Engaging in a bit of trash talk before Thursday’s debate yesterday, Sarah Palin made fun of Biden’s age.
And I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Sen. Joe Biden. We’re gonna talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I’m looking forward to meeting him too. I’ve never met him before, but I’ve been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in like second grade.
Set aside the fact that Sarah Palin’s interest in the US Senate pretty obviously began about twelve years ago, when she started sucking at Uncle Toobz’s earmark teat while Mayor of Wasilla. Palin’s crack, though an obvious lie, is sort of funny, flipping Biden’s extensive experience on its head.
It’s about what I would expect from a woman spouting words written by Steve Schmidt and Tucker Eskew.
Yet, even while they’re taking digs at Biden’s age (he’s six years younger than McCain), they’re turning an Obama joke about McCain’s erratic behavior into another fit of false outrage about age.
This morning on MSNBC, Gibbs returned to the make-fun-of-the-elderly joke well. "Just yesterday, John McCain said we shouldn’t fix blame. He took a breath and then fixed blame. He said the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and he flip-flopped. He opposed the bail-out of AIG, and then he supported it. This guy zig-zags. Look, if he’s driving a car, get off the sidewalk." (Video here.)
That Swampland post and this Politico post were written after the McCain team sent out an outraged email (see Duncan on the former here).
Seeing as how Sarah Palin’s biggest drawback for voters–out of many–is the age and past health problems of her running mate, I’m not sure the campaign really should have made age-based attacks fair game.
But now that they have, I say, let’s have that discussion about McCain’s age, shall we?
Update: LOLOLOL!!! Katie is doing herself proud with her Palin series–from tonight’s installment:
Gov. Palin at Monday’s event in Columbus, OH: I do look forward to Thursday night and debating Senator Joe Biden. We are going to talk about those new ideas, new energy for America. I’m looking forward to meet him too. I’ve never met him before. But, I’ve been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in like 2nd grade.
Katie Couric: You made a funny comment, you’ve said you have been listening to Joe Biden’s speeches since you were in second grade.
Gov. Palin: It’s been since like ‘72, yah.
Katie Couric: You have a 72-year-old running mate, is that kind of a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden’s been around awhile?
Gov. Palin: Oh no, it’s nothing negative at all. He’s got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we’ve been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he’s got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I’m the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he’s got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years.
Of course, the follow-up should be, "Sarah, do you remember any speech Biden made?" Because I’m betting–given that Palin wasn’t chosen until the following day–that Palin didn’t even watch Biden’s acceptance speech.