Attacking Palin
By Jeff Fecke, August 29, 2008 • People are already handwringing about how the Democrats can attack Sarah Palin. That’s stupid. There’s plenty to attack Palin on. She’s radically anti-choice, she’s a social reactionary, she’s got no foreign policy experience to speak of, and her pick by McCain bespeaks a sort of belief that women are interchangable and that any vagina will do — Palin and Hillary Clinton are as similar as James Dobson and Dennis Kucinich, and only someone who thinks women are too dumb to know the difference between the two would think that Palin’s very presence on the ticket would win over Clinton Democrats.
But let’s state this flatly, right here, right now — where you don’t attack Palin is based on her looks. Based on her femininity. Based on her being a mother. Based on her XX genotype. Sarah Palin is a former Miss Alaska, and conventionally attractive. But that doesn’t mean her mind is irrelevant to the discussion, that her experience as a Mayor or Governor is somehow worthless.
Contrawise, Palin is not immune to being attacked because she’s a woman. Joe Biden is more experienced on national security; he should make that a point of attack. Sarah Palin isn’t particularly experienced; that should be an issue. Palin is extraoridnarily pro-life, way out of the mainstream on the issue; that should be brought to light. Those issues don’t go away because she’s a woman. Those issues don’t go away, period.
Palin should be judged in the same way any other candidate for the vice presidency should be judged — on her merit as a candidate and a leader. Period. Attack her record and attack her experience — those must be on the table. But her gender — that should be off the table, period.
workaround
Comments
Palin’s first lie as VP candidate
Palin’s first lie as VP candidate
Well, that didn’t take long. The first brazen lie of Sarah Palin’s campaign as John McCain’s VP candidate came just moments into her speech accepting his invitation to join the ticket. From the Washington Post’s transcript of her speech:
And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves.But Brad Plumer at the New Republic blog puts the lie to that claim. He quotes her answer to a question about that “bridge to nowhere” in the Anchorage Daily News during her 2006 campaign for governor:
5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges? Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now–while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assistShe wanted it so much that she knew she had to get the federal funding for it soon because of the pending legal problems of Alaska’s two main men in Congress, Ted Stevens and Don Young. It turns out that they didn’t have the clout in Congress to get it done, due in no small part to McCain’s dogged campaigning against the project as an example of useless and expensive earmarks.
This may be a new world record in how quickly a politician manages to get out the first lie after being introduced to the public
Read more:
http://www.michiganmessenger.com/3383/palins-first-lie-as-vp-candidate
“...and her pick by
“...and her pick by McCain bespeaks a sort of belief that women are interchangable and that any vagina will do — Palin and Hillary Clinton are as similar as James Dobson and Dennis Kucinich…”
Absolutely! I find it hard to believe that the McCain/Palin campaign actually believes that those women who support Senator Clinton would actually vote for them based on the fact that they have similar body parts. I don’t doubt they believe it, I just find it hard to believe. It’s like First Avenue promoting a show featuring the Rolling Stones, then changing it in the last second to a Quiet Riot cover band and expecting that no one will notice or care.
Post new comment