They are keeping Joe and Michelle safely tucked away from the media....

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http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/20/politics/fromtheroad/entry453144
7.shtml

Palin Becomes Increasingly Accessible To The National Media
Posted by Scott Conroy| 97





(CBS)From CBS News' Scott Conroy: 

(COLORADO SPRINGS) It was less than two weeks ago when Sarah Palin 
astonished her traveling press corps by lifting the curtain (literally) 
and journeying to the back of her campaign plane to answer reporters’ 
questions for the first time after 40 days on the campaign trail. But 
the candidate who has been criticized for having a bunker mentality when 
it came to the national media can now lay legitimate claim to being more 
accessible than either Joe Biden or Barack Obama. 

In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her 
national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held 
another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu 
press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few 
minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an 
off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop. 

By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, 
and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps 
since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary 
season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media 
availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23. 

Though she often turns the “mainstream media” into a punching bag on the 
stump, Palin clearly enjoys interacting with reporters. She seems to 
relish the opportunity to demonstrate that her breadth of knowledge far 
exceeds what she offered to CBS News’ Katie Couric in a series of 
interviews that were marked by vague, often convoluted answers to 
straightforward questions. 

After her plane in Colorado Springs, Palin answered no less than 14 
questions from the media. It took traveling press secretary Tracey 
Schmitt three attempts finally to get the governor to move along. 

After reaffirming her belief that some parts of Obama’s tax plan carry 
“socialist principles,” Palin was asked whether she thought the 
government’s move to pump money into U.S. banks was also socialist. It 
isn’t difficult to imagine the Sarah Palin of a month ago getting 
tripped up by this question, but her answer this time was clear and 
concise. 

"No, I do not,” she said. “And I believe that there are those measures 
that had to be taken by Congress to shore up not only the housing market 
but the credit markets also to make sure that that’s not frozen, so that 
our small businesses have opportunities to borrow.” 

When she brought three of her young children to a Coldstone Creamery a 
few minutes later, Palin took even more questions from reporters, 
confidently approaching the cameras, rather than trying to avoid them. 

Asked for her reaction to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent 
suggestion that the media should investigate members of Congress who may 
hold “un-American” views, Palin didn’t hesitate. 

"Well, that's quite subjective," she said. "I would think that anyone 
running and wanting to serve in Congress is quite pro-America. You know, 
that is the mission, to better this country. So I would question what 
the intent of that would be." 

Transitioning to the rising violence in Afghanistan, Palin meandered 
through her answer a bit more but succeeded in getting several points 
across. 

"And we do need more troops in Afghanistan and we need that same surge 
strategy that's worked in Iraq and we need to make sure that we have 
that counter-insurgency strategy, too, in place,” she said. “We need to 
grow our military. We need to incentivize our young Americans to realize 
what it is in terms of benefits and service our military can offer. We 
need to grow our military and get more troops in there. Work closer with 
the leaders in Afghanistan and make sure that with our NATO allies also 
that we are all working together there to fight that War on Terror 
there. Also, we can't afford though to lose in Iraq and think we are 
going to be any better in Afghanistan. That's why we are still opposed 
to an early or premature withdrawal from Iraq. We've got to win both the 
wars on both those fronts Afghanistan and Iraq."

CMPQwk 1.42-21 9999 
Democrats --  The party of economic destruction ....

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