Palin vs. Biden: Are you ready for some football?

Biden is carrying an actual pigskin. McCain is taking cues from Chicago Bears. Palin has been reduced to a cheerleader. As the countdown begins to the kickoff of the Palin-Biden debate on Thursday night, both the Dems and Republicans are trying to appeal to America’s sports-fan-like allegiances in order to come out with the “W.”

In fact, with all of the sports-type talk and post-game locker-room chatter going on in the McCain campaign, you’d think they believe most Americans are a bunch of face-painted dolts who just loves them a big ol’ star-spangled boot in the ass of the bad guy. “Drill, baby, drill!” is their rallying cry, and if you don’t like it, you don’t bleed red, white and blue. Forget hockey. This is American football, “baby.”

It’s bad enough that the McCain campaign is co-opting arena-match cheerleading tactics and turning voting into a game of un-fantasy football. But it also appears the Republican Party thinks Americans are so simple-minded that they can’t understand anything unless it comes slathered with the cheese of $9 nachos. In the last moments, they’re tossing a disingenuous pass of macho marketing tactics they hope Americans will grab and run with like the Vikings devouring those cheesehead Packers or, say, (insert your favorite sports metaphor here to show we’re on the same team.)

Just how much is the McCain campaign like the last seconds of a football game? Let us count the ways. The inside-the-red-zone fumbles, if you will. The Hail Mary passes. The tug at the pigskin strings. The post-punt pile-on. The straight arm to the American public. The game plan, at a glance:

Sarah Palin on debating Joe Biden, NYT: “I have to admit, though, he’s a great debater, and he looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s going to win,’’ Ms. Palin, 44, said of Mr. Biden, 65. “But then again, this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that University of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!”

The Christian Broadcasting Network, on Palin in “shackles”: Clearly she is being handled very closely by the McCain campaign. They don’t want her to make a big mistake. In essence, they are putting Palin in the position of playing the football equivalent of the “prevent defense.” In other words, giving up a few yards is OK as long as she doesn’t give up the back breaking touchdown.

Christian Science Monitor, on Palin prepping for debate: In terms of the debate, one Republican strategist isn’t worried. He instead sounds a bit like John Elway right before he marched his team downfield in the legendary football sequence called “The Drive.” Elway told his teammates before the miracle 98 yard drive to win the game, “We’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em.” GOP strategist Todd Harris must have been taking notes. “I think expectations for Palin will be so low on Thursday that it will be difficult for her not to meet them,” Harris told The Vote…

Providence Journal, “Thoughts” on Sarah Palin: Sarah Palin has accomplished a lot in her life, but picking her for vice-president is like putting a youth football star in the NFL.

The Telegraph, a U.K paper, on last Friday’s debate between McCain and Obama: It was the tough guy versus the talker, the pugilist versus the professor, the fighter versus the lover.

Rocky Mountain News, on last Friday’s debate: They provided the sort of contrast the nation needed to see, along with some ideas of how each man is likely to govern: McCain the tough guy, Obama the healer.

Nation News, on McCain’s fourth-quarter plays: And the fact is — and here the football sequence goes askew –- the ramifications of McCain’s first Hail Mary pass are still unfolding. That ball, having been intercepted, is still being run back; and, as the Palin meltdown continues, it’s not clear it won’t go all the way, for an Obama touchdown.

Huffington Post, on McCain’s “tough-guy” stance: The debate analysis in the media is rampant with contest analogies of war, baseball, boxing, football; you name it. Any testosterone contest imaginable is fair game. … In fact, [McCain's lack of congeniality] was actually one of the debating points that Obama called McCain out on; his tough-guy stance (a football term) to refuse to even talk to other countries, like North Korea or Iran, without first getting them to agree on certain U.S. demands. … Hello? We’re not playing ball here. We’re electing a president. Analogies suck.

Sports analogies do suck. So who’s ready for some hardball? Go red, white and blue!