When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.
Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.
Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.
The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to ”” not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.
For the NYT a rather benign piece. I wonder at the quote:
“On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.”
While it is an Op-Ed piece, statements such as this should have some examples to back them up.
[blockquote]McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state . . . . {/blockquote]
“Career”?
That’s incredibly tone-deaf. Palin’s chief appeal is that she doesn’t have a career. She has a life.
Two things strike me.
The notion that McCain doesn’t have a governing philosophy seems a little odd. Look – he’s a moderate conservative – but is that any more confusing than the compassionate conservatism of eight years ago?
Second, the assertion that there “simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration” seems silly. There are always people with passions interested in government. McCain would just have to look for them. Would this be any different from 1988?
The media and secular sharks are circling Palin. They have managed to drive the polling data down for McCain over the last two days. Meanwhile, too many pro-life Christians are sitting on the sidelines, not voicing their support for her and her candidacy.
If anything, her family circumstances underscore the genuiness of her convictions. Her life is representative of the stress and strains of today’s commited Christian family, where setbacks and mistakes are addressed by a determination to do the right thing, secure in the knowledge of God’s grace.
If the Palin nomination fails, it will be at a great cost to the pro-life movement. There will not be another solidly pro-life, unabashedly Christian, major party candidate for a long time.
The writer seems to have little clue. His suggesting that McC. has no “sense of what gov’t should and shouldn’t do” suggests the writer misunderstands . Both Palin and McC understand the concept well. P.S. – Highly unlikely any “mandarin” Republicans walk the earth in Alaska. As an evangelical Christian, Palin’s Assemblies of God pentacostal roots will enhance her clarity.
Oh, come on now, Going Home. I have not seen any recent polling data, but if the polls are down for McCain, maybe it’s because the people polled don’t think Palin is as good a choice as do most of the commenters here. This is America! Not everyone has the same criteria for judging a candidate. And of course the media is going nuts. She is not someone they have been covering forever. That’s what the media does. This is politics, not whiffle ball.
Virginian, “mainstream” media such as the Atlantic Monthly were demanding yesterday that Sarah Palin’s hospital release verification that her son was indeed hers. Her husband’s 1986 drinking conviction was on the first page of the New York Times, one of three negative first page articles. They are villifying her because she led the following prayer at her church, caught on audio:
“Pray for our military men and women, who are striving to do what is right,” she urged. “Also, for this country, that our leaders – our national leaders – are sending [US soldiers] out on a task that is from God…That’s what we have to make sure, That’s [what] we’re praying for – that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”
That prayer is cited on the front page of several media outlets with ridicule.
Imagine. A lady that believes it is important to seek God’s will in national, as well as individual, affairs.
Most of our opinion leaders, media and elsewhere, do not get this. But the prosecution of Palin runs much deeper than just secular revulsion at an ordinary believer. Palin has become public enemy number one for Planned Parenthood and its aligned groups.