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Oct

10

Palin is plain wrong


I’ve read this quote in several places now and every time I read it, it’s still wrong.  From the AP:

Palin, at a fundraiser in Ohio on Friday, told supporters “it’s not negative and it’s not mean-spirited” to scrutinize Obama’s iffy associations.

If Palin were in fact scrutinizing the associations (definition of scrutinize: “to look at critically or searchingly, or in minute detail”), that might be true. But she does what she always does: she is conclusory – she tells the audience what to think.  She doesn’t offer one shred of evidence to support the conclusions she wants the listeners to make, because there isn’t any evidence to support her conclusions, and she’s not all that interested in the audience even being concerned about the evidence.  She just wants them to distrust Obama – and she knows that.  What she says, what she is doing is being said and being done willingly.  And it is irresponsible.

The AP article includes this commentary on that irresponsibility:

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania an author of 15 books on politics, says the vitriol has been encouraged by inflammatory words from the stage.

“Red-meat rhetoric elicits emotional responses in those already disposed by ads using words such as ‘dangerous”dishonorable’ and ‘risky’ to believe that the country would be endangered by election of the opposing candidate,” she said.

But don’t listen to me. I’m just a left-wing blogger. You can read conservatives condemning Palin’s conduct too.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 11:06 pm October 10th, 2008 in Barack Obama, Campaigning, Ethics, Politics, Sarah Palin, Vice President, WH2008 

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