Not enough money to pay the speechwriters?

Since the conventions wrapped up, I've been watching a lot more of the 24-hour news stations. Keith Olbermann played a portion of Gov. Sarah Palin's speech from Pennsylvania on his show tonight.



I've seen portions of her speeches played quite often lately -- earlier this week, it was a speech in Colorado Springs. But what has struck me as funny is, it's the SAME SPEECH as the one she gave at the convention. Did Sen. John McCain not pay his speechwriters? Or do they not have time to write new material for Palin? I don't get it. Why would you continue to give the same speech over and over, complete with all the lies that the media has already exposed several times over since Palin's speech at the convention? And not just the lies, but the same hokey insults, such as how Obama lavishes praise on working people when they are listening and talks about them behind their backs. It's like a bad comedic sketch, where you know you've heard the comedian's jokes a thousand times over and they just aren't funny anymore. You almost feel sorry for her -- talking about the chef she fired (the chef was reassigned to another job); the jet she sold on eBay for a profit (she didn't sell it on eBay and certainly not for a profit); the "thanks, but no thanks" line with respect to the Bridge to Nowhere (she was for it before she was against it); and how she's against earmarks (she hired lobbyists to get $27 million in earmarks for the town of Wasilla). It's one thing to give the same tired speech over and over, but to repeat the same lies and exaggerations everyone knows to be such? That's just craziness.

So I started to wonder why she'd do such a thing? It almost makes the McCain campaign seem amateurish. Yet, people are eating this up. Oh, Palin is injecting life into the campaign. She's just what the campaign needed. Blah de blah blah. But I think I figured out the secret. See, Palin is out there giving this lame speech again and again, and the rest of us are talking about it. Republicans, Democrats, the mailman in your town -- they are all talking about her. And what aren't they talking about? The issues. Where does McCain stand on the issues? Oh sure, we hear it brought up from time to time, but most of the news programs I've been watching and blogs I've been reading are Palin this, Palin that. McCain could probably take a dump on the sidewalk in some town, and the news that day would be, "Did you hear that Palin fired her gardener for planting petunias instead of tulips?" I remember right after Palin's speech, some political analyst said that the worst thing Obama's campaign could do was make this election about Palin. This Associated Press article states that anonymous Democratic strategists said something similar lately:

"Two Democratic strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, complained that Obama should assign his own running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the task of countering Palin, rather than do it himself."

So true. Palin is the vice presidential pick, and while vice presidents do count in the sense that they are a "heartbeat away from the presidency" (I hate that phrase by the way, used WAY too much lately), they are not the top of the ticket. It's Obama and McCain. The more Obama, or anyone else on the left, focuses on Palin, the more this election becomes about her and takes the focus away from the person it should be on -- McCain. Palin is obviously a liar and thinks much of herself. She must if she thinks she can perpetuate this myth about herself as the Alaskan maverick. Let her lies speak for themselves, now that they have been shown as such, and deal with her when she lies and exaggerates about Obama's stance on issues or his record as a politician. Maybe conservatives think she's hilarious, with her sad insults about Obama's days as a community organizer, but all she does is make herself look like the elitist. It's clear who is the insecure one. I'd like to see Palin fade into the background where she belongs. Do we hear about Sen. Joe Biden every day? No. Do we hear the McCain campaign attacking Biden more frequently than they attack Obama? No. Let's shift the focus back to Obama v. McCain for a few days, huh? Please. I can't take hearing Palin's voice on the news anymore. And if I hear the joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull one more time, I'm going to hurl. This is the United States presidential election, not Last Comic Standing, Sarah.