11 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
11 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
McCain makes a bold move
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<p>Picking Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee was a clever and gutsy thing for John McCain to do. I think he has just wrong-footed the Democrats on several levels.</p>
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<p>First, this choice looks bold and change-making in exactly the way Obama’s choice of Biden did not. Instead of a tired old pol with a history of scandal and gaffe (not to mention the bad hairplugs), McCain chose a fresh-faced frontier girl married to an <s>Inuit</s> Yup’ik Indian. And one with a history of whistleblowing on corrupt Republicans.</p>
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<p>Second, this tells us something about McCain’s relationship to the Republican base: either he figures the more reactionary end of the red-meat Right has no place else to go, or he thinks they don’t actually care what shape a President’s gonads are any more, or the color of the person the President sleeps with.</p>
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<p>Third, it puts the PUMAs further in play. The most obvious message here is that McCain wants all those disgruntled Hillary-voting older women out there voting for him. Just going on her tough-babe bio, I think Palin has a pretty good chance of drawing them, too, especially if she’s any good as a stump speaker.</p>
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<p>Fourth, McCain just put a helluva spoke in Hillary Clinton’s wheels if she’s got ambitions for 2012. I’ll see your fake working-class-woman persona and raise you with the real deal, he says. There’s no way a Wellesley and Yale Law grad can win an authenticity competition with a woman who shoots moose and pilots her own float plane.</p>
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<p>It’s a pass-the-popcorn moment for sure. How many politicians can both play the “diversity” card and brandish a lifetime membership in the NRA? And just to put the cherry on top for Republicans, this move might upstage all the hope-and-change posturing at the DNC.</p>
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<p>All in all, a very clever choice — and not in isolation. The McCain campaign is starting to punch seriously just as Obama’s seems to be losing momentum; the choice of Biden was a hard stall, and their attempt to suppress an issues ad tying Obama to terrorist Bill Ayers via lawsuit threats isn’t winning them any friends. Couple these with the dead-heat poll numbers at a moment when on historical patterns Obama ought to have a huge lead, and I see trouble for the Democrats.</p>
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<p>I’ve begun to wonder in the last week if the epitaph on Obama’s political grave will read “He peaked too early.” I’m thinking that looks increasingly likely now.</p>
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<p>Update: Heh. And there’s already a <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qwNGaeCRkvY/SLgIcjWvoMI/AAAAAAAAAnk/H1bG2FKHQYA/s1600-h/hot.jpg">picture circulating</a> of Palin aiming a a scope-sighted M-4 like she knows how. In Iraq. That’s gonna cause heartburn in <em>all</em> the right places. </p>
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