Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

by DemFromCT [courtesy of Daily Kos]

Sunday, and the storm (Hannah) has passed (Ike is to come.)

Frank Rich: This is one column that shouldn't be abbreviated. A taste:

McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The "no surrender" warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.

That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.

George Will:  If you read the right things, and follow the right sports teams, you might well be "better off" than you were four years ago, so don't bother to ask that question. economics is only statistics and people spend too much time whining about them.

David Broder: Change is coming. For example, I can find strengths in the Democrat this year as well as the Republican.

Maureen Dowd: Too bad Hillary's not VP. It would have been a hell of a debate.

Rick Shenkman (Associate Professor of History, GMU): American voters aren't very educated, and it has nothing to do with party. And that hasn't changed in years.

Jessica Reaves:

Sarah Palin is a woman. Hillary Clinton is a woman. Women just love voting for other women. Women candidates are interchangeable. Therefore, women who would have voted for Clinton are obviously going to vote for Palin.

If this syllogism strikes you as stupid, that's because it is. Not to mention cynical and not a little bit sexist. Yet it also appears to be one of the reasons behind John McCain's choice of a running mate.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Pollster Ed Reilly described the current state of this contest as extraordinary, considering that voter sentiment typically firms up much later in the election.

"There’s not a lot out there that’s movable and they are mostly independents," said Reilly, who conducted a National Journal poll last week reflecting the hardened attitude of voters.

John S. Baick (Professor of History, Western New England College):

As the shock of her pick wears off, I wonder how this ticket can work when it sends conflicting messages. How can McCain talk about fighting government pork when his running mate comes from the state that is a symbol of lobbying and earmarks of which she seems to have played a part? Revelations about her record as a mayor and a governor badly undermine one of McCain’s central crusades. How can McCain talk about experience when he chose as his running mate perhaps the least experienced candidate of the 20th century? Putting aside the question of how much experience matters in terms of presidential success, the entire theme of experience has been badly undercut. The McCain campaign clearly hoped that the pick of Governor Palin would bring in new enthusiasm and new voters, creating a ticket whose appeal to different groups—veterans, libertarian conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and hawks for McCain; social conservatives, rural voters, and perhaps some disaffected Clinton supporters for Palin— but I think it is quite possible that the whole will not be equal to the sum of its parts in the long run.