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Rudy’s Ironic Gift to the Democrats

Posted by ELROD in At TMV.
Sep 4th, 2008 | Comments

Yes, Rudy Giuliani’s over-the-top red meat speech angered and fired up the Democratic base, just as it riled up the GOP base. But that’s Rudy and to him it’s always 2004 and building off 9/11. The problem with Rudy’s speech is that it lasted too long. So long, in fact, that they couldn’t show the introductory biography video of Sarah Palin before she spoke.

Why does this matter? Well, if you saw the intro bios at the DNC you can see that they’re powerful stuff. Michelle Obama’s mother narrated a pitch perfect video that did wonders to resuscitate her image. The bio video of Biden showed a warm side to him that nobody had seen before. And Obama’s bio video reminded people of his life journey.

New candidates NEED these sort of soft-media images to prepare the viewing audience for the performance. They need to be warmed up and placed in a sympathetic light. Nobody needed the soft-media bio video more than Sarah Palin. Think of the tears that would have come out in the hall and, possibly, across the country with the picture of Baby Trig.

But that bio was missing, thanks to Rudy’s love of his own voice.

And what emerged instead was a Sarah Palin that looked a lot less charming than the woman who was supposed to appear. Instead of her attacks at Obama being subtle, they looked sharp, nasty and condescending. There simply was no contrasting image – a warm image in the bio – to soften the blow.

What could have helped Sarah reach non-Republicans ended up repulsing them. Her introductory appearance was incomplete. She was a pure base rouser, but nothing else.

The Democrats can thank Rudy Giuliani for truncating Sarah Palin’s rollout and making her look less like an inspiring mom and executive and more like an acolyte of Rudy himself.

  • DLS
    You're better than Shaun's current desperate descent into the sewer, Elrod, but again you have completely mischaraterized Palin and her speech, and Guiliani and his, too.

    Palin's speech was splendid.

    Guiliani's speech was really good, too. Sorry to disappoint you, but it wasn't all about him and all about 9-11.

    Palin's speech was so good it increases the pressure now on McCain to do well himself, with his own speech, in order to retain his campaign's new surprisingly strong momentum and appeal to Americans given to it by the selection of Palin and boosted by her speech last night.

    Since you lefties are failing so badly these days (are you desperate, and even scared that the Obama-Biden campaign is not the juggernaut you imagine[d] it to be, and are you suffering from that arrogant-entitlement mentality many Clinton voters had before _and_ after Super Tuesday?), let me introduce two current items that y'all have failed to handle in any passable manner.

    * McCain's Obama-imitation appearance after Palin's great speech last night was clumsy, so clumsy it was puzzling and gives intelligent observers concern that he may not give a good speech of his own. If McCain does well, his campaign will have even more momentum and appeal to Americans that Palin's selection for VP brought to it. If McCain is merely Just OK, Americans will shrug and yawn and will be wary of the campaign's future, and redirect attention substantially to the Obama campaign. If McCain does poorly, he will deflate his campaign (and the vultures will be circling already in the media's eyes and in those of too many people on this site).

    * What's this behavior lately from Peggy Noonan?

    http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives...

    "We now return you to the current desperate, even delusional and worse lefty stuff on this 'moderate' [sic] site."
  • jwest
    It may have been a mistake to knock out the soft bio in order to let Rudy club Obama and Biden like baby seals, but we’ll just have to wait on the polls to see the results.
  • The Rudy-Palin 1-2 punch was rather horrifying wasn't it? Not a good contrast to the hopeful politics being pushed by the Democrats.
  • Ricorun
    I wonder how Palin would react if she gets pissed off in an unscripted situation. It might be interesting to find out.
  • elrod
    DLS,
    You keep asserting that the speech was wonderful and that all of America loved it. Jwest says this too. Where's the evidence? Focus groups of undecided voters were very mixed - more negative than positive. I've seen no polling yet. Right now it's just spin.

    I'm previously inclined to dislike her, based on her ideology. She added mockery to her ideology and made herself into a female George W. Bush in my eyes last night. Do other people feel that way too? I have no idea.

    But I'm quite certain that the video bio would have made me and other non-base people think better of her. She needed something between herself and Rudi (and Linda Lingle wasn't covered). As such, she looked like an extension of Rudi.

    For some people that's great. I get that. But outside the base, how many people are going to find that appealing, especially as new information trickles in every day that undercuts her claim to be a reformer and regular person.

    She took a huge risk by doing it this way. Now the Democrats - not the bloggers and the media - will go after her hard. Expect some ads attacking her dishonesty over the Bridge to Nowhere.
  • jwest
    Elrod,

    Show me a focus group that is negative.
  • DLS
    "Where's the evidence?"

    People I've encountered and observed and overheard everywhere I've gone (and I'm in a BLUE state) have remarked about her speech. Even the media have said the speech was good (arguably more so than righty talk show hosts said that Obama's speech was good, which it was). It was the kind of speech those of us exposed to good speeches in the past recognized immediately as good (in fact, the prime-time lineup ended up being all surprisingly good, Huckabee-Giuliani-Palin being a true hat truck of high-quality successes). Plenty of callers to lefty as well as righty talk shows (and up to last night, many on the right were wary of Palin and had wanted McCain to choose someone else) said that she was good, while the criticism of her and her speech was (as it has been on here) completely detached from and often the opposite of reality.

    What's good is good, and this speech by her was great. Even the media are exploiting her sudden popularity (and trying to put her down by wrongly making her analogous to and the same as largely-celebrity-only Obama) by calling her "the GOP Obama" and such.

    This is a huge gain for McCain and the GOP and their campaign and it is now going to be interesting to see how things go next week and interest in McCain-Palin vs. Obama-Biden becomes rebalanced (even in the media, who have been largely Obama campaigners and McCain ignorer-suppressors).
  • DLS
    "Expect some ads attacking her dishonesty over the Bridge to Nowhere."

    I expect a lot, especially from the media who have been campaigning for Obama and ignoring any real digging into his past and who have been quiet about Biden and his and his family's own problems, worse than Palin's. Lefty talk radio is an outright copy of paranoid-true-far-right Bilderberg-fearing Palinophobes these days.
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