Don’t fall for it
jewel August 29th, 2008
Work was all abuzz today about McCain’s pick for VP. She’s young, a woman and has a story. McCain is no doubt banking on her to bring in the women voters, particularly the bitter Hillary supporters. Personally, I’m hoping that Hillary’s supporters are smarter than that. While there are quite a few things I don’t like about Hillary Clinton, she is a strong woman and a force to be reckoned with. She has spoken out in regards to women’s rights and issues and has long been an advocate for affordable health care. And she was able to win over quite a lot of folks. Also, she has spoken out in favor of evidence based science standards and a woman’s right to choose. Sarah Palin is about as opposite as you can get from Clinton. Of course maybe McCain is just trying to appear like the maverick he no longer is (if he ever really was) by choosing her.
Lets take a look at Palin. She’s young and also appears to be very strong willed and driven. She’s a mother of 5, with her youngest – 4 months old – having Down Syndrome – something she knew while she was pregnant. Being steadfastly anti-abortion, she went through with the pregnancy anyway. Some people probably find that to be a noble thing, and perhaps it is, I’m sure it isn’t an easy path to tread.
More important to me, personally, however are things like civil rights, the environment, evidence based science education and Palin fails all of them. She’s anti-choice, supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is against gay marriage, although she says she has many gay friends. Ok, so she has gay friends but doesn’t feel they should get the same rights and benefits as the rest of us. I’m not impressed. She supports teaching creationism in public schools and is a lifetime member of the NRA. Basically she is a standard issue Republican. I’m sure they are thrilled with her. She claims to have a fresh perspective, but in my opinion her perspective is more akin to the 19th century.
Something else to look at here is her political experience. She doesn’t have any national political experience, not that that kept our current president from being elected. She would be a heart beat away from the Presidency – and McCain is not a young man. Would she be able to do the job? I’m not convinced. I do know that she would undoubtedly influence any Supreme Court Justice appointments that come available and I think that would be dangerous. Although Obama doesn’t have a ton of experience, he has at least been a Senator and Bidden has decades of national political experience and foreign policy experience. Plus Biden scores pretty well with the ACLU, as does Obama. Perfect? No, but still pretty good.
I do hope that this country is tired of what Bush and company have done. It’s going to take a while dig ourselves out of this hole. I hope we are able to get started on that path soon. Like in 143 more days.
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- Comments(2)
I didn’t fall for Palin. Neither did I for Biden.
I’m immensely disappointed with my choices this election. Albeit less so than last election.
He certainly isn’t perfect, I’ll grant you. But he is a whole lot better, in the things that are important issues to me personally, than Palin could ever be. But, first and foremost he (along with Obama and the rest of them) is a politician and “politics” really does suck no matter where ya go.