At approximately 9:35 Central Standard Time the presumptive Vice Presidential Nominee of the Republican Party, one Madam Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) came to the podium to give her acceptance speech to thousands of cheering fans and millions of Americans at home. For the first time in this year’s Presidential Convention season a nominee told the absolute truth. In order to disprove any nay sayers I will present to you all the speech paragraph by paragraph of the Good Governor’s speech. While I will not address each paragraph, I will focus on those which are the most meaningful.
Governor Palin began her speech as was necessary when she stated, “Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens, I will be honored to accept your nomination for vice president of the United States.” Unlike Joe Biden when he made his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Sarah Palin is not yet the official nominee for Vice President for the Republican Party. Her nomination will not come until tomorrow when John McCain will make his first speech as the Republican Nominee for President of the United States.
Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by. He’s a man who wore the uniform of his country for 22 years and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who now have brought victory within sight.
Unlike Barack Obama and Joe Biden, John McCain has not been a life long politician or lawyer. Instead Mr. McCain went to Annapolis and became a United States Naval Aviator. Shot down in 1967 over Vietnam, John McCain was sent to the infamous Hanoi Hilton where the North Vietnamese took many American POWs. It was not until after his return from Vietnam in 1973 that John McCain began his trail to the White House though he remained in the military until 1982 when he finally ran for the House of Representatives. John McCain, unlike his democratic counterparts, has real life experience when it comes to National Security. The closest the Democratic ticket comes is Senator Biden who sits on the Senate’s Foreign Policy committee. As a soldier during Vietnam, arguably America’s most unpopular war, John McCain understands what it means to troops to have a government willing to support their efforts in a foreign land. We have one of the only all Volunteer militaries in the world, and it is impossible to say that the Men and Women who serve our nation should be disrespected by our government. Knowing full well that they will be sent to War, young men and women continue to enlist in the United States Armed Forces and the message Obama and Biden wish to send them is that their efforts are worthless to this country. The blanket of freedom have and appreciate is only possible by those brave soldiers and sailors who feel it is their duty to answer the call of their Nation. One of those young men is Track Palin who will be shipped off to Iraq on September 11. As a mother of a son in the military Sarah Palin feels the need to keep her child safe, just as any other mother feels when their son or daughter is sent to war. The best way she feels is to have a commander-in-chief in the Oval Office who knows what it is like to be sent by one’s country to fight. John McCain, if elected, will become the first man or woman to be elected President who served in Vietnam. The last President to have had military-war time experience was President George H.W. Bush. The last two Presidents have been a draft dodger and a member of the Air National Guard.
Everyone should know by now that Governor Palin and her husband have five children, two boys and three girls. The eldest daughter is five months pregnant and due to marry the father of her child. Governor Palin and daughter have received criticism by the media for the decision to allow a 17 year old girl to keep the child and to “force” her to marry the father. This is an absurd comment to make, the most honorable thing a man can do is to marry a woman whom he gets pregnant; not give her the money for an abortion. For those wondering, the legal age of consent in Alaska is 16. Governor Palin, before talking about her youngest son, admits that her family is no different than any other. They have had, “the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys.” The most difficult moment for any family to face, aside from a teenager daughter or son becoming a parent, is the birth of a child with a disability. In April Governor Palin gave birth to a son with Down Syndrome. People have been quick to judge her for this decision, yet speaking as a member of the disabled community there is nothing greater than to see a parent in the age where abortion can be gotten with absolute ease for a parent to keep their child and love them no matter what. This speaks volumes about the type of parents Sarah and Todd Palin are, that they would willingly and knowingly want to raise a child who will struggle day in and day out for acceptance by the outside world and to live a normal life. This is a refreshing image of sorts, as it was John F. Kennedy who was president in the 1960′s had a sister who was mentally disabled and her family decided to place her in a mental ward. And to this day only one person has achieved the office of President and been disabled: Franklin D. Roosevelt who suffered from Polio and went to great lengths to hide his condition from the American people.
Governor Palin’s morality and ethics stem from her childhood, neither parent was well off and both worked in the local elementary school. She grew up in a small town, quite different from Barack Obama who grew up in Jakarta and Honolulu. The last President to be born in a small town is a lot like Governor Palin, a person who would not stand up to corruption and unethical dealings in government. The only President of the 20th Century to have never graduated college was born to farmers in Missouri: Harry S. Truman. In 1944 he was selected as the Vice President for Franklin Roosevelt, running for his 4th term as President. Feeling he would not cause any chaos in the office, Democratic officials pressed Roosevelt to choose him despite Roosevelt’s failing health. Barely into his fourth term, Franklin Roosevelt died; Harry S. Truman, who by all comparisons to Governor Palin, lacked experience to hold the office, ascended into the Oval Office. Truman to this day is idolized by both parties as Andrew Jackson, our first President born in the west, was used as the image of a President up until after the Civil War. As a shot at Michelle Obama, Governor Palin stated, “I grew up with [small town people]. They’re the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.” Anyone from a small town should be proud to know that Governor Palin knows what it is like to grow up outside of the big cities where men like Barack Obama has lived his whole life.
Echoing something that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated in his speech, Governor Palin took a shot at the Democrats saying she lacks experience, “I guess — I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Senator Obama began his political career as a community organizer in Chicago, where he did little to actually help the standard of living for those he “helped.” Correctly, Governor Palin points out that Obama is willing to tell anyone what they want to hear and then when their back is turned retract those statements. Obama is not a man of conviction like John McCain or even Sarah Palin who are both known to stand up for what they believe in even when everyone else says they are wrong. The only reason the media claims she is inexperienced is as she said, “if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin care to appeal to the media, because they aren’t the ones who matter come election day. The job of a politician is to help those whom they serve, and they serve the people of the United States of America. Governor Palin emphasis this when she said, “Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reason and not just to mingle with the right people. Politics isn’t just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it. No one expects us all to agree on everything, but we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart.”
Governor Palin goes on to explain her accomplishments as Governor of Alaska, accomplishments that Barack Obama only dreams of matching. She did away with the Governor’s personal luxury jet, stating she “put it on eBay.” She asserts she drives her self to school and did away with the personal chef of the Governor to help save money where it didn’t need to be spent. She has vetoed bills that promote unnecessary spending in excess of $500 billion providing Alaska with a budget surplus. In his time as Senator, Obama has yet to see this in the Federal budget. Like Sarah Palin, John McCain is willing to work with legislators to cut spending or to veto their bills to force them to cut spending. Obama wants to enlarge our government. Palin stated, “Government is too big; [Obama] wants to grow it. Congress spends too much money; he promises more.Taxes are too high, and he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan.”
Her biggest accomplishment as Governor is helping to solve America’s energy problem by building a natural gas line in Alaska which will help Americans move away from foreign oil. She proposes that the McCain administration will help build Nuclear Power Plants, Wind and Solar energy plants, and tap into America’s natural oil resources like that on the North Slope in Alaska. The Democrats she asserts, “Our opponents say again and again that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems, as if we didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling, though, won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.” In fact that is all Democrats have proposed, to do nothing except stop drilling for oil. They want to place more dependence on countries in the Middle East who rather us dead .
And next she discusses the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which America is winning just as we were winning in Vietnam before we pulled out. Obama and other democrats refuse to recognize the accomplishments our troops of made in these two countries. Obama refuses to admit we’ve achieved victory, instead he rather talk about his own victories in politics.
Obama’s plans for the economy are to raise taxes to stifle businesses as she points out, “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.” What will that do exactly, she points out accurately, to small business owners who are unable to withstand these taxes and are forced to close? What about the businesses who are forced to lay people off because they are unable to support paying them? Senator Obama has no plan for America, he only has plans to make himself great by becoming President. She stated, “In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.” But Barack Obama views it as a means to an end, what that end is nobody by Obama can answer. Sarah Palin is right when she stated, “My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.” Barack Obama is nothing but speeches of empty words intended to rally the American people just as Adolf Hitler used his speeches to rally the German people.
We live in a world, the Governor asserts, that is filled with dangers–specifically from terrorists who want to see America burn. We don’t need individuals who use empty phrases as “fighting for you.” As the movie A Few Good Men states, “You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use then as the backbone of a life trying to defend something. You use them as a punchline.” John McCain has demonstrated throughout his life that unlike Obama and Biden he has defended and fought for this country when other men of his era, like Bill Clinton, ran away from responsibility and nearly 30 years later used promises to fight for the American people as a punchline in their comedic sketch to the White House. John McCain has proven himself willing and able to defend this country and to fight for the American people. Sarah Palin has shown time and again in her career in Alaska that she is willing to fight for the interests of the average person. Barack Obama, in his time in elective politics has written two memoirs while authoring no major piece of legislation. Whether you agree or disagree with McCain, he co-authored the single most important piece of government reform with Senator Feingold. Sarah Palin wants to bring wealth and prosperity to the people of Alaska by building a natural gas line, and by drilling in ANWAR. Barack Obama and Joe Biden only have words and false promises to help reform the government, and help make America a more prosperous nation.
