Iraq.
“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign,” the combative Palin said.
“But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet?
“The answer is to make government bigger, take more of your money, give you more orders from Washington and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy, our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, he wants to forfeit.”
Palin looked on at a sea of whooping delegates and, taking note of “Hockey Moms 4 Palin” signs, joked that “the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull” is “lipstick.”
She heaped praise on McCain’s character and POW heroism, saying, “There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain.
“It’s a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a 6-by-4cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office. But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made.”
Palin took the stage after days of attacks by media commentators and liberal bloggers who have targeted the unwed pregnancy of her teenage daughter and two-decades-old DUI arrest of her husband, Todd.
As her beaming family, including daughter Bristol and her fiance Levi Johnston, who held hands and smiled, looked on, she devoted little time to the sniping, seeking to put it to rest quickly and simply.
“Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys,” Palin said, adding that she met her husband in high school, “and two decades and five children later he’s still my guy.”
(AP’s report, staying true to the news agency’s campaign track record, sucks too much to be worth posting. Speaking of which, here’s a line which was oddly absent from AP’s Giuliani speech story though other news organizations had no trouble noticing it: “How dare they question whether Palin will have enough time to spend with her children while vice president? When do they ever ask a man that question?”)
Moderate Voice: Formidable talents. Like her or not, she’s a natural woman warrior.
Robichaud at Boston Herald: “An American Margaret Thatcher in the making.”
Surber: “We didn’t get a Reagan … we got a Thatcher.”
NYTimes rises to its own challenge: How can we make this boring?
WPost’s challenge: How can we make this boring and about Obama?
Malkin liveblogging.
In other business, AP wants to make sure you know the gun-toter is a religion-clinger.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:36 am on Thursday, September 4, 2008
3 Responses to “Pitbull with Lipstick”
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September 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am
[...] What about there other grand strategy, mud slinging (or is it monkeys and poo?) Here’s hoping they continue that and get even more outrageous because only the stupidest of the fringe will buy it, but otherwise it will backfire creating more support for the pitbull with lipstick. [...]
September 4th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
It’s going to be a tough couple of months to the election. Most likely we’ll see a level of nastiness worse than we’ve ever seen before. But I hope the American people have seen a glimmer of some real hope and change in the way our government operates, and don’t buy into Obama’s pie in the sky bullpatty.
September 4th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
[...] Pitbull with Lipstick [...]