Make Palin Explain "Small Town Values"

by Steve Soto
In its effort at setting the narrative for this presidential race, Gallup is out with its latest poll for the USAT, wherein they tell us that among likely voters (as Gallup defines them), McCain/Palin have shot to a ten-point lead over Obama/Biden in the aftermath of the GOP convention and Palin’s ascension. Certainly, this is a reflection of how Gallup puts together its likely voter (LV) sample for this poll, and yes, this is moot because the election isn’t for another seven weeks. But Gallup used a LV sample for this poll that had an equal number of Republicans, Democrats, and independents in it, after weeks and months of they and other pollsters telling us that Democrats were energized and Republicans were demoralized so much that Democrats had a significant party ID advantage. Now, after just one VP selection and while assuming that Democrats won’t be similarly energized to stop McCain/Palin, Gallup is telling us that the Republicans have a significant lead among LVs.

As I blogged back in 2004, we’ve been here before with Gallup, when they used suspect LV samples to set a narrative that the race was closer than it may have been. Also, it is not known how Gallup and other pollsters factor in cell phones to their sample construction; since a large part of Obama’s support is among the young who rely exclusively not on hardwire but cell phones, this whole population never makes it way into these samples.

What matters are not the head-to-head polls but rather the Electoral College totals. For all we know, we may have an interesting replay of 2000 this year, where the popular vote winner loses the election, instead this time it may be reversed. I fully expect millions of wingers in red states to come from the pews to the polls to vote against an African American, egged on by their supposedly Christian pastors and the right wing smear machine.

Sarah Palin has garnered this love and energized support from the wingers based on the image of her and storyline created by the McCain team, who want to shield her from any real scrutiny as long as possible. Palin will have her first network news interview this week with the safe Charlie Gibson of ABC News, who can be counted on to give her softball questions. The McCain team wanted to blow off the media for another several weeks, but realized that the counter-narrative of a candidate who was afraid of media scrutiny threatened to undercut their preferred narrative of a woman mistreated by a bad liberal media. Yet the Democrats should assume that most of the corporate media will give Palin a pass, and go along with the media management techniques of Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove, because the media have eaten dirt from these guys before and will do so again.

Palin was the one who spoke of small town values and being different, just like John Kerry spoke of his military service and Vietnam in 2004. And just like 2004, where the Rove attack machine used what Kerry led with and turned it against him, Democrats should now take what Palin led with and focus their arguments on Palin’s record and beliefs, and give her the same treatment the GOP has given Hillary all these years.

Do small town values mean you lie about earmarks, try and cover up your husband’s participation in a separatist movement, the mess you left behind as mayor, denial of global warming, and upbringing in an “end times” church that considers all other faiths including Jews as unworthy of God’s mercy? All of these are legitimate areas of inquiry where Palin should be held accountable by the media and Democrats to explain why her small town values, which she sold herself at the convention, qualify her to be one geriatric heartbeat away from the presidency.

These aren’t questions about her family or kids, but rather about the type of person she herself is, what she herself put out there at the convention to energize the sheeple. And Democrats need to make Sarah Palin explain why she is not an extremist, and why she and John McCain have no real answers for many of the problems facing Americans right now.

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highest in the state.