I don't know whether Sarah Palin was a smart pick for Veep or not, but it's pretty clear that she scares the clogs off of some of my dear friends on the left hand of the local blogosphere. At least they are dumping on her with a watery discharge that makes our treatment of Joe Biden look like a hagiography. See Professor Schaff on Biden ("good pick"); and mine (where I defend Biden against an old charge).
Cory Heidelberger brings a charge against Palin that is worth taking seriously. During a interview, Governor Palin giggled as the interviewer called Lyda Green (Republican State President) a "cancer" and a bitch. Governor Palin should have taken them to task in the sternest way possible. Her failure to do so was a lapse in political and moral judgment. It's kinda like listening to someone say that the U.S. invented the AIDS virus in order to kill Blacks and keeping quiet instead of raising an objection. Cory produces a couple pieces of evidence occurring over a span of, at most two years. Barack Obama listened to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years; and if he ever took issue with the Reverend's noxious venom, there is no record of it. Obama went along to get along, for a long time. Palin did the same. It was correct for Cory to point this out. But he obviously doesn't take this sort of thing seriously, except when Republicans do it.
My bud Todd Epp weighs in with that same item, and a few more. He says that "Palin said she was for the bridge to nowhere but then said she wasn't." Well, I went to the link that Todd provides, but all I found there was a bunch of people who would have benefited from the bridge claiming that the Governor had been for it when she ran for office. Did she in fact come out in support of the bridge? I don't know yet, and neither does Todd. But if true, does Todd really think that this is a good reason to drop a candidate? Todd's man crush Barack Obama claimed that he supported some limitations on late term abortions, but in fact he had never done so as a state legislature. When a pro-life group called him on it, he accused them of lying. His campaign later had to admit that they got it right. I am guessing that this doesn't take the bloom off of Todd's rose.
Oh, but Palin's perfidy goes deeper than that. "She apparently failed to tell Sen. John McCain that her unmarried 17 year old daughter was pregnant." Todd links to his own Kansas blog, which in turn links to a Huffington post piece. On the latter, I found this:
The McCain team asserted that he knew about the pregnancy when he selected Palin. She has five children and now a grandchild coming as she hits the campaign trail.
Oops. McCain did know. And besides, should this really have figured into McCain's decision? I know that political considerations are sometimes ugly, but what should we have thought of McCain if he rejected Palin because her daughter was pregnant out of wedlock?
I don't blame my Keloland colleagues for not noticing that the instant oatmeal they whipped up to throw at Governor Palin sticks just as easily to their own favored candidate. But when one of them starts talking like the church lady, that's a sign that the Palin choice is deeply disturbing to their world view. And it's not only the local blogosphere. Sally Quinn at the Washington Post goes full tilt into left-wing Archie Bunkerism. But that's for the next post. McCain's choice is starting to look like genius.
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