The criticism keeps coming about John McCain picking Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president. And no matter how the talking heads spin it, most presidential candidates -- Democrat or Republican -- would not have tapped a woman under investigation for some duplicitous firing situation, who was dealing with the sensitive family drama of teen pregnancy and was so far to the right of Attila the Hun that her views and her novice nature on the national (and international) scene scare the pants of independents and Democrats.
I already thought Palin was a hasty decision, made in the wee hours after the closing of the Democratic National Convention. She was an reactionary pick, a gut check, not thought through. And this looks more and more like the truth with the Republican Party dispatching operatives to Alaska as fast as the press and the tabloids are.
Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin. (NYT)
People will toss the tundra in search for all the dirt they can find on Mrs. Clean and we're heading into bizarre territory with so many odd skeletons falling out of Palin's political and personal closet.
She has a private lawyer in an ethics investigation trying to determine whether "she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner;" and her husband was convicted 22-years-ago on a DUI charge. (NYT)
The scandal "Troopergate" involves Palin, members of her staff and her husband pressuring the state's public safety commissioner to fire her brother-in-law who was in the middle of a contentious divorce with her sister. (Anchorage Daily News via Jack and Jill Politics)
Palin has her own controversial pastor troubles -- an ongoing them in the 2008 race with Rev. Wright, then Rev. Hagee and now with Wasilla Assembly of God Pastor Ed Kalnins who has "preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war 'contending for your faith;' and said that Jesus 'operated from that position of war mode.'" (Huffington Post)
She depending on who you ask, she backed controversial candidate Pat Buchanan's presidential run. She said she didn't. Pat Buchanan said she did. (Washington Post)
Palin has a much more complicated relationship with embattled, indicted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and flip-flopped on "The Bridge to Nowhere" deal. (Washington Post)
Palin was fine with earmarks when she was Mayor of Wasilla, securing a lot of government cash for her city. (Washington Post)
She is against abortion, even in the cases of rape or incest. (Jack and Jill Politics)
She was almost recalled as mayor of Wasilla after she tried to have the police chief and library director fired for not supporting her reelection campaign in 1996. (Huffington Post) (Jack and Jill Politics)
Then there's the matter of her pregnant teen daughter, thrust into the spotlight. She and her mother are being lauded by the right while ignoring the hypocrisy of holding two diametrically opposing views at once.
Despite the whole "teen premarital sex" issue that the vast majority of Christian conservatives claim they are against, including pushing abstinence only education, everyone seems "OK," arguing teen pregnancy is "normal." I can't help but think their opinion would be different if it were anyone else (see the Obama daughters if they were older). It was Christian conservatives who worried Jamie Lyn Spears pregnancy glamorized teen pregnancy. And the abstinence only program teaches that all birth control methods are unreliable so you shouldn't have sex at all until you are married. Of course, teens being teens, they have sex anyway. Only now, unsafe, unprotected sex. But for some reason everything is grand with the same crowd who usually bemoans behavior.
Yet another mixed message. Premarital sex is OK, as long as you marry the person you're doing it with ... eventually. Glad to know the goal posts got moved back a bit more.
The more and more that trickles out the more and more I'm positive she was never vetted no matter what the McCain campaign says. She would be leper in the eyes of most president wannabes, the equivalent of Barack Obama selecting Kwame Kilpatrick as his no. 2. No one would want this kind of negative press, not to mention all the gross shock jock talk about Palin's comeliness and McCain's penchant for pretty ladies. If Hillary's sin was being dumpy and always wearing pantsuits, Palin's cross to bare will be her youth and beauty ... further compounded by the investigations and baby dramas.
I don't care how much the base loves her. The based would have loved a lot of pro-lifers who were being vetted. But McCain couldn't have Liebermann or Tom Ridge so he chose the craziest veep pick ever.
What else is going to happen? Is the woman going to appear in a grainy picture of the grassy knoll? Did she really kill Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman?
If Palin was a roll of the dice, I'm starting to think McCain shot craps.
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