Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Click here for the audio from this morning's DNC conference call. Here are some excerpts...
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius
...Gov. Palin did a good job last night delivering a speech in a tough arena, she mastered the words written by the Bush speech writers...Unfortunately, although it's a new face and a new voice, what we didn't hear about is what people talk to me about every day, is what are the solutions put forward by this team of McCain and Palin. What I hear from folks here in the heartland...is that people really want to know how they're going to afford health care, what's going to happen with their job...how we're dealing with the cost of gas and the cost of groceries...again last night what we heard was a lot of partisan attacks and no real solutions....Lots of attacks that we've heard before, lots of the partisan divide that we're used to...I think what Americans are desperate for is a leader like Senator Obama and Senator Biden who have real solutions to their problems...That's been absent from St. Paul so far...
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz
You know, last night I was really struck by the lack of substance in Gov. Palin's speech. I have to tell you, I've been in office for 16 years, and arguably this was the speech of her political life...I only heard from Sarah Palin's voice last night negative partisan attacks. There was no substance, there was no vision of where she thinks the country should go, which direction they think they should take us. She claimed that John McCain is a maverick and she's a reformer. Where is the beef, where is the evidence of that? Sarah Palin is not a reformer. She's under investigation in her home state for trying to get a state trooper fired...I mean, if her best example of being a reformer last night is selling the state plane on E-Bay, that's not my definition of reform, nor is it the definition of most Americans. What I see in the example of Sarah Palin last night is that John McCain bowed to the right-wing of his party in this really misguided, bad judgment choice. He had a lot of other women in the Republican Party that are well qualified to run for vice president of the United States, Sarah Palin is clearly not one of them. She had a real problem with the truth last night...even her hometown newspaper said she stretched the truth...She said she opposed the bridge to nowhere. Well she supported it before she opposed it...She also talked about being supportive of earmark reform when she requested more earmarks than any other governor in Alaska history...
Plus there was some sort of surtax in there too. Raising taxes on oil, in fact, was her big reform -- undoing a previous tax decrease that was tainted by political corruption.
Then Palin and the Democrats turned around this summer and used the tide of oil and gas money flowing into the treasury to mail a check for $1,200 to every person in Alaska to help them with their energy bills, which is as direct redistribution of wealth as you will find outside Das Kapital. It has made her wildly popular. But Palin also wants to give a $500 million cash subsidy to TransCanada to build a liquefied petroleum gas pipeline to Alberta so the big energy companies can market their gas in the lower 48 states.Take taxes. The signal achievement of her brief tenure as governor is a massive tax increase on the oil and gas industry, which she passed with the help of the Democratic minority in the legislature and over the opposition of conservative Republicans. Eighty-five percent of the state budget comes from taxes and royalties from oil and gas production, and revenues were dwindling as oil peters out. So Palin proposed a massive increase tied to windfall profits. We could have used a little of Sarah Palin in Arkansas. She makes the little gas severance tax passed by Mike Beebe look like pocket change. (She also embraced a tough ethics bill written by a bipartisan legislative committee and passed unanimously after indictments in 2006 had decapitated the GOP caucus. We could use some of that gumption in the Arkansas statehouse, too.)
Sarah Palin says she stood up to the "good old boys" in Alaska. Isn't that exactly who is running McCain's Campaign and are McCain's closest friends? Charles Keating and Charlie Black are not what Americans would call, men looking out for the best interests of this country.
Not one penny of which was ever paid for.
It's just more money that's been wrapped in a massive debt package of several trillion dollars which will be dumped on future generations.
By the way, one S too many, and no hyphens. She can get pretty aggitated about that hyphen everyone seems to want to add. :-)
Was this the comparison you were looking for?
I'm perfectly happy with Biden, but there were and still are lots of great things to say about an experienced, nationally-respected Governor of Sebelius' caliber.
My own view is that Sebelius has a track record as Governor that trumps Kaine's. Her record is on par with Mark Warner's in terms of economic growth and the ability to get deals done in a state where the legislature is more adversarial.
In comparison to Palin -- Kaine and Sebelius both have much more political experience and better track records. They also have more life experience as well.
tx2vadem will likely point out in response that Kaine inherited a great state from Governor Warner, and that's absolutely true. Much like Warner, Sebelius inherited a very poorly-managed state with massive amounts of debt from the preceeding Republican administration (fighting to get that debt under control and reduce it was what earned Sebelius recognition as one of the 5 best Governors in the first place, again, much like Mark Warner). While Governor Kaine did have an advantage in terms of keeping a lot of the officials from the Warner administration around to perpetuate a good thing, I'm not inclined to dismiss Kaine many accolades out of hand.
On the other hand, if the "she" you were refering to is Governor Palin, I would absolutely say that Kaine's demonstrated more-competent executive leadership since he took office in 2006 than Palin has since she first took office early last year. Leaving aside the numerous accolades that Kaine's government has racked up and which Palin's government didn't, I also note the steady, level-headed leadership that Kaine exercised in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy, rushing back from a trade mission in Japan to provide both the necessary bureaucratic management (putting together a task force to make sure we learned why the tragedy happened and how to prevent it in the future) and also sort of emotional stability and quiet faith we Virginians needed to confront a tragedy that did thrust us out onto the national stage.
What national examples have we had of Sarah Palin's leadership?
As to the Kaine statement, I would say that but that is only part of a whole. The short story is I like Kaine. But you have to give greater kudos to someone like Sebelius who had a steeper hill to climb.
(at the two minute mark for those who are interested).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Also, I note the continued focus on exploiting natural resources and wealth.
This is all kind of strange to me having grown up in a Catholic tradition that emphasized the importance of charity -- and even poverty and helping the poor -- contra the "prosperity gospel" which seems to glorify money and earthly power above all other ends.
First elected in 1986 to the state legislature; a two-term Governor first elected in 2002. Very high marks in terms of her performance as Governor.
She has a strong economic track record -- and also has a lot of experience dealing with energy policy.
Like any governor she would have been questioned on foreign policy credentials, but she's has demonstrated areas of expertise those other areas, and a record of strong performance in an executive role.
No ethics scandal, or record as a hard-partisan. In fact, she's been able to get a few high level Republicans to switch party and run as Democrats -- especially noteworthy in a state that isn't exactly a Democratic stronghold. She's been successful as a bridge builder in what many would consider a hostile political environment -- that's another key difference.
See article here.
1. Hawaii Pacific U. (business major). Lasted 1 year.
2. Idaho College (2 year school in Coeur d"Alene, ID). "General studies major.
3.U. of Idaho (journalism, specializing in broadcast news) fall 84-spring85
4. Then to Matabuska-Susitna Colege in Alaska (fall 85).
5. Then back to U. Idaho (finished in 1987)