Blue Mass Group

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Serious Question: Why are you so afraid of Sarah Palin?

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I’m not even going to comment on the comments. But I want to ask y’all a serious question.  “Why are you so afraid of Sarah Palin?”

It’s obvious the left is terrified, based on the level of attack.  “Why are you so afraid?”

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  1. I’m afraid of John McCain and what his process choosing a Vice-President says about how he might run the country.

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    p>I’ve had quite enough of Presidents who rush into things with little consideration for the facts and worry more about appeasing the most radical wing of their party than how their decision might effect the rest of us.

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    p>

  2. …by what an an unmitigated disaster a continuation of Bush’s policy through a McCain presidency would be, and then along came the shockingly unqualified Sarah Palin who only subtracts from an already poor ticket.

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    p>As a progressive, I’m terrified of the regression represented by McCain/Palin.

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    p>And I got news for ya: It’s not just the left that is “affraid” of Palin.
    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/a…

  3. However, after a year of garbage about Obama being a Muslim, and other really interesting fiction spread on the web, I don’t think anyone on the left wants to sit around and allow the Republicans and the right-wing to define Sarah Palin without a little competition.

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    p>The pregnant daughter, IMHO, is off limits.  However, her views are certainly relevant, as is her political record.  We all know there are far more qualified candidates out there – more qualified women, too.

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    p>I am offended by the spin, that Governor Palin has more executive experience… she is governor of the largest state in the union… while still trying to attack Obama.  Governor Palin was the mayor of a municipality so small it couldn’t be a city in Massachusetts.  In a sense of scale, we have a woman who went from a small town selectman to county commissioner to VP candidate.

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    p>There’s a bunch of really questionable decisions.  She fired the police chief in Wasilla for political reasons, and the head of the state police for what seems to be specious reasons.  What does this mean for someone who will be a heartbeat from the presidency?

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    p>What does this have to say about McCain’s decision-making process?  Fair game, and given the amount of negatives from the McCain campaign against Obama, I can’t blame enthusiastic Obama supporters who want to exploit a McCain negative.

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    p>So, I’m not afraid.  But, in the land of Karl Rove, there’s lots of folks who have learned the important lesson of hitting fast and hitting hard without any DeLay.

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    p>Nuff said?

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    p>

      • … as a result of picking someone the media didn’t have a clue about at first:

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        p>

        The media’s total unawareness of Palin allowed the McCain campaign to immediately press their narrative. Whether the media would have challenged the narrative anyhow is open to speculation, but in this case, they had no choice but to accept what they were told — they didn’t know anything else.

        For example, the McCain team assured reporters that Palin was a maverick. And so it was:

        • Referring to Palin during the August 29 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews claimed, “I think she is a maverick,” and added, “[T]he several years she’s been in public life has been that of a maverick, someone taking on the good ol’ boys. … Every time one party runs the show, it gets corrupt, and she was challenging it.”
        • Discussing the choice during the August 29 edition of MSNBC Live, anchor Kevin Corke said of McCain: “I’m thinking he likes this idea that she’s also a bit of a maverick.”
        • During the August 29 edition of CNN’s The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer uncritically asserted, “Republicans call her a uniter and a tough maverick.”
        • During the August 29 edition of Fox News’ Your World, host Neil Cavuto asserted, “First, the maverick. He picks a maverick.”
        • An August 29 Detroit Free Press article was headlined “McCain chooses maverick Alaska governor to be his vice president.”
        • In an August 29 post on the washingtonpost.com blog The Fix, staff writer Chris Cillizza claimed, “In choosing Palin, McCain also doubles down on the maverick argument; Palin is the face of reform in the Republican party nationally and is clearly not of Washington — a key element of her biography given how negative voter sentiment toward the nation’s capital is currently.”

        During her speech, Palin claimed she was against the “Bridge To Nowhere” — this presumably was a big reason that reporters immediately began referring to her as the “face of reform in the Republican party,” as we see Cillizza did above. Mainstream reporters asserted that again and again — Bob Schieffer, Chris Wallace, and The Wall Street Journal, for example.

        Presumably they were unaware of the basic fact that Palin supported (the bridge while she was running for governor. And of course, the vacuum of any information on Palin allowed conservatives to step in and advance ridiculous things, unchallenged. David Brooks said on PBS that Palin “pretty progressive on gay and lesbian issues” and “talks about global warming quite a lot.” As is true on many issues, Palin’s views on gay and lesbian issues aren’t know, and Brooks didn’t offer any support. (Given her other social-issue positions, I assume Palin is “progressive” only if the Taliban is the baseline measurement, but we’ll have to wait and see). And while Palin does “talk about global warming quite a lot,” she says things like “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”

        Josh Marshall offers some angles for reporters to pursue, now that they have time to look into Palin and ask some real questions. Hopefully, we’ll be able to distinguish the media’s reporting two weeks from now from its reporting when they thought her name was Susan.

  4. Because all signs indicate that she will be an awful, awful vice president.

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    p>As someone who has established a commission partially dedicated to reducing GHG emissions yet inexplicably does not believe that global warming is caused by humans, as someone of is anti-choice, as someone who sees to have almost no ideas about foreign policy other than praying that US troops are doing “God’s work”, as someone who wore a Pat Buchanan button and seems to have supported him (unless Pat Buchanan is lying), as someone who seems to believe that we all need to be theists, as someone who has already starting spreading lies about her past actions, as someone who thinks that creationism and evolution should be taught side-by-side, as someone who believes that if the phrase “under god” in the pledge “was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me”, she could do a whole lot of damage.

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    p>So yeah, I am terrified of this ticket. Because I honestly think it could win, and that would be an utter disaster.

  5. Offended.  Very few people like it when a completely unqualified person is offered an important job, let alone the Vice Presidency of the United States, based purely on his/her gender.    

  7. As a matter of politics, this is a desperate choice by a failing candidate. It might conceivably help McCain with the fanatical evangelical wing of the GOP, who aren’t interested in reason anyway, but as a matter of history selecting a completely unqualified VP who is a member of the Party’s most extremist fringe is just one more step on a slippery slope down.

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    p>As a matter of drama, however, it’s incredibly funny to watch the increasingly green faces among the realistic Republicans — the ones who have always been afraid that McCain would just pop off and do something crazy that would lose the election … and are now seeing those fears realized. Each day has brought an even more horrific revelation: she doesn’t know what the VP does! she’s under investigation for using the power of her office to get a public employee she didn’t like fired! she was a member of a political party that wants to destroy the United States — and sent them a video message within the last 20 months saying “Keep up the good work.”! Cindy McCain thinks she understands foreign policy because her state is next to Russia! I mean, it’s hilarious.

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    p>Best of all, from my perspective, by turning the entire Republican campaign effort into a joke, Palin has ruined whatever gravitas McCain might have hoped to preserve as an ancient war hero. Frankly, given the Palin bikini and mini-skirt photographs circulating on the web, McCain mostly just looks like a dirty old man at this point.

  8. This is obviously anecdotal, but there’s a group of Clinton supporters I know who were solidly in the “I still can’t vote for Obama” camp after the Democratic Convention. As of today they are all on board for Democratic Unity.

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    p>One interesting exchange (paraphrased): “Could you imagine the right-wing attacks if it were Chelsea who got pregnant?” “Wouldn’t happen. Any daughter of Hillary is going to know enough not to get pregnant.”

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    p>So, thanks, John McCain. You helped get through to these people how important this election is.

  9. It’s clear that by the comments and anyone that is not a die hard Republican that we are questioning John McCain and his judgment.  It’s not really about Palin, it’s about McCain.  I noted earlier that it’s a panic decision, we all understand this since they never met prior to the week of her selection and the vetting process.  Right now she is being vetted in public since McCain did not vet her himself.  That’s a problem for McCain.

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    p>I think you are trying to change the subject, and it’s a theme that started yesterday by the McCain camp.  Along with bring her daughter front and center as if that’s the issue everyone is talking about.  The media has asked about her record, that’s fair, all candidates she be able to discuss and defend their decisions.  

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    p>Instead, McCain has harped on the baby and the post in Kos.  The media has not harped on this issue, it get repeatedly brought up by McCain, they even bring out the baby’s father to the convention and shutting Palin out to the media.  Bottom line, she being publicly vetted by McCain’s doing.  They are crying and complaining about it (and probably hope it works), similar to your question.  Hoping that the normal questions that have gone unanswered can he avoided.  The media is asking legit questions, troopergate, corruption, Ted Stevens, the secession party.  Instead they bring up the baby and they are being attacked.  I don’t think it’s going to work.

    • did you see the big news thingie mccain staged at the airport?  they show him greeting w/hugs and pats on the back the lusty young couple.  we’re not supposed to talk about them, but mccain featured them in a free ad a video news release.

      • that asked us not to bother them, I don’t know how much more hypocritical he could get. Either they’re out-of-bounds, or they’re not. Can’t have it both ways…

      • …on Palin campaigning with young children at home:

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        p>I’m stunned – couldn’t the Republican Party find one competent female with adult children to run for Vice President with McCain?   I realize his advisors probably didn’t want a “mature” woman, as the Democrats keep harping on his age.  But really, what kind of role model is a woman whose fifth child was recently born with a serious issue, Down Syndrome, and then goes back to the job of Governor within days of the birth?

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        p>I swear I heard this sentiment came from Democrats.  Go figure.  

        • i didn’t get to see her speech and the family on-stage intro.  were either palin parent holding trig?  i swear that every time there is a family photo, the baby is being held by one of the daughters.  it’s as if the parents want to keep a distance from him.

  10. First though…I smell blood and anything to hurt the Republicans chance at victory is OK with me.  And, aside what I mention below, Sarah Palin is a flawed pick and I’m all for pointing out those flaws.

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    p>But the prospect of having a person who believes in such polar opposites ideas as me, being a heart beat away from the Presidency scares the shit out of me.  

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    p>Teaching creationism “along side” science scares me.

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    p>Having woman who terrified that they are pregnant and forcing them to get back ally abortions in which many will either die or rendered sterile after the procedure scares me.  Having concerned medical professionals charged with murder because they performed an abortion scares me.

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    p>Having a president that once had the gumption to float the idea of banning books from a library scares me.

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    p>There are a whole lot of other things that scares me about Sarah Palin but those are just a few.   But if you want to say that I’m afraid of Sarah Palin because of her ideas-yes, that would be correct.
     

    • I’m not afraid of her in terms of political dynamics (which EaBo seems to imply). I’m afraid of pretty much everything she believes in, including:
      – Taking away a woman’s right to choose.
      – Teaching creationism in the science classroom.
      – Drilling our way out of the energy crisis.
      – That any political or military agenda is ever a mission from God.

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      p>So yeah, I think that’s pretty damn scary.  

  12. I think you are confusing “fear” with properly vetting someone who was an obscure footnote a week ago and has suddenly been thrust onto the national scene.  

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    p>John McCain’s warts have been hashed and rehashed over the last three decades, so he’s had time to distance himself from stuff like the Keating Five or making a crass joke about the President’s teenage daughter being “ugly”. Likewise, Obama has had 18+ months to weather the stories about Reverend Wright and Tony Rezko and Joe Biden’s plagiarism has lost its gotcha value over the last twenty years.

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    p>For Palin, however, we’ve had five days to decide whether the 20-month governor of the 47th most populous state is worthy of being a heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world, so she’s merely getting the same level of scrutiny as the candidates above, condensed into a short, busy week.  

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    p>That you feel you have to ask childish questions like “Why are you so afraid?” says far more about your mindset than ours.

  13. I think she’s a clear case of tokenism, questionably sane compared to the job she’s running for and less experienced than Jane Swift.

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    p>None of that means I’m “afraid of her.” Indeed, the potential for an October surprise via TrooperGate could sank the ticket alone. I HOPE the Repugs keep her on the ticket – because she’ll turn off more people than she will energize the base.  

  14. I think it’s simply a small portion of democrats who have grossly underestimated both her and the Republican spin/strategy machine. Unfortunately those democrats tend to be the loudest ones.

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    p>By allowing the media to completely smear her without answer, the conservatives have made this woman out to be a scrappy fighter. I’m not sure if this was planned or not, but seems to be the way things are going to play out.

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    p>A lot of “experts” are saying she didn’t do anything to pull any independents over to the GOP, and that McCain is going to have to do something special tonight to get that bump in the polls everybody talks about. McCain doing something special is about as likely as my grandparents voting democrat.

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    p>I will be interested to see how other parts of the country react to the convention as a whole when I travel a bit next week. My gut feeling is that McCain and Obama will be tied in the polls by the beginning of next week. Not necessarily an 8 point jump for McCain, but more like a 5 point jump for McCain and a 3 point drop for Obama.

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