McCain Puts Politics First, Country Second

Veep Pick Proves McCain Puts Country Second
And Politics First

Republicans: "Sarah Palin is so Pro-Life that she keeps the duds!"

What if Geraldine Ferarro and Dan Quayle had a child? The answer is Sarah Palin, John McCain's newly minted runningmate. Palin already has a unique place in history as being the first candidate to be both woefully unqualified and selected chiefly because of her gender.

McCain's choice for Vice President matters more in this election than in those previous because he would be the oldest first-term President ever at the age of 72. Aside from his numerous bouts with cancer, men his age are known to drop dead spontaneously. Because of this, John McCain might not be able serve throughout all of George Bush’s third term. People who vote for the self-proclaimed “Original Maverick” should know that they are voting for a Sarah Palin administration every bit as much as they are voting for a McCain administration.

Palin’s light resume, her extremist views, and her history of corruption and lies are enough to make a lot of voters wonder if John McCain was in possession of all his cognitive faculty when he chose Palin to be his running mate. After all, he had met her only once and officials from his Vice Presidential search committee had arrived in Alaska to do a background check on Palin just one day before the announcement was made and the McCain/Palin yard signs printed.

McCain and Palin are now calling themselves the “The Original Mavericks” in an effort to make people forget that McCain-Bush policies have been driving the country for the past eight years. Sarah Palin is already famous for saying that she opposed building the ‘bridge to nowhere”, which is a half-billion dollar Alaskan bridge project that connected to an island with a population of less than 50 people, which has become emblematic of wasteful pork-barrel spending. By comparison, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was built for 400 million in today’s dollars.
But, in fact during her gubernatorial election, Palin supported the project whole-heartedly. She only rejected it after it began to provoke outrage and mockery across the nation. Worse? She kept the quarter-billion dollars of congressional pork-barrel earmarks for the bridge and spent it on other projects.

Even though there is now a broad consensus that her remarks fall far short of the truth, she hasn’t corrected herself on the campaign trail. In fact, Palin keeps repeating the same line verbatim from town to town, without any reluctance or evidence of shame. She is either oblivious to the facts or she is an outright liar.

Either way, we have had enough ignorance and dishonesty throughout the past eight years under the Bush Administration; and if you want a change in the direction of the country, John McCain and Sarah Palin are the wrong choice.

Palin, is currently under investigation for misusing her role as governor to have her sister’s ex-husband fired from the Alaska State Police, which is an amazing feat given that she has only been Governor for about a year and a half.

During her 19 months in office, Palin spent 312 days in her own home and charged the tax payers for meals and apparent business expenses, just like any other “Hockey Mom”. If you want a departure from the culture of corruption that has been emboldened by the Bush Administration, John McCain and Sarah Palin are the wrong choice.

Sarah Palin’s radical right-wing worldview is unlikely to jive with Hillary Clinton voters or anyone who might have considered voting for Barack Obama.

Palin is a global warming skeptic, which means that she does not believe that global warming exists or is man-made, despite an overwhelming evidence-based consensus to the contrary. This is a view so extreme that she is out of the touch with the top of the ticket. John McCain has in the past admitted that global warming is real phenomenon. There is no word on McCain’s position since receiving millions of campaign contributions from oil company lobbyists.

Palin is also against abortion rights in all instances, even if a woman is a victim of incest or rape. This is a view way outside the political and practical mainstream. What is even more repulsive is that Palin has allowed the McCain campaign to make a political prop out of her infant son who was born with downs syndrome. There wasn’t a single night during the Republican Convention where someone didn’t mention little Trig Palin. It’s almost as though the Republicans are saying:

“Hey America! Look! Sarah Palin keeps having children, and she is so Pro-Life that she keeps the duds!”

Because she refuses to participate in news interviews, we don’t know if Palin agrees with the assertion of the Bush administration that all contraception can be considered legally the same as an abortion. For that matter, we don’t know if she has any thoughts on anything other than moose burgers and protecting the right to hunt wolves with a helicopter.

Sarah Palin also breaks with John McCain, conventional wisdom, as well as science and reason in her opposition to life-saving medical research on stem cells. If you feel like the clash of ideologies is stymieing progress in Washington D.C. and you want more pragmatic decision makers in the White House, John McCain and Sarah Palin are the wrong choice.

The Palin pick exposes a lot about John McCain’s leadership style and decision-making process. You have to wonder if John McCain would be as equally hasty when choosing an Attorney General or a Secretary of State. The Bush years are a barely-living testament to how putting ideological purity before operational competence can sink a Presidential administration. These are the people who after all gave us Donald Rumsfeld, Harriet Meyers, and Michael “Brownie, you’re doin’ a heck of a job” Brown. And now they have given us Sarah Palin.

As Sarah Palin claims to have told Washington when it came to the “Bridge To No-Where”, tell them “thanks, but no thanks”.

The 45th President Of The United States?