last night's RNC: negativity
Sep. 4th, 2008 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolinPaul Begala on CNN American Morning this morning. Kiran or whomever was introducing him commented that he'd said he likes the negative, and asked him what he thought of Palin's speech. He said he likes the negative, not the sarcasm. He said you want people to like you and that sarcasm comes out of "arrogance" and "superiority."
He said he liked the stuff that sounded like it was written by her -- the self-deprecation, the pit bull line, etc. -- but that the campaign had admitted most of it was written by Pres. Bush's speechwriter and written before they even had a nominee.
I felt like the GOP speeches were all really negative. I liked Huckabee's for the most part, Romney's was okay, really didn't like Giuliani's, and wasn't a huge fan of Palin's (and I had gone into this expecting/hoping to really like/be impressed by her speech).
In thinking about last night's RNC, I keep coming back to the negativity. One can argue that the DNC's theme of hope and change and inspiration was a lot of empty rhetoric (and hey, I laughed at Palin's "studio lot" quip), but it was uplifting. The RNC speeches were so much about attacking their opponent (and yeah, it was weird to me that Palin kept saying "our opponent" rather than actually naming Obama or the Democractic Party or whatever), and even leaving aside the issue of how much of that was actually factually accurate, it just felt like too much. I'd rather vote FOR someone than AGAINST someone else.
The small business owners etc. who were on before the big names talked about why they were supporting John McCain/the Republican Party, and while I wasn't paying much attention to them at the time, looking back on the night, theirs was the portion I felt more positively toward.
I feel like I'm forever arguing the other side (whatever that might happen to be at any given moment), but even trying to see it from the perspective of the target audiences, I have difficulty getting past the incessant negativity and attacking.
He said he liked the stuff that sounded like it was written by her -- the self-deprecation, the pit bull line, etc. -- but that the campaign had admitted most of it was written by Pres. Bush's speechwriter and written before they even had a nominee.
I felt like the GOP speeches were all really negative. I liked Huckabee's for the most part, Romney's was okay, really didn't like Giuliani's, and wasn't a huge fan of Palin's (and I had gone into this expecting/hoping to really like/be impressed by her speech).
In thinking about last night's RNC, I keep coming back to the negativity. One can argue that the DNC's theme of hope and change and inspiration was a lot of empty rhetoric (and hey, I laughed at Palin's "studio lot" quip), but it was uplifting. The RNC speeches were so much about attacking their opponent (and yeah, it was weird to me that Palin kept saying "our opponent" rather than actually naming Obama or the Democractic Party or whatever), and even leaving aside the issue of how much of that was actually factually accurate, it just felt like too much. I'd rather vote FOR someone than AGAINST someone else.
The small business owners etc. who were on before the big names talked about why they were supporting John McCain/the Republican Party, and while I wasn't paying much attention to them at the time, looking back on the night, theirs was the portion I felt more positively toward.
I feel like I'm forever arguing the other side (whatever that might happen to be at any given moment), but even trying to see it from the perspective of the target audiences, I have difficulty getting past the incessant negativity and attacking.