printWell, John McCain’s VP pick is certainly pretty.
Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin is an outsider alright. Liberals, to whom beauty is a liability (unless it’s Michelle Obama’s kind of Amazon-Woman appeal), are already making light of her beauty-queen pedigree. Check this condescending Newsweek article title: “Pageants and Politics.” Isn’t this an attempt to diminish the woman?
Palin is a hunter and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Unlike her boss, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But, and as Obama intends to do, she already has raised taxes on oil company profits.
She’s from Idaho, which, I am told, is where extremely conservative Real America escapes the depredations of the creeping left.
A nickname that has stuck with Palin is “Sarah Barracuda”—all good—and she worked as a commercial fisherman. Her husband, a handsome, some-time commercial fisherman (one of the most dangerous jobs), is a Yup’ik Eskimo. I say that the Moron McCain has hit a home run. This family is a nice counterweight to the Obama family exotica.
On the issue of experience, McCain has knocked the stuffing out of Obama in as much as the latter has made all the winning arguments for judgment and wisdom over experience.
From the gushing Republicans are doing over Palin, however, it is clear that it doesn’t take much to please these party loyalists. Republicans are nowhere near a eureka moment—recognizing that without Ron-Paul type fiscal leadership, the US is going down the economic toilet, with a national debt half as large as the GDP.
For that, a pretty face and a feel for fetuses are not enough. Salvaging the country is something only a Paul, perhaps a Bob Barr, could do, with a willing Congress. And here the reader is encouraged to fill in all the clichés of improbability he can conjure. For example: And Britney Spears will grow a voice. Or wear underwear.
Update I (September 1, 2008): Sarah Palin’s unmarried daughter, aged 17, is expecting a baby. I disagree with all the Republicans and “conservatives” who’ve suddenly detected in this event another sign of Palin’s conservative bona fides. Palin’s press release reveals the woman’s liberal parenting style with respect to an issue her conservative cohorts are helping to normalize:
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support.”
Spoken like a true liberal, who supports and, no doubt, will subsidize irresponsible—some conservatives would say immoral—conduct.
Update II: cultural conservatism has become an unknown quantity in fin de siècle America, in which a conservative candidate for office publishes a letter practically celebrating her unwed daughter’s pregnancy. There is not a hint of disapproval in the Palin press release. A reader has asked what I think Palin ought to have said about the affair. Apparently that’s a mystery. So here’s the conservative version of Palin’s press release:
“As conservatives can imagine, my husband and I are deeply disappointed in our beautiful daughter, Bristol. Her actions flout the upbringing and the values we thought we had instilled in her. Our daughter is well aware of our disappointment. In addition to the enormous responsibilities she will be forced to shoulder due to her reckless behavior, she has her parents’ disapproval to deal with. As this is a private and very difficult matter for our family, we ask that the media respect our privacy and keep its distance.”
Update III: From ABC News: “A meme is developing out there among liberals that Gov. Sarah Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan in the 1990s, a charge that the McCain-Palin campaign strongly denies.”
Why deny? So a pregnant daughter is not a liability, but supporting Pat Buchanan is?
Update IV (September 2): The responses so far to my comment about Gov. Palin’s perfectly liberal parenting style is to point out that getting knocked up and having bastards is simply the way of the world.
I see moral and cultural relativism is another twisted tenet conservatives have adopted. For that is what this mounts to: because everyone does it, certain conduct becomes part of the cultural repertoire. Judgment is suspended. Understanding extended, and the undesirable behavior then multiplies.
Furthermore, my comment pertained not to what the girl intends to do—or will be compelled to do—but to the lack of any opprobrium in Palin’s gushing press release. As I say, her daughter’s conduct is depicted rather positively, even praised.
Actually, when my girl was a little younger than Bristol, I had The Talk with her. Let me put it this way, the options I presented her with should she conceive were not as appealing as the Palin plan for unwed mothers. Nowhere did “pride and support” feature in our little conversation. It broke my heart to be so harsh, but it worked, to the benefit of my daughter’s wellbeing. Young girls are not ready physically or mentally to have babies. Babies born to young girls, moreover, are not as healthy. In fact, complications and abnormalities abound in the young cohort as they do in the older age group.
Question: Palin’s kid is five months into her pregnancy. Why on earth did she not get married earlier?
Naturally, this is an interesting conversation in itself. Note: nowhere have I intimated that this matter should–or does–have any bearing on Gov. Palin’s abilities.
Update V: Lew Rockwell on what’s in the offing for this feisty woman:
It is perhaps possible to be the governor of a small state such as Alaska and not be part of the machine. It is not possible to be vice president of the United States and not enter into the deeply immoral arena that values the burying of all principle, and saying and doing whatever is necessary to bolster power.
Part of the purpose of campaigns is to socialize the candidates in this mold. Sarah will be slapped around if and when she openly disagrees with McCain’s politics. When they win the election, she will immediately be required to take on the role of an apologist for all that the administration does.
Unless it is a tight race, I still plan to write in Ron Paul’s name. Since Obama seems to like war as much as killer Cain, the pro-life credentials tip the balance.
I’m very cynical about the appointment of Sarah Palin. It’s being used as a reason to attract more Democratic women to his platform, something that I despise. Democratic women, it can be logically and empirically proven, are the most evil beings in the known universe, the embodiment of such enormous ignorance and stupidity that it has been observed that black holes need to be named after them. [LOL]
But I disgress…
Watching the stupidity of America, and the degradation of liberty and economic freedom, all one can do is hope that it is coming to a head.
The real problem is what takes place after the Big Boom. If Keynesians, Republicans, or Democrats take control after the calamity, a new form of Minute Men must be created to combat them. Right now, we can only hope that classical liberals, Austrian economists, and (some) neoclassicals are getting prepared to answer the important questions after the big bust.
The Zeitgeist is not yet ready for our ideas.
Damn! I wish I’d said that!
Chief neo-conservative Bill Kristol urged McCain to pick Palin
http://www.rlc.org/2008/08/30/bill-kristol/
Biography equals American democracy. We started this road to popular democracy with Indian killers Andy Jackson and William Henry Harrison, raised in “log cabins” and went on to “rail splittin’ Honest Abe“, “Roughriding” Teddy Roosevelt,”World feeder” Herbert Hoover etc. Now we have Tortured P.O.W. Hero McCain with Caribou Hunting Beauty Pageant Palin facing off against Multiracial Raised Overseas by Abandoned Mother Obama with Wife and Kids Killed in Auto Accident Biden. I am looking forward to the day when we nominate a trangendered, cloned, raised-underwater -by-squid, NFL linebacker, opera-singer, one-legged rabbi for President – use your imagination for VP! {P.S. – please ignore that fanatic Ron Paul character, he is actually running on the Constitution and limited government}
I do not know that Bob Barr is trustworthy. Paul is.
Ilana:
I’m wondering what you think Palin should have said regarding her teenaged daughter’s pregnancy.
Pat is great when it comes to common sense stuff regarding the nation.
Bring economics into the picture, and he’s awful. He literally has not much of any idea of how the world works.
I find this kind of ignorance in spite of good theory and facts to be scary. I used to think that if people were subjected to good theory and facts, they would change. Pat Buchanan shows that this is not true, and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t argue about political economy anymore.
Humans are not reasonable or rational beings. Buchanan, an economic barbarian, shows this to be true.
I don’t know much about Palin yet. What I do know so far tells me she is more of a man than the other candidates in this race for President and VP. I still don’t plan on voting for McCain, but at least Palin makes Obama and Biden look like the sissies they actually are.
Bristol is no Murphy Brown. She and her baby’s father are going to marry and take responsibility for their actions. People married and started families as teenagers for centuries. Obama, on the other hand, would have his grandbaby aborted.
Well, Barack’s mom Stanley Ann Dunham, was pregnant from an overseas married Kenyan before they got briefly married for a year – plus ca change, c’est la meme chose. Mama Michelle’s rival for first lady inherited a fortune selling a product forbidden for people under 21, broke up the marriage of a returning POW 18 years her senior, and was addicted to pain medication. Our caribou hunting VP (can she harpoon that senile warmonger and take over the office?) was apparently a member of the Alaskan Independence Party – but this, like being pro-Buchanan, is embarrassing to the “Bomb-Bomb-Iran” campaign organization. It’s also interesting also to have a baby named Trig – (even worse than Myron) – who is he going to marry – Algebra?.. and name their baby Calculus! American elections are not about ideology and principles but about soap operas and sound bites so we are going to have a raucous 90 more days. BONUS Question – if Stanley Ann Dunham’s boyfriend was a Norwegian hockey student named Barry Amundsen instead of a Kenyan named Barack Obama, would he have been the Democratic nominee and Messiah?
Ilana,
I’ve not read this site in detail for several days and am only now finding your Update II, with which I heartily agree. It must be remembered that Palin is not only a social conservative, but a Christian conservative. Sexual relations outside marriage are called “immorality” in the Bible.
So I wonder, based on what standard is Palin “proud” of her daughter? Would she be similarly proud if her daughter had revealed that she is a homosexual (the practice of which is also called “immorality” in the Bible) and preparing to elope to California with a lesbian partner when she turns 18? Would socially conservative Christians be as wildly supportive of Palin in this circumstance as they are today?
I doubt it, but I think the point is that the same standards should apply to all. If one touts biblical standards, one should be judged by those standards. If people–by that I mean conservative Christians–can’t do that, they should just shut up about morals and values.