SARAH~CUDA

By now, most of North America, and no doubt, the English speaking free world, have heard about John McCain's coupe de grace, Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as his vice-presidential running mate in the November US presidential election. You'd have to be politically dead and buried, not to palpably see and hear the squeal being squeezed out of the MSM and the Democratic National Caucus so soon after the Obamessiah's ascension. If nothing in the last two days, the MSM have demonstrated that at their core, democrats and liberals are just nasty, ignorant slobs. Misogynistic, bigoted, slobs. I'm not even going to bother to link any of this - just google Sarah Palin and read the trash from the left.

The biggest complaint has been her "lack of experience". Never mind that she is a 44 year old mother of 5 kids, the latest just this past April, sadly, a Down's Syndrome child. Never mind that along with her B.A. in journalism, she is capable of putting meat on the table, literally, as a capable hunter (and Horrors! a lifetime NRA member. Some would say that's just proof of her pragmatism - its cheaper that way than annual dues...) She brings much of this skillset to the job, too.

Attaining the Alaska governorship in 2006 after a short stint as a small town mayor, Gov. Palin's (just Sarah, as she is referred to in her home state) high school reputation as "Sarahcuda" on the basketball court foretold her penchant for state governance reform once she got into the Governor's chair. Move over "Ahrnold ", there's a new terminator in town. Dick Morris, in the August 31, New York Post:

Sarah Palin does not simply represent an opportunity to appeal to women voters and to add a new, charismatic presence to the ticket. Her selection signals the rebirth of John McCain, the courageous, independent senator who seemed to have been anesthetized during the long primary process.

[...]

But Palin is McCain's kind of governor. She took on the corrupt establishment of the Republican hierarchy in Alaska and defeated incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in a GOP primary. The Murkowski family and the family of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens have run the state for decades. Frank served as senator and then gave it up to run for governor. And into the Senate seat slid his daughter Lisa Murkowski, whom Alaska voters dutifully elected. To give you a gauge of how hard it was for Sarah to beat Murkowski for governor in a Republican primary, Stevens has just won his primary for re-election even though he is under indictment!

But Palin uncovered Republican corruption in the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which she had been appointed to lead. She reported the violations of ethical regulations by her co-commissioner (who also happened to be the Republican Party state chairman). Barred by state law from going public with her charges, she quit and revealed her accusations. She was vindicated when her co-commissioner agreed to pay a $12,000 fine for breaking the state ethics law.

Then, in true McCain style, she took on the state attorney general over his corruption and forced him to resign. Finally, she challenged Gov. Murkowski himself in a primary and won 51 percent of the vote in a three-way contest. Since then, she has line-item-vetoed huge parts of the state budget that she found wasteful and has cleaned house from top to bottom.

Her appointment demonstrates the crucial flaw in the Democratic attack on McCain: the accusation that he is another George W. Bush. Bush chose Cheney. McCain chose Palin. That's emblematic of the difference between them.

[...]

The entire edifice Obama and Biden built in the Denver convention hinges on the supposed similarity between Bush and McCain. Every speaker hewed to his suggested talking points in calling a McCain presidency a third Bush term. As proof, Obama cited the fact that McCain voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. But most Senate votes are unanimous! They praise high school sports teams or American heroes for their accomplishments or rename post offices or courthouses. It's likely Obama and McCain voted together most of the time, too.

Once McCain rebuts the supposed similarity between himself and the man he ran against in the bitter primaries of 2000, there is not a whole lot Obama can do to besmirch McCain's reputation.

Reacting to Palin's selection, Obama called it "more of the same." To say that Sarah Palin is more of same is like saying that Cameron Diaz is like Doris Day.

I had an opportunity to meet and spend half a day with Gov. Palin during a vacation cruise to Alaska sponsored by National Review magazine. The governor invited several of us, including editor Rich Lowry and former UN Ambassador John Bolton, to come see her. There we learned about her crusade against corruption in Alaska, her support for oil drilling there, and the quality of her leadership.

I will always remember taking her aside and telling her she might one day be tapped to be vice president, given her record and the shortage of female political talent in the Republican Party. She will make one hell of a candidate, and hats off to McCain for picking her. Her very presence on the ticket underscores something Obama doesn't want us to notice: He spent two years stopping a woman from becoming president and now he is about to spend two months stopping one from becoming vice president. Obama could have made history but failed the test. McCain passed with flying colors. That point will not be lost on independent women.

But it was when I looked up her biography after the meeting that I learned one of the most salient facts about Sarah Palin. She knew she was bearing a Down syndrome child but refused to have an abortion. While I am personally pro-choice, pro-choice means just that, the right to choose to have or not to have an abortion. My head bows to the integrity, guts and courage it takes to embark knowingly on such a life challenge because of one's personal belief in the sanctity of life. When we look at McCain's loving adoption of a child from a Bangladeshi orphanage run by Mother Teresa and Palin's knowing birth of a handicapped baby, we see a quality of character on this ticket worthy of the White House.

Says LibertyLeft, in Alaska: Palin is a shark, a warning: "..."Don't underestimate her."

...To many of us it felt like the Democratic party didn't ever take her seriously. We all knew Sarah had a chance of winning, even a good chance, Alaska is a very red state after all, but no one predicted the landslide that developed, or her ability to maintain an 80% approval rating.

Sarah is a shark. She is smart, and she is shrewd. However, she comes across as extremely personable; you can't help but like her in person. She is a good public speaker, I've seen better from her in Alaska, and considering how little time she had to prepare for today's speech, I think we'll see much better from her in the near future.

The biggest mistake we can make is to write her off, ignore her, or think she won't bring anything to the campaign. Quit with the jokes and the remarks about how cute and quaint she is. Stop with the pats on the back and the hurr hurr stuff.

The experience debate disappears now, let it disappear. It seems many Dems feel a vindictive need to bring up the experience issue after it's been applied to Obama so many times. Don't. Experience is a non-issue, she won in Alaska by being the inexperienced, outside candidate, and the Rs will, and already have, argued that she has more "executive experience" than Obama anyways. This is an opportunity to take the experience issue off the table, lets take it.

Our job is to remember and remind everyone else that it is John McCain running for President and not Sarah Palin. This means dropping the "old and dying" stuff. The jokes and comments that McCain's VP might become president in the next 4 years. We don't want people thinking about Sarah as the President.

I say this because I believe Sarah could win if she were the one running for President. Sure she's from a small town in Alaska and has only been the Governor for 2 years, but it doesn't matter; she is as of today on the national stage. McCain's campaign will do its best to lead with the pretty, energetic woman and let you forget that he's the one that would sit in the big chair. People will like her, and she will be a name in the Republican party for quite a while now.

The experience debate off the table? No, I don't think so. Experience isn't about how much time you've spent, it's about what you have done. Sarah Palin, in two short days, may have just caught up to Barack Obama and ran right past him, while he was straightening his tie and rehearsing his TelePrompter lines. McCain 1, Obama 0.

The next few days add yet another dimension for the GOP in this campaign. Hurricane Gustav is about to trash the south coast again, potentially as fierce as Katrina, while the Republicans try to have a convention in Minnesota. Given the audacity of McCain/Palin gambit, the Republicans may once more get the chance to demonstrate that conservatives are nothing like their trash talking cousins on the left.