“Say it ain’t so Joe!” An analysis of the VP debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden

As the two VP candidates entered the stage, a winsome and confident Sarah Palin approached Joe Biden and shook his hand "May I call you Joe?" she inquired. Joe smiled with his dentine white teeth and nodded. This was the beginning of Sarah's night. This was Sarah's make-it or break-it moment. The pundits had said that if she made any serious gaffes or mistakes, her political career and McCain's campaign would be over. She did neither. Palin's Midwestern folksy cadence demonstrated to the average American that she was not a "Washington Insider." As she delivered her arguments, she would occasionally wink saying to the "American people" in a non-verbal fashion that she was one of them, but at the same time each time she winked, she drove the left mad. The far-left "Huffington Post" equated her winks to trying to pull something over on us. Huh? Palin in large part articulated McCain's positions better than McCain has done. Again, Palin baffled her critics. Just the fact that she was able to hold her own against the life-time boorish senator Joe biden and that she make no mistakes or gaffes makes this a Palin win.

This was also a referendum on Gwen Ifill, the moderator. Gwen was on her best behavior throughout the debate. The criticism she received as a result of an Obama book to be published January 20^th where she stands to make a lot of money should Obama win must have caused her to put her partisan ideology aside and conduct an honest debate. There were no "gotcha" questions, and the questions were for the most part questions for which we wanted to hear answers.

Palin on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

" We need to look back, even two years ago, and we need to be appreciative of John McCain's call for reform with Fannie Mae, with Freddie Mac, with the mortgage-lenders, too, who were starting to really kind of rear that head of abuse. And the colleagues in the Senate weren't going to go there with him. So we have John McCain to thank for at least warning people. And we also have John McCain to thank for bringing in a bipartisan effort people to the table so that we can start putting politics aside, even putting a campaign aside, and just do what's right to fix this economic problem that we are in."

Why is the McCain campaign so reluctant to name names? McCain has no problem in naming names if it's a Republican, but he erroneously figures that if he names a democrat, he is being too partisan. This will always get him in trouble. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democratic monstrosities run by Franklin Raines (a current advisor to the Obama campaign), Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, all Democrats. Chris Dodd and Barack Obama were the two highest recipients of contributions. The McCain campaign needs to name names.

Palin on energy

Barack Obama and Senator Biden, you've said no to everything in trying to find a domestic solution to the energy crisis that we're in. You even called drilling -- safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore as raping the outer continental shelf. There -- with new technology, with tiny footprints even on land, it is safe to drill and we need to do more of that. But also in that "all of the above" approach that Senator McCain supports, the alternative fuels will be tapped into: the nuclear, the clean coal.

Palin knows her energy, and I am finally glad they are hitting this hard. Most Americans want offshore drilling.

On global warming (aka climate change)

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet. But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts? We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that. As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We've got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an "all of the above" approach to deal with climate change impacts.

This was a good answer. For anyone who has seriously studied climate change knows there is no proof that human activity is the cause of global warming. Even if humans do have any impact, the solutions the left tries to impose will usually hurt the economy without affecting the climate (i.e.: cap and trade schemes.) The left also doesn't want to put in nuclear power, the cleanest form of energy that would reduce carbon emissions. Today I read McCain wants to tap Al Gore as a resource. Why does McCain always feel he has to go towards the Democrats who hate Republicans? Especially a blowhard know-nothing like Al Gore.

Palin on taxes

Barack had 94 opportunities to side on the people's side and reduce taxes and 94 times he voted to increase taxes or not support a tax reduction, 94 times. Now, that's not what we need to create jobs and really bolster and heat up our economy. We do need the private sector to be able to keep more of what we earn and produce. Government is going to have to learn to be more efficient and live with less if that's what it takes to reign in the government growth that we've seen today. But we do need tax relief and Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year. That's a lot of middle income average American families to increase taxes on them. I think that is the way to kill jobs and to continue to harm our economy.

McCain and Palin need to hammer this home - how Obama's taxes will kill the economy. Today's news showed another 159,000 jobs lost, and Obama still wants to raise taxes.

    An increased tax formula that Barack Obama is proposing in addition to nearly a trillion dollars in new spending that he's proposing is the backwards way of trying to grow our economy.

That was a great line.

At one point in the debate Ifill posed the following question,

     " I want to get -- try to get you both to answer a question that neither of your principals quite answered when my colleague, Jim Lehrer, asked it last week, starting with you, Senator     Biden, What promises -- given the events of the week, the bailout plan, all of this, what promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you're not going to     be able to keep?

Even Ifill thought they didn't answer that question and realizes that if the economy is going to hell in a hand basket, your policies would need to change with the circumstances.

That was an excellent question and Biden, in Biden fashion, totally evades the question, and bloviates about nothing – But it sounded good. Palin answered the following,

    There is not. And how long have I been at this, like five weeks? So there hasn't been a whole lot that I've promised, except to do what is right for the American     people, put     government back on the side of the American people, stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street

McCain's plan of lower taxes will work in any environment, but Obama's plan will kill the economy, but yet Obama and Biden still want to play Robin Hood.

Biden mentioned that McCain even refuses to meet with the government of Spain. Of course, I knew that was a lie on the face of it. Spain's Prime Minister Luis Zapatero is a socialist, but he is no threat. There would be no reason why John McCain would not visit him, and come to find out www.factcheck.org said that it is an erroneous claim by Biden. That is not what McCain said.

The debate was good for McCain because Palin performed well and articulated McCain's positions better than McCain has, but the McCain campaign needs to name names. Palin and McCain need to pound harder on taxes and what Obama's plan will do to the economy, and the idea that 95% of people will receive a tax cut is ludicrous especially with a trillion dollars of spending. Obama's math is a little fuzzy too. Only 70% of people pay taxes, so how is it that 95% will receive a tax cut? McCain should have fought against the bailout plan laden with pork barrel earmarks, the very thing he said he was going to fight against, and he should have gone with the Republican version. He could have turned the campaign around had he done this. He missed a huge opportunity – his first test. We will be pulling our hair out for four years with McCain, but the alternative is all too dangerous.

    We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.    It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from     extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find     ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free. We will fight for it,     and there is only one man in this race who has really ever fought for you, and that's Senator John McCain. Sarah Palin