VP Debate - Which candidate doesn't know what he's talking about?

By Rick Moran

To listen to the MSM, you would think Sarah Palin will come out on stage tonight in St. Louis wearing overalls and sporting a piece of straw shooting out of her ears. The idea that Palin is "dumb" is being hammered relentlessly in the media to the point that people are actually starting to believe it.

This will backfire tonight when Palin comes out and shows herself to be, if not as informed on foreign policy issues as Biden, certainly his equal in intelligence and quick wittedness. And given the fact that there is a huge audience expected for this debate, one wonders what the voters are going to think when they realize the media and the Democrats have been lying about Palin's innate intelligence.

If I had a dollar every time a liberal called a Republican candidate “stupid” I would be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Eisenhower (dumb, incoherent), Goldwater (crazy and stupid), Ford (dumb jock and a stumblebum), Reagan (dumb actor), Quayle (can’t spell potato), Jack Kemp (dumb jock), George Bush (dumb playboy). The harsh truth is, the personal attack works when you have the press and other media (think Saturday Night Live riffing off liberal talking points for Ford, Reagan, Quayle, Kemp, and Bush 43), buttressing and playing to that exact same argument. It is a potent combination and only the basic good sense of the American voter has saved the GOP from being shut out entirely over the last 50 years.

But the "dumb beauty queen" theme has taken hold pretty strongly according to the polls - to the point where it is actually hurting McCain among some groups. Forgotten are Joe Biden's enormously stupid gaffes made everyday on the campaign trail as the press uses a laser beam to focus on the tiniest Palin misstatement or vagueness. For example, in the Couric interview, Biden showed a towering ignorance of the significance of Roe v Wade:

Ramesh Ponnuru of NRO:

Those excerpts from Couric's interviews give me more concerns about Biden than Palin. He seems to be under the impression that there's a "liberty clause" in the Fourteenth Amendment (he has talked about it in Supreme Court confirmation hearings too). He misdescribes what Roe held. He seems to believe that Roe has been good for social peace and that this alleged fact justifies it as constitutional law.

Palin, meanwhile, is asked a somewhat oddly phrased question by Couric, and says, reasonably enough, that the Constitution protects a right to privacy. Now it is certainly and obviously true that the Constitution protects privacy: What else do the Third and Fourth Amendments protect, for example? There is nothing incompatible with either a pro-life point of view or originalism with saying that the Constitution protects privacy.

The problem isn't so much with what Palin says but how she says it. She is unfamiliar with "Washington speak" - double talk in spades that allows a politician to get out of tight corners with the media. But like her knowledge of foreign policy - which is a mile wide and an inch deep - Palin will learn the ropes once she makes it to Washington.

Given her intelligence, I predict she will be a quick study.