{"id":3435,"date":"2008-10-08T08:01:03","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T13:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3435"},"modified":"2008-10-08T08:01:03","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T13:01:03","slug":"i-started-the-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3435","title":{"rendered":"I Started The Evening…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…almost as despondent as Roosh seemed to<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mac generally does well in a “Town Hall” format – and I personally don’t like “town hall”-style debates a whole lot.\u00a0 And like Roosh, my first impression was that Mac was too polite; that he didn’t go inside and mix it up with Obama nearly enough.<\/p>\n

And then I thought slept on it, and didn’t feel nearly so bad.<\/p>\n

Just as Mac doesn’t need to play to the media (indeed, just as he and Gov. Palin need to outflank them and go directly to the people), Mac doesn’t need to destroy Obama;\u00a0he needs to convince millions and millions of people who are not <\/em>political junkies – people not remotely like me, by the way – that he’s someone they can trust to lead this nation<\/em> during the most difficult time in recent memory.\u00a0 He needs to appear like a statesman and a leader, not a trench-fighter (that’s Palin’s job – one she’s finally gotten to take on in the past week).\u00a0<\/p>\n

While last night’s performance was bound to leave doctrainaire conservatives and political junkies [Roosh and Berg raise their hands, glancing nervously about – Ed<\/em>.] a little unsatisfied, Mac knows that they’re not the ones he needs to win; while that issue may have been in doubt six weeks ago, putting Palin on the ticket guarantees that no movement conservative who’s not in Lori Sturdevant’s rolodex is going to stray.\u00a0 That means Mac can\u00a0– and, last night, did – play to the vast horde in the middle who don’t care much for “R” and “D”, but who do <\/em>balance their checkbooks and watch their 401Ks and whose kids are going to be of military age sooner than later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And I don’t think Mac lost a single vote in that crowd last night.<\/p>\n

He needed to look like a leader, a statesman, a President.\u00a0 And I think he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…almost as despondent as Roosh seemed to.\u00a0 Mac generally does well in a “Town Hall” format – and I personally don’t like “town hall”-style debates a whole lot.\u00a0 And like Roosh, my first impression was that Mac was too polite; that he didn’t go inside and mix it up with Obama nearly enough. And then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}