Sarah Rocks the V.P. debate in St. Louis

Governor Sarah Palin who had been belittled by the lamestream media and their not-so-funny late night tag-a-long wise guys rocked the V.P. debate last night, recovering nicely from the ambush Katie Couric had set for her during a recent CBS interview she held with the diva of the tiffany network. The mainstream media and their late night comics had their storyline all worked out. Sarah Palin was supposed to be a nobody from nowhereville, a hick with no real world experience. She was supposed to just crumble under all the negative trash talk they could muster against her from every outlet at their disposal. Instead, this candidate from the Land of the Midnight Sun came into the high-pressure, high-stakes debate calm, cool, collected, poised, friendly, intelligent, articulate and down-to-earth. She made fools of the whole lot of them.

Palin's performance debut on the National and International political stage was nothing less than brilliant. After a friendly exchange of pleasantries both candidates went at it, starting with remarks the covered the economy, taxes, partisanship, funding for the Iraq war and flip-flops by Obama on troop funding. You could see that Biden while remaining friendly and congenial during the debate was taken back by Palin's articulate, informed and confident manner. Going into the debate the Delaware Senator may have been led to believe that Palin would be a light-weight, halting, easy opponent to best in the forum that night. That illusion quickly evaporated when Palin did not retreat from rhetorical barbs thrown at her by Senator from the first state who tried to associate her and McCain with the shortcomings of the Bush administration. Palin quickly deflected those comments and went on the attack, pointing to Obama's move to cut troop funding after promissing he would not and hitting Joe Biden with comments he had made during the Democratic debates doubting Obama's experience and ability to lead and quoted Biden's flat out statements saying Obama was not ready to be President.

Some of the clean hits that Palin landed during the debate while pleasantly smiling into the cameras were:

After Senator Biden riffed about McCain voting to raise taxes and not going along with Wall Street regulation Gwen Ifill directed the question to Palin;

IFILL: Would you like to have an opportunity to answer that before we move on?

PALIN: I'm still on the tax thing because I want to correct you on that again. And I want to let you know what I did as a mayor and as a governor. And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

Later, Senator Biden went on to promote his ticket's tax plan sounding the familiar "tax breaks for the rich" meme, which prompted this response from Governor Palin, I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you. But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they're going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity. Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic. Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. In fact, too often you're the problem so, government, lessen the tax burden and on our families and get out of the way and let the private sector and our families grow and thrive and prosper. An increased tax formula that Barack Obama is proposing in addition to nearly a trillion dollars in new spending that he's proposing is the backwards way of trying to grow our economy.

After an exchange between the candidates over oil companies and tax cuts Palin responded; Well, the nice thing about running with John McCain is I can assure you he doesn't tell one thing to one group and then turns around and tells something else to another group, including his plans that will make this bailout plan, this rescue plan, even better. I want to go back to the energy plan, though, because this is -- this is an important one that Barack Obama, he voted for in '05. Senator Biden, you would remember that, in that energy plan that Obama voted for, that's what gave those oil companies those big tax breaks. Your running mate voted for that.
On the Obama-Biden ticket's plan for pulling out of Iraq Palin responded, Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure. And it's not what our nation needs to be able to count on. You guys opposed the surge. The surge worked. Barack Obama still can't admit the surge works.

In her response to Biden's hectoring about the pecadillos of the Bush administration in handling affairs in the Middle-East she quipped, for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going.

After listening to another round of Bush-Bashing by the Senator over the economy as viewed from Main Street USA, conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan Palin responed and then turned the discussion to education.

Palin: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

(That's taking it down home)

Lastly in her closing remarks thanking Senator Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill, Palin said, Well, again, Gwen, I do want to thank you and the commission. This is such an honor for me.
And I appreciate, too, Senator Biden, getting to meet you, finally, also, and getting to debate with you. And I would like more opportunity for this. I like being able to answer these tough questions without the filter, even, of the mainstream media kind of telling viewers what they've just heard. I'd rather be able to just speak to the American people like we just did. And it's so important that the American people know of the choices that they have on November 4th. I want to assure you that John McCain and I, we're going to fight for America. We're going to fight for the middle-class, average, everyday American family like mine.

Brilliant. Just Brilliant. No wonder teammates on her championship high school basketball squad used to call her Sarahcuda. She beat Joe Biden in the debate, showed the country (and the world) that she's got the chops and punked the mainstream media without breaking her stride, a sweat or her smile.

You GO GIRL!