The Democrats, the Palin choice, and the GOP

When I first heard that John McCain asked Sarah Palin, gov of Alaska since '06, to join his ticket, my gut reaction was that he was trying to attract the female Hillary Clinton supporters who supposedly claim they would rather defect than vote for Obama. Now, this whole thing with the supposed "female Hillary supporters voting for McCain before Obama" sounds to me like a fairy tale wish on the part of the GOP and/or McCain, possibly cooked up by the good people at Fox News, ("fair and balanced" for those who haven't noticed) and generally all around a pipe dream with the exception of possibly a handful of women. I can imagine there are a few women that feel strongly that Hillary was the right candidate to be at the top of the ticket and out of respect will not support her former rival, (current ally) Barak Obama. Yet I doubt this is a large group of women. (I am a former Hillary supporter that while not totally smitten with Obama, surely will not be voting for McCain.) I doubt there is a significant number of women dead set against voting for Obama, and, willing to subsequently vote for McCain. If I am wrong, I would love to see the evidence.

So, with that out of the way, I thought McCain's strategy of picking Sarah Palin to attract those non-existent "female Hillary supporters turned defectors" was pretty silly since I don't think the supposed defectors exist. Yet, once the media began their dirt digging escapades across southern Alaska and turned up Sarah Palin's 17 year old daughter Bristol's pregnancy I began to see other reasons why it wasn't a good pick. ("Should we even be reporting this story?") There is also the issue of Bristol drinking alcohol, (see pics) as well as the issue of Sarah's oldest son Track born 8 months after a "spontaneous" wedding. The so-called Trooper-gate, which I think we will soon know more about, as well as Palin's 1990s era membership in a group called Alaskan Independence Party, which has been pushing since the 1970s for a legal vote for whether Alaska can secede from the nation. Finally, I would like to note that Palin is joining McCain on a reform ticket, and part of that reform includes elimination the "pork barrel projects" in the federal budget. Yet Palin, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, made trips to Washington to request Federal dollars for the very "pork" projects she is now a reformer of.

Surely many of the above mentioned aspects of Palin, as uncovered by the media, won't fly with the conservative GOP types, although they are masters of sticking together and not airing their dirty laundry. According to a Wall Street trading mechanism, mentioned on the air today by Erin Burnett, there is currently a 15% chance McCain will dump Palin from his ticket. What I think is likely is that McCain will keep Palin on his ticket, and the choosing of her will become fuel for the fire of "McCain makes impulsive decisions" or something like that. This episode, in which McCain had months and months to pick a VP, will show the country that be often makes major decisions without thinking them through. That, my friends, will help a Mr. Barak Obama.

(I take no moral or ethical position on any of the named reasons as to why Palin isn't a good pick, such as teen sex, teen drinking, Federal pork, etc.)