Tales from liberal-land...
I'm not even sure if the choice of Sarah Palin for McCain's VP had been 100% confirmed yet, but I was sitting at a lunch table at school, and one woman said, "Did you hear that McCain chose a woman as his VP?" Some had heard, and some hadn't. Then a different woman said, "Yeah, I hear there's been this thing with her, where her sister is in a messy divorce from a state trooper, and Palin asked the trooper's boss to fire him, and he wouldn't, so she fired the boss, etc, so... interesting choice."
Someone's been pinging DailyKos about as often as I've been pinging The Corner today...
The people at The Corner seem to like the choice overall, but at least one contributor to Powerline does not.
I'm not even sure if the choice of Sarah Palin for McCain's VP had been 100% confirmed yet, but I was sitting at a lunch table at school, and one woman said, "Did you hear that McCain chose a woman as his VP?" Some had heard, and some hadn't. Then a different woman said, "Yeah, I hear there's been this thing with her, where her sister is in a messy divorce from a state trooper, and Palin asked the trooper's boss to fire him, and he wouldn't, so she fired the boss, etc, so... interesting choice."
Someone's been pinging DailyKos about as often as I've been pinging The Corner today...
The people at The Corner seem to like the choice overall, but at least one contributor to Powerline does not.
posted by Matt | 11:17 AM
4 Comments:
What do you guys think of this...
I can see it's genius, to some extent. Talk about a fracturing choice; this will only exacerbate the pro-Billary vote.
It also takes away some of his most holiness and merciful's 'historic-ness'.
She's outspokenly pro-life, which might shore-up the conservative vote.
So at first, when I heard this, I thought it was brilliance. (My friend Peter actually called me on my cell. In class. The students asked if they could answer. I said "yes" and passed it over. He had already hung up.)
And you GOTTA think that Hillary's pissed. That's her birthright, after all. The first woman serving a real role at the White House. I know why his most merciful didn't pick her for a VEEP (she'd kill him). Now I'm wondering if she'll have him killed just for spite.
However, the more I think about it--I'm doing a double take. She's 44 with an undergraduate degree in journalism.
To me, it almost reminds me of Bush's chic-pick for the Supreme Court. A chick for the sake of being a chick--who, in reality, wasn't the best qualified.
Two words: cautiously optimistic.
I mean, she's such an unknown quantity, it could really go either way--and a significant distance either way! I would love for her to come out of nowhere and kick some butt in, say, the debates. (I've heard good things about her speech today, but haven't seen it.) But there's another part of me that is just waiting for her to "screw up" in some way and make all conservatives go "uh-oh".
There's already a YouTube video out there (don't know the date) where she says she doesn't really know what the VP does. Count on it showing up in an Obama ad.
To me, it seems that McCain has made a choice that he believes will help him win the election, but not necessarily a choice that will be best suited to the role of VP. Not to be all morbid on the guy, but there is a real possibility that this guy does not live to see the end of his term (assuming he wins). And if that is the case, if his health does ultimately give out, what are we left with? A 44-year old first-term Governor of Alaska? That does not excite me one bit.
On the other hand, in terms of helping McCain actually win the election, I share many of the same thoughts as Greg voiced in his post. All the PUMAs and other hacked off Hilary backers suddenly have moderate Republican running with a woman. That's going to be appealing to some of them. Moreover, she's an Alaskan in favor of drilling in the ANWR territories, which allows McCain to continue to hammer Obama on the issue of off-shore drilling and ultimately, US dependence upon foreign oil.
So I think it may help in terms of getting McCain elected, but heaven help us if God calls John home in before his term would be up.
I also thought it was interesting that her bio listed her as "Protestant" and not as "Evangelical." At first, when I saw that, I assumed mainline liberal Protestant church. But then I read further and she seems pretty conservative. More to the point, she is a woman who is pro-life; and that takes a certain amount of political courage because she is seen as a Judas-type by many of her own gender. So given the conservative views and the pro-life agenda, I find myself wondering if that Protestant is actually a bit closer to Evangelical, which may help shore up the religious portion of the GOP base.
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