You’re Doing It Wro- Righ- Wait, What Are You Doing?

Just a small blurb for the Republicans…

What the hell are you doing?

When McCain came out with Sarah Palin for his VP candidate I said “Who?” Read up a little bit on her – governor of Alaska after being a major for a bit – and said “oO, either way we got history in the making for the 2008 presidential election.”

I woke up this morning and heard “Palin’s 17 year old daughter is pregnant – she plans to wed her boyfriend.

My jaw dropped. I mean first McCain runs the risk of losing support in the southern and mid-west states for having a *gasp* woman run as a VP candidate… not a conservative move since conservatives still think that women aren’t suited for governmental leadership… not unlike the RC only allowing males to be priests. So, OK, an aggressive move from McCain in selecting a woman from an “outlying” state. Then ya hear this unwed, under aged pregnancy.

Can you imagine what the conservatives are saying about this? Did McCain know about it? Did she hide something from the committees? Should he retract the nomination, saying that she’s not right for the job? That makes him appear disloyal. Should he stand beside her? What about family values? The media? They’re going to have a field day with this. How could they not? It’s a proper scandal!

Then it dawned on me… this was a masterful move. Masterful.

McCain has taken the teeth out of the Democrats mouth with this. For a long, long time they have fashioned themselves as the “younger, hipper” party. The party that isn’t straitlaced like the Republican party. Hell no! No Democrat will ever be as conservative as the Republicans! So… then, how can the Democrats throw the first stone at this one? Palin’s life – and her daughters – is more mainstream American than we should know about. No abortion mentioned, true, but she’s having a kid outta wedlock! That’s something a Democrat does – how can they bad mouth her without bad mouthing themselves? Same thing is true of the press: how can they beat the shit outta McCain or Palin on this when their usual line is that, well, simply put, Republicans don’t like or even have sex.

Could he have planned this? Sure, it could backfire: he could end up losing all of the conservative support and lose the election accordingly. However, if this was planned? Disarming the liberals by using their own “rules” against them and possibly grabbing a bunch of swing votes in the process? Even if it’s note 100% effective…

Masterful.


5 thoughts on “You’re Doing It Wro- Righ- Wait, What Are You Doing?”

  1. I don’t think McCain has much to lose. The other ticket has the most liberal senator, and the third most liberal senator. Palin has enough conservative cred to avoid any hard cores going the other way.

    Suddenly the Republicans are the ticket for change, and the Obama ticket looks like “business as usual” when he paired himself up with a 30-year veteran of The Establishment. Masterful stroke.

  2. Two mavericks for the price of one! :)

    Political conventions are full of B.S. rhetoric anyway. Voters today know how to filter out that stuff after being sensitized to repeated talking points from the left and right. However, Sen. Lieberman actually made a good point in his speech: “This year, when you vote for president, vote for the person you believe is best for the country, not for the party you happen to belong to.” I always try to vote for the person with the most wisdom, regardless of party affiliation, but that brings up another question – how do you measure wisdom?

  3. PALIN: “I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending … and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere.”

    THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a “bridge to nowhere.”

    PALIN: “There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform ? not even in the state senate.”

    THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

    PALIN: “The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

    THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama’s plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain’s plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

    Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

    He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

    MCCAIN: “She’s been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America’s energy supply … She’s responsible for 20 percent of the nation’s energy supply. I’m entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America,” he said in an interview with ABC News’ Charles Gibson.

    THE FACTS: McCain’s phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she’s no more “responsible” for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state ? by population.

    MCCAIN: “She’s the commander of the Alaska National Guard. … She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” he said on ABC.

    THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under “federal status,” which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska’s national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

    FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin “got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States.”

    THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor’s election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

    FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: “We need change, all right ? change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington ? throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin.”

    THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.


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