Defying His Mortality
by digby
I can see that everyone’s been vastly engrossed and downright obsessed by all these revelations about Sarah Palin’s bad parenting, reproductive decisions, daughter’s sex life etc, over the past few days, but I doubt any of that will persuade people to vote against McCain. Indeed, I think the religious right will find the liberal sniping at her personal choices to be galvanizing while everyone else will see it as a lively sideshow, but unimportant in terms of their vote.
Anyway, the only people who make a fetish of other people’s reproductive choices are social conservatives and they will forgive her anything because she’s a right wing Christian. There are, of course, many many other things about Palin and her selection that are very damaging, but in my view this Jerry Springer, Jamie Spears stuff may even help her more than hurt her. (This whole thing has a bit of that old “dragging 100 dollar bills through trailer parks” vibe, which actually ended up making Clinton more popular, not less.) Here in Murika, people love to gossip about others’ foibles and they love to compare their own lives to those who have made other choices —- but they don’t hold ordinary everyday problems against them. Redemption R Us.
Today I hear that the media is asking if she will stay on the ticket, because of all the “problems” her pregnancy story has caused. barring something else, I think she’ll stay. The memories of Eagleton are fresh enough that nobody wants to repeat them — McGovern was the one who suffered for both the choice and the removal of him. And this one is even more dicey. Palin’s a woman, she’s from a rural state and she’s become the poster child for the religious right.
This was always going to be a turn-out election and without the churches to counteract the Obama campaign’s modern ground operation, they don’t stand a chance. They can’t risk angering James Dobson’s army and I don’t think they will unless something a lot more damaging than the mundane news of a knocked up seventeen year old comes out:
Sarah Palin already has energized conservative religious leaders who had fretted that John McCain would pick an abortion rights supporter as his running mate. The Alaska governor was raised in a Pentecostal church and has called herself “as pro-life as any candidate can be.”
To Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religion Liberties Commission, Palin is “straight out of veep central casting.” Land said he had urged the McCain camp to consider the political unknown.
Gary Bauer, one of McCain’s most enthusiastic evangelical supporters, said the Arizona senator had hit a “grand slam home run” and that adding Palin to the GOP ticket is “guaranteed to energize values voters.”
The 44-year-old mother of five, who led her high school chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, was baptized as a teenager at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, where she and her family were very active, according to her then-pastor, Paul Riley.
She now sometimes worships at the Juneau Christian Center, which is also part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God, said Brad Kesler, business administrator of the denomination’s Alaska District. But her home church is The Church on the Rock, an independent congregation, Riley said.
(If the “liberal media” is suggesting that she be removed, so much the better for GOTV. That just means the elites hate her, which is the most galvanizing force of all.)
FWIW, (probably not much) Jonah Goldberg also says she’s a huge hit among the rank and file (Michael Murphy agrees):
This is my sixth RNC, and I’ve never seen anything remotely like the excitement Palin has unleashed. Some compare it to the enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan in 1976 or 1980. Even among the GOP’s cynics, there’s a kind of giddiness over John McCain’s tactical daring in selecting the little-known Alaskan.
Readers of National Review Online — a reliable bellwether of conservative sentiment — flooded the site with e-mails throughout the long weekend. The messages ran roughly 20-1 in almost orgiastic excitement about the pick. On Friday, one reader expressed Christmas-morning delight over the gift of Palin, proclaiming that McCain had just “given us our Red Ryder BB gun.”
Hundreds of NRO readers announced that they were finally donating to McCain after months of holding out. Many had hard feelings toward the senator, who too often defined “maverick” as a willingness, even an eagerness, to annoy conservatives. They weren’t kidding: Between the Palin announcement Friday and Monday morning, the McCain camp raised $10 million. This enthusiasm reflects how, although the party wants Barack Obama to lose, it is just now getting excited about a McCain win.
The naysayers argue Palin undermines McCain’s core message since he locked up the nomination: “experience” and the necessary foreign policy expertise for a dangerous world. They contend choosing her was a gimmick that runs counter to McCain’s mantra about country before politics, particularly given his age and health record.
If Palin fumbles badly in the next few weeks, the critics will likely be proved right. And one doesn’t have to be an obsessive about liberal media bias to feel confident that the press corps will be eager to Quayle-ize her.
But what if she doesn’t fumble? What if McCain’s gut was right?
Then picking Palin just might go down as one of the most brilliant political plays in American history.
Right. George W. Bush is a genius too.
I think the pick did two things for McCain: it stopped any strong Obama momentum coming out of the convention and it shored up the religious right. But the downsides of having an untried, unknown, unqualified person on a national ticket with a an elderly nominee are immense and we don’t know yet what the consequences of that are. I suspect “brilliant” isn’t going to be what people say about it. Unless he wins, of course.
Many have observed that all this is a reflection of McCain’s bad judgment, but I think it’s more than that. It’s a reflection of his reckless temperament, which is not something you want in a president, particularly one who has spent most of his life as a warrior and has a violent temper. (Just think about the Cuban missile crisis for a minute and consider what would have happened if an erratic, impulsive president had been in charge.)
This, to me, is the central problem with McCain, and his VP choice reflects that. It’s as if he woke up and said “fuck it — let’s do it!” and didn’t think through the consequences. After all, he is far more likely to die in office than most because of his advanced age — to choose someone with a gargantuan learning curve, along with all the baggage of being an unknown “first,” is an act of extreme recklessness. It’s almost as if he did it to defy his own mortality. (He can’t die and leave the country in the hands of this neophyte.) You can’t get more arrogant than that. Or less patriotic.
For my part, the proper response to “daughtergate” is John Amato’s brilliant take:
This is nice to see.
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement.
It’s a great day when The Palins and McCains both agree that women do have the right to choose. Here’s the McCain camp:
Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.
McCain made a similar statement back in 2000, you’ll recall:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain, when asked Wednesday what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan became pregnant and wanted an abortion, said it would be a “family decision.” “The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel,” McCain said, speaking of himself and his wife Cindy. “I would discuss this issue with Cindy and Meghan, and this would be a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else,” McCain told reporters in New Hampshire on board his campaign bus nicknamed “The Straight Talk Express. “Obviously I would encourage her to bring, to know that baby would be brought up in a warm and loving family, but the final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel.”
She did say it. So did he. The implication is clear.
I for one am very pleased that they both believe their daughters have a choice. They can’t possibly believe that your daughter shouldn’t have the same right, could they?
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