He'll assume, he said, that Palin is "as smart as I am, as thorough as I am, and knows as much as I do"--and that's that. "She's going to have to answer questions," he added. By tackling the specter of sexism head on, Biden has cleverly reframed the debate. It's not "sexist" to hit Palin hard, he's saying. Instead, it's sexist to pull punches, show her deference and treat her any differently than he would treat, say, John McCain. By repeating this line of reasoning ad nauseam until Palin actually engages with voters and reporters, Obama and Co. would be conditioning the country to take offense if they DON'T go after her with their usual gusto, not if they do. Who knows if that's enough to overcome what Cottle calls "all those stupid, gut-level, subconscious, knee-jerk instincts that would lead voters to feel protective" of Palin when she winds up on the receiving end of one of Biden's bloviations. But it's a start.
I think that the best response is to let Sarah do as much talking as possible. I've heard her speaking before crowds on a few occassions since her VP acceptance speech, and I was amazed at how uninspiring she sounded, re-hashing the same insipid and mean spirited sound-bytes from the GOP convention, same delivery. She also has a grating speaking style, that comes off as a condescending, and sounds shrill at times. We're down to less than 2 months until the general election, and just three weeks until the VP debate. This is more than enough time to grow tired of her, and as she spews more and more rhetoric hate-speek that endears her to the evangelicals, it will errode her support among moderates & independents, which is probably tenuous at best, given the new polls. The more she talks, the more she gets caught up in distortion and lies.
Simply stated, Sarah Palin should be treated as a candidate. Not a (female) candidate, but just a candidate, period. After all, Palin has been through this ringer before when she ran for Governor of Alaska against the egregious, corrupt and entrenched Murkowski's. Sarah Palin knows that when you are going to play with the big boys you have to expect to get bumped, tackled, bruised and hurt just like the big boys do to each other. If she doesn't know this, then she is due for a rude awakening and will look like a deer in the headlights, a la Dan Quayle. Hillary Clinton knows this and she is quite capable of playing with the boys as she proves time and time again, and so should Palin. If Palin thinks she can claim sexist behavior because she is asked hard hitting and relevant questions, she will look foolish and be dismissed out of hand.
Harry Truman's statement, "If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen" rings as true today as it did back when he uttered the line!
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