Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Sarah Palin for VP!

Ha, leave it to the GOP to put a woman on the ticket this year This came out of nowhere but so far I'm loving it. I might actually be able to force myself to vote for McCain now.

PJ

I was very excited to read about it too, actually, all of my own leanings aside.



alcyone

I was very surprised. I actually may feel a little better about voting for McCain too once I hear more about her.

I know absolutely nothing about her though. I know she was the Governor of Alaska. I'd be interested to hear some opinions from Jess or Guineapants on what they think of her...

I did hear that she campaigned in Alaska by 'bringing ethics back'. Ethics are good. DC needs some of those.

From what I hear... her ethics may not be that great:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gWi6yTVfPyJeiTBsQ33SSUiobt8wD92I9NIO0


But... we will see how this turns out. Maybe it had nothing to do with her request.

Hmmm... interesting article Jo Jo.

I guess if all the allegations against Wooten turned out to be true, I would try to get him fired too. Or it could just be very petty if she was just a disgruntled sis-in-law trying to get him fired for her sis' sake.

It does seem overkill to start firing all these other people for not firing Wooten. But if the allegations against him were true and no one was listening, more power to her I guess.

This will definitely be a very intersting election. All the skeletons will come out of the closet, so to speak.

Actually, although it doesn't look very good at first, it turns out that the brother in law in question used a taser on his 10 year old stepson and threatened the life of his father in law if he hired a lawyer to represent his wife in their divorce. Apparently there was a lot more involved in this situation than we know, but these things turned out to be true. I'm sure more details of this will come out in the coming months but, from what I've read, apparently she was trying to deal with Alaska's political machine, so I can see why she might have decided to clean house while she had the chance.

I'm still not thrilled about McCain, but this may actually change my mind. We're going to have a former senator for President no matter what we do. It would be nice to have an actual governor/reformer in the White House as well.

Nan

I'm pretty happy with this decision; I was hoping McCain wouldn't pick anyone from the Dream Team (Romney, Lieberman, etc) that everyone kept speculating about. So we'll see what happens!

JD

It's an interesting choice, but I'm still not swayed. I'll be avidly watching, though! From talking to someone living in Alaska this morning, it may not be such a good idea, but we'll see what the press is like.

The reactions at work were quite interesting, though. One coworker said that McCain had picked Tina Fey as his running mate. Another one says he's voting for McCain now because Palin is "hawt".

Your coworker might have a point.

Oh, blogosphere. How can I love you and hate you at the same time?



alcyone

PS I heard the news already started with the whole "But you have kids! How will you find the time..." thing.

NO! OK, no.

I'm sure none of you out of Alaska have heard of this, but since she was elected there have been ENDLESS corruption scandals involving her. Not new, because Republicans can do and get away with whatever the hell they want to up here, because they rule everything, but I don't want her as VP.

My cousins grew up with her, I've heard plenty of horror stories about her personality. If they win, I hope some of you Canadians have room on your couches, because I'm not staying in this country.

It is interesting that it was the GOP that put a woman up in the VP seat this year, I'm more interested in supporting her because she's a member of the NRA, she's pro-life, and she had a good deal to do with stopping that "bridge-to-nowhere" pork deal. She also supports the mission in Iraq, her own son on his way there, in fact. I might be able to give John McCain some credit for this, so long as she doesn't get into that environ-mental BS. We'll see. It's a couple of months yet to November.

TEEEEEJ

Hey Jessi,

Could you get more information on what scandals there were, and what exactly about her personality did your cousins abhor? I admit I know nothing about her, but I'd like to know exactly who she is.

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.

This has been all over the leftist media, how she stood up against Republicans in her state about their policy, (obviously the media trying to turn her off to Republicans), but what they convienently forget is that the Republican politicians in her state were, as you mentioned Roger, corrupt, deep into liberal money wasting projects. The media can't stand that she's a conservative and are trying to spin their view as hard as they can. Any mention of scandal she seems to be involved in, is petty family matters at worst. LOL and the obama camp is whining about her lack of experience!?! Hello,POT CALLING KETTLE....!!!

TEEEEEEJ

Which, of course, could apply equally to the McCain camp - whine about your opponent having no experience and then choose someone equally lacking for your running mate.

What I find ironic - and deeply amusing - is that if Ms. Palin is the paragon that everyone on the right seems to believe she is - why isn't she the Republican nominee for President?

I mean, I've been listening to all these Republicans waxing reverential about her on the news channels - she's a feisty campaigner, she's 'just what we need', she's bringing 'youth and vitality' to a tired old man's campaign....

Well, gee, sounds like someone you'd want in the top job then, huh?

So, really, what this says to me is that far from proving McCain's feminist credentials, it seems that women are still only good enough for second place in the Republican party.

Hey, at least the Democrats actually put one on the list for the top job.

LabRat (who still finds it amusing that Republicans accuse Obama of having no foreign policy experience when the same attack against Bush before he was elected was met with the counter that he would have plenty of advisers to help him out, so he didn't need it. Although...considering the complete cockup he's made of foreign policy during his tenure, perhaps that's the point. Maybe that's why everyone's so hot for the President not having to rely on advisers and having his own experience these days. Learn from your mistakes...

To me, the pick seems like a cheap political ploy of the worst kind. Let's be honest - she does not have the experience to be president, and that has to be a real concern in light of McCain's age and health issues. (BTW - did anyone else notice that huge growth puffing out of his cheek as he was introducing her...what was that?) This is a desperate move to attract independent women who voted for Clinton. If McCain really believes that women are so stupid that they vote only for the candidate's gender rather than the issues, then that is the real insult of the nomination.

Insult or not, I do know women, who [sadly] have said for years they would vote for Hillary JUST because she was a woman - even though they disagreed on nearly every issue. I would imagine the same is true for other women, but Hillary was the only one on a national scale the last time I had that conversation.

As for McCain's age... Yeah, he's old. But DH's Stepgrandpa turned 85 last week. He runs circles around the rest of us - combined. Seriously. The man never slows down. Ever. 72 isn't as old as it used to be...

Carol [who votes on issues not gender but also knows many people who vote for whoever had the better commercial. Americans, as a whole [present company excluded I'm sure], aren't known for delving deep into issues when it comes time to make decisions on many things.]

I totally and whole-heartedly agree with Labrat's comment. I'm not really convinced that the Palin nom is done out of the greatness and love of diversity of the GOP. Yes, those are my biases and I own up to them. *shrug*

Both sides are being *gasp* political.

Realistically, there was no other way for Obama to go if he wants to win. He needs someone to pick up the slack where he needs it. On a meta-level, all the talking heads have been jabbering on for forever about how Obama needs to neutralize his difference while McCain needs to prove his.

That's where Palin and her "interesting" story come in. Lol. This is an entirely calculated move as well. Both sides are pretty transparent about bending over to media pressure. I'm not even gonna pretend.

There's no way for anyone to pick the perfect VP. Groobie echoes a lot of the feminist criticism I've read from the left:

Palin is just about the other extreme of Hillary, so one wonders. And McCain has been courting Hillary's peeps...

Still, whatever gets the underrepresented to participate. I won't vote for her because of where I stand, but I like that she has a chance. Yay equality.

That's certainly true. I'm still reeling over the attention paid to stupid flagpin issues at the beginning when all I wanted was to see how the candidates differed on policy.

alcyone (who is eagerly awaiting the debates)

Yes, the whole thing seems suddenly likely to be a *lot* more lively... people are already fantasizing about 2012 being Hillary v. Sarah. Which would be fascinating. I don't agree with Hillary's policies, but you had to admire the way she refused to give up.

I predict Obama's going to regret dissing Hillary. I mean, sure, they hate each others guts so there's no way he'd want her in the #2 slot (never turn your back on that person who hates you and has a big knife) but he didn't even go through the motions of vetting her. :rolleyes: So when Sarah Palin gives Hillary props, that's going to resonate with the PUMAs. Political? Of course.

If we're doomed to have inexperienced people either which way, I'd prefer mine to be on the *bottom* of the ticket, not the top. And as I can't think of an "experienced" person who I like better for McCain's VP, I think this was a good pick.

Time will tell! But at least it'll be more entertaining this way <g>

PJ