I, for one, am happy with this pick. Picking Pawlenty or Romney would have made me even less inclined to vote for McCain than I was before. As you can probably tell, I've never been a big McCain fan. This pick shakes things up and helps to energize the base, something that's absolutely vital if McCain wants to win. Picking from the "Dream Team" would have just put the base to sleep, me included.
Palin is an interesting choice, mostly because of her background and her effectiveness in battling the establishment, including members of her own party. Her husband is a blue collar union member while she, herself, was formerly in a union as well. She calls herself a "hockey mom," helping to appeal to married men and women. She has five children, one of them on his way to Iraq in the fall and the youngest being a Downs Syndrome baby. As an outspoken pro-lifer, she definitely cemented her credentials by walking the walk when given the choice of aborting her child.
The biggest thing is her 80%+ approval rating in her home state. While Alaska is a red state, you must be doing something right to have approval ratings that high, especially with the prominence of corrupt Republican officials such as Frank Murkowski and Ted Stevens.
If McCain does win the race, I can easily see Palin becoming the front runner for the GOP nomination once McCain steps down.
Though I'm not a McCain fan, I will say this for him. He has impeccable timing to announce this pick right after the Democratic Convention. Instead of everybody talking about Obama's speech, the entire mainstream media is busy searching Wikipedia trying to find anything they can about Sarah Palin and is talking about nothing but the VP choice. I have a feeling Obama's six-point convention bounce won't even last three days as people forget there even was a speech.
Obama's whole campaign is based on change. I find it ironic that both GOP running mates are mavericks who have a track record of upsetting the establishment while Obama chooses an old guard establishment candidate from the "Good Old Boys Club," ostensibly to offset his own pathetic lack of anything resembling experience.
