For The Hard Times Ahead—Sarah Palin
I got it wrong in my last posting. At least, I got it partly wrong. I wrote then that Sarah Palin was unqualified to be Vice-President because she was unqualified to be President if the need arose. And that her selection on a McCain ticket was thus a grievous mistake.
I still agree with the first part of that evaluation. She’s certainly not qualified. But as for the grievous mistake part, well, I missed that one by a mile.
Let’s be honest. Whoever wins in November isn’t going to shape U.S. policies to any great extent. Decisions made in past years (and still being made by Bush & Company) will determine what can and can’t be done. Most really major decisions will be made by other governments and the bond market. Whoever becomes President is going to be reacting to these demands, not initiating big new programs of his own.
Enter Sarah Palin. This woman brings an entirely new element to the national scene. Something missing since a sexually-dysfunctional Bill Clinton got it on with a trailer-park-quality partner named Monica in an alcove of the Oval Office. Palin would bring dysfunctionality back to the national scene in a major way, and giving it a family dimension.
We need someone in the “Big Four” whose sister requires backroom clout to get the right divorce settlement. We need someone whose high-school-aged daughter is having a kid out of wedlock. We’ve learned about these things just days after the announcement of her getting on the Republican ticket. Imagine what will come out when the National Enquirer gets on the case!
We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll argue and furiously point fingers as this woman enters our lives, almost certainly by way of some new personal upheaval. Dick Cheney gave us the imperial vice-presidency. Which was really kind of high falutin’ Beltway stuff when you think about it. Palin would bring to her next job a focus we can all easily understand and relate to: A Dr. Phil and Dr. Dan vice-presidency that will help us weather the hard times ahead.
Why? For the simple reason that it will be entertaining. Our government is going to be hard pressed to do the bread thing in years to come. The least we still have a right to expect is some circus.
Great choice, John McCain. You saw the need and filled the gap. Now, if you happen to win in November, just stay healthy. Then we can all enjoy the Palin follies from a safe distance.
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20 Responses to “For The Hard Times Ahead—Sarah Palin”
Ahem! *clears throat*
Due to the preponderance of Palin threads it can be clearly ascertained by ANYONE reading this website that dems are concerned with her nomination…if not overtly, then secretly paranoid about loss of votes thereto.
Therefore, it would behoove the dems to roll the bowling ball in such a manner as to take out these two pins with one shot. Which issue do both McCain and Palin hold high that a vast majority of americans object to?
Answer: BigOil's ownership of America outright. When this becomes the issue and not tabloid personality issues, then the bowling ball becomes much larger and the pins much more tightly compressed together for a solid hit.
Now I noticed Obama isn't too good at bowling. So maybe he'd better hit the lanes and get some practice…
The strike failed by not picking Hillary.. It's now the time to pick up a spare or lose the game.
Then there's the issue of some truly pernicious small-time political back-biting and promise-breaking: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily…
(Of course, it's not on the same effrontery scale of challenging your opponents' signature lists.)
All this Dynasty meets Jerry Springer in the White House, I must admit is amusing. (Be honest, how many people have checked out “Beyond the Palindrome” the mock blog.) However, another “what if” just came to mind.
What if there is a divorce and “nasty custody dispute” between Bristol and Levi? We know that Governor Palin has no issue using government forces to get back at people who cross her family. Are we OK with the federal government getting involved in a Bristol/Levi divorce? And I am sorry, I really did want to leave this alone because Bristol should have her privacy. But Governor Palin's actions in troopergate do make this “what if” a possibility.
[...] For The Hard Times Ahead—Sarah Palin [...]
It's interesting that Barack Obama is publicly making the argument that he has more political experience than Sarah Palin. Why does the top of the Dem ticket feel the need to run against the bottom of the GOP ticket? It diminishes him. And by stressing experience as a metric, isn't Obama setting himself up for the inevitable losing battle of his time in office versus John McCain's? Anyway wasn't this election all about “change?” Didn't Hillary lose the nomination by stressing experience? They must really feel threatened by Ms. Palin.
–James S. Robbins, at NRO
Leonidas, Or maybe he was responding to a question comparing their respective experience.
Incidentally, for another interesting perspective on top/bottom of ticket and experience, see http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/essentia….
Leonidas: Why does the top of the Dem ticket feel the need to run against the bottom of the GOP ticket?
I may be wrong, but except for their ill-advised initial knee-jerk reaction (which Obama disavowed) I don't get the impression that the “top of the Dem ticket” is paying much attention to Palin. Rather, it's the media and the blogs — both left and right, as far as I can tell — which are keying on her.
Sarah Palin has more executive experience, that which counts most, than any of the other three candidates. Sarah Palin, the #2 (VP) choice, has such experience, while Obama, the #1 (Pres) choice, has none. Palin (R #2) is criticized for having no foreign policy experience; Obama (D #1) has none, and Obama's strength or lack thereof in this matter has been a serious issue (addressed by Biden as VP); it is not a serious issue with Palin. It's interesting how Obama, the candidate of Change whose inexperience in Washington, is now considered to have “experience,” namely time spent in Washington (little of it, in fact, the same thing that Obama fans were bragging about earlier — they as well as their man are masters of stance reversal).
Palin is being attacked (both she directly, and she indirectly in place of her daughter)in sexist ways by the Left (whose Obama fans attacked Hillary Clinton in similar ways) because while she is a successful woman, she doesn't meet the PC specifications for performance and is not on the Dem Party reservation but has strayed far from it (which makes her far “worse” than Clinton).
Barack Obama is the child of an unwed mother at the time. He should be quiet when it comes to Palin's daughter. (And aren't you Obama fans glad Obama wasn't aborted? BAM … thud) It really is irrelevent to Palin as VP, a choice that has rejeuvenated the McCain campaign and the GOP this year. It's a shame that this issue had to be exposed because of scumbag, vicious behavior on leftist blogs. The hypocrisy with the liberal media (Dems' families being off limits in the past) only adds to the negativity. It's the Dem-voting community that is associated with unwed pregnancies and use of the welfare system; at least with this girl and the other examples you see with churches providing assistance to unwed and single moms, it's private sector, not instant welfare, and even may involve a (risky) marriage.
Yes, in a vacuum it's egg on McCain's face. Marriage at 17 is so unconventional these days (as well as risky and failure-prone) except in some communities, and will we be hearing that R stands ever more for “redneck”?
It should be fun to watch, definitely!
DLS — While I'll agree with you that some are definitely attacking Palin in sexist ways, I don't think the fact that Obama wasn't aborted has anything to do with this. Do you really think the left thinks that Palin's daughter should have an abortion? Or that Palin herself should have had one with her most recent child? Of course that was the mother's choice in each case. The big problem is that Palin keeps talking about how happy she is to have made that CHOICE, and that her daughter made the CHOICE to continue the pregnancy. This is coming from a woman who doesn't believe that women should have a choice, and who likely (at least according to her policies) didn't ever mention to her daughter that she could use condoms to protect herself during sex.
roro80,
Reminds me of Henry Ford talking about the Model T: “You can have it any color you like, as long as it's black.”
Or like an election in Saddam's Iraq.
Seems that lots of her “experience” really isn't ..
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/31/ap/po…
My point about Obama and abortion is self-explanatory. And it strikes the most extreme people where they deserve it, the absolutionists on the pro-abortion side (who want no restrictions and want government provision of it; they are more extreme than the always-illegal extremists.) Also, the correct word and issue here is abortion and the correct terms to use are “pro-abortion” and “anti-abortion” rather than the evasive, cowardly word “choice.” Red or blue “team” this year? Black or brown shoes today? McDonald's or Burger King for lunch today? We have and make plenty of choices every day. I always reserve the right to correct misuse of language in cases like this.
Insofar as sex education is concerned, how do you know what Palin told or didn't tell her daughter, and don't neglect to remember that it is correctly the role of parents to provide such education (real, not activist education), not “society.”
I can add, when reviewing the hypocrisy of the Left, the laudatory treatment given to people such as Bill Clinton. It stands to reason that were Palin a Democrat, Levi Johnston (the Daddy in this current news story) would be seen by Democratic voters, not limited to teens, as the hottest, sexiest new hunk and a new celebrity.
DLS-
Bill Clinton is loved by Democrats and many others worldwide IN SPITE OF MONICAGATE—- not because of it. That's part of him but we love his intelligence, vision, charisma, speech-making ability, grasp of the minutia of policy details, competence, compassion for the less fortunate, promotion of the greater good, etc. Most Democrats were furious at him for his moral lapses in the WH, especially when they helped to defeat Al Gore in 2000.
We would view a pregnant teen and her boyfriend as a political liability just as Republicans (who are trying to make the best out of this fiasco) would.
DLS,
Republicans have this habit of implying that all Democratic men are gay. Being a womanizer is a way to nullify that smear.
Kritt,
DLS seems to have forgotten the recent excommunication of John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer.
Sorry, DLS, but no — lots of people have to make harder choices than where to go to lunch; that doesn't mean we cease calling them choices. Nobody who considers themselves pro-choice is actually pro-abortion (at least nobody I know). It's pro-women making their own decisions. Pro-give everyone all the necessary accurate information about their health options. Pro-getting the government out of my uterus. I therefore reserve the right to correct YOUR misuse of language.
I would agree that parents should talk with their kids about sex and birth control. And math, science, and history too. However, some kids don't have the advantage of having two parents in the household, or parents who know everything that we as a society think it would be good for them to know. That's why we decided a long time ago as a country to provide public education, for the common good of everyone, and because we want an educated society. So, when kids are in kindergarden, we teach them their colors and how to brush their teeth. When they hit puberty, sex ed is in the curriculum — again, because it's something educated people know. Why, then, would people like Palin be pushing for a system where you can't say the word “condom” during a discussion about how the human reproductive system works? I don't know what she taught her daughter about sex, but I know what policies she advocates.
The Libertarian case for Palin
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/…
<snip>
Palin, for example, vetoed 300 pork projects in Alaska in her first year in office.
———–
I call that walking the walk better that Obama's talking the talk.
I've never said all choices are superficial or very easy, but have just corrected the misuse by some of the English language, often with the objective of being evasive or of being cowardly about the stances they hold. (Denials of that don't make anybody look good, nor do making false charges in retaliation, so don't bother.)
As to avoiding the appearance of being gay, well, Chris, the father of Palin's daughter's child (Palin's future granddaughter) is reportedly now going to attend the _GOP_ convention with the Palin family. I'm not sure how much this action is genuine versus its being a “family values” conservative political prop.
McCain and Palin would draw well in November were they to use the veto pen as a symbol of what they promise.
No, talking about shoes and lunch choices sure didn't seem like you were saying choices are easy or superficial. It's not a misuse of the English language just because you don't understand what pro-choice people actually fight for. (Hint: it's not “everyone get an abortion today! whoopee! bloody fetuses!”)