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.
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5 comments:
The elitist wing of the conservative movement has always been wary of us libertarians coming into the GOP. Sarah Palin is one of the top elected libertarian Republicans in the country, (along with Idaho's Gov. Butch Otter, and Cong. Jeff Flake of AZ).
Of course, she's going to make some conservatives nervous.
They are wary of her libertarian cultural views. This is the woman, after all, who famously fought back against social conservatives in Wasilla who wanted to run all of the bars and taverns out of town.
They even started a whisper campaign in Alaska during the 2006 primaries that Sarah wasn't really a Republican, but rather a "closet libertarian." She had attended a couple local Libertarian Party meetings seeking their support.
But what she loses from the social conservatives, she gains 10 times over in libertarian votes.
Figure, Libertarian Bob Barr was polling 6% nationwide in mid-summer. As high as 10% in New Hampshire. And post-Palin he's now down to 1%.
Ever since Goldwater the eastern establishment Republicans have distrusted Western cowboy individualists in the GOP.
With Sarah Palin, the libertarian wing of the GOP has finally arrived. Of course, that's going to make some other Republicans nervous.
Get over it Conservatives, THE LIBERTARIANS HAVE ARRIVED!!
I appreciate the point that eric dondero makes in his comment. Sarah Palin is not a conservative. I am not sure I would go so far as to say she is a libertarian however. A libertarian would have been somewhat reticent about working the earmark system the way Ms Palin did for Wasilla and Alaska. A libertarian would have actually opposed the bridge to nowhere through the entire life-cycle of the proposed project. Palin only opposed it when it became inconvenient politically. IMHO, Sarah Palin is a crony-capitalist on training wheels. She has a way to go before she masters the fine points of plundering the exchequer,but she shows great promise.
Regardless of whether she is a consertvative, libertarian, or heffalump, she is spectacularly unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. There are any number of libertarian women and men who are far more qualified to grace the East Wing than the recent mayor of Wasilla.
Denis:
I wonder if I do humor so well or not...but your tenure in Bridgeport CA might give you common ground with the governor in answering the final extra credit question at the end of this entry:
http://punditry.org/blog1/politics/
"If I'm stranded near the north pole and kill a polar bear, what part of the polar bear should I avoid eating in order to avoid toxic concentrations of vitamin A ?
umm, liver?
Ding ding ding!
Liver it is.
When we were presented with this factoid at Warner Springs, all I could think was:
How am I supposed to kill a polar bear in order to separate it from its liver? Shoot him in the eye with a MK-79 pencil flare? Blind him with a signaling mirror?
Instead I just prayed that any survival situation I might find myself in would be in a tropical climate, not an Arctic one:-)
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