Thursday, September 04, 2008

Palin thoughts, serious and otherwise

In no real order:

  • As the father of a daughter, I applaud any breaking of the glass ceilings in our society. I am glad that a mediocre female politician has been given the same opportunity that a mediocre male politician would have had in the past.
  • Palin is not really supposed to appeal to disaffected Clinton supporters or women; she's intended to appeal to the hardcore theocratic right-wing faction of the Republican party. These are the folks who have always been suspicious of or hostile to McCain, and he'd be certain to lose if they stayed home in appreciable numbers on November 4. The question now is whether Palin, who among other things is a creationist, tried to ban books as mayor, is lying about her opposition to the "Bridge to Nowhere" (she was for it before it was convenient for her to be against it), abused her office seeking payback against an estranged relative, and more, is sufficiently nutty as to alienate voters in the middle of the political spectrum.
  • I suspect she is; in 2004, rallying the base was enough for Bush to eke out a narrow win over Kerry, but that base -- and Republican identification among the electorate -- is much smaller now than it was four years ago.
  • As Lance notes, it is a mistake to assume Palin is a lightweight. On the other hand, I cannot listen to her without recalling Stuart's mom offering Beavis and Butt-head breakfast burritos.
  • Imagine for a second that the Obamas had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter. Now imagine the right-wing freakout over it. Go ahead. Get back to me when you stop screaming for it to stop.
  • I really figured that Tagg was going to be the weirdest candidate's child's name in 2008.

4 comments:

De said...

Your penultimate point is spot-on. Bill O'Reilly would have been hammering that point every single night in his "No Spin Zone."

Trig is now officially my favorite name.

Matter-Eater Lad said...

I think Frank Church, who ran for president in 1976, had one son nicknamed Spud and one nicknamed Twig. Trig and Twig should get their own morning show or something.

Kate said...

I am all for the breaking of glass ceilings, but no mediocre male politician with this little experience would ever have been given this opportunity in the past. Dude, Dan Quayle was an elder statesman compared to Palin. The whole thing is just insulting. And it is kind of embarrassing that in part, at least, it appears to be working.

Matter-Eater Lad said...

Spiro Agnew's the only one close to Palin's level of inexperience, and at least he'd been a county commissioner before he was Governor of Maryland for a year and a half when Nixon picked him. OTOH, the county he represented probably had a population much bigger than Alaska's.