Reflections From a Murky Pond

Alaska’s Governor Sarah, Palin has been chosen by Senator John McCain to be his Vice Presidential nominee and running mate in the 2008 US presidential elections. The vast majority of people - certainly almost all of the Left - believe that Gov. Palin was chosen solely because of her gender. The general assumption among the Democrats is that her nomination was nothing beyond a poorly executed pandering to the die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters who feel so abused and maligned by the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign.

I truly wonder if this was the case. This does not mean that I believe the the GOP is beyond such tactics. It merely means that I do not hold them in such contempt that I believe they would execute any campaign strategy that poorly.

It’s absolutely no secret that McCain wanted Sen. Joe Lieberman as his VP. Lieberman was an politically unacceptable choice though. An ex-Democrat now Independent who ran with Al Gore in the 2000 election wasn’t going to be acceptable to the GOP or their conservative base. McCain had to choose another running mate. That’s where it gets interesting.

Palin based on her political views - especially her hatred of government corruption - was always a fine choice for McCain’s VP.  Much of her - albeit limited - political history shows that she was a good match for the “maverick” McCain. Alas, she was a woman and the GOP could not be expected to accept a female VP candidate. Then along came Hillary and the resulting rather bitter schism within the Democrats. Suddenly a female VP candidate was politically viable.

So the question becomes did McCain choose Palin as his running mate because she was a woman or did he choose her for political positions and cultural views despite or irrespective of her being a woman thanks to Clinton making it palatable to the GOP?

The Left will tell you the reason was the former, but I believe it was the latter.  Palin bring far to much to McCain’s campaign from within the Right and so little from the Left that it’s ridiculous to think that the McCain and the GOP would have chosen her in order to pander to Hillary’s supporters.

On Tuesday night, the second night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Sen. Hillary Clinton stood up in front of the crowd of Democrats and delivered a speech. It has generally been hailed as a very good speech.

It was a concession speech!

Clinton never used the word  “concede,” but that is what the speech was all about - Hillary giving up the race and supporting Obama as the Democratic Nominee.

Now the Democrats will have to wait and see if Clinton can manage to sway her supporters. So far the response has been mixed, with some some Clinton supporters seeming willing to support Obama and others somehow seeing this as another example of mysogyny in America.

Any thoughts?

By now most of the Civilized World has heard of Jerome Corsi’s new book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. I’m fairly sure that most of the Civilized World also has an opinion about the work - a strongly held opinion for or against both the author and the book.

For the detractors of Corsi and The Obama Nation the anger and outrage has unsurprisingly spilled over onto the supposed “right wing attack machine.” This is of course a normal reaction for the Left in general and the Obama followers in specific. Anything that is derogatory about Obama must have been dreamed up by McCain and the GOP. Once again their knee-jerk emotional reaction was wrong.

Corsi’s The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality came straight out of the PUMA laden Clinton Campaign bag of dirty tricks. The book was produced by Mary Matalin, wife of long time friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton and Campaign Consultant to both Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

I suppose that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hillary Clinton was involved with such an attack on her arch-enemy Barack Obama. I thought that as a GOP vehicle the book was released too early in the campaign to be properly effective. The release date is not too early though for Clinton since she’s forced her name back onto the DNC nomination and roll-call vote at that DNC Convention. It’s actually perfectly timed.

With a very unexpected H/T to Kayinmaine at White Noise Insanity.