Several pundits who wrote this weekend seemed to take a demonstrably false premise to an easily rebutted conclusion.
1. The faulty premise: Nobody had heard of Sarah Pain. On the contrary at least two of my GOP friends have extolled Palin's virtues for months -- one who'd supported Ron Paul in the primaries, the other a moderate whose favorite GOP presidential candidate I never knew.
2. The shaky conclusion: She owes her nomination to being female. On the contrary, ignore gender completely for a moment and ask yourself who McCain could pick to accomplish these goals:
A. Energize his base, and turn his lukewarm supporters (who might otherwise not bother to vote, much less campaign) into fervent supporters.
-yet-
B. Don't alienate moderates, nor alienate one faction over another.
This list demonstrably can't include any Bush administration figure (incidentally, would all the people ragging on Palin's foreign policy non-background be willing to claim that Condi Rice would be an obvious improvement? - I suspect they wouldn't), and McCain's primary opponents are also out: Huckabee because of his feud with Rush Limbaugh (all the more problematic given how McCain himself gets along with Limbaugh), and Romney/Giuliani/etc. because if they were really that well-liked they'd have won the nomination.
The rest of the realm of plausible candidates (basically sitting governors and ex-governors, unless I'm overlooking something -- is the world ready for a business leader to begin his political career that high up? there are military leaders, but as McCain's VP such a background would be uniquely redundant) includes a few who might be solid, but not much in the way of excitement. From what I can tell it'd basically be Palin or Jindal.
So if Palin were otherwise the best choice, imagine trying to make this case against her: "We can't pick her because everyone would think she was picked for being a woman." And she'd end up being denied the pick specifically because she was female -- which is exactly what we want to move beyond, right?
Posted by Matt Bruce at August 31, 2008 10:12 AM
Actually, her selection has alienated me from thinking about voting for McCain. I'm not exactly thrilled with Obama's selection of biden, either. If there could somehow be an Obama/McCain or McCain/Obama ticket I would vote for that. McCain appeals to my growing fiscal conservatism, but Obama appeals to my social liberalism. I think the issues of allowing gay people the same rights as straight people and abortion are going to be what ultimately breaks the tie, and Palin loses on both counts.