Tag: Sarah Palin

Ron Fournier on the Palin pick

Last week I criticized the Associated Press’ Washington bureau chief, Ron Fournier, for writing what I thought was a dumb and partisan analysis of the Joe Biden pick. Fournier, as I noted, has an interesting history with John McCain, so I was wondering if he would be similarly harsh when writing about McCain’s choice.

To Fournier’s credit, his analysis of the Sarah Palin nomination is pretty tough. Granted, it would be hard for it not to be given its utter ludicrousness. But Fournier hits all the right notes, observing that McCain himself said just a few months ago that he was determined not to repeat George H.W. Bush’s Dan Quayle mistake of 1988 — and making it clear that he just did.

Personally, I think Fournier is wrong about Biden and right about Palin. But he was even-handed.

Palin’s anti-science, anti-gay agenda

According to information dug up by Boston Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin not only supports the teaching of creationism in public schools, but opposes state health benefits for same-sex partners — even to the point of supporting a constitutional amendment.

I know John McCain has said some disturbingly supportive things about teaching “intelligent design,” but no one thinks he actually believed what he was espousing. Palin, on the other hand, sounds like a true believer. Off the top of my head, it also strikes me that Palin’s anti-gay agenda is considerably to the right of McCain’s.

Not good.

Dan Quayle in a skirt

John McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (at left in photo) as his running mate is deeply problematic on two levels.

1. It shows McCain can’t adjust quickly to changing events. A woman might have made sense last week. But, right now, it looks as though Republican hopes of peeling off vast numbers of Hillary Clinton supporters are diminishing. No, Clinton voters don’t have to march in lockstep with convention delegates. But whatever lingering anger there was between the Obama and Clinton camps had largely dissipated by Wednesday night.

2. It fails to address McCain’s biggest weakness. That would be his age (72 today) and his history of cancer. Let me be blunt: If McCain wins, it would surprise no one if his vice president became president in a year or two. Palin is stunningly inexperienced. And before you say, “So’s Obama,” keep in mind that’s the single biggest obstacle Obama needs to overcome. Voters are making judgments about that every day. Running mates are not generally subjected to that level of scrutiny. And it already looks like the vetting process used to select Palin was a little ragged.

If McCain really believed he needed a woman, I’m not sure why he didn’t go with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. At 72, Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina is probably too old, but Hutchison is 65.

By far the most intelligent choice would have been former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Above all else, McCain needs a plausible president as his running mate. Romney’s not the most popular guy in the world, and McCain plainly doesn’t like him. But he would have done McCain a lot more good than I suspect Palin’s going to do. And given his political and business experience, you can picture him as president.

This is not going to play well, I suspect.

More: Markos Moulitsas, who also thought of Quayle, flips the experience question on its head: “The Sarah Quayle Palin pick is an abandonment of the ‘Obama is not ready to lead’ attack lines. Those are dead, and to be honest, while that line didn’t work for Hillary and it had limited traction for McCain, it still had some traction. That attack line is gone.” He’s right.

And the Outraged Liberal takes note of the corruption investigation now under way involving Palin’s alleged involvement in trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from his job as an Alaska state trooper.

Photo (cc) by Tricia Ward and reproduced here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.