Reading National Review‘s “The Corner” and some comment threads at Rod Dreher’s place, I was puzzled to see so many conservatives gushing about McCain’s choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. From what little I’ve read she seems to be an admirable lady with strong convictions, but how does this alter the ticket in any material way–enough to make formerly lukewarm conservatives positively giddy about McCain?
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal
14 responses to “Cheap dates”
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Ahh, she’s pro-life, pro-gun, and interesting on the environment. And she’s cute. She’s been the love of the movement types for a while now.
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They don’t need to be positively giddy; they just need to be interested enough actually to vote, just like the other side doesn’t have to be persuaded, but just made uninterested enough that they don’t vote.
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What I don’t get is the idea that disgruntled Hillary supporters might vote for McCain because he’s chosen a female VP. Seriously? Are people so shallow that they will vote for someone who is on the other side of the political spectrum just because both are female? I mean, Hillary and Palin could not be much more ideologically opposed. But I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised. Voters aren’t exactly rational creatures.
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Brandon – I agree, but based on the comments I was seeing, lots of people are giddy about this pick, and that’s what I can’t figure out. But, then, I’m clearly not the target audience here.
Jeremy – Good point. Though, I think the “PUMA” phenomenon has been blown way out of proportion. I’d be surprised if we saw significant defections of Democratic-leaning women to the GOP. But what do I know?
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To be more specific, what really baffled me were the comments from people saying that they had been planning not to vote, or even to vote for Obama, but were now switching to McCain sheerly because of Palin. Huh?
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That anyone would react to this as to a good thing amazes me.
Howard Fineman said the other night she makes Obama look like John Adams on the experience front.
Wasn’t her last big job president of the senior class in high school?
And though they are mendaciously advertising her as a maverick (what else is new?) she is a straight down the line movement conservative.
If the folks who listen to conservative talk radio are thrilled by this they are even stupider than I thought.
And that’s entirely possible, I suppose.
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Amen. Personally, I’m disappointed that Dreher and so many of his crunchy con followers seem thrilled about a GOP ticket that (as far as I can tell) has nothing to do with the Wendell Berry brand of conservatism he claims to espouse. McCain-Palin means an aggressive foreign policy, an energy policy based on drilling, little or no change in immigration policy, and tax cuts and deficits as far as the eye can see. This is conservative?
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It is now.
And has been since the neocons came in with GW.
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To be more specific, what really baffled me were the comments from people saying that they had been planning not to vote, or even to vote for Obama, but were now switching to McCain sheerly because of Palin. Huh?
Is this really so surprising? None of this came out of the blue; there has been a widespread and active push for Palin for months now building interest in her, and interest is half of Presidential politics. There have been plenty of people who don’t want Obama to win but who were unenthused enough about McCain that they didn’t think him worth voting for — but in Presidential elections most people vote ticket rather than candidate. And, while I think it will be a very small effect, there are indeed people who really want to see a woman able to be President, and while the best way is to get one into the Oval Office, the second best is to get one into the back-up seat. And there is nothing shallow about this. It’s much the same thing as the possibility of having a black man President; if Obama is elected, even a sharp critics of Obama, if not lost the use of reason yet, should be saying, “I very much wish it were someone else, but it’s about time that we put our money where our mouth is.” I think there’s a serious danger of opposing a very shallow form of identity politics with what is in fact just a very shallow form of artificial objectivity, one in which our own objectivity as to ‘issues’ is simply posited without regard for how very similar nonrational evaluations affect our own judgment. As I said, I doubt the identity politics thing will really translate into many votes for McCain; but it does translate into interest — and, again, interest is the real coin of a political campaign.
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Thank you, Lee! You said what I’ve been thinking.
This pretty lady has had the unintended effect of showing (again) there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to establishment conservatism. The emperor’s starkers, folks.
I agree with you that Palin’s personally admirable and she used to support some good people but the best commentary has come from the lewrockwell.com blog: with this she’s made a deal with the devil. IIRC AFAIK she’s for the war. And of course I couldn’t care less what sex she is just like I don’t care about Obama’s race.
I don’t think there’ll be much if any pull on disgruntled feminist Hillary Clinton fans though I think that was a factor in McCain’s choice. No, it’s supposed to work on Mrs Clinton’s heartland primary voters.
As an interest-generator she works.
My theory is, besides trying to neutralise the novelty of Obama’s race, McCain wants to use her culture-wars conservative cred to rally the recent Republican base of the Protestant right (and oh, is it working, as you point out), freeing him up to zig leftwards, playing the moderate-to-liberal (again?) on social issues, making a play for the centre (the swing vote in this election) just like Obama’s silly zags and feints to the right to try and win the kind of whites he hates (the Kansan corn-syrup advertising, ‘let’s reduce abortions by agreeing on contraception’, the purpose-driven Saddleback appearance and so on, ad nauseam).
How does Palin alter the ticket in any material way? That’s rhetorical of course. Not at all.
I’m staying home. I did my bit – voted for Paul in the primary. Now I’m done.
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Wow – I leave town for a couple of days and the buzz on the blogs has shifted from (reasonable) debates about Sarah Palin’s experience and views to a lot of smears and innuendo about her family life. Not cool. I’m glad to see that ATR commenters are keeping it clean. 🙂
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I think Gaius’ comment about her last job is unkind, considering her last big job was Governor. I’m not defending her qualifications for VP, but I think it’s unnecessary to belittle the “pretty lady.” I agree with Brandon about shallow identity politics and artificial objectivity.
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Brandon – I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but the overlap between the newly-enthused conservative base and people who really want to see a woman president (or VP) is (let’s be charitable) presumably not huge. If anything, I now think that the enthusiasm among the base for Palin has a lot more to do with her socially conservative lifestyle than her sex: as far as “walking the walk” (a phrase I’ve seen repeated a lot), she seems like the genuine article (pro-life, five kids, etc.). This is all, of course, based on my highly unscientific sample of blog posts and comments. Which is a similar “identitarian” explanation, I guess.
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Well, I’m not so sure that Palin’s sex is quite so insignificant for her popularity among conservatives: after all, a lot of conservatives are female themselves, who (even if they don’t let it dominate their view) might well be more interested in the idea of a woman vice president (and, as I said, interest is all that is really needed); and I think there are a lot of conservatives who, regardless of their interest in a woman president or vice-president in general, would simply love to be able to say that they beat the liberals to it (I think this is even more true if we put it in terms of Republicans and Democrats rather than conservatives and liberals). But I agree that it’s almost certainly not the number 1 reason for the excitement in some quarters. I think part of the real reason is that most people were not really expecting McCain to pick someone so conservative, and especially not a strong pro-lifer. The other things — her being a woman, etc.–took the reaction to this and amplified it.
A Thinking Reed 
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