Sarah Palin

[elfs]

So, the more I look at Sarah Palin, the angrier I get. Really. Here's what Sarah Palin's nomination as John McCain's vice presidential candidate says to me.

First, John McCain is a hypocrite. After months of telling us that Barack Obama isn't ready to be president, he picks someone "one heartbeat away" who isn't ready to be president. She's been governor of Alaska for less than two years; before that, she was mayor of a town of 8,000. She has no foreign policy experience. "You know all those terrible things about Barack Obama I told you? Put them down the memory hole."

Second, John McCain is unserious about governing. His own press is coming out that he's met with Palin exactly once, that he's spoken with her a few times on the phone. He has no idea if she'd be compatible with his governing style; he has no idea what will happen when they get into the cabinet. This is not a woman who has the authority to back him up when he makes a decision that is opposed by members of his cabinet.

Third, John McCain has seriously misread America. He thinks he's going to pull in the PUMAs and independent women, but they're all going to think one thing: this would never have happened if Palin were a man. Hillary has qualifications. Despite all the media from the broadcast MSM, there was little actual pro-Hillary, anti-Obama movement at the convention itself. I can't speak of protests outside the convention; the press were unfortunately skilled at keeping that out of the American eye. But McCain is going for pure tokenism.

The more I read this, more I think that John McCain just wanted to piss off the Obama camp, throw them off guard. Well, he succeeded. His problem is that there are seven weeks left, seven weeks in which both Palin's record and her working relationship with John McCain will be held up to the most intense scrutiny.

Meanwhile, the women of America will look at her and, I hate to say this, most of them will wonder how a woman with five children, one of them a Downs baby, will be able to attend to duties she herself admits she doesn't understand.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

McCain doesn't expect to win.

That's the only conclusion which makes sense.

And Palin on a losing ticket will kill the chances of women in the GOP.

That will please some.

[(Anonymous)]

Some people are of the opinion that Palin is merely a distraction with two main goals: first, get people talking about how awful her lack of experience is, so they can turn around and say "So inexperience is bad, eh? How about Obama -- he has even less executive experience than she does!", hoping no one notices that Obama's relative lack of experience is tempered by his well-demonstrated preparedness. And second, to draw the focus to her instead of to McCain himself, so his own missteps receive less scrutiny; sort of a sacrificial anode for his corroding campaign.

I wonder if the rumors that McCain was all set to go with Lieberman but suddenly changed his mind last night have any truth to them. The Google link you posted about earlier certainly lends credence to that, as does the fact that his own people seem unprepared to respond to his announncement. If so, then I'm skeptical of my first paragraph, and think this was purely a desperate knee-jerk response to Obama's home run at the convention.

Sincerely,
Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure at this point that i can do anything but sit back with a bowl of popcorn, and enjoy the fireworks that are to come. She rather scares me, but i think McCain just handed over the race.

This lady comes pre-packaged with her own scandals, too. Apparently some unfair firing practices and some conflict of interest for variety. Whee.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What's the old saw, if you can't beat'em with brains, baffle'em with bullshit?

Only America has been force-fed a steady diet of bovine scatology for the better part of two decades now, from both sides of the aisle, and I think - I hope - we're beginning to tire of the taste.

This is a royal cock-up from any thinking man - or woman's - point of view. The question is, can we convince enough people to *think*?

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

Why "hate to say it"? My very first reaction was "A woman with a FOUR MONTH OLD BABY"? My second reaction was "with special needs?" My third reaction : "is she insane?"

As for picking her, to my horror an acquaintance who was pro-Hillary and reacts to Obama with unexplained repulsion is saying positive things about her as a choice, and McCain for choosing her.

To my disgust, there may just BE a demographic to support the choice. *shudder*

[jenk]

Remember the hoo-haw over whether Lieberman could actually serve as President due to the requirements of Judaism?

I expect the same over the 4-month-old.

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I've *had* a four month old baby with special needs.

I couldn't have been student body president and given him the attention and care he deserved. (Prior to his birth, I expected to return to a Physics major program the next day.)

I think it's a very legitimate question in a way that the question of orthodox Judaism was not (since obviously politicians in some countries do just fine with that.)

[jenk]

I don't doubt that it's a legitimate question. However, the child has a father as well, and possibly other caregivers (I doubt Jackie Kennedy managed without a nanny). It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Troopergate!

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

Since I am from Alaska I thought I would drop this in to the mix.

The legislature is investigating if the governor's office used political pressure to have the ex-brother in law of the governor fired. The governor's office has ordered the AG of Alaska to investigate BEFORE the legislature to find out if anything happened.

One comment from a sitting legislator was "We could be looking at an impeachable offense".

Yeah, but she is just so damn cute!

MPK

[tagryn]

I thought it was a diabolically clever choice. It shores up his right wing support in the GOP - they're almost universally in love with the pick - while nullifying some of the "We're making HISTORY!!!" advantage of the Obama side. It aims at a serious fissure in the Democrat party, while stealing the media spotlight from Obama's speech. Most importantly for them it injected some much-needed energy into the GOP side going into their convention, something that would have continued to be lacking with a "safe" pick like Romney or Pawlenty.

Frankly, given their stumbles so far, I didn't think the McCain camp had the campaign acumen to come up with something like this.

It presents some interesting campaign problems. The experience debate is a losing one for the Democrats, since it has a simple response: if experience is a biggie, why isn't Biden the POTUS candidate and Obama the VP pick? The Downs baby argument will be trouble with some feminist (Hillary) supporters, since it has an underlying sexist assumption that the woman should be the one staying at home with the kids; it also brings the abortion issue into play, something Obama has not wanted to take on. The investigation into the ex-brother-in-law's firing is probably the best attack angle, though it isn't a perfect open-and-shut case either since a lot of voters if they read about the details of the case will conclude "Guy was a bad cop, he should have been fired."

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

The more I read this, more I think that John McCain just wanted to piss off the Obama camp, throw them off guard. Well, he succeeded.

I think the results from Obama's camp were more bewilderment than anger. The media, smelling blood in the water, has already started to take potshots at her, and she's rapidly looking more like a joke than anything else. And by cutting the knees off the "lack of experience" argument, McCain's running out of options fast.

As I commented in another journal, I'm waiting for his next announcement, where he will pick Barney the Dinosaur as Secretary of State.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

The problem is, the fissure that McCain wants to exploit is looking more and more like a surface scratch. If the events in Denver didn't signal absolute unity of purpose to those few Hillary supporters left still pissed off, then they were off watching another program.

It's a SOP. A play for the hard right in hopes they'll be enough to turn it around. But by picking such an extremist as VP, especially when the back of most voter's minds include the thought that McCain's health is a BIG issue, he lost the center.

The experience argument was one of the few shots McCain had that was any way accurate against Obama. Now he's tossed that out. The Dems don't care about the whole experience argument. A far more obvious one exists: You want proof that he's another four years of Bush? Look who his veep is!

[urox.livejournal.com]

I heartily agree that there are far more attacking points than any that have to do with her sex.

The first thing I thought of when she was chosen was, "I guess McCain wants to sop up bitter Hillary supporters," but after I started reading, her psychoness went WAY beyond her gender.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

The icon's cute, but "face" starts with a consonant, so you don't elide the e; and why not "palme de vis"?

It seems to me that sexist potshots could hurt the good guys very badly, even if it's the media and not Obama's people taking them.

Arnold Schwarzenegger posed nude as a bodybuilder and showed us all his tiny dick; he got teased a little. She was a runner-up in a beauty contest (isn't that a Monopoly card?), which I suspect will be used a lot to suggest that she's not serious.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I got it from a friend. I speak no French, so I was unaware of the grammar.

It seems to me that sexist potshots could hurt the good guys very badly, even if it's the media and not Obama's people taking them.

Oh, hell yes. In fact, I'd be willing to hold any such persons down for Gov. Palin to get in some well-deserved crotch-shots.

But for someone to be so far to the right that they joined Pat Buchannan's staff after he gave that hate-filled screed at the 2000 RNC*? The one every pundit agrees helped cost them the election? There's a target of opportunity bigger than a battleship.

*As proof that I'm even willing to find points of similarity in all of us, John McCain and I are resolutely agreed on one thing: Pat needs a punch in the mouth.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I thought that too, but the more I look at it, the more transparently bogus it all becomes.

She claims she's "taken on big oil." It's a lovely soundbite, but do you know what she took big oil on over? She wanted more drilling so she could get more money to fund the Socialist State of Alaska™.

The experience debate is hardly a loser. Yes, you can try to spin it about Biden, but that's a battle brought late: the already existing fight is about John McCain's honor and honesty. He has been dishonest, and everyone now can see that.

And I strongly suspect Americans are still sexist enough to assume that a mother of five does not have the bandwidth to be a mother and vice president.

Besides, how do you get to be a governor and not know what your vice-governor's role is?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Is it sexist to say that any man in Palin's role with Palin's record would have had absolutely no shot at the vice presidency?

Palin, in her first speech, sold herself as just another soccer mom. Is it sexist to ask her how she can find time to be both a soccer mom and the understudy for the most powerful position in America?

[(Anonymous)]

This isn't just a sop to the most extreme fringes of American society - this is - at least in potential - a recipe for a pseudo-legal religious overthrow of the US government entirely.

*IF* McCain takes the presidency, I have little doubt that he will "retire" within 2 years...for 'health reasons', of course (assuming he doesn't die under suspicious circumstances)...leaving this shrill and ignorant ideologue in possession of emergency powers, war powers, and the big-stick power of the executive order.

This is what the religious-fascist extreme has never been able to achieve: an actual grip on secular power in this country. I have absolutely no doubt whatever that she will use it. Badly, disastrously, tragically, but use it she will.

Add to that the religious subversion of the military (well under way at this point), the existence of the private zealot army know as "Joe's Army" (think, if you dare, of a well-funded, well-organised militia in support of - and spearheaded by - Blackwater), and the sweeping powers granted the executive by the Patriot Act and the Domestic Terrorism Act...among others.

And of course, let's not forget the violent and well-armed neo-Confederate networks that have been practicing for years to act in the event of a "race war"...such as a bunch of 'liberal traitors' 'surrendering' the country to a "gay communist president"....

These people are celebrating right this second: they think this is it - they've won, the gloves are coming off and they will soon be able to purge all the gays, "socialists," atheists (both synonyms for "liberals" in their lexicon) and "race traitors" along with the 'mongrels'

I hope this scares you; it scares the living crap out of me. It should scare the living crap out of everyone who loves freedom and our constitutional government. The essential power alignments in this country have been substantially in place since Reconstruction; Obama's rise threatens the very uneasy balance we've maintained in this society for the last hundred and twenty years.

I've been a student of US history for 50 years, and politically active for almost all of that time . This is THE scariest thing that has happened in my lifetime: more than the cold war, more than the Cuban crisis, more than Watergate, more than Iran-Contra, more than crime, violence, inequality, and the mortgage crisis.

We like to think "It Can't Happen Here" (and if you haven't read Sinclair Lewis' book, go find a copy NOW), and we like to dismiss these people and groups as lunatics we don't have to take seriously; but it CAN happen here - and if we don't take steps it WILL happen. It IS happening.

This has been an alert from your emergency broadcasting system....

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

...*and the mother of a Don;s-syndrome newborn....

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

at the press conference yesterday, her eldest daughter (apparently) was the one charged with caring for the baby - doesn't this send the signal that she's willing to devolve responsibility for her reproductive choices onto her daughters? Is that what America's women want? To consign their own daughters to a domestic role they eschew for themselves>?

With any luck, this will backfire on her big-time...

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

Oh, the force-feeding has been going on FAR longer than that (perhaps you remember Nixon?)

I solemnly believe that Palin's selection will not draw a single vote from the Demo pool; what it will certainly do is mobilize and excite the Dobsons, the Hagees, the Parsleys, the Robertsons, the Schlaflys - the fundamentalist evangelical extreme that has been the source of Republican victory for hte last 30 years: all of whom were so displeased w/ McCain-for-POTUS that they've been threatening to stay home in droves.

THIS will get every single one of them to the polls in November. The stakes just went WAAAY up.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Is it sexist...?
I think so. If her sex were reversed no one would even bring it up. HE would be getting kudos for convincing the Wife to raise and care the special needs baby while he went off to run the country. There's no reason to think that her husband can't become primary care taker of their child. And there's also no reason to think that with sufficient support she can't do the job (Not that I want her there mind you, I'm just defending her as a Mother taking a tough job)

I give McCain kudos for bring a Mother with Young Children into the spotlight and saying "She can do the job". It doesn't make me want to vote for them, but I think it brings a voice to the table that America has seriously needed in the National Dialogue.

Re: Troopergate!

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

I think having the state AG short stop a legislative investigation is the main issue really. There have already been legislator talking about how it might be a felony and an impeachable offense. So we will see.

My take is that she hangs in until November 1 and then resigns for 'personal' reasons and Lieberman gets the nod.

MPK

Hey! Watch it buddy!

[pandakahn.livejournal.com]

We are not a socialist state. We just took all our oil money and saved and invested it so that we can run our government on the income and not have taxes. We are good capitalists! We don't even have universal health care up here.

MPK

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

I agree Gov Palin was a clever choice but I am not so sure she was the best choice.

As for her good points, she does shore up the base with views on gun ownership, abortion and drilling. And while those are good (and I presume effective) energize-the-base reasons, I think her real values lies as a defensive choice. She is relatively unknown but popular so has little that can be used against her. She's a woman and, to be quite frank, that means Sen Biden can't really unleash the full force of his experience on her with out seeming condescending or a cad. She simultaneously bolsters the so-called Maverick moniker for Sen McCaian.

... and she's hot. Don't misunderestimate that.

With respect to the young child foisted on an older sibling, I don't see this as going anywhere. Obviously with the base it will fall on deaf ears but it seems to otherwise smack of an anti-family view. Of course we raise him/her in the home, we wouldn't expect the government to do this. Even amongst those who would choose not to have carried the kid to term have to respect her for that.

Personally I think that despite the claims to the contrary, Sen McCain did largely choose her due to her sex and not her credentials. Surely she not the best qualified amongst last two or so terms of Republican governors. I mean, I understand not wanting to pick another senator or representative as most are millionaires (Sen Biden being one of the rare exceptions) and also smack of more inside-the-beltway-same-as-usual thinking. But I still come back to that 3am question.

But I'll listen to what she has to say.

After all, she is really hot.

[tagryn]

The Washington Post had an article on how Palin got selected today, and it wasn't nearly the shoot-from-the-hip decision that was assumed. On the other hand, another Post article went into the details of the ethics investigation, and there might be some "there" there, not so much for trying to get the cop fired, but for the dismissal of the AK public safety commissioner. The report on that is supposed to come out in October, but it'll be interesting to see how it gets spun between the two parties.

I think she was a good choice as a candidate, the question remains whether she's a good choice to be President. Still, we've got 3 Senators with no executive experience and one inexperienced Governor making up the two tickets, so its a whole new game from the usual tact of only selecting governors that's dominated the modern POTUS process. Even just having a former Senator as President could make for some significant changes in how the President interacts with Congress that nobody really understands yet.