Thoughts on Sarah Palin
I smell kool-aid. I am cautious.
First off, the noise about her pregnant daughter is just noise. There’s no reason to think it disqualifies her as being morally unfit for office, because the daughter is reacting properly to her mistake; she is not murdering the unborn child and plans to marry the father. Conservatives take personal responsibility when they make mistakes, and it reflects well on the governor that she raised a daughter who can make such a rational decision at such a young age, despite the previous irrational decision. Does this damage the VP pick? Nope. Yawn, move on.
Now, as to the governor herself, I’m skeptical, perhaps by nature. Any politician who brags about being an NRA member probably joined for the sake of the political opportunity it presents, not necessarily because of a belief system. If she proclaimed her membership in the Gun Owners of America, then I’d be more impressed. No one joins that bunch without knowing what they are about, that’s for sure.
As for her pro-life positions, they seem good. A politician says one thing and does another, but at first glance everything seems right. Her words and actions match, and lie on the correct side of the issue.
Her skill at reducing the Alaskan government to the point where the state could set up a savings account makes me wonder at her political skill. First, how did she get the politicians from the Ted Stevens pork-fest state to accept such a thing, and second, when the government had more than enough money to pay its bills, how did she avoid voter wrath by not returning the excess to the people in the form of tax breaks? That, my friends, is skill.
She has more executive experience than anyone else on either ticket, which leads me to my first non-rhetorical question. Why is she on the bottom of the ticket?
Let’s accept, for argument’s sake, the premise that she is actually conservative. Why did John McCain put her into a potentially useless position? A genuine conservative will be, if he is elected, in a figurehead position, unable to make significant policy decisions and have little if any influence outside of cabinet meetings. If anything, the ticket should be inverted, but since that is out of the question she would better serve the republic by running for Ted Stevens seat in the Senate. Unfortunately, the leadership of the Republican party seems to think its a better use of talent to use her to bring in votes for a marginal conservative instead of putting a genuine one in a position of actual usefulness. Just how useless will she be? Ask John Adams: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet the common fate.”
Meh. I like her as a candidate, but not for VP. Since the party seems to think otherwise, we’re stuck. This is why Republicans are called the stupid party.