His True Colors

The choice of Sarah Palin as running mate tells us at least two important things about John McCain.  The first is that he is worried.  Worried that Obama’s popularity is again on the rise and that going negative hasn’t worked, or at least it hasn’t worked enough to make a difference in the polls.  Obama and McCain are essentially tied, but since we dwell in the world of the Electoral College and the first to 270 wins, total votes don’t really matter - Just ask Al Gore.  Obama is ahead in most projections 211 to 178, with Oabma financially able to mount a strong campaign in virtually every swing state.  McCain can’t challenge Obama’s fund-raising efforts, and doesn’t have the support system Obama has to be able to compete outside of Republican strongholds.  This is where Palin comes in.

McCain needs the Fundamentalists the same way Obama needs the internet - It is his vehicle for spreading his message and his pipline for raising money.  The fundamentalists control the GOP faithful, and they have never really trusted McCain.  This was his last chance to show them that he would fall in line.  He had to pick one of them or he risked losing millions of dedicated supporters, and he would lose the election because of it.  

There are many ways to spread your message as a politician, but perhaps none is more effective than a minister berating your opponent for a hour every Sunday.  It is one thing to say you believe different things than Obama or that you don’t trust him, it is another to say you will go to Hell if you vote for him.  Most rational people in the U.S. would be shocked to hear this sort of attack regularly goes on, but it is par for the course with the Palin people - To fundamentalists, The Others (anybody who questions Us) are evil, a product of the devil, and Jesus will be her any day now.  

The second thing it tells us is that McCain doesn’t care about America.  How else can you explain a choice so blatantly inexcusable, so doomed for failure, and choosing a running mate so obviously incompetent.  Palin has been the governor of a tiny state (with a population of less than 700,000) for less than two years, and her only other job of note is the mayor of a frontier village of 5,500.  The McCain apologists are actually claiming that Palin is fit to lead because, as governor, she was in charge of the Alaska National Guard.  And we all know how often she was on the front lines leading the National Guard into battle, making the tough decisions.

To call Palin a lightweight is to insult lightweights everywhere.  With virtually no experience, her eventual presidency (how long can McCain actually live? That may sound harsh, but we need to be realistic here) would be a disaster.  John Kerry has called her a “flat-earth fanatic”, which is both accurate and too kind.  She is a fool, a buffoon, a Creationist clown and a hater of all science.  Can we trust her to improve schools, keeping in mind that science is taught there?  Can we expect her care about global warming or pollution, which is clearly a left-wing conspiracy?  Will she address our energy crisis with the Rapture right around the corner?  

I don’t really care about her flip-flop on the Bridge to Nowhere - Most politicians do this all the time, and I don’t care that her seventeen year-old daughter is pregnant - That (sadly) happens far to often, to good parents as well as bad.  And actually, I don’t care that her politics are vastly different than mine - I suspected that McCain would pick somebody with whom I disagree on most issues.  What bothers me is she is a fundamentalist whack-job, and she has no real experience.

And that is the real bottom-line here.  If John McCain would do this just to curry favor with a few voters, what won’t he do?

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