A sweep of a few Illinois conservative blogs shows that the right
is pretty pleased with Sen. John McCain's choice for his vice
presidential nominee, Alaska Governor Sara Palin. Team America calls Palin a "great and bold choice on the part of McCain," who could attract stray Clinton voters. Illinois Review's Ralph Seiffe suggests
Palin could also help appeal to working-class swing voters because
she's "a fisherman, a hunter and a NRA member." He doesn't find her
lack of experience to be a pitfall, either:
The Democrats have chosen a young, inexperienced presidential candidate and a poltroon for vice president. Contrast that to an experienced presidential and a new, apprentice. This is forward looking positioning and shows a plan for succession.
Backyard Conservative is equally enthusiastic:
She's a tough reformer and porkbuster, great on the energy issue and is a very appealing person, mom and an athlete to boot. Pro-life for the base but she might pull in some disaffected Hillary voters.
My take? McCain's choice of Palin is nothing more than a vanity move, a desperate attempt to consolidate support among the small cadre of wary Clinton supporters while simultaneously appealing to the party's base. Adam Serwer has the best line of the day here:
The pick of Palin is dripping with transparent condescension, the notion that the enthusiasm behind Hillary was simply the result of her being a woman, that it had nothing to do with what she actually stood for, and in that sense it's equally sexist.
While Palin will briefly titalate the talking heads, it's unclear whether or not she can help McCain govern, as Matt Yglesias astutely observes. Obviously, it's a gamble for the Obama campaign to bring up concerns about her experience, but the facts are pretty striking. She's been in the executive office for 20 months in a state with 650,000 people (if it were an American city, it'd be the 16th most populous). She makes Dan Quayle look like Ted Kennedy.
And that maverick image? I'm not buying it either. She's fought against earmarks, so that's a net-plus if it's an issue anyone cares about (I can't say I'm in that camp). But let's be clear: the party's hardcore base loves her, as Ed Kilgore explains:
Palin's a heroine to the Cultural Right for one simple reason: she recently carried a pregnancy to term despite knowing that the child would likely suffer from Down's Syndrome. In combination with her unambivalent anti-choice (and anti-gay-marriage) views, this makes her the ideal female candidate for the Christian Right (her own religious views are a bit hazy; she's usually described as a "non-denominational Protestant").
Economic conservatives like her too, partly because of her advocacy for oil drilling everywhere, especially in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and partly because she's the bitter enemy of an Alaska GOP establishment long considered (strange as it may seem) dangerously liberal by most conservatives.
You can also add her support for intelligent design.
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