New York Times Slams Palin Debate Performance

I watched the vice presidential debate this evening with a group of friends and while Sarah Palin did not come across as the complete cretin that she is in reality, I believe Joe Biden clearly won the debate. Palin frequently never even answered the question posed to her and repeatedly slipped into GOP talking points and double speak when she had no earthly understanding of the question and/or how to answer it. She clearly confirmed that the GOP revels in ignorance. After all, the Christianist base of the GOP rejects science, rejects evolution, and rejects competent medical and mental health expert opinion. Why should Palin be any different? The one interesting point is that Palin said she agreed with Biden on civil legal rights for gay couples. James Dobson, et al must be having a veritable stroke. I suspect the Chritianists will rip Palin a new one for that comment. Here are some highlights from the New York Times:

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We cannot recall when there were lower expectations for a candidate than the ones that preceded Sarah Palin’s appearance in Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate with Joseph Biden. After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms. Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe.

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By that standard, but only by that standard, the governor of Alaska did well. But Ms. Palin never really got beyond her talking points in 90 minutes, mostly repeating clichés and tired attack lines and energetically refusing to answer far too many questions.

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When it came to domestic issues, Ms. Palin mainly relied on enthusiasm and humor, talking about hockey moms, soccer moms and Joe Sixpack almost as often as she used the word “maverick” to describe Mr. McCain or herself. But she offered virtually no detail — beyond the Republican mantra of tax cuts — for how she and Mr. McCain would address the financial crisis or help Americans avoid foreclosure or what programs they would cut because of the country’s disastrous fiscal problems.

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Ms. Palin’s primary tactic was simply to repeat the same thing over and over: John McCain is a maverick. So is she. To stay on that course, she had to indulge in some wildly circular logic: America does not want another Washington insider. They want Mr. McCain (who has been in Congress for nearly 26 years). Ms. Palin condemned Wall Street greed and said she and Mr. McCain would “demand” strict oversight. In virtually the next breath, she said government should “get out of the way” of American business.

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In the end, the debate did not change the essential truth of Ms. Palin’s candidacy: Mr. McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment. It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment.

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The woman is so out of her league that it is terribly frightening. What the Hell was John McCain thinking when he selected this mental midget??