Hennessy’s View

On Thursday, the Washington Post gleefully reported that the GOP couldn’t give away tickets to McCain’s scheduled pre-convention rallies in Dayton, Ohio, Pittsburgh, PA, and O’Fallon, MO. 

That ended with the announcement of Palin as is VP choice.

In St. Louis, tickets disappeared so quickly (and the distribution method was so lame-brained) that even donors and party activists with guaranteed reservations lost their reservations.  The party decided to give away reserved tickets to meet the clamorous demand at the doors of various ticket locations (which is going to royally piss off my son Patrick when he finds out they gave away our tickets).

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Conservative spirits soared like roman candles three times in my life:

• Ronald Reagan’s emergence in 1980
• Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994
• Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s vice president in 2008

Besides the math (each event exactly 14 years apart), Palin’s selection could change the face of politics in America for a long time.

Yesterday, I hurriedly outlined some of the instant wins from McCain’s brilliant move.  With 24 hours of reflection, this game-changing decision produces even more positives.

Changing the 2008 Election

For this year’s election, adding Palin was like the Colorado Avalanche adding Ray Bourque in 2001.  With this move, McCain scored a hat-trick of priceless political goals:

• Solidified all aspects of the right: evangelicals, 10th Amendment philosophers, family-first pragmatists, 2nd Amendment patriots, economic conservatives
• Opened the wallets of Americans who had been hedging their bets
• Wiped the DNC Convention off of the news instantly and forever

Such an inspired political move deserves praise and academic celebration.  This one will be examined in college political science studies for decades.

Wowing the Press

This move said you don’t have to be anti-American to be young, energetic, intelligent, and political.  Since the fall of 2007, the media have been telling young people and political neophytes respond only to young, ultra-liberal, America bashing rabble rousers.

Palin is Reagan conservative who pulls the young because she exudes youthfulness, energy, and independence.  Like Reagan, she bucks the Republican party’s idiotic tendency to crawl back to its Eastern Seaboard Country Club past.  She’s not a Rockefeller, thank God:  she’s one of us.

I’ve been watching conventions and their aftermath since the 1976 election cycle.  I figured out some time ago that it’s not what the party or candidate says at the convention, it’s what the media say about them that causes bounces.  Even though Obama’s speech was one of the worst in history, the media–almost all Obama donors–fawned over the speech as the new Gettysburg Address.

Palin made those reporters drop their Obama stories and start digging on her.  What they found shocked them.  Even the New York Times online front page is wholly positive:

• Choice of Palin Bold Move with Risks [link]
• Palin, an Outsider who Charms [link]
• Defining Sarah Palin [link]

The entire page above the fold is devoid of Obama’s name, probably for the first time in a year.

Defining the Future

McCain may have permanently altered the course of the conservative movement in America, the way Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1976 RNC convention did.  Palin, known only to conservative wonks and Alaskans before Friday, jumped to mega-star status by Friday night.  Her actions are quickly becoming legendary, particularly among women.

• She stayed on the dais to participate in an energy meeting for 30 minutes after he water broke in April 2008
• She won the state high school basketball championship playing point guard with a broken ankle
• She is an expert rifle shot and hunter
• She defeated an incumbent Republican governor
• She told Congress to get lost when it tried stick a bridge to nowhere in her state
• She manhandled oil executives
• She went to Iraq when it wasn’t safe to visit her Guardsmen, not to politic

Avoiding major errors, Palin has skyrocketed ahead of Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as the Next Big Thing from the right.  Even if McCain loses (which is increasing unlikely), Palin is here to stay unless she stumbles badly.

My guess is that she’ll wipe the floor with Biden, if Biden even debates her.  Her quick, sharp jabs will wear him down while he tries desperately to land a knock-out blow.  The Barracuda, though, is young and energetic.  Biden could be her lunch.

Conclusion

Taking well-calculated risk, McCain has changed the course of politics in America for at least 14 years.

**Update**

Ed Morrissey finds a Democrat who agrees that the Palin selection is massive strategic windfall for McCain.

Did McCain set Obama up to fall into this trap?  If so, then perhaps that more than anything demonstrates how poor a candidate Obama is and how much more masterful McCain can be.  Would you rather have the man who set the trap dealing with our enemies abroad, or the man who fell into it?

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Technorati Tags: John McCain, Sarah Palin

Danielle Bologna’s trembles like an injured child’s when she approaches the word, “widow.” 

“I never thought I’d used that word about myself,” she recently told an interviewer.

Bologna is a widow.  She’s also the grieving mother of two sons.   On June 22, 2008, a wild, crazed killer wiped out Mrs. Bologna’s family as they returned home from a family picnic.  Tony, husband and father; Michael, 20 years, sone; Matthew, 16 years, son.  Murdered in cold blood for the sport of it.  Shot to death in a city with notoriously strict gun laws.  A family of four became a family of one. 

The murderer, Edwin Ramos, is an illegal alien living in San Francisco at the personal invitation and under the protection of Mayor Gavin Newsome.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors say is a member of a violent street gang, was found guilty of two felonies as a juvenile – a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman – according to authorities familiar with his background.

In neither instance did officials with the city’s Juvenile Probation Department alert federal immigration authorities, because it was the city agency’s policy not to

consider immigration status when deciding how to deal with an offender.

Since the murders and arrest of Ramos, Newsome continues to defend the policy, protecting and inviting more illegal alien murders into the United States and into San Francisco.  Newsome never offered an apology to Mrs. Bologna.  He refuses to consider complying with federal law.  He did not attend the funerals, send flowers, or grieve.  Instead, he partied in Montana.

Gavin Newsome is the proximate cause of the Bologna murders, just as Charles Manson was the proximate cause of the Tate and LaBianca murders.  Only a temporary judicial anomaly spared Manson the electric chair.  Nothing but a quick trial should stand between Gavin Newsome and the needle. 

Gavin Newsome deserves to die, along with every official who supported and complied with Newsome’s deadly immigration policy. 

But how whacked are San Francisco and California?  Newsome, the modern day Charles Manson, might just be the state’s next governor. 

You liberals wanted sanctuary cities.  We conservatives told you they would destroy us.  We were right, as always. 

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