Peggy Noonan not a "you must vote" person

This is a pretty interesting piece of vid from MSNBC last week, when Peggy Noonan (of Ronald Reagan sycophant fame) appeared on Morning Joe. The reason for her appearance is inconsequential (talented actor David Strathairn was promoting something), but her comments were pretty telling. (Strathairn narrated the video that introduced Barack Obama in Denver during the Democratic National Convention.)

First, she's not so sure that 18-year olds should have the same right to vote as a 70-year old businessman who has been paying taxes and running a business for years? Welcome to Democracy, Peggy. I'd like to know what she would like to do to "adjudicate" this "problem." And of course Noonan had to bitch and complain about the supposed "liberal bias" in higher education - more red meat for the neocon base. Whatever.

Also pretty telling that she's not one of those "you must vote people," coming from a career politico. That was borderline elitist. If I had to guess, I'd say she's referring to the people who are allegedly voting for Obama just because he's black. As a progressive liberal, I could have the same point of view about people who want to vote for McCain just because he was a POW, or people who want to vote against Obama just because he's black. But, I don't feel that way - everyone citizen has the right to vote in this country who is of age, and our democracy should do all it can to make it easy to vote. Tragically, there are much too many roadblocks being thrown in the way of people who simply want to vote.

More on that in a bit.

Is this how conservatives truly view Palin?

This one video has been spreading like wildfire around the Internet - conservative pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan were caught off camera talking about the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, along with NBC's Chuck Todd, who jumps right in, too. Rough transcript from Crooks & Liars:

Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it's not gonna work.

Noonan: It's over.

Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: Don't you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too? (inaudible)

Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.

Murphy: They're all bummed out. I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Todd: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.

Yeah, but what's the narrative?

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it.

Murphy: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical. And as you call it gimmicky. ...

Color the Palin selection as just another way that John McCain has miserably failed to placate far right conservatives (and dare I say it, moderates, because she's no moderate, despite the "hockey mom" brush that the McCain camp is painting her with).

I've got much more to say about Palin and the GOP Convention later today, and tonight I'll live blog McCentury's acceptance speech, so stay tuned.

Strange Mitt Romney ad

This is one odd political ad - one of the strangest I've seen so far in this young presidential campaign. As PoliticsTV sagely points out, is this Mitt Romney ad "an ad for a candidate, the environment, or E.D. treatment?"

I can't add anything pithier than that. The Peggy Noonan reference is rather odd, too. Like all of the GOP candidates running for president, Romney has a fetish for President Reagan. Noonan was a favorite speechwriter of Reagan's, and Romney's quoting her passage in this ad is just weird:

Following the Columbine shootings, Peggy Noonan described the world as 'the ocean in which our children now swim.' She described a cesspool of violence and sex and indolence and perversions. She said the boys who had done the shootings had 'inhaled too deeply in the oceans in which they swam.'

The only people who did any inhaling were the people who thought those lines should be included in this ad, and maybe even Noonan herself. I love analogies and use them on a daily basis to get my points across, but Noonan was trying waaay too hard with that one. She's done better. And for Romney's sake, I hope his political people do better than this. It's just plain funny.