Friday, August 29, 2008
29 Aug 2008 07:48 pm
Ambinder talks to a few who are blinking in disbelief:
A few are cautiously optimistic that it'll turn out OK, but most of the strategists and consultants I've spoken to, e-mailed with, or read/watched are struggling with it. They expect her to have a good week... and then to crash and burn when she hits the campaign trail as scrutiny catches up with her. "It's like playing poker blind," one strategist said. Another e-mailed:
"Obama's lack of readiness was THE only way to win." When these
Republicans ask the McCain campaign for guidance, all they hear back
is: "She's more experienced than Obama is."
But the religious base is enthralled. For me, the more I think about it, the more this pick is about McCain's contempt for Obama. He really seems to think that Palin is as qualified as Obama to be president. If he does, it seems to me he has fatally misjudged the abilities of his opponent. As Clinton did.
29 Aug 2008 07:35 pm
Yes, we knew McCain had an ego. We never quite appreciated how vast it was. Yes, Obama is inexperienced in foreign policy. But at least he has thought seriously about it. Do you really believe that Sarah Palin understands the distinctions between Shia and Sunni, has an opinion about the future of Pakistan, has a view of how to exploit rifts within Tehran's leadership, knows about the tricky task of securing loose nuclear weapons? Does anyone even know if she has ever expressed a view on these matters? Here's a bleg: can anyone direct me to any statement she has ever made about foreign policy?
The biggest secret of the Bush administration is that they were never serious about national security. Serious leaders do not fabricate intelligence through torture methods borrowed from the Communist Chinese. Serious leaders do not invade foreign countries on dubious intelligence with no plan for an occupation. Serious leaders do not try to manipulate detainee policy for electroal purposes. Serious leaders do not engage in moronic talk of victory or surrender five years after removing a regime.
And now we know something about McCain's promise: he takes all this even less seriously than Bush.
29 Aug 2008 07:22 pm
A reader writes:
You are absolutely on point that the most important aspect of the Palin
pick is what it tells us about McCain's judgment. Picking a VP is one
of the first serious, consequential decisions of a presidential
candidate. It is somewhat like a parent choosing who will be the
guardian of their child in the event of death. The VP isn't just some
vote-grabbing machine - it is the second-highest Constitutional office.
For JM to offer this slot to someone with such meagre credentials, whom he hardly even knows is a sign of serious character disturbance.
29 Aug 2008 07:12 pm
Oh God. This is now getting officially painful. Just listen to this audio of Palin talking about Iraq. It's excruciating. She doesn't "know what the plan is to ever end the war"? She sounds about as informed as someone you would grab off the subway at random. This is how seriously McCain takes foreign policy and war? Here's the full interview from August 14th. And here's the quote in more context:
The GOP agenda to ramp up domestic supplies of energy is the only way that we are going to become energy independent, the only way that we are going to become a more secure nation. And I say this, of course, knowing the situation we are in right now — at war, not knowing what the plan is to ever end the war we are engaged in, understanding that Americans are seeking solutions and are seeking resolution in this war effort. So energy supplies and being able to produce and supply domestically is going to be a big part of that.
Her only other mention of Iraq is when she talks about her son:
Continue reading ""Let's Make Sure We Have A Plan Here"" »
29 Aug 2008 07:12 pm
A reader writes:
I don't see how you can rationally say that picking Palin is unserious
but picking Obama is serious. Neither one has a ton of experience.
But Palin’s experience is mostly executive, and Obama’s experience is
all legislative. That cuts in her favor. Moreover, Palin is running
for the #2 slot and Obama is running for the #1 slot. That is
fundamental.
It occurs to me that some on the right actually think that Obama is as inexperienced and as trivial a figure as Palin. So ask yourself: could Sarah Palin have run a national election campaign against, say, a machine as powerful as the Bush family, and won? Does she have the skill set to construct a campaign that would actually have brought her to the nomination herself? I find the comparison with Obama ludicrous. But it will be made. Palin looks to me like a lovely person and a good local politician, with some inevitable rough spots. I'd be delighted if she took a leadership role in the GOP in the future. But in the same league as Obama? Do Republicans really think that little of him?
I guess they do. We are looking at a different person.
29 Aug 2008 06:49 pm
An Alaskan reader writes:
Actually, Sarah Palin's children are not named for television
characters. Willow is a town in Alaska and Piper is for an aircraft.
Bristol is also for a place in Alaska and Trig is for a family member.
Track is named for where he was conceived. This is the story that has
been running around AK for ages. I'm sure her office will release some
statement on the kid's names but no, the names are not at all from a
television show.
He was conceived on a track? Pray tell some more ...
29 Aug 2008 06:35 pm
It gets better:
— Stevens and Young, redux. She has distanced herself from the state’s
two most popular politicians, but both appeared at Palin fundraisers
during her 2006 gubernatorial bid.
— The environment. As governor, Palin vetoed wind power and clean coal
projects, including a 50-megawatt wind arm on Fire Island and a clean
coal facility in Healy that had been mired in a dispute between local
and state governments.
— And, maybe, censorship. According to the Frontiersman newspaper,
Wasilla’s library director Mary Ellen Emmons said that "Palin asked her
outright if she could live with censorship of library books.” Palin
later dismissed the conversation as a “rhetorical” exercise.
So one tenth of her campaign financing in 2002 was from oil company bosses, she's being investigated by her own legislature for a scandal where she appointed a sexual harasser, she vetoed wind and clean coal energy projects, and wanted to impose Christianist censorship on public libraries. I mean: did anyone even vet her?
29 Aug 2008 06:34 pm
It's useful to judge the veep picks as an insight into how the two presidential candidates make decisions. A reader sums it up:
Looking at these two events,
what do we see? Obama is cautious, conservative and highly deliberative in
his approach. McCain is a risk-taker, indeed, even a bit
rash.
In a world of Jihadist terror, resurgent great power politics, and proliferating WMDs, who are you more comfortable with? And how eager are you to roll the dice?
29 Aug 2008 06:29 pm
John McCain first met Palin in February of this year and had a telephone conversation with her. That is the full extent of his familiarity with Palin until he spent time with her last week. That's how seriously he is taking the presidency of the United States. It's simply unbelievable recklessness. It's Bush-level recklessness.
Putting country first? This is a reckless act of egotism and politics. The more you think about it, and the more you consider how many charges he has leveled against Obama's alleged inexperience in a time of peril, the more outrageous it is that she he picks an unknown local politician he has only met once before to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Palin isn't the issue here. McCain's judgment is. It's completely off the wall. Is there something wrong with him?
29 Aug 2008 06:17 pm
Palin backed Pat in 1999.
29 Aug 2008 06:03 pm
Not a fan:
Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, "I believe we have a creator." She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact. "I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she said.
29 Aug 2008 05:41 pm
Top eleven things Hillary felt when hearing about Palin:
11) Initially, too busy braving sniper fire to notice.
10) Ordered fur-lined pantsuit for on-site opposition research.
9) Traded in Michelle Obama voodoo doll.
8) Shorted Lieberman on InTrade.
7) Canceled "Hillary '12" signs, ordered "Hillary '16" signs.
6) Started clinging to guns, religion.
Continue reading "Hillary And Sarah" »
29 Aug 2008 05:30 pm
Fallows was impressed by the Democratic convention as a whole:
This has never happened before. Usually there are a number of obvious turkeys among the big-kahuna speakers. This time, the biggest names came in facing very tough tests (how will Bill and Hillary behave? How can Obama re-position himself?) and very high expectations. They aced the tests and beat the expectations in every case.
29 Aug 2008 05:00 pm
Heh:
"With
all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three
years. He's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could
really name a big, important thing that he's done ... [Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's
smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa, or Gilbert,
Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town."
Palin has been governor for less than two years of a state with 600,000 people, compared to Virginia's 8 million. Before that, she was mayor of a town with 6,000 inhabitants, compared to Richmond's 200,000. Someone able to become president of the United States at a moment's notice? Politically, I have no idea how this will play. As an act of presidential governing, as McCain's first real presidential decision, it was and is fundamentally unserious.
29 Aug 2008 04:27 pm
"Sarah is from America. Obama is not," - an email posted by Mona Charen at NRO.
Among the other reasons some at NRO are psyched:
Like many Americans, she says “Eye-rack” and “Eye-ran” (for two neighboring countries in the Middle East).
29 Aug 2008 04:13 pm
She didn't know about his record because he wasn't vetted. But it's part of the somewhat funny and very obscure politics of a small state with a wild frontier. The photo above is from Palin's hometown, Wasilla. Here's a blog-post from a proud Alaskan who nonetheless is gob-smacked that McCain thought Palin suitable for high office. Here's a blog-post from July from an Alaskan political blog that is not exactly encouraging about Palin's management skills:
Just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any more smarmy… Prepare for the next chapter of Sarah-Gate. (sliding glasses down on nose, and opening book) Are you comfortable? Good.
When we last left the Governor, she was busy denying allegations that she fired the popular and beloved Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan becuase he refused to dismiss Alaska State Trooper Mike Wooten, her ex-brother-in-law of questionable character, and currently embroiled in a nasty custody battle with her younger sister. She said neither she nor any staff or family member pressured him to axe Wooten. But Monegan said she, her husband, and staff members did. Hmmmm. Investigation by the Legislature? Very likely.
The scene today features the Governor (again) and also the man slated to replace (Good Cop) Walt Monegan as Commissioner of Public Safety - Chuck Kopp.
Continue reading "Palin Appointed A Sexual Harasser" »
29 Aug 2008 04:05 pm
... as of 24 days ago.
29 Aug 2008 04:05 pm
Marc asks:
[Will] undecided women, weakly partisan Democrats, independent suburban women, women between the ages of 30 and 50, will now take a hard second look at John McCain because of his choice of Sarah Palin[?]
I think they will. A second look ... doesn't mean they'll vote for him. But he's earned himself a second look. Identity politics works that way.
29 Aug 2008 04:03 pm
A reader writes:
Not knowing anything about the Republican field, I heard about the pick this morning and looked up the stories on her.
My first thought was: Trophy Candidate.
The visuals were strange. She looked like the promising student that an older professor admires (and has a bit of a crush on). When she called McCain her "partner," it sounded odder still. He comes off as her guardian or foster parent.
29 Aug 2008 03:55 pm
An Alaska native writes:
On Palin generally, I tend to agree with your analysis. Most Alaskans like her, but there's a lot about Alaska that the rest of the country either doesn't know or doesn't care about. Her likability stems in part from the unique political-social culture in Alaska. I've known some die-hard republicans and some ultra-liberal democrats, but what connects everyone is a strong undercurrent of libertarianism. It's very much a "let me be" kind of place, and I think you see that in Palin's political positions.
Continue reading "The Alaska Angle" »
29 Aug 2008 03:46 pm
Worth noting:
"Signing this bill would be in direct violation of my oath of office,"
Palin said in a prepared statement released by her administration
Thursday night."
Constitutional issues have not stopped other Christianists. I like her personally - a good deal.
29 Aug 2008 03:27 pm
Dave Weigel:
It's going to be awfully, awfully tiresome to hear conservatives whine about Palin attacks being sexist. One, it's in bad faith: I challenge them to take a polygraph and say they never visited SlapHillary.com or giggled when a voter asked McCain how he could "beat the bitch." Two, it minimizes Palin by portraying her as a hapless female, and comparing her to Clinton. Clinton was and is a feminist icon. Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin.
29 Aug 2008 03:17 pm
I like it (second video). I'm not sure the PUMAs will.
29 Aug 2008 03:11 pm
It seems that the main theme of the GOP this year will be that more domestic oil will solve all our problems. From Palin's interview with Time:
“What, on a real practical level here, the GOP has got to do between
now and the election is to convince Americans that it is our energy
policy that is best for our nation and the nation's future, that if we
are to become energy independent and if we are to become a more secure
nation then we had better start supplying our very very hungry markets
across the nation with American supplies of energy.... That, of course,
has been a problem for the GOP. And a problem up here in Alaska. We
have state lawmakers serving time in prison right now... other
lawmakers whom the FBI is probing right now... because they have been
found, some, to be corrupt in oil and gas issues, having taken bribes.
That does not bode well for the GOP.”
29 Aug 2008 03:10 pm
Palin is creationist friendly. Does she favor banning private stem-cell research as the GOP platform does?
29 Aug 2008 03:08 pm
Havana, Cuba, 2.01 pm.
29 Aug 2008 03:05 pm
How the Plain name surfaced.
29 Aug 2008 02:54 pm
“As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?" - Sarah Palin, a month ago.
29 Aug 2008 02:50 pm
This deserves a second note from yours truly. McCain's pick was the most pro-gay move any Republican has made since George H.W. Bush added hate crimes against gays to the national statistical base. I know that's not saying much, but the details are here. Bottom line:
Palin's first veto
was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from
granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. In effect,
her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples.
Yes, she opposes equality in marriage. So does Obama. And, yes, she's much worse than Obama on civil unions:
Palin said she's not out to judge anyone and
has good friends who are gay, but that she supported the 1998
constitutional amendment. Elected officials can't defy the court when
it comes to how rights are applied, she said, but she would support a
ballot question that would deny benefits to homosexual couples.
But she is a rare Republican governor who signed benefits for gay couples into law, as a matter of constitutional equality. And she has gay friends. It's a good day for gay Republicans, and the clear public references to gay rights in all the major Democratic speeches last week shows how far we've come.
29 Aug 2008 02:41 pm
Obama's lead stretches to eight in Gallup daily. That's before his acceptance speech and before the Palin shocker. But I'll wait till the week after next.
29 Aug 2008 02:39 pm
38 million viewers watched Obama's speech:
Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, the final "American Idol" or the Academy Awards this year.
29 Aug 2008 02:37 pm
The McCain campaign responds to the Obama camp's statement on Palin.
29 Aug 2008 02:27 pm
Marc has the statement:
Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same.
Calling Palin "more of the same" falls a little flat, no?
29 Aug 2008 02:15 pm
From National Journal's Almanac, a comprehensive, if dry, profile of Palin.
29 Aug 2008 01:40 pm
She named two daughters after television witches, and smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska, and inhaled. She's also very gay-friendly. It makes me like her. I'm not so sure how the most devout in the base will respond. Her Down Syndrome baby will help, I'm sure - and her decision to bring him into the world is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
29 Aug 2008 01:34 pm
Could this be McCain's Miers moment? Some readers think so: the point at which people suddenly realize that McCain is actually less interested in governing than in politics. And willing to let personal liking and respect for utterly unqualified people trump the sober responsibilities of running a country at war, a climate in flux, an economy in trouble, and an empire close to imploding.
One more thing: this was a bit of a F-U pick, a personal, totally idiosyncratic, gut-level, aggressive piece of opportunism. Yes he can! And yes, it does underline his maverick, out-of-the-box brand. It makes me like his empathy for gutsy young women, even former beauty queens (is there footage of her contest out there?). But it also makes me less comfortable with the idea of him as commander in chief. It seems a less steady choice than Biden.
29 Aug 2008 01:16 pm
An Alaskan reader writes:
This is a gift for Obama. This is Dan Quayle and Gerry Ferraro all over again.
Another writes:
My mother is a moderate, 58
year old Republican from Pennsylvania, voted Bush twice, now suspects
he's an idiot. She switched and voted for Obama in the primary because
she hates the Clintons and because I begged her mercilessly to do so.
I've feared all along that we might lose her in the general. No
longer! She just called me from her office, LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY -
"Did you see who McCain picked? Ha ha ha ha." I could hear her friends, as she just described them, "other former
Republicans," also laughing, all boomer women.
Continue reading "Email From Alaska" »
29 Aug 2008 01:13 pm
Ramesh Ponnuru deserves major props for this very honest post:
Both the pros and the cons are pretty obvious. I’m going to focus on the cons, mostly because conservatives right now seem to be paying them less attention.
The pros: She’s a pro-life conservative reformer from outside Washington, and a woman. The pick signals a boldness and willingness to mix things up that the McCain campaign, like Republicans generally, need.
The cons:
Inexperience. Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain's age raised the stakes on this issue.
As a political matter, it undercuts the case against Obama.
Conservatives are pointing out that it is tricky for the Obama campaign to raise the issue of her inexperience given his own, and note that the presidency matters more than the vice-presidency. But that gets things backward. To the extent the experience, qualifications, and national-security arguments are taken off the table, Obama wins.
And it’s not just foreign policy. Palin has no experience dealing with national domestic issues, either. (On the other hand, as Kate O’Beirne just told me, we know that Palin will be ready for that 3 a.m. phone call: She’ll already be up with her baby.)
Tokenism. Can anyone say with a straight face that Palin would have gotten picked if she were a man?
Continue reading "Ponnuru: "Governor For Two Minutes;" "Token;" "Reckless"" »
29 Aug 2008 01:06 pm
Yuval Levin acknowledges Palin's drawbacks, but is ultimately pleased:
The biggest drawback for me is that she has no more foreign policy experience than Obama and fairly little (though, as Mark points out, more than Obama, Biden, and McCain combined) executive experience. I don't quite agree that foreign policy experience doesn't matter, and I think concern about that has had a lot to do with the success of the "he's not ready" charge against Obama--it's not only because he has so little political and governing experience in general, but also because it's terribly difficult to see him in charge of American foreign policy in a crisis. It's at least as difficult to imagine Palin in charge in a crisis, and maybe more so. But on the other hand, Palin is up for the number two spot, not for President, and the guy at the top of the ticket is John McCain, who people certainly have an easier time seeing as a foreign policy expert and decision-maker. A heartbeat away is a real issue, as Jonah says, but it's much less of a concern than choosing a president who isn't ready for the job.
29 Aug 2008 12:54 pm
A reader plumbs the weirdness:
"Willow" was Buffy the Vampire Slayer's best friend and "Piper" was the
eldest sister on the series Charmed played by Shannen Doherty. The governor
obviously has a penchant for television shows of paranormal female
empowerment. (I know, it's too gay that I know this). "Trig?" Don't
have clue.
Bristol! A town in near Wales! And another correction:
Piper was the
second sister, she was played by Holly Marie Combs. Shannon Doherty
played Prue (Prudence) Halliwell. Willow and Piper are both witches.
Good witches.
29 Aug 2008 12:51 pm
Brendan Loy makes it:
[T]he thrust of the Dems' argument will not be that Palin is too inexperienced; it will be that McCain is being disingenuous when he argues that Obama
is too inexperienced. This argument will gain wide acceptance among the
pundit class, and it will also succeed with voters -- largely because
it is correct, and obviously & instinctively so.
29 Aug 2008 12:22 pm
12.46 pm. I can see the logic of this, and she made a good speech. I'm just very unsure what this does to the race. It's a total curve-ball. Will people respond to this - essentially window dressing for female independents? Or will they consider this a trivial, headline-grabbing choice that suggests a lack of seriousness about governing?
12.45 pm. The embrace of Hillary Clinton directly - and Ferraro! - is remarkable. She is directly appealing to Clinton's female supporters to back her because she is a woman. Subtle this wasn't.
12.44 pm. "Only one candidate has truly fought for America." Oh, and she pronounces "nuclear" the Bush way.
12.43 pm. Challenge the status quo and serve the common good. This is about coopting the message of change.
12.42 pm. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and ... Trig? Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper and ... Trig? Maybe we don't need the Romneys. But she has experience on the PTA.
12.41 pm. She mentions her son going to Iraq. Biden, as far as I recall, didn't.
12.40 pm. Her husband's a snow-machine racer!
12.30 pm. Mortgage payments, groceries ... the focus on pocket-book issues is identical to Obama's. And the reference to union members is an obvious attempt to get out of the "elitist" trap.
12.23 pm. This is a populist speech. Democratic in its themes.
12.20 pm McCain's opener is borrowed entirely from Hillary Clinton.
29 Aug 2008 12:16 pm
Noah Millman:
McCain's choice of Sarah Palin (assuming it's confirmed) is a brilliant first counter-stroke. She helps the ticket on so many different fronts: she gives women who are angry about Hillary being passed over another reason to vote McCain; she gives fence-sitting whites who feel they "ought" to vote for Obama because of the historic nature of his candidacy an excuse to find history on the other side; she burnishes McCain's credentials as an independent, reform candidate; she restores McCain's credibility on energy and environmental issues, where Obama personally feels most comfortable going on the attack; she will generate enthusiasm among evangelicals among whom Obama was hoping to make inroads; she absolutely locks down the gun-rights vote (where McCain needed to play a bit of defense against Barr); she helps McCain in the Mountain West (Colorado and Montana) where he cannot afford to lose any states (except New Mexico); she neutralizes Biden in the debates (if he comes out zinging, he'll seem ungentlemanly); and, most important, she makes McCain seem bold, future-oriented, and in control of his Administration, where Obama has seemed timid, defensive and unable to control his own party.
Jonah Goldberg:
The upside: She's the best of the dark horses because she's
an exciting, exotic (yet heartlandish) female pick.
Continue reading "Palin Reax" »
29 Aug 2008 12:09 pm
Now we're talking:
Palin doesn't support legalizing marijuana,
worrying about the message it would send to her four kids. But when it
comes to cracking down on drugs, she says methamphetamines are the
greater threat and should have a higher priority.
Palin said she has smoked marijuana --
remember, it was legal under state law, she said, even if illegal under
U.S. law -- but says she didn't like it and doesn't smoke it now.
"I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled."
The more I read the more I expect to like her a lot.
29 Aug 2008 12:05 pm
Sonny Bunch says I am confused:
Andrew has this exactly backwards. The McCain campaign is hoping and praying that someone will say that Palin is unready for the job. “Please,” John McCain is praying right now AS I TYPE, “Let a Democrat say that an executive with 2 years of experience and no foreign policy expertise isn’t ready for the presidency. Oh pretty please. Because you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take that soundbite, put it in an ad, slap Obama’s mug up there, and run it over and over and over again.”
Because Palin has exactly as much experience as Obama–arguably more, since she’s an executive. The only difference is that she isn’t running for president.
I can see that. But still: there's inexperience and inexperience. Has Palin ever even said anything about foreign policy in her entire career? That's all I'm asking. What have been her views on Iraq and Afghanistan? Darfur? Georgia? Russia? The EU? I'd like to see evidence that she has addressed these issues or has substantive views on them. That's all. Is that too much?
29 Aug 2008 11:54 am
Much better than the base, according to Wiki:
She opposes same-sex marriage, but she has stated that she has gay friends and is receptive to gay and lesbian concerns about discrimination.[9] While the previous administration did not implement same-sex benefits, Palin complied with a state Supreme Court order and signed them into law.[28] She disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling[29] and supported a democratic advisory vote from the public on whether there should be a constitutional amendment on the matter.[30] Alaska was one of the first U.S. states to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage, in 1998, along with Hawaii.[31] Palin has stated that she supported the 1998 constitutional amendment.[9]
Palin's first veto
was used to block legislation that would have barred the state from
granting benefits to the partners of gay state employees. In effect,
her veto granted State of Alaska benefits to same-sex couples. The veto
occurred after Palin consulted with Alaska's attorney general on the constitutionality of the legislation.[29]
29 Aug 2008 11:43 am
A reader writes:
You’re talking about the war, but as you’ve pointed out numerous times, it’s winding down on its own. The pick of Palin doesn’t show that McCain doesn’t take it seriously… it tells us that he’s going to make this election about energy. It’s a winning issue for him, and that’s Palin’s speciality. Who can speak with more authority on ANWR than the Governor of Alaska?
Conservative pundits tried to blunt the Biden choice by saying it undermines Obama’s message of change. It doesn’t, of course, because Obama for better or worse, embodies the idea at this point. Similarly, no running mate can genuinely undermine McCain’s experience on foreign policy. Let us not forget that, young or not, she’s the only one of the four people on either ticket with genuine executive experience.
Continue reading "Balancing The Tickets" »
29 Aug 2008 11:42 am
Ross:
This could, of course, turn out to be an enormous debacle if she isn't
ready for prime time. But for now, Sarah Palin looks like a perfect
face for the sort of Republican Party I want to support: She's a
pro-life working mom; she's tough on corruption and government waste
without being a doctrinaire Norquistian on taxes; she's more supportive
of gay rights than the current GOP orthodoxy (while stopping short of
backing same-sex marriage); she has a more conservationist record than
your typical GOP pol, but supports drilling in ANWR; she's an
evangelical but she isn't a southern evangelical ... and if McCain loses, she can run at the top of a Palin-Jindal ticket in 2012!
All of this may be great for the future of the GOP. But it's a hell of a risk for the country.
29 Aug 2008 11:35 am
Now I understand: she's a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome child. And she's not from the South.
29 Aug 2008 11:32 am
It's quite a symbolic pick in the current climate:
She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasila and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004... Palin has focused on energy and natural resources policy during her short stint in office, and she is known for her support of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, a position opposed by McCain but supported by many grass-roots Republicans.
Her biography on the state governor's Web site says one of the two major pieces of legislation passed during her first legislative session was a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline.
Continue reading "Vice-President For Oil" »
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