An Anchorage Daily News Editorial: A great day for the Alaska, but for the country?

Selecting Palin may prove to be a brilliant political stroke for McCain. Like him, she’s an independent who bucked her party establishment and has worked with liberal Democrats. She’s an ethics-reforming outsider who will help blunt Barack Obama’s claim to be the candidate of change in Washington.

Like McCain, Palin doesn’t mind using government to dictate individuals’ personal choices. She staunchly opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, which will help energize the religious Republican base.

But as governor, she has downplayed those hot-button social issues. Soft-pedaling her convictions in those areas may help her appeal to women disillusioned by Hillary Clinton’s absence from the Democratic ticket.

Palin’s husband is a blue-collar union worker, which may help the ticket appeal to economically anxious Americans who have lost ground after eight years of George Bush.

Palin is comfortable around guns and snowmachines and fishing boats. She has a son in the military, soon to be deployed to Iraq. Those nontraditional female credentials help communicate the toughness that Republicans want to project in their campaign. Her youth and good looks are a handy complement to McCain, who is the oldest first-time presidential candidate in U.S. history.

McCain’s choice of Palin was somewhat surprising because she most definitely is not a standard-issue Republican. She worked with liberal Democrats in the Legislature to pass a multi-billion-dollar tax increase on Alaska’s oil industry. She went back to Democrats again to win approval of her natural gas pipeline deal, which bypasses Alaska’s major oil companies in favor of a Canadian company.

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