I won't link to all the commentary. I'd have to agree with the sentiment that there are plenty of more qualified Republicans (who happen to be women) to choose from.
Posted by tgl on 2008-08-30 14:58:47 +0000
Oh, and there's a big difference between being an inexperienced candidate that ~18 million have supported, and one that has been appointed.
Who's got better judgment: 18 million Americans or John McCain?
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2008-08-30 17:11:47 +0000
Well it certainly insures a historic election victor.
I think it's a decent choice, one that changes the debate and leaves everyone scratching their heads as well as searching the internet.
Yet it reeks of politics, and to quote Karl Rove (though Rove was talking about Obama): "He's going to view this through the prism of a candidate, not through the prism of president."
I can't see her as President.
Posted by jbcardinale on 2008-08-30 18:54:56 +0000
From what I know, she's 44 years old. She's good looking. She has a reputation as a reformer. She's against abortion. She belongs to the NRA. A good Republican VP candidate. President???
So... your teenage daughter is five months pregnant. Great time to spend the next 2+ months running for V.P. More great judgment from the GOP.
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2008-09-02 13:57:58 +0000
No Sex Ed in schools! Just teach abstinence.
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2008-09-02 16:36:56 +0000
"Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby."
Wait, I thought the goal of this Republican ticket was to eliminate a woman's ability to make that "decision"? Did she actually have a choice? And we're not talking about adoption here...
Posted by TheFullCleveland on 2008-09-02 17:00:35 +0000
A similar response was given by George Bush the Elder in 1992 when asked what he would do if one of his granddaughters wanted to have an abortion. He said that the decision would ultimately be hers. I don't know how anti-choicers are given a pass on statements like this (especially a president!). When pressed, they really can give no other answer. Generally speaking, they want the choice for their own family, but they couldn't give a rat's ass about anyone else's.
Posted by virtue on 2008-09-03 10:58:54 +0000
While Bush pere may have been talking about choices including abortion, I don't think it is as clear that this is included in "choice" for the Palins, where the decision is to "keep" the baby.
The use of "choice" in abortion rhetoric (I wouldn't go so far as to call any of it dialogue), whether pro or con, strikes me as incredibly frought. It tends to indicate a whole set of assumptions about individual agency straight out of early modern European political theory that don't always jive with the realities of the far more complex lived human experience.
I do find the rumors about Palin's youngest, Trig, to be especially interesting. A woman in her early 40s is far more likely to have a child with down's syndrome than a teenage girl. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but this really strains credulity. I think someone must have been reading too much Victoria Holt.
Posted by TheFullCleveland on 2008-09-03 11:42:44 +0000
The Palin girl made two choices - she chose life and she chose to keep the baby. This double-choice is not as clear as it should be in abortion rhetoric, and should be, but it doesn't serve much of a purpose for the pro-choice lobby. It serves some purpose for the anti-choice lobby, but I've always had the sense that they'd like you to keep the baby if you're going to give birth to one. And the media...well, the media likes the life/death battle, and usually offers the adoption option as a footnote, if at all.
Posted by virtue on 2008-09-03 13:26:21 +0000
The Palin girl made other choices as well, though--presumably to have sex (or at least, I hope that she made that choice, which, sadly, is not always a given). She also made a choice about birth control (or lack there of), even if it was uneffective.
But what kind of choices are these really? At sixteen, or however old she was at the time of conception, we declare her legally unfit to make other kinds of choices, such as who should be the next president, how many hours she can work, whether or not she can legally drink alcoholic beverages.
The media isn't the only one who likes dichotomy. Most of us do, which is part of what I find so problematic. It's so much easier to think of things as either/or, a and b, yes and no. The word choice, especially in the context of abortion, tends to imply a binary decision process that isn't often present in the romance/sex department of human experience. If it's ever present, which I tend to doubt.
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2008-09-03 16:05:30 +0000
It's the media's fault.
I find it hard to believe that Palin was fully 'vetted' (dislike that term). What with her daughter's pregnancy as well as Palin's own ethics investigation, these seem like things the Republicans might not want to talk a lot about. Wait, that's why it's the media's fault.
I can't wait for Thursday.
If Palin is the new face, and Biden is old-fogey experience... then what does that indicate about the top of the ticket, you know, um, the part that matters?
Posted by tgl on 2008-10-04 00:38:46 +0000
...and that's the last we'll hear from Palin. What's the over-under on her giving a press conference before the election?
Posted by ConorClockwise on 2008-10-04 16:53:05 +0000
Even Simmons ribs Palin on this one.
Hat tip: Yglesias.
Posted by TheFullCleveland on 2008-10-07 18:56:36 +0000
Interesting fact. I'm not counting on MSM reporting, but ya never know.
Posted by tgl on 2008-10-07 19:48:17 +0000
I'd like to apologize to Harriet Miers for comparing her to Sarah Palin.