Amused Cynic

[WITH ROLLING UPDATES]

[MULTIPLE SATURDAY, 8/30/08 UPDATE BELOW--SCROLL DOWN]

Have the Republicans become the “Mommy Party”?  Let’s hope so!  And what a mom she is!  This is abolutely the smartest pick McCain could have made for a whole host of reasons….talk about the perfect way to suck all the hot air out of Mile-High Stadium.  I wrote a bit about Sarah Palin back in June, but as the summer wore on, I’d lost hope that McCain would do something so, well, mavericky.  The one down-side from a purely political standpoint is that she’s younger than Obama, and has a relatively short track record.  HOWEVER….her tenure in office has been very bold, very productive, and very much in tune with the “change” and ” hope” that everyone professes to want.

The Anchoress first put Palin on my radar back in May, with this piece, and is reaching for her checkbook on this truly momentous day.  I am too.  From the ever-prescient Anchoress, back on 5/20/08:

But it’s the popularity of Palin that is bad news for Hillary, because it tempts us to daydream the most delicious irony of this political season:

McCain picks Sarah Palin as his veep and actually wins the thing, then dies in office and ta-da! The first female President of the United States is not only NOT Hillary Clinton…she’s not even a Democrat!

Hillary’s screams will be heard around the world; they will set off eruptions at Mt. Etna and rattle California into the Pacific Ocean.

Volcano and earthquack aside, that little daydream puts a Walter Mitty-esque smile on my face and helps me get through the day, while reading about things like what can and cannot be served at the Democrat convention in Denver. Sad when you can’t get a piece of fried chicken because of the bureaucrats. Welcome to America.

On to the Republican hoopla!  This should be tremendous fun!

Neo-neocon shares my excitement, and unabashedly remarks on the ruggedly handsome Mr. Palin.  I think he looks a lot like Zed, from DayByDay.  See what you think.  Coincidence?  I think not….

This choice has created a huge buzz, my phone is ringing off the hook.  Even my father called to talk about it.  The only negative stuff is coming from the rapidly deflating Dems.

UPDATE:  Patterico is also happy, and provides a link to a great Beldar piece, with great Palin pics!

The Anchoress has double-updated. (thanks for the link).

Rachel Lucas was on the fence, but is now going to “vote her ASS off” for the “maverickette” and her ticket.  “I got your hope-n-change right here, bucko…”

Too funny. This is really great stuff, way better than a faux Britney Spears set in a football stadium!  I’ll bet Palin could fill Mile-High stadium tomorrow, after a quick email blitz.  Looking forward to the McCain-Palin bumper stickers to come out.  I’ll have to perform another “changing of the colors” ceremony.   I can handle it.

8/30/08 UPDATE: Some great stuff on McCain’s veep pick at The Weekly Standard this morning.  First, from Noemie Emery’s blog (I am filing this in the “I wish I had written this” department):

What Palin Does

1. Steps on the story of Obama’s speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a
female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama’s critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama’s claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare’s nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder more loudly than ever why they didn’t pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn’t.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama’s light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he’s–to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod–their lead dog.

That is so. right. on.  And then, TWS follows up with this very interesting inside baseball piece…I love it.  It really is a wonderful world, after all.

McCain has had a long and sometimes heated rivalry with Alaska senator Ted Stevens, the upper chamber’s greediest collector of congressional pork. Going back more than a year, McCain has used Stevens’s pet project–the $389 million dollar bridge between Ketchikan, Alaska, and the island that hosts its airport that is known as the “Bridge to Nowhere”–in his stump speech as an example of the problems besetting Washington. Palin, who was skeptical of the project, ordered the state to find a “fiscally responsible” alternative. She has challenged the state GOP as corrupt and openly chastised establishment Republicans for failing to live up to conservative principles.

Not only has she bucked her own party, she has praised Democrats and done so at times that carried significant political risk. Earlier this month, at a time when she was regularly mentioned as a (longshot) McCain running mate, and just 24 days before McCain ultimately picked her, Palin put out a statement praising Barack Obama.

“I am pleased to see Senator Obama acknowledge the huge potential Alaska’s natural gas reserves represent in terms of clean energy and sound jobs,” she said of Obama’s energy plan, released that day. “The steps taken by the Alaska State Legislature this past week demonstrate that we are ready, willing and able to supply the energy our nation needs.”

She also praised Obama for recommending $1,000 rebates to help cover increased energy costs. “We in Alaska feel that crunch and are taking steps to address it right here at home,” Governor Palin said. “This is a tool that must be on the table to buy us time until our long-term energy plans can be put into place. We have already enjoyed the support of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, and it is gratifying to see Senator Obama get on board.”

In a telephone interview on August 22, one week before she was announced as McCain’s running mate, I asked her about reports that she had “embraced” the Obama energy plan. She laughed and said:

I’m not embracing his plan. I said a couple of good things about it. But you know I find myself getting crucified once in a while for having dared say anything positive about a plan, or an aspect of a plan that comes from a Democrat. When you consider the gravity of the problems that we’re dealing with right now–and that is dependence on foreign sources of energy to such a great extent that when someone sees the light, in this case Obama seeing the light, doing a little flip-flop there on offshore drilling, I’m going to say: “Yeah!” I’m going to say: “Good job, I’m glad you did that.” So yeah I come out and I say something quasi-positive about it and yeah, you get in trouble for it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, while her praise for Obama did anger several McCain staffers, it did not upset the senator, who had met her in Washington shortly before he won the Republican nomination.

On Wednesday of last week, Palin flew with her top aide, Kris Perry, to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter from McCain’s campaign. The following day this group traveled to McCain’s home in Sedona and met with the candidate and his wife, Cindy. McCain took Palin outside to his deck and offered her the job. (Decks are fast becoming the traditional location for Republican nominees to offer the job to their running mates, as George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to join his ticket on the deck of his ranch.) Palin accepted and set in motion a plan that would shock the political world just 24 hours later.

Palin flew with Salter and Schmidt to Middletown, Ohio, and checked into the Manchester Inn. (She registered under the name Upton.)

No one on Palin’s staff back in Alaska had any idea that she was going to explode onto the national political scene the following morning. “The only reason I ever thought anything is because I was asked by reporters if she was vetted by the McCain campaign,” said McAllister. “And I told them no. The only thing I knew about was some biographical materials that they requested for the convention itself, for her speech.” Some of her staff believed she was still in Alaska and planning to be at the State Fair on Friday.

24 Hours later, I am still SO STOKED!  I also loved this paragraph, from the same Weekly Standard piece, and I want the highlighted quote carved into the marble frieze above the new CIA and State Department buildings, once we’ve razed them and rebuilt them from scratch:

Many political observers are astonished the secret held. The McCain campaign is not. “The key to keeping secrets is not telling people,” says Matt McDonald, a McCain adviser, who was one of only a handful to learn about the pick Thursday night.

Neo-neocon comments on the strategic stupidity of trying to denigrate Palin by  dissing the bitter clingers in small-town America.  I’m becoming less and less impressed with Obama’s supposed persuasive skills.

The Anchoress is noting the crassness of the anti-Palin counterattacks from the now-terrified “Hope’n'Change” crowd in Obamaland:

Anyway, it seems like they’re wasting no time taking Palin out of context. That’s how it goes, I guess. Unsurprisingly, they’re also saying really gross things about little Trig, and about her children. Classy, classy bunch.

You read the crap they’re coming up with and you realize, they’re terrified.

But you know, in the past few weeks we’ve seen several right-wing blogs defend the Obama team against excessive nonsense (the birth certificate carrying-on, for example) – I do hope we’ll manage to see one or two blogs from the other side actually give Palin a hearing – in context – before jumping aboard.

Also from The Weekly Standard—be sure to read this:

John McCain was inching up on Barack Obama last week in the presidential polls as his campaign cleverly picked and pecked at Obama’s vanity. At the Democratic convention, speeches by the Clintons and Senator Joe Biden, Obama’s running mate, salved the campaign a bit. Then came the address by Obama before 85,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver. The event was a grandiose spectacle that overwhelmed the doctrinaire content of the speech. But as a political happening, it worked like nothing I’ve seen before.Republicans were demoralized, which could be fatal in an election year in which most of the larger political forces are working against them. I’m not going to list those forces. Read the newspaper. And it looked like we were in for the selection by McCain of a humdrum vice presidential running mate, followed by a not very interesting Republican convention in St. Paul.

Sarah Palin changed all that. She was not only a surprise choice but also an electrifying one, and her selection has far-reaching implications. Her entry will change the nature of the presidential race. And if the McCain-Palin ticket wins, it has the potential to carry Republicans through a rough patch and even ensure conservative dominance of the party–for years to come.

That’s an awful lot of political significance to ascribe to a vice presidential pick. But given who Sarah Palin is and what her future might be, it’s not too much.

As my kids would say:  “Wow….Just Wow.”

An interesting “inside the belly of the beast” observation from Neo-neocon commenter Gail:

SitRep from the Innards of the Enemy Camp: a major Madison Avenue ad agency where I toil daily–the Lefties are buzzing like a kicked beehive over the Palin selection. I heard more sexist remarks in twenty minutes than I’ve heard over the course of ten years: she’s unqualified because she’s too pretty, she gave her kids weird names, she’s a lightweight with no experience, she’s just bait for the droolingly stupid NRA guys, she’s a girrrl, she’s a mommy and a churchgoer, etc.

It got so bad that I was tempted to call them on it, saying they sounded like the old farts they affect to despise and saying just the same things (minus the pretty part) the old farts they despise had said about Hillary.

They also said, rather heatedly, that NO Hillary voter was going to vote for McCain just because he picked this “bimbo.”

But none of their objections was substantive, and there was an edge of anxiety to their energetic discussion: they showed much more animation about the Palin pick than they did about BO’s speech, which is telling.

I think they’re worried.

I see it as a brilliant move by McCain. I agree: she’s “not an old white guy,” which is crucial. She’s attractive, hugely popular in AK, killed the Bridge to Nowhere and sold the governor’s private jet, and is an NRA member.

The “troopergate” issue sounds tissue-thin: I watched the link to the report on the Anchorage station, and I can’t even make out what the great sin is supposed to be. Or, for that matter, what the heck the story is about! I doubt the general public will get wrapped around the axle about it.

I’m pro-choice, a big fan of science, and more of a lib-hawk than a conservative, but I think this pick will play well: McCain is popular with moderate Dems, and has shown that he’s not exactly the fire and brimstone conservative they love to hate; OTOH, Palin is a much more conservative pol, and should appeal to the rightward end of the Republicans. I think he just balanced his ticket.

Heh, heh, heh….Dr. Melissa has the first of the inevitable Palin topless photos!!!  Good Lord, this is shaping up to be the best Labor Day weekend I’ve ever had, and I’m stuck at home!  I also love Dr. Melissa’s “Girls Want To Be Her, Guys Want To Be Married To Her” post…..oh yeah.  That’s what’s going on here.  Oprah, get ready to cry your next set of eyelashes off.  Yeah, this reminds me of the Roseanne Cash song “Seven Year Ache,” at least this line, anyway….”The boys say ‘when’s he gonna give us some room?’ the girls say ‘God, I hope he comes back soon…’”  America has a new sweetheart.