Sarah Palin “saved John McCain again” with her performance at Thursday night’s debate with her vice presidential rival Joe Biden, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan declares.
“She is the political equivalent of cardiac paddles,” Noonan writes on Friday.
“Zap! We’ve got a beat! She will re-electrify the base.”
Noonan states in her column, which carries the subhead “Joe Biden was no match for ‘Joe Six-Pack,’” that Palin “killed. She had him at ‘Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?’ She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man.”
Palin’s style was “classic ‘talk over the heads of the media straight to the people,’ and it is a long time since I’ve seen it done so well,” Noonan opines.
“Joe Biden seems to have walked in thinking that she was an idiot and that he only had to patiently wait for this fact to reveal itself. This was a miscalculation.”
The heart of Palin’s message, according to Noonan, was that “Joe Six-Pack” and “soccer moms” should unite “to fight the tormentors who forced mortgages on us. She spoke of ‘Main Streeters like me.’ A question is at what point shiny, happy populism becomes cheerful manipulation.”
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