John McCain has announced his VP choice, and it's none other than Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Um. Who? You know, Sarah Palin, the former Miss Alaska runner-up who was mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470) before losing a race for Lieutenant Governor and finally scoring an upset win for Governor of Alaska in 2006 (population 683,478 - 47th largest state in the Union!).
Apparently, this move is supposed to cinch the election by attracting all 18 million of Hilary Clinton's supporters to the Republican ticket.
There will be a few former Hilary supporters who's main objective is seating a woman in the White House, regardless of party or policy, who will be swayed. But I believe they are a tiny sliver of HRC's former supporters.
Anybody who was for Hilary for what she stood for will back away in horror from the McCain-Palin ticket, and specifically from McCain's "appeasing" of them by selecting a pro-life, big-oil connected, NRA member who returned to work last April only three days after giving birth to a premature baby with Down syndrome.
That Palin is willing to hit the national campaign trail at this time in her family's history says volumes about her ambition and priorities, but very little for her judgment - or McCain's.
(Just forget the fact that she's served less than two years as governor of a state with fewer people than most mid-sized cities - We will not play the "experience card").
I applaud McCain for choosing a woman (24 years after the Democrats nominated a woman VP candidate), but why Palin? Christine Todd Whitman would have attracted many more crossover voters and independents, to name one possibility.
So, I'd be tempted to say, this is good for Obama and bad for McCain, but in the end, the VP choices don't mean all that much (how do you spell "Quayle?"). The battle is between the two at the top of their party's tickets.
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