I'm sure I'm not alone in watching with consternation the Palin/convention bounce in McCain's polling numbers. I'm trying to maintain my cool about it, but it sure feels like there has been a shift in the momentum and that all the commotion has thrown off the Obama messaging machine. Maybe we're just seeing a bubble in the media's attention and there will be more opportunity in the coming weeks for the Obama campaign to set the conversation, but I'm worried that the Republicans are getting way too much room to define this newcomer in the public consciousness, and once that narrative has been set it will be very hard to knock it loose. We're already seeing some of the more blatant mistruths in the myth of Palin cement (selling the jet on ebay, being against the bridge, and being persecuted by the media). The Obama campaign has a limited window in which to push back.
So how?
I'm no messaging expert but I don't understand why we're not hearing some variant of the following on every sunday talk show, every interview, every public speech (I'm getting most of this from ThinkProgress' Palin digest at http://thinkprogress.org/... -- far from changing up the race, the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket just confirms that McCain intends to continue the failed policies of George W. Bush. The similarities between Bush and Palin are striking -- Bush champions drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so does Palin. George Bush thinks he's on a mission from God in the Iraq war, Palin believes the war is a "Task from God". George Bush doesn't think global warming is caused by Man, neither does Sarah Palin. George Bush has consistently pushed for abstinence-only education programs, just like Sarah Palin. After his term is over, George Bush will have left the country with hundreds of billions of dollars more debt than we had when he was elected. When her term as mayor of Wasilla was over, Sarah Palin had left her previously debt-free town of 6000 with $20 million in debt. Bush's speechwriter even wrote Palin's RNC address. America can't afford four more years of Bush and Palin's failed policies.
There's plenty more examples, but that gives the basic idea. I can see a commercial that's just clips from Palin's public speeches matched with similar comments from W. The McCain campaign has taken an incredible gamble with Palin, and they're out there working as hard as they can to make it pay off. But the flip side of that gamble, if Obama will get on it, is that they've given us a big opportunity to tie Bush's failures even more squarely around McCain's neck. But the window of opportunity is closing, and at this point, I would go so far as to say that the team that successfully defines Sarah Palin for the public will be the team that wins this election. For better or worse, she has become the lynch pin of the whole thing.