Her full name is Sarah Lousie Palin…..or, to put it in Suess speak, she shall forever be known as:
Sally Lou…..Who?????

She’s serving the same purpose that Dick Cheney served in 2000

I’m not seeing the Darth Vader in Palin.

I don’t see the parallel on Cheney either.  Cheney was reassuring to many because GWB was so clueless on foreign policy and many, even his supporters, agreed GWB wasn’t very smart.  Cheney was chief of staff under Ford, Defense Secretary under George the First, so people figured he was smart and experienced.  Many mistakenly thought he was moderate, with his service under the relatively moderate Repub presidents. 

Do you suppose Palin used butt glue when she was a beauty pageant contestant?  http://www.queenschoice.com/pageant_butt_glue___firm_grip

Why oh why is the media eating this up instead of grilling her?

Just spoke with a conservative business associate (the kind of conservative who can legitimately make taxes his top issue) about Palin. His comments:

1. People vote for the President, not for the VP
2. She has less experience than Obama, who has less than Biden, who has less than Cheney—a wash
3. She has some pretty “scary” Xtian fundie views.

So there’s one fiscal conservative who’s underwhelmed.

I have to agree with the others regarding the comparison with Cheney—he basically chose himself for the position, knowing he’d be running the show as regent to the idiot prince. Neither Biden nor Palin will have near the level of power he did as VP.

Why oh why is the media eating this up instead of grilling her?

As I noted in an earlier thread, she’s a bloody gift to the MSM. Here they thought their lazy-minded “black guy vs white woman” story had come to an end Wednesday night, only to get a last-minute extension.

They’re drooling over McCain’s choice of VP like they did over his BBQ sauce.

I think this is more like Spiro Agnew, personally. Why hasn’t anyone brought that comparison up?

The base W had to appease is a different base than the base McCain has to appease.  Bush had to appease the business/moderate wing of the Republican party; McCain has to appease the lunatic fringe.  Cheney appeased the business/moderate wing because of his pro-business, seemingly-moderate bona fides.  Palin appeases the lunatic fringe wing because of her pro-birth bona fides.  It’s also a desperately cynical move to try to draw voters from not one but two groups: Women and young voters.  I think that’s the reason for Palin as opposed to one of the more established Repub choices.

But, to be fair, John McCain never got to pick a vice-POW.  Especially not a woman.

Yeah. It’s too bad for him Tammy Duckworth is a Democrat. She’d have been his perfect pick otherwise….

It’s also a desperately cynical move to try to draw voters from not one but two groups: Women and young voters.

Exactly. A completely cynical and desperate PR choice, probably by the RNC rather than McCain. Very different from Cheney, though, who headed up the 2000 VP search committee before choosing himself—he was never looking to make friends with any of the public, unless they happened to be major stockholders in defense or oil-services corporations.

I knew Cheney was a major asshole as soon as I heard he chose *himself*.

Tweety doesn’t seem to be enthused, at least. Not sure if that’s a good or bad sign.

soooo the McCain link keeps giving me the “do not want!” and claiming the link doesn’t exist…

Look, McCain loves women!  As long as he can use them for political gain.

Bring on the “trollops” I say!

soooo the McCain link keeps giving me the “do not want!” and claiming the link doesn’t exist…

So you’re saying the link to McCain’s Womens’ Issues platform is ending up with a blank page? Is that what you’re saying is happening?

I’ll wait.

( )

@dweeze - agree with all your points, except I don’t think Palin adds anything to appeal to young voters who are not already rightwingnuts. 
Her ultraconservative stands on social issues will bring the AmTalibangelicals back in line and the GOP is hoping to peel off a few Independent women voters who will go for a woman who’s succeeded in a man’s game.

That wink really belongs to Jesse, since it was his post, but it was too good to pass up.

oh…shit Auguste…I didn’t even see that.

...leave me alone…it’s Friday :(

They need to put Clinton up against her as publicly and frequently and loudly as possible. Don’t make this black guy v. white woman, make it old experienced woman against young evangelical woman. I think she’ll look flaky next to Clinton (I don’t think Palin is flaky, but I think she needs a few more years before she’s really to be VP) and I think it’ll keep every focusing on policy instead of gender if it’s two women being contrasted.

<blockquote>I don’t think Palin adds anything to appeal to young voters who are not already rightwingnuts.<blockquote>

The Republicans are trying to appeal to younger low-info undecideds as well, and Palin definitely makes the ticket slightly more appealing to them than if it was McCain and a pasty Boomer with a penis. They’ll probably fool some of those undecideds with this move, but not nearly enough.

They need to put Clinton up against her as publicly and frequently and loudly as possible.

If Hillary Clinton is willing to focus on that, it’s a great idea, Olive.

We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here….”

So confused…is she running for VP of the US, or just Alaska?  Is she aware that most of her new constituents will be from the other 49—and that pretty much most of those 49 have dramatically more people than her state does?

What am I saying?  She’s a creationist.  She’s unaware of anything that hasn’t been spoonfed her.

Really, is

Do you suppose Palin used butt glue when she was a beauty pageant contestant?

necessary?

(Answer: No. Criticize her for being a bad Governor with terrible policy positions. Don’t criticize her for being a beauty pageant contestant.)

Aww, “You win second place in a beauty contest!” is an actual Monopoly chance card.  Don’t take that from us.

And Pat Buchanan keeps pushing it as a positive, anyway.

NonWonderDog: It’s a Community Chest card, actually.  I oughta know, I pull it EVERY DAMN TIME.

Sarah Palin: Stunt Casting

http://www.dailykos.com/user/judybrowni/diary

I think this is more like Spiro Agnew, personally. Why hasn’t anyone brought that comparison up?

This comparison would require folks to remember something that happened more than two news cycles ago. Not gonna happen.

Also, however many interesting similarities one can draw between Palin and Agnew (i.e. little known, fairly new governor of a small—or at least smallish in Agnew’s case—state), the politics of their selection seem rather different in most ways.

Nixon’s choice in 1968 was framed by a need to please a series of constituencies within the GOP that were potentially hostile to each other.  The movement conservatives (chief among them the newly important Southern Republicans, led by Strom Thurmond), enough of whom had been talked out of getting behind a last-minute Reagan run for the presidential nomination, had to be placated.  And the Establishment Rockefeller wing had to be kept in line.  Most moderates who were under consideration for the VP slot, like Oregon’s Mark Hatfield, were nixed by the Southerners.  Agnew, who was generally seen as a moderate, had become a loudly reactionary on racial issues. So he ended up being acceptable to everyone in the party.

There is one potential similarity here (depending on who made the Palin call): Agnew was very much Nixon’s personal choice.  Before Tricky Dick began suggesting his name, none of the various groups he and his campaign were negotiating with had even considered the possibility of putting Agnew on the ticket. 

It’s quite possible that McCain personally insisted on Palin in this way. But in other ways, the choice is very different. By the summer of 1968, especially after the Democrats difficult Chicago convention, Nixon believed (correctly, it turns out) that the campaign lined up very well for him. The main issue in the VP selection was uniting his party (no small trick after the disaster of ‘64).

The Palin choice, on the other hand, smells of desperation.  It is, as many have said, a Hail Mary pass.

Choosing Palin is a cynically calculated suck-up to certain corners of the allegedly feminist, allegedly progressive blogosphere who labor under the delusion that McCain will do anything more than patronize them and toss them a scrap of red meat when it is convenient for him to do so.  They ignore that they are going to take it in the shorts based on McCain and Palin’s shared wingnut agenda, but still they have achieved some perverse frisson over the fact that at least someone chose a woman as their VP pick and that by, doing so, have set in motion the alleged “karmic payback” they have been hoping would befall Obama for having the temerity and gall to win the nomination

If you’ve see the blog i’m to which i’m alluding, you know some folks ain’t coming back down out of the trees for a good while to come, if ever.

“This is John McCain’s platform on women’s issues.”

I got an error when I tried the link, and when I went to the homepage and pulled down his list of issues, women’s issues was no longer there. Since he’s got a woman running with him now, obviously women’s issues are no longer something to worry about. Yay!

except I don’t think Palin adds anything to appeal to young voters who are not already rightwingnuts. 

I agree, she doesn’t. She doesn’t really add anything to appeal to women who are not already rightwingnuts.  But it fits into the whole Rovian calculation that people are idiots who are more interested in flash than substance. And it’s clear from the pick that they’ve decided on the equally-Rovian idea of securing the base and then trying to pull off enough undecideds to give them the barest level of victory.  They don’t need to grab a lot of young voters or female voters - they just need to grab enough that those voters, coupled with the base, will put them over the top. The problem for them with that approach, however, is that there are enough breaks in other areas of the base that they need more than just a few undecideds - they need a whole lot of them.

I had a sinking feeling about this choice for about five minutes because it seemed to take the wind out of the “historic firsts” election theme (first woman / first black guy) that played well for Obama.  I feared this could turn into “You Democrats are such rank hypocrites to call us racists and sexists!  Clearly America can see that we’re really the non-racist/non-sexist folks here.”  And then I started laughing when I realized that Obama had never made the primary theme of his campaign the fact that he’s black.  As his acceptance speech showed so clearly, his campaign is about hope and change triumphing over Machiavellian maneuvers.

The election up to now has been Obama’s relentless on-message theme of “hope-and-change versus divide-and-conquer”.  He’s already defeated one campaign that was run like a GOP campaign and he has been consistently addressing the conservative movement lying behind similar tactics.  McCain’s response to everything has generally been “can you trust this guy?” for whatever reason—in other words trying to keep his response pinned to Obama’s personal characteristics rather than to Obama’s actual words, using a variety of dog whistles to soothe various GOP factions.  Until now, McCain’s campaign has been able to pretend to be oblivious to all those dog whistles.  But this VP choice absolutely eliminates the ability to further use identity politics to divide the electorate.  To make Palin not an obviously sexist choice (sexist because it would assum that all women politicians are interchangeable) the campaign must focus on the issues she brings in and not her body.  That takes the racist/sexist fog off the playing field and gives Obama’s campaign the chance to go after the heart of the conservative movement itself.

The best part is, Obama doesn’t have to change anything about his message!  He can continue to hold the ground he staked in the acceptance speech and be 100% effective on real issues.  But McCain can’t go after Obama’s characteristics without indicting his own VP choice.  No more smoke and mirrors and dog whistles designed to hide the real issues, now we can go straight for movement conservatisim’s fucking jugular!

The longer this pick is sitting out there, the worse and worse it looks.

Crapture, I read the blog you allude to on a regular basis out of sheer disbelief. I’m amazed at how much energy goes into it, and the level of hatred is beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a political blog.

I still think that if McCain wanted to try something So Crazy It Just Might Work with this pick, he could have gone with Bobby Jindal, who’s at least as wingnutty on cultural issues as Palin, and actually _does_ have some experience to go along with his youth.  It wouldn’t peel off Democratic women, but this won’t either.

I’m committing the sin of posting without reading the copious comments that have come before me, so someone’s probably said this already, and better than I (at least, that’s the way it usually works around here):

I think this is proof positive that the repugs are going to run a clean campaign (well, mostly clean) and expect to lose. Why? Because I can’t see the RNC willingly having someone they clearly feel (based on their policies) ought to be barefoot and in the kitchen with a real shot at becoming the POTUS. (”Real shot” because of McCain’s age and overall health.) Unless, perhaps, they’re hoping she WILL become POTUS because they figure she’s just an empty-headed female and will let the big strong manly men around her actually set all the policy and run things. Hell, given how Darth Cheney declared the office of VP above any laws or regulation, I can’t see them risking a “mere” woman getting her hands on *that* much power.

Hah.  You so missed his “women’s issues” page:

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/95b18512-d5b6-456e-90a2-12028d71df58.htm

I don’t agree with the “women and young voters” demographic…

Women, sure, but with the caveat “low-information generally indifferent to reproductive rights” women.

Young people are pretty much firmly entrenched already… I don’t know too many centrist young people.  They’re either gung-ho progressives (most of them) or gung-ho conservatives (a tiny chunk).

Rapper Ludacris:

” Better yet put me in office, make me your vice president, Hillary hated on you, so that bitch is irrelevant…Paint the White House black and I’m sure that’s got ‘em terrified, McCain don’t belong in any chair unless he’s paralyzed…..Yeah I said it cause Bush is mentally handicapped, ball up all of his speeches and just throw ‘em like candy wrap.”

Obama on Ludacris(in Rolling Stone mag.): 

Ludacris as one of several “great talents and great businessmen”,  “the genius of the art form.”

JCfromNC, my dad’s theory is that they’ve decided that this year will probably be a loss, and so, John McCain is being sold out again. This woman’s unknown career can afford to take the hit of a losing ticket. If they lose, they can take the money they’ve pilfered so far and run, if you will, to a country like Uruguay or whatever it was where they’ve bought houses, and the others can have the luxury of sitting back and criticizing the Obama/Biden presidency while feeling like victims. And then on the other hand, winning is winning, and she won’t present an obstacle for them; either as VP or P, she’d be a puppet, more or less. So in a way, it’s win-win. If you’re Rove.

The main issue in the VP selection was uniting his party (no small trick after the disaster of ‘64).

The Palin choice, on the other hand, smells of desperation.  It is, as many have said, a Hail Mary pass.

Um, I’m not sure why people think that Palin was chosen to draw women over to the McCain ticket.  She’s there for Turnout - Fundie turnout and Dittohead turnout.  McCain has a real worry that the Republicans won’t turn out for him - and that’s a factional thing, as much as Nixon’s problems in ‘68.

Where the Nixon/McCain comparison fails is that Nixon just had to get his base in line because the general population in ‘68 was ready to throw out the Dems and try something new.  Today McCain not only has to get his warring factions to line up behind him but he ALSO is running into a headwind because the general attitude today is to throw out the Republicans and try something new.

So this IS a desperation move, but it’s a desperation move to place a stealth fundie wingnut on the ticket that will unite the base while allowing him to retain the illusion of not being more of the same (i.e. mavericky).  In that part of the reason Palin is there is to shore up support with the base, the comparison to Agnew is apt.  (Of course they’re not exactly the same - ‘08 it not ‘68.)

Eric, not sure if you’re trolling or what, but..

That was one scary page.  I almost choked on my coffee when I linked over.  And guess what?  The obligatory mention of his military service.  Gah.

By the way, in case you were being serious, those are not what I call women’s issues.  Those are scare quote issues used to motivate the whacked-out people they call their base.

Shorter BobK:

AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhh! Black people are scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary!

I work with a PUMA and she feels insulted by the obvious pander. In her words, “I think he just cost himself the election.”