Since her name was announced as John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin has generated more US-based internet search traffic than Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Michael Phelps and Barack Obama combined:
Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we'll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We'll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she's the right woman for the job Up next, one man who's already convinced and he'll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.Interestingly, almost inexplicably, Noonan's got an essay today arguing that John McCain and Sarah Palin spell trouble for the American left.
(cut away)
Peggy Noonan: Yeah.
Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --
PN: It's over.
MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.
PN: Saw Kay this morning.
CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --
MM: They're all bummed out.
CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --
CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.
MM: I totally agree.
PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.
MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.
CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.
MM: Yeah.
She has the rarest of qualities: authenticity. Media and Beltway types can't fathom what that is. It goes right over their heads. Not even on the radar screen. Her multiple facets -- beauty queen, moose hunter, mother, member of an Assembly of God Church, and ferocious reformer of corrupt politics may baffle sophisticates, but ordinary Americans see all the pieces fitting together, and they recognize a type of person they know and love.Neither has Peggy Noonan, unfortunately.
Think of Marge Gunderson, the fictional chief of police of Brainerd, Minnesota in the Oscar-winning movie Fargo, taken as a comic send-up by the swells in New York and Hollywood, with her Midwestern twang (shared by Sarah Palin), funny hat, and kitsch-artist husband. The kind of woman who probably rides snowmobiles with her husband, for crying out loud. Yet in the end, Marge Gunderson solved the murder despite the sneers of her betters in the Big City (Minneapolis), and won the hearts of movie audiences. Americans like their heroines full of common sense and spunk.
Sarah Palin is the ultimate All-American Girl, beautiful but not glamorous, powerful but unpretentious, high-powered but down-to-earth, a reformer who speaks up while others cower in fear of rocking the boat. Like Ronald Reagan, she can reach right through the television camera into people's minds and hearts. We recognize one of us.
The left, so wrapped in artifice and fakery, are driven crazy by this. Her behavior appears bizarre, inexplicable. In their minds, she is a disaster and they pretend to be gleeful, asking when McCain will dump her. All while panicking, because they can see the energized GOP base and the failure of Barack Obama to garner the ten-to-fifteen point post-convention bounce to be expected after his speech before the multimillion-dollar Greek temple set and fireworks at Invesco Field only 5 days ago. Those who planned the classical Greek theatrical stage never for second contemplated the possibility of a deus ex machina named Sarah.
The Politico has the background story, via Memeorandum:
Mounting a ferocious defense of his embattled running mate, John McCain said he is buying a TV ad arguing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has more experience than the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.Check the link for Schmidt's statement.
In an effort to rev up conservatives, a campaign statement issued a list of critical media mentions that it called “smears” of Palin, who speaks in prime time at the convention Wednesday night.
The campaign announced: “The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin’s executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $10 billion budget to Barack Obama’s experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois.”
The ad is what the campaign calls “a forward-leaning effort to counter the shameless smears that have prevailed during Gov. Palin’s introduction to the American voter.”
Senior adviser Steve Schmidt gave Politico a statement saying the campaign will have no more comment about the vetting process, which was the subject of more critical coverage in Wednesday morning’s papers...
I've talked to many political professionals over the years who were mad at the media, or me in particular.Apparently, Schmidt says Sarah Palin's "under seige" by the waves of media speculation on the alleged teenage pregnancy cover-up, not to mention every other unhinged leftist smear that gets pick up as "mainstream" news by the press.
But I've never quite had a conversation like the one Tuesday night with Steve Schmidt.
He was absolutely furious as he unloaded on the journalistic community for, in his view, unfairly savaging Sarah Palin.
Sure, it is in his interest to try to get the press to tone things down. But Schmidt - a hard-headed, no-nonsense, on-message strategist - really sounded shell-shocked. And so he was saying things on the record that senior aides usually say only under a cloak of anonymity.
It gets a little embarrassing sometimes, being an ink-stained wretch, when you see the way the other scribblers can’t stop piling on one and can’t stop worshipping the other. Here’s a great Dem talking point, compliments of the Washington Post: Palin slashed funding for teen moms. Not a peep on what the increase was, what the money was actually for, what else she might have slashed, whether the program is actually worth a damn or well managed, or anything else resembling context. Maybe it was the horrible, meanspirited act of a hypocritical pol, but with no indication anyone bothered to ask any of those questions, who knows? A little shoddy. Hang on, here we go. New media makes old media look bad again. Via Malkin: Slashed line item was a threefold increase.The Wall Street Journal picks up on the theme, directing covering fire at the inside the Beltway media crowd's anti-Palin mysogyny:
Then there’s the rampant lefty sexism. Even some of my own pals can’t help themselves. The funny part is how they think a couple days of partisan squawking will be enough to force her out. Anyway, tonight we hear from the vice-presidential candidate who has the power to induce fits of apoplexy, and then, maybe, we’ll get a sense of whether actual voters share the ire.
Meanwhile, a former Democrat explains why she's voting McCain-Palin in November (Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin).Even as the Obama camp ponders how best to handle John McCain's veep pick of Sarah Palin, the high priests and priestesses of the media have marked her as an apostate. The Beltway class is in full-throated rebellion against a nondomesticated conservative who might pose a threat to their coronation of Barack Obama and the return of Camelot-on-the-Potomac....
This is the same media whose chant for weeks - no, months - has been "let McCain be McCain." If we know anything about John McCain, it is that he is by instinct a reformer, sometimes to a fault. Yet when he acts like McCain and picks a maverick reformer in his own mold, his former media cheering squad turns on him for not conforming to Beltway mores and picking someone they've all met 10 times in the CNN green room....
What's really going on here is that the Beltway class can see how popular the Palin pick is with Republicans outside Washington, and especially with middle-class conservatives. As Richard Land, a leader with the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin closed the "enthusiasm gap" between the two parties.
There is nothing more dangerous to entrenched Washington power than a populist conservative who looks unlikely to buy into Washington's creature comforts. Take a close look at Governor Palin's record on ethics and energy in Alaska, and it becomes clear what this Beltway outburst is actually about. The irony is that while Senator Obama is running on change, his acceptance speech made explicit that he's promising only more power and money for Washington. Sarah Palin's history of taking on the career politicians of a corrupt Alaskan GOP machine - her own party - shows that she's the more authentic change agent.
The stakes are sky high for America's Sweetheart!
Unlike any previous vice-presidential nominee, Palin faces an all-out assault from every corner of the political universe. The nihilist leftosphere led the way with sleazy allegations of a teen-pregnancy cover-up. The feminist left has attacked Palin with a zeal unmatched since the Clarence Thomas nomination in 1991, with the latest smears alleging she's a bad mother. Breathless stories of Alaskan political scandals have splashed the front pages of newspapers nationwide, and this morning we're greeted with the tabloidization of Sarah Palin, at the National Enquirer and US Magazine.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton remains on the sidelines, refusing to speak out in praise of Palin's historic achievement.
Kathleen Parker puts the Palin phenonemon in perspective:
Did someone switch the Kool-Aid?But note Victor Davis Hanson, who argues that Palin will be vindicated in the court of all-American public opinion:
Palin is everything liberals have always purported to want for women—freedom to choose, opportunities for both career and family, a shot at the top ranks of American political life. With five children and an impressive résumé, Palin should be Miss July in the go-girl calendar.
Palin's symbolism is the antithesis of the metrosexual wind- or body- surfing politican, and hair-plugged, neurotic TV pundit So at this time, right now, millions apparently like Palin's atypical 19th-century profile. Again, it's a pleasant change of pace from Harvard Law School, DC politics, "community organizing" and the can't-do, 'they raised the bar on me' collective complaint.No, those in the anti-Palin attackocracy have no clue.
If she can beat off the frothing Newsweek/MSNBC/New York Times inbred rabid wolves, and do it with the grace she has shown so far, she will fill a deep yearning among Americans for someone like her. A lot of Americans, if they watch reality shows, prefer truckers on ice or Bering Sea crab fishing to endless psychodramas of thirty-something suburban whiners.
So apparently they are eager to see a rare politican who is unapologetic about America's past achievements (cf. Obama's "tragic history" and need for more "oppression studies"), and who reminds us with pride that a muscular world of action, not community organizing, creates the bounty that others use and take for granted but so often sneer at the methods of its acquisition.
Right now, there are millions rooting for her in a way not true of Biden—and many who are criticizing her don't have a clue why that it is so.
The McCain campaign scrambled to take control of the public debate over vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin, canceling her public appearances and teaming her with high-powered Republican operatives as she prepared for a speech Wednesday night that will be her first, and perhaps most important, chance to define herself to the American public.I doubt Barack Obama will retain his lead in public opinion beyond the end of the week. Rasmussen reports that following a weekend of revelations, Governor Palin finds a clear majority with a favorable opinion:
Campaign officials were heartened by the strong support the Alaska governor continued to receive in the halls of their nominating convention here, a day after the revelation that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was pregnant.
Gov. Palin and her husband "have embraced the grandchild about to be born," Gary Bauer, a social conservative activist and onetime presidential candidate, told the Texas delegation. "They already are teaching America a lesson about the sanctity of life," he added, as the delegates jumped to their feet in applause.
But Republican officials remained nervous about how the choice was playing in the country as a whole. Some new polls showed Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama gaining a big lead in recent days following his party's convention last week....
Although there has been extensive coverage of Gov. Palin in the four days since she was named, the campaign sees her speech as an opportunity for her to describe herself in her own terms. The adviser said he would be shocked if she spoke about her daughter's pregnancy, noting that the campaign considers that issue off-limits. Her whole family is expected to attend, including Bristol and her boyfriend, Levi Johnston.
The speech is "a chance for her to actually get out and tell her story and for people to see beyond some of the media fog that's existed in the last 48 hours," said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.
After a long weekend of Democratic criticism of John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, over half of voters (52%) still have at least a somewhat favorable opinion of the Alaska governor. Thirty-one percent (31%) view her very favorably.If Palin's speech is anything like her debut on the campaign trail in Dayton, Ohio, last Friday, opinion trends should stabilize amid a significant McCain-Palin polling bounce.
Checking the Politico link to the opposition file turns up an error message.The Politico has received an opposition research file from the Alaska Democrats. You can read it in PDF here.
In the file, the Democrats have released Sarah Palin's social security number minus the last four digits. Also tied to the information are her various home addresses.
Back in 2005, Democrats used Michael Steele's social security number to get his credit record.It is atrocious that the Democrats would not only seek out Sarah Palin's social security number, but release it in opposition research to the press.
John McCain said Tuesday his vice presidential vetting process was thorough, as his campaign tried to calm concern that more surprises about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin were coming.Note, as well, Tom Blumer's account at Pajamas Media, where he links to a Wizbang post indicating that Culvahouse was seen in Juneau, Alaska, in May of this year.
"My vetting process was completely thorough, and I'm thankful for the results," the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said during a stop at a fire station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The McCain campaign said it was aware in advance of two items it revealed on Monday: Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is about five months pregnant and Palin's husband, Todd, had a DUI conviction 22 years ago.
A source intimately involved in the vetting process of McCain's choice for vice president called CNN to give an account of Palin's background check.
This official said a 25-person team, led by Washington attorney A.B. Culvahouse, started by compiling reports on 20 top vice presidential contenders, using only public documents like disclosure forms, public records, newspaper articles and interview transcripts.
That information was eventually presented to McCain, and to top campaign advisers Mark Salter, Steve Schmidt, Charlie Black and Rick Davis - the only four aides involved in the highly secretive process.
Once McCain and those aides narrowed the choices to a short list, Palin and other contenders were contacted and asked for documents, including a credit check, tax returns and additional financial disclosure forms.
The official told CNN that all of those on the short list - including Palin - were asked to answer 70 "intrusive" questions, including "Have you ever paid for sex?" and "Have you ever been fairly or unfairly accused of sexual harassment?"
The questions were also described as some basic queries now asked of presidential nominees, like whether they ever hired illegal workers or neglected to pay taxes for nannies.
In one of her answers, Palin told McCain aides about her husband's DUI arrest 22 years ago.
Then Culvahouse, along with a few associates, interviewed Palin for three hours. During that interview, she revealed her teenage daughter's pregnancy -- and was warned it would become public if she were picked.
"She said she'd have those conversations with her daughter," the source said.
From the start of the vetting process, one red flag was a state investigation into whether Palin improperly dismissed Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner for not firing her ex-brother-in-law.
CNN was told that McCain investigators spent considerable time looking into the so-called "Troopergate" affair - interviewing Palin's lawyer and quietly talking to others involved - and decided the facts were on her side.
One thing at least is clear to me, that wasn't when I was watching Palin from afar, and thinking that she seemed like a politician worth keeping an eye on, is that she and her family are a culture-war hand grenade like nothing we've seen in a long time.Yes, as I demonstrated in my entry, "Feminist Movement Attacks Sarah Palin Nomination."
Liberals like to pretend they are tolerant and accepting of those who are different but when it comes to anyone not ensconced in their progressive, elitist dogma they mock and attack their lifestyle to inspire hate. But because governor Palin is endearing, authentic–and with this latest revelation–easy to identify with, she invokes panic in the left. Why else would they assail a very popular, promising lady and her children?Well, Sarah Palin's is the personal embodiment the gendered left's greatest fears, so the campaign of innuendo and smears will continue (see here, for example).
For every piece of the portrait of Palin that the McCain campaign sketches, a far more complicated picture of the Alaska governor is drawn.From my perspective, Palin's speech tomorrow, and her expected agility and poise on the campaign trail, including her debate against Joe Biden in October, will be the most important factors determining the success of the McCain-Palin ticket.
The youthful mother of five whose placement on the ticket was meant to reinforce traditional values has now revealed that her unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant -- a piece of information that the family and the campaign said they had hoped to keep private.
The woman introduced to America as a reform-minded Washington outsider who opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" -- the symbol of McCain's hatred of wasteful spending -- originally supported its construction. The governor who in her introductory speech decried the practice of budgetary "earmarks" sought, as the state's chief executive and as mayor of Wasilla, hundreds of millions of dollars in such federal funding for local projects.
Moreover, Palin has now retained a lawyer to represent her in a controversy the McCain campaign said it had fully researched -- Palin's role in dismissing a state police official who had refused to fire a trooper who divorced Palin's sister.
On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin's background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn't know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator's decision-making process.
"I really hope McCain did his homework," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. "I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn't."
A former McCain advisor, Mike Murphy, said Monday that it remained an open question whether "the running mate in a good or bad way becomes a window into the skills of the nominee."
Most dangerous of all, McCain's team does not seem to know what new development, if any, might grab the public's attention.
One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.
The unease comes as Palin, 44, prepares for her next big public test: a prime-time, nationally televised speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.
So far — and it is hard to tell what the future may hold for Palin’s unexpected national candidacy — the travails of the Palin family probably seem awfully familiar to many average Americans. It is this averageness that makes her such a politically promising running mate for John McCain — and such a dangerous opponent for Democrats. Many voters will find it easy to identify with her family’s struggles — a significant advantage in an election where the voting calculus is so unusually and intensely personal.That said, McCain and Palin ought to be relieved if Bristol Palin's pregnancy announcement is the last major preemptive press release they need to make. There's already speculation that Sarah Palin is the new Thomas Eagleton, and nothing would harm the GOP's chances more than Palin's withdrawal as McCain's running mate.
Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden hardly come from blue-blood backgrounds; Biden, now famously, is an Irish-Catholic son of Scranton, Pa., and Obama was raised by a single mother. But the fact that Palin, even as a governor, remains grounded in a recognizable American lifestyle — warts and all — has not gone unnoticed among Republicans, as the first wave of opposition research has been unloaded on her.
While it's obvious why they made this statement to assure the public that Bristol was not coerced into keeping the baby (after all, she does have a parent who is a staunch opponent of the right to choose and is currently on the Republican presidential ticket), as my significant other pointed out, there's some serious hypocrisy at play here. I mean, John McCain and Sarah Palin don't believe women have a right to choose. It's absolutely absurd for the campaign to emphasize the fact that Bristol "made this decision," and then push for policies that take away that choice.What Freidman here is basically saying (by assumption, since the family's decision-making is a private matter) is that as parents the Palins should not in fact be able to counsel their daughter on what to do, that is, they should not as custodians have a say on the welfare of their grandchild. In other words, they have violated Bristol's rights. Note, of course, that the Supreme Court has upheld parental notification requirements for minors seeking abortion, so Friedman's criticism is an all-out attack on the sanctity of the family institution.
In reality, Bristol's actual "choice" was probably not whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry it to term, but whether raise the child herself or put it up for adoption. But the reason that the McCain campaign chose to emphasize Bristol's agency in this decision was to reassure the public that this pregnancy is not coercive. They know the public wants to feel secure in the knowledge that it was Bristol's choice to keep the pregnancy. And coming from the McCain campaign, which opposes a woman's right to choose, that statement is disgusting.
My head is spinning. My first reaction to the choice of Palin was that John McCain is one of those funny guys who things [sic] of the concept of a "woman" as a spoonful out of some imaginary mountain of the characteristic "womanhood", so that any woman is just as good as any other woman, and that he doesn't see any reason why feminists wouldn't vote for Palin. Even if Palin only supports abortion in the case when a woman's life is at risk. No rape exception ... But she's got a vagina, right? So those feminazis must like her.This is a strange passage, considering how empowered Sarah Palin is, domestically, politically, and socially. To call McCain a sexist in selecting the Alaska Governor defies reason, unless a women in office is only good for rubber-stamping the radical hard line on abortion on demand.
Palin is a rightwing-Christian anti-choice extremist who opposes abortion for any reason whasoever, except to save the life of the girl or woman. No exception even for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. No exception for a ten-year-old, a woman carrying a fetus with no chance of life, a woman on the edge of suicide - let alone the woman who is not ready to be a parent, who is escaping domestic violence, who is already stretched to the limit as a single mother. She wants to force over one million women and girls a year to give birth against their will and judgment. She wants to use the magnificent freedom the women's movement has won for her at tremendous cost and struggle - the movement that won her the right to run those marathons and run Alaska - to take away the freedom of every other woman in the country."Christian" and "extremist" in the same sentence is jolting, but all the rest of this leaves out something important: Why are "over one milliion women and girls" ending up in situations where they'd need to terminate a life? Isn't the freedom to choose a death warrant for the human product of sex without responsibility?
At some point, women have to stand up and say no to insulting selections that make a mockery of the rest of us who have not only had to pay our dues, but wait our turn. It took Hillary Clinton 35 years to prove her prowess. It's taken me decades, including honorable investigative work that is often ridiculed, plus years of working tirelessly to make a name for myself, to get where I am today. Women need to be able to stand up against and separate themselves from a political marketing plan based solely on packaging, as opposed to a worthy choice that honors the expertise of women of real stature. The choice of Sarah Palin is gender affirmative action and nothing more, which no independent woman should support or condone. It's nothing less than a slap in the face to all sisters wanting equality based on merit, not marketing.It all reeks of genuine nihilism (i.e., anti-progress nothingness devoted to the destruction of the traditional family).
Here's my take on her qualifications. Historically speaking, she has enough experience to be veep. We can talk about what happens if McCain drops dead on day one, but that sounds tendentious to me - like asking what President Obama would do should Vladimir Putin declare World War III on the day of Obama's inauguration. It sounds smart to people already set upon voting against Obama, but everybody else will probably just roll his or her eyes.Read the whole thing, here.
Does this mean her qualifications will be a non-issue? Not necessarily. She has fewer qualifications than most veeps, that's for sure. Her thin resume could hurt her if and only if she performs badly on television. This, and nothing else, is what matters. The people who could vote Republican this year will give her a chance. Jonathan Alter, Andrew Sullivan, and other pro-Obama commentators in the MSM are not going to sway these people, at least not directly. These analysts could frame the persuadables' reactions should they decide they don't like her. So, it's up to Palin.
For those who are skeptical that she can pull this off, remember - Obama did! While Obama might be special, he's certainly not singular. Lots of people can give good performances on television, even if they have had little practice. Furthermore, unlike Obama as of a year ago, Palin has already been through a real statewide election. Two, in fact - first against incumbent governor Frank Murkowski, then against former governor Tony Knowles. Obama managed to look so poised without such practice.
The key word for Palin, as it was (and is) for Obama, is poise. She appeared poised at her announcement, which was her most important day. If she appears poised during her nomination acceptance address, poised on the stump, and poised in the debate - her qualifications should be a non-issue, and she'll help McCain deliver his message.
Anyone find it amazingly coincidental that Daily Kos went after Palin’s own pregnancy right out of the chute on Friday, with no apparent evidence whatsoever, and now we find out that her daughter’s actually pregnant? I usually scoff at the idea of party researchers planting memes with bloggers, especially since the nutroots is so paranoid about that happening on the right, but that’s a simply remarkable stoke of good luck on their part, no?While interesting, Daily Kos in fact offered its "story ender" last night at 8:50pm PST, well before the news broke of Bristol's pregnancy. No, the truth is that Daily Kos and the nihilist left - now that the Barack Obama's gotten no polling bounce from Denver - are simply attacking the GOP ticket out of desperation and spite. The Kos people are at it again with a new entry attacking Bristol:
You can't make this s**t up. "Evangelical Christian" Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter is knocked up. No word on the father yet. That'll help Palin's daughter to break the glass ceiling: start out life dragging a screaming kid around. Should work out fine on those job interviews.Keep in mind that the Daily Kos netroots is considered the "mainstream" of the Democratic Party. This is a significant point, since these slurs reveal that it's not "post-partisanship" animating the crazed political vultures of the leftosphere.
Oh, but she's KEEPING it. Wonderful. What's the name going to be: Bareback?
Palin is quickly being revealed as a White trash Protestant in the vein of Brintney [sic] Spears and the drunk Bush clan. What's next? The father of Palin's daughter is the family Pastor?
The next two months are going to be a riot - I'm betting there's MUCH more on this kook Palin.
A woman enters the presidential race and suddenly the progressive mission is to shame and mortify Sarah Palin, her children, her husband, and every woman who has ever found herself in a similar situation. And then no one will ever vote for Sarah Palin again because she's a slut!?!?Note this comment too, from "Slim999" at Althouse, on the netroots attacks on McCain-Palin:
John Aravosis imagines that we are still living in the Victorian Era when women were so devastated by public shaming that they committed suicide. Way to go John Aravosis! And we thought you already held the record for alienating women voters with your vile misogynistic posts about Hillary Rodham Clinton. There's just something about ambitious women that brings out the inner misogynistic creep.
When the tallying is completed of the landslide of states that voted for Sarah Palin ... the Democrats need to take a good look at the bloggers who blew the election for them.I suggested this morning that the left's earlier attacks on Palin have precluded any credible criticism from the Democrats in light of this morning's announcement:
A sadder bunch of women haters and closet racists just couldn't be found.
Bristol Palin's pregnancy and pending marriage to the father look even more likely to endear McCain-Palin to average American household members who share similar everyday challenges in raising functional, healthy families.I felt a bit tentative in commenting on all of this, but Chris Cillizza's analysis of the political impact of Bristol's pregnancy dovetails with my own:
* Palin has a VERY strong following among social conservatives who are nearly certain to give her the benefit of the doubt in this situation. She is a known commodity in social conservative circles and is regarded as "one of them" - a fact that should lessen any criticism from the right.The Palins will most likely find sympathy among disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters, who cannot be assumed to be automatically healed from this year's primary wounds following the appeals in Denver a "unity ticket":
* Democrats must be VERY careful not to take a false step here. Some Republicans have already insisted that the Obama campaign is behind the rumor-mongering about Sarah, Bristol and Trig ... Any sense that Democrats are pushing this idea will almost certainly turn both Sarah and Bristol Palin into sympathetic figures - and that spells trouble for her detractors.
It was an awfully complicated week to be a Hillary supporter.The Democrats may have already been doomed, when earlier this year Obama "decided to exploit sexism and misogyny in his quest to defeat Hillary."
Her voters headed into the Democratic National Convention in Denver with anger, with threats to reprise 1968. Then came the swelling of pride, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave what many considered the speech of her life. But, oh, the regret: if only she had campaigned with that kind of oratory!
By the time Mrs. Clinton graciously called for the convention to nominate Senator Barack Obama by acclamation, some of her supporters were working their way toward acceptance, wiping tears but nodding as she declared that the party had to unite behind him. Yet how could they not feel at least envy, watching the Obamas and the Bidens stroll out in triumph, and thinking that their candidate could have been in either role, at the top or bottom of that ticket. Not even vetted for V.P.!!
Then, of course, came Friday: “It turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet!” That was Sarah Palin, the Republican governor of Alaska, as Senator John McCain introduced her to the country as his vice-presidential nominee. “We can shatter that glass ceiling!” she proclaimed.
What’s a woman to do? Or at least, the woman who so badly wanted to see a woman in the White House?
Democrats, who make up the party that has long claimed the bigger pool of up-and-coming women, were quick to dismiss Ms. Palin as not experienced enough to be a heartbeat from the presidency. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters will never back her, they insisted, because she is against abortion rights.
Not. So. Fast.
That underestimated, or at least underappreciated, the raw feelings of many Clinton supporters, and particularly the women among them, despite the almost flawless display of harmony in Denver.
At the very least, Ms. Palin’s selection unleashes gender as a live issue again, just when Democrats thought they had it under control.
The 17-year-old daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, is five months pregnant, Senator McCain’s campaign advisers announced today.It's still early, but some initial reaction on the left is cautious. Here's Steve Benen, for example:
The daughter, Bristol, plans to marry the father, the campaign said.
In a statement, Mrs. Palin said: “Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support.”
The announcement was intended to counter rumors by liberal bloggers that Mrs. Palin had claimed to have given birth to her fifth child in April when, according to the rumors, the child was her daughter’s.
Groups that oppose abortion rights had been thrilled with Mr. McCain’s selection of Mrs. Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his running mate, partly because of her opposition to abortion. It is not clear how social conservatives will respond to the latest news.
The campaign intends to cast this as the kind of situation that ordinary American families face.
The McCain campaign says it was aware of her daughter’s pregnancy before it named her as the running mate on Friday.
Now, there are different schools of thought on this, but I'm very much inclined to think a politician's kids are entirely off-limits for public scrutiny. Bristol Palin's pregnancy has no political relevance whatsoever.What's interesting is that had the leftist conspiracy mongers not jumped to attack Governor Palin with the most insane rumors imaginable, the Democrats might have been able to make a case of conservative inconsistency in the promotion of family values.
If these candidates, McCain-Palin, previously did not have all of my respect, they do now. Palin's straightforward statement effectively quashes any further discussion on the topic. Further, McCain apparently stated he knew of Bristol's pregnancy, and chose Palin as his running mate anyway. My hat's off to both of them. Choosing to keep her child is the most personal decision a young woman can make, and now that she's in the spotlight, will require phenomenal courage.Also, unprincipled left-wing allegations of McCain's dishonesty on prior knowledge of the pregnancy are already flying, although even some of the most ruthless neocon-bashers are hestitant the smear the Palins, so caution may indeed to the norm with this, even on the left.
Of course there will be those who "trash" her and "family values." To those I would say: is not compassion a "family value?"
By the way, I'm a 56-year-old former Dem, female, who aborted a child decades ago. That child still haunts my heart, and will until the day I die. Kudos to Bristol, Palin, and McCain.
By putting the relatively unknown governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, on his presidential ticket, John McCain has demonstrated that rarest of all political qualities: willingness to take a real risk on a serious new venture with great potential. It’s a sign of confidence, not desperation.Note too, that GOP party officials are also ecstatic about McCain's candidicacy, with nearly 90 percent of delegates to the Republican National Convention saying they're "enthusiastic" about the ticket.
If the response from the conservative base is any indication, McCain has hit a home run with the Palin selection. A sullen GOP, set to vote reluctantly, if at all, for the “maverick” (some say unprincipled) senator from Arizona, has suddenly become electrified. In the first 36 hours after McCain announced his pick, $7 million in new contributions poured in online. This isn’t because Palin is making history as the first woman on a GOP ticket. It’s because of the type of woman and politician that she is. She’s a normal person, a mother and wife, who entered politics in 1992 by running for city council in Wasilla, Alaska to oppose tax hikes. She became mayor and swept a bunch of cronies out of the bureaucracy. She ran for, and lost, a race for lieutenant governor. She served on the state’s Oil and Gas Commission, where she went after the corrupt state GOP chairman, who had taken money from oil companies. In 2006, she ran for governor and won, after first beating the Republican incumbent for the nomination.
Throughout, she hewed to a few clear principles. She championed fiscal responsibility, cutting pork in the form of capital projects as well as larger symbols of waste, such as the infamous “bridge to nowhere” sponsored by Republican senator Ted Stevens. In a state that has been awash in oil money and political corruption, she also demanded real ethical standards and sent people who didn’t meet them to jail, never hesitating to challenge Republicans who were corrupt or ineffective. And she was pro-development, supporting drilling in ANWR; for that matter, she has dealt extensively with the tricky energy issues that have become central to this year’s election, and she understands them better than anyone else on either ticket.
In summary, Palin worked her way up the political ladder, rising on talent (she’s likable and a good speaker) and incremental achievement.
McCain's selection of Palin is even being described as inherently sexist, because, well, he's "an inveterate sexist, and it's written all over the way he talks about women, and the way he votes on issues that affect them."Can it be that the National Organization for Women, the oldest, largest women's interest group in the United States is opposing a woman for the vice presidency of the United States?
The simple answer is: Yes, because NOW and other feminist organizations hew to a very strict leftist orthodoxy that places politics over gender. The NOW website, for example, lists prominently its "signature" issues--and they read like a laundry list of social activism: "Abortion and Reproductive Rights", "Racism", "Affirmative Action", "Disability Rights," "Marriage Equality" and many others. These issues provide the litmus test through which women are evaluated, with the most important being abortion rights--which is sort of the "First Amendment" of the women's movement. Not all women, it turns out, are created equal: if you don't believe in a woman's right to choose an abortion, you might as well be a man.
When Kim Gandy, NOW's Political Action chair, made her statement in support of Hillary Clinton during the primaries, for example, she noted how important it was for NOW to help women crack glass ceilings:
"Today, the first woman speaker presides over the U.S. House of Representatives, and Harvard University has its first woman president. Firsts are important, because they open doors for those who follow--but our real goal is to have every first followed by seconds and thirds and fourths, until having women in leadership is so common that it isn't even remarkable any longer."
Not for all women, however: Electing Sarah Palin as the first vice president in the nation's history doesn't count--because she doesn't march in lock-step to the way in which feminists have defined women's rights.
Such a strict definition of what is considered "acceptable" in the women's movement goes beyond NOW and other feminist organizations, and has become the de facto standard by which feminists view the world. The day Palin's selection was announced, for example, Sarah Seltzer, who writes at the liberal HuffingtonPost.com, wrote in an article entitled "A Feminist Appalled By Palin":
A lot of feminists out there are appalled by the cynicism and condescension inherent in this choice. It's as though the McCain camp believes our irrational she-hormones will lead us, like sheep, to pull the lever for any candidate who looks like us--even if she has a strong record, as Palin does, of standing against women's interests.This seems a pretty typical reaction by feminists to the Palin choice. It's mostly anger mixed with frustration: That the Republicans would have the gall to steal Hillary's thunder by choosing a woman, but in doing so have chosen someone who (though female) is not their kind of woman--because she stands against their razor thin view of what is acceptable for women to believe in.
One area of Sarah Palin's background that may help her is Alaska's unique role in our national security and homeland defense. Several folks have have mentioned this but Tom W. was specific and his info jibes with the record.This really is too much!Alaska is the first line of defense in our missile interceptor defense system. The 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard is the unit that protects the entire nation from ballistic missile attacks. It’s on permanent active duty, unlike other Guard units.
As governor of Alaska, Palin is briefed on highly classified military issues, homeland security, and counterterrorism. Her exposure to classified material may rival even Biden's.
She's also the commander in chief of the Alaska State Defense Force (ASDF), a federally recognized militia incorporated into Homeland Security's counterterrorism plans.
Palin is privy to military and intelligence secrets that are vital to the entire country's defense. Given Alaska's proximity to Russia, she may have security clearances we don't even know about.
According to the Washington Post, she first met with McCain in February, but nobody ever found out. This is a woman used to keeping secrets.
She can be entrusted with our national security, because she already is.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday night shows the Obama-Biden ticket leading the McCain-Palin ticket by one point, 49 percent to 48 percent, a statistical dead heat.I predicted so much in my earlier entry, "Obama Will Get No Post-Denver Polling Bounce," which was based the expectation of a continuing Obama pre-convention polling collapse, as well as the likely impact of the McCain campaign's aggressive early veep announcement rollout (which has had a more phenomenal impact than anyone could have imagined).
The survey was conducted Friday through Sunday, after both the conclusion of the Democratic convention and McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.
A previous CNN poll, taken just one week earlier, suggested the race between Sens. McCain, R-Arizona, and Obama, D-Illinois, was tied at 47 percent each.
“The convention — and particularly Obama's speech — seems to be well-received. And the selection of Sarah Palin as the GOP running mate, also seems to be well-received. So why is the race still a virtual tie? Probably because the two events created equal and opposite bounces — assuming that either one created a bounce at all,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
