Kathleen Parker on why Sarah Palin should step down

This is from Kathleen Parker, a usually reliable promoter of the Republican line, hook and sinker. If Parker has turned on Palin, McCain is in trouble.

The Palin Problem
Kathleen Parker
Friday, September 26, 2008

WASHINGTON -- If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream -- away from Sarah Palin.

To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president -- and possibly president -- is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick -- what a difference a financial crisis makes -- and a more complicated picture has emerged.

As we've seen and heard more from John McCain's running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan's president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?)

And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she's had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin's narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain's running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood -- a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. Palin didn't make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it.

It was fun while it lasted. Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there.

Here's but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: "Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we're talking about today. And that's something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this."
When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama's numbers, Palin blustered wordily: "I'm not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who's actually done it?"

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we'd all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she's a woman -- and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket -- we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

McCain can't repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP's unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

A Random Thought...

We are in a financial crisis. The government has taken some bold and controversial steps to resolve some of the problems and they don't seem to be working. The latest step is the proposed $700 billion bailout package. The problem is that few if any institutions are willing -- particularly in the last three weeks--to risk their capital by lending it to anyone else. In short, they are afraid and have lost confidence in the government and finacial sector.

No news there.

But why are they so afraid?

The steps the Fed has taken thus far should have calmed many worries. Opening the lending window made capital available to banks to cover potential losses from the mortgage melt-down (assuming it doesn't suddenly get worse). The government's judicious handling of Lehman Brothers vs AIG should boost confidence that Washington is applying reason to its moves (unless they stop applying reason).

Why so little confidence?

Maybe, about three weeks ago, the people who run these institutions saw something happen that led them to believe that the recent years of fiscal and monetary imbecility might just continue.

Maybe, they watched the Republican party nominate an utterly unqualified small-town mayor with seriously goofy ideas to be the Vice President to a 72 year old Presidential candidate who has had two episodes of melanoma already.

Maybe, after watching that spectacle, they ran home, slit open the proverbial mattress and started stuffing their cash inside.

Economists and financiers do a lot of analysis based on reams of data, but it all comes down to confidence in the end. And, frankly, Rocket J. Squirrel and his trusty sidekick Bullwinkle don't inspire confidence.

More on those double standards...

This election year candidates' personal lives and families are fair game for Republicans as long as the candidate in question is not a Republican.

My niece sent this in an email. It was too good not to post.

" I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

" If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."

" Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.

" If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

" Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

" Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

" Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

" If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

" If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

"If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

"If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

" If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

" If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

" If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

" If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

"OK, much clearer now. "


Seriously folks, we are voting for someone to lead our country during perilous economic and political times. We aren't drawing straws for who buys the next keg.

Bad jokes and fake outrage; thanks, John McCain

About ten years ago, John McCain told a joke to some Republican fund-raisers. It went, "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father."

Today McCain and his crowd are accusing Barack Obama of misogyny and demanding he apologize to Sara Palin. Obama's offense: He said McCain's claims to "change" amounted to "putting lipstick on a pig."

You see, when Republicans are in full attack mode they leap at lame stuff like this. Sarah Palin talked about lipstick in her convention speech, therefore any mention of lipstick is now off-limits as far as they are concerned.

Is John McCain such a hypocrite that he can tell a slimy, hurtful joke then sanction his aides going after Obama with feigned outrage over a non-insult?

Is Ms Palin so precious that she cannot handle criticism, even when it is not aimed at her?

Politics ain't beanbag folks. Get real or get out.

Lipstick, Lipstick, Lipstick!

During a campaign event in Virginia today (9 September 2008), Barack Obama described John McCain's claim that he will change things in Washington as putting lipstick on a pig.

Okay, it is an old line. I have heard it for years before this. But the McCain camp had a fit, thinking it a slam on Sarah Palin. They have, of course, demanded an apology.

Give me a break.

The McCain camp has told us that Palin's family is off-limits. Her personal life is off limits. Do we start saying "The L-word" instead of lipstick now? Is anybody allowed to criticize Sarah Palin?

Can you imagine if the Democrats tried to coddle their candidate in this manner? The Republican attack machine would tear itself apart in their eagerness to heap ridicule on the Democratic ticket. If Barack Obama gave a speech about Sarah Palin that was half as snarky as the one she gave about Barack Obama, the Republicans would be completely beside themselves with feigned outrage.

This is pure crap.

Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President or President. And by putting her on the ticket, John McCain disqualifies himself as well.

It is Barack Obama's duty, and Joe Biden's duty--and the duty of every American who realizes what a cynical and un-American path John McCain is ready to take us down--to denounce this travesty. And it is the duty of every American to demand that the press and media call the McCain camp's double-standards and hypocrisy for what they are.