We Americans love to see people get bashed, ridiculed, berated, hammered by their opponent, and we love a really good verbal assault that totally decimates another person. I don’t understand the psychology behind it but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with making ourselves feel better about ourselves. There is no question that the ‘agony of defeat’ makes us happy that ‘it isn’t us’.
Sarah Palin’s hateful and extremely divisive speech, written by George W Bush speech writer Matthew Scully, at the RNC last night proves this sad point as it was basically a mud-slinging slugfest against Barrack Obama. And the republican’s in attendance gleefully ate it up. She won them over by simply mercilessly and repeatedly bashing their common opponent in their quest to win the presidential election.
Last night’s agenda served to confirm the notion we already had that the republicans think the democrats are to blame for every ill that has beset Washington and that the republican party is nothing but an empty shell built upon worn-out platitudes designed to demonize anyone who doesn’t buy into their party line. Giuliani has milked 9/11 bone dry, Romney and Huckabee showed obvious despite towards each other during the primaries and yet last evening they openly praised each other and McCain which amounts to hypocrisy of the highest order.
There was not one positive note about how republicans plan to turn the economy around, about how to improve our healthcare system, about how they are going to reverse the erosion of civil rights begun by Bush’s policies, about how to seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels, or about how to improve our diplomatic status with other world leaders. Their were no insights into how Sarah Palin’s presence is going to actually benefit a McCain administration or this nation.
Sarah Palin would be the next in line to the presidency should McCain be suddenly taken out of the picture and the true powers behind the presidency will not allow her to run this country. This society is still too patriarchal to allow that to happen. That’s right, she is nothing more than a token, an appeasement to female voters to attempt to keep the republican party in the White House.
And why would a woman want to vote for someone who opposes just about every issue that women support. She approves "abstinence-only" programs (which her own daughter obviously rejected), which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she supports government control of women's wombs; she used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
She opposes gun control; she believes that creationism should be taught in public schools; she opposes stem cell research.
She tried to use taxpayers' money for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation.
She has been accused of using the powers of her office as governor to exact a vendetta against a state employee. Does this sound familiar? It should, Bush/Cheney have a clear history of doing exactly the same thing.
She changed positions on the Alaska ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. Palin initially expressed support for the bridge and ran on a 2006 "build-the-bridge" platform, arguing that it was essential for local prosperity telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere." And then, two years later, told a cheering crowd of McCain supporters "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,". Re-writing history?
She runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. This is a clear indication that she will support the corporate welfare policies of the Bush administration.
McCain has tried to distance himself from George W and then brings in a Bush clone as a running mate. His cynical choice over a list of extremely more qualified individuals says McCain is trying to appease two camps: the Bushites who would give anything to see Bush/Cheney serve a third term, and those who want to see dignity restored to the pre-Bush/Cheney days. When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
Sarah Palin has been thrust into something much bigger than herself. Her ‘meteroric’ rise within the very small community that is Alaska has not prepared her for this stage. The awe she must be experiencing at being chosen as a Vice Presidential candidate must be overwhelming. She has allowed herself to become a puppet for the republican party manipulated into using ugly campaign tactics and spewing forth their distortions of Obama’s policies and mocking his eloquence. The speech she gave were not her words, the passion behind them was hers, but she is nothing more than window dressing.
When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
Republicans keep spouting about how Obama does not have leadership experience yet applying the same scale for measuring this elusive quality, Sarah Palin is equally inexperienced.
Sure she is a bulldog (more like a rottweiler, with the clear inference of being an attack dog to be unmussled when they need her), last nights speech made that point abundantly clear. She has been labeled an outsider and a rebel. Sometimes these qualities is what is needed to change course. But she is not going to be a policy maker, and the republicans have no intention of altering the course that George W Bush and Dick Cheney have been responsible for.
Sarah Palin is nothing more than a republican talking point, a mouthpiece, with a lot of energy and attitude. No substance. No original thought.
“Hottest VP from the Coolest State” Sexism is alive and well in the Republican party.
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