Some things on Sarah Palin

I read a pun today that instructed me on how to pronounce McCain's running mates name... her name is Sarah Palin (Pail-in or Pale-in) as in Sarah pale-in comparison to Joe Biden. I really thought that McCain would pick Tom Pawlenty from Minnesota, in order to appease his right-wing Rovian masters. From the looks of things, he actually wanted either Joe Liebermann from Connecticut or Tom Ridge from Pennsylvania, but they were both too centrist (except on foreign policy where they, especially Liebermann are both as hawkish as they come). So instead, he ends up picking Sarah Palin, the first term governor from Alaska who two years ago was the part-time mayor of a town whose population could fit comfortably in the office building where I work, a town which is basically two medium sized high schools. Even her governorship is of a state whose population is 1/3 the size of Brooklyn, four state representatives from New York would have more constituents than she. Not that having a small constituency is a deal breaker, I mean Joe Biden is from Delaware. The difference is that he has more than enough experience to make up for it- you cannot make up for such a small constituency from being governor of a small state for 20 months and being part-time mayor for 6 years.

Not that Palin does not have any bonafides, she did help to clean up Alaska's notoriously corrupt Republican party, where seemingly ever one, most notably Ted Stevens, is under indictment. She's a wildly popular governor with approval ratings hovering between 80-90% (edit, it's now down to 67% from a high of 90%), and although I'm pretty sure governing a section of New York is harder than governing the entire state of Alaska, Alaska does have big resource businesses which are very technical and require certain expertise. At the very least, she hopefully brings some kind of knowledge on oil (her husband works for BP). She's young, she's pretty, she's intelligent. Then again, her best bonafides are that she's a dyed in the wool social conservative, she's anti-abortion (I hate the phrase pro-life, it's the way Repubs control the conversation), against gay marriage (although Obama is a states rightist on the issue), for teaching creationism in schools. She also has a very interesting story- married to a part Inuit, 5 children, one in Iraq, one with Down Syndrome (although I'll talk about that in a second), state champion basketball player, hunter, snowmobile rider, PTA/hockey mom, etc. Overall, she plays very well with the Bible-thumpers, a constituency that is still not completely fond of McCain and which would not have stood for pro-choice Joe Liebermann. Personally I think they would have come around anyway, but I guess this just solidifies the base- a decent defensive move if that's all it was supposed to accomplish.

But I think it's quite obvious that this was supposed to be an offensive move- Palin is supposed to capture for McCain a significant fraction of the so-called "PUMAS", who are pissed that Hillary Clinton did not get the nomination and so will not vote for Obama. Now that another person who is their "gynecological twin" as Samantha Bee put it, is on that Republican ticket, they'll move over to McCain. The basis for this is the overblown media coverage of the PUMAS and some ppolls which say that 20-30% of Hillary supporters will not vote for Obama. My personal opinion is that many of the, let's say 25% of those people were not Democrats to begin with, but were instead independents/women who were attracted by Hillary Clinton- who was a well-qualified, highly intelligent candidate. I don't know if Palin's conservative views on women's social issues guarantees her capture of most or even a significant fraction of them. To many people this seems like such an opportunistic/pandering move that it might actually hurt rather than help McCain. It rests on the assumption that women only voted for Hillary Clinton because she was a woman- rather than because they truly thought that she was a great candidate. Say what you want about Clinton, and even though I didn't vote for her in the primary, I still think she would have made a good president- much better than Bush or McCain. McCain or his camp has made a pretty big error, and while it got them in the newscycle after Obama's rousing acceptance speech, it's not going to win them this election.

And this brings me to my favorite part, scandal! Some of things I discovered, just yesterday about Palin are enough to make me question whether or not she has been properly vetted. First, the small, a video from one month ago, showing Palin as not exactly knowing what her role as vice president would be, basically kinda dissin the job. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loUHRv3ipLE Second, there is the whole scandal involving her trying to have the chief of Public Safety, Walter Monegan, fire her sisters ex-husband (they were in the midst of a bitter custody battle) and when he didn't, she fired him instead. She then appointed a new chief of Public Safety who was reprimanded for sexual harassment and ultimately stepped down two weeks later and got a severance package of 10,000 (for two weeks of service) while the by all accounts excellent Monegan got nothing. The investigation is still going on and will hopefully be done by the time of the election. (for more go to http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/what-is-mccain-thinking-one-alaskans-perspective/

The final thing is just a rumor that has been circulating parts of the web and on some radio shows. The more I read about it, the more I become skeptical of it, but nonetheless, sometimes we leftist need to roll around in the mud too (keeps us young). There are whispers floating around that her youngest baby, Trig (the one with Down Syndrome) is in fact not her baby at all but her daughters. No doubt wanting to hide the embarassment of being a Bible-thumper whose own daughter couldn't follow the abstinence only sex-education she no doubt wanted to place in schools all across the country, she said that the baby was her's. The evidence for this is all very circumstancial/speculative. She made her announcement when she was 7 months(!) pregnant, which is a little odd. By all accounts, she did not look pregnant at all. She flew down to Texas to give a speech while she was 8 months pregnant (with a baby already diagnosed with Down Syndrome), said that her water broke that morning, proceeded to spend most of the day at the conference, give her speech, then fly 8 hours back to Alaska to have the baby. She also posed for Vogue in December 2007, at which time she would have been 5 months pregnant with Trig. Also, there are rumors that her daughter was pulled from school for months with a case of mono. For all of the details you can go here, http://www.mahalo.com/Sarah_Palin_Pregnancy_Rumors
Now, there are things that could dispel these rumors, particularly the fact that the baby has down syndrome, which is 10 times more likely in women over 35. Also, there would have to be a pretty good conspiracy going at the hospital where the baby was born (unless they went through one physician at home or something). Those are two pretty good pieces of evidence, and really, if Sarah Palin wasn't so willing to tell other women what they should do with their bodies, if she wasn't so keen on saying that abstinence only education is the answer, I probably wouldn't be writing this. But because she is, game on.