Sarah Palin Gets the Veep spot!

Posted on August 30th, 2008 by Darth B'strad.
Categories: Political, Energy, Environment, Party System, Philosophy, Media, Republicans, Democrats, Economics.

An absolutely brilliant political maneuver by John McCain and it’s sure to stir things up! Thursday while Obama was preparing for his speech there were plenty of rumors going around about who McCain’s running mate will be. He had the media all rilled up with Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Tim Planity all rumored to be headed to Ohio to accept his nomination and then this morning he pulls out Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate! Now I now that I have had plunty of prevous posts saying that she needs more experience and should stay in Alaska another four years to get it, but now that he has picked her I really am happy and I must say that I am starting to get impressed by John McCain. I starting to really look forward to seeing her take on Joe Biden! I mean come on now! This lady will tear Biden a new one! This is really starting to expose a big flaw in the Obama camp in the fact that he went with the normal Democrat running mate when he should have gone with Hillery (of course then again he would have to have plunty of secret service around him at all times a even need to hire a taste tester too if he did that.) Slow Joe Biden is not going to get Obama anywhere and now it just looks like all of the thunder that he amassed yesterday was just stolen by Sarah Pailn. Hugh Hewitt has six reasons why this pick was a good one up at Townhall.com.

First, over the past month we have gone from hoping Senator McCain would win to thinking he might actually be able to win. With the selection of Governor Palin most of us are convinced he will win. Which means the country will be well led on the war for at least another four crucial years. The reason behind this new confidence leads us to the second factor.

Although I am going to be more humble and not say that McCain/Palin is a sure win but new confidence is exactly right!

Sarah Palin is a real deal conservative, down the line, on all of the issues. This has the immediate effect of energizing the base to battle to keep the White House and to close the gap in or take back the House of Representatives. It is especially important that she is ardently pro-life, and the story of her family is certain to resonate with those values voters who prize faith and family as the center of life.

Amen!

Third, the Palin pick guarantees that the party will remain a conservative party long-term. If Senator McCain had picked a pro-choice Republican or had asked his friend and great American Joe Lieberman to run with him, the party would truly have been split. That didn’t happen, and Matt Cunningham summarizes the response among conservatives party activists:

McCain took a major step forward in exciting the GOP’s conservative base at Rick Warren’s forum. For example, I spoke with a prominent local conservative activist who was so enthused by McCain’s performance who bought a plane ticket for Minneapolis the next.

The Palin choice boosts and accelerates that process. Like me, Palin is 44 years old. She came of age politically during the Age of Ronald Reagan. To a conservative movement that has grown tired and enervated, she has demonstrated you can run, win and successfully govern on conservative principles in the face of the government-accommodating Republicanism that has infected so much of the party.

Most defiantly was necessary for McCain to ensure to his base and the fact that he will have a conservitive voice in his administration will ease the concerns of, well really all the conservatives in the party.

Fourth, the GOP already owned the energy issue and and the energy issue dominates and will continue to dominate the next 60 days. Even if Sarah Palin doesn’t persuade John McCain to come out for exploring ANWR now, a vigorous exploration/conservation strategy has an ideal spokesperson in Palin.

It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

Fifth, she is not a Beltway Republican. The modern GOP is the party of Reagan and Bush –both westerners, and very outside-the-Beltway. Neither ever succumbed to the Beltway’s many poisons.

John McCain is clearly outside of his party’s recent tradition, much more of the Eisenhower, above-partisanship nationalist than the movement conservative, comfortable as a Beltway big, on easy terms with the permanent political elite of the country from both parties and the Beltway-Manhattan media elite.

McCain, of course, understands the war and is the steel for the next crucial few years of resolve that victory in the war requires. A Vice President Palin will be a voice for the conservative movement in the Administration and for the party outside of the Beltway. The long run of Congressional power drained a lot of the energy from the GOP when it came to the battle of ideas, and Palin is a representative of the non-Beltway GOP that wants very much to get back into that fray. Winning the war remains the first priority, and Supreme Court justices after that, but on a host of key issues Governor Palin represents the reagan wing of the party, and that’s a great thing.

That’s looking to cleaning up Washington!

Sixth and finally, she is young enough to be a bridge to the next generation, and with five kids, she has been living in the world of young moms and technology-dependent teens. This advantage will be hard to quantify, but when she is out on the trail talking about her kids and her family’s path, it will be a huge counterpoint to the Obama’s narrative, one that underscores that millions of American families are conservative, traditional, proud of their country and full of optimism about the future if the government’s burdens do not grow to large and the country’s enemies are kept in retreat.

There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and given these reasons, it will endure until November.

Absolutely right! That certainly helps out a lot. Even James Dodson is getting on this band wagon:

Prager: Plenty, plenty of people care and that’s why I am having you on. I care, many people care and you have a lot of followers. You have earned the right to that respect. So are you prepared to say, “Folks, look, given this pick and all I have learned about what would happen with a Democratic victory we have no choice, but to enthusiastically work for the McCain-Palin ticket?”

Dobson: You know, I have only endorsed one presidential candidate in my life and that was George Bush in the second term after I had watched him for four years. I did not do that in his first term. So I’m very reluctant to do that. You marry a politician you can be a widow pretty quickly.

Prager: That’s right.

Dobson: But I can tell you that if I had to go into the studio, I mean the voting booth today, I would pull that lever.

Prager: Well this is a very big deal.

Dobson: And that’s a long way’s from where I told you a year ago.

Prager: No kidding. No kidding. I am honored that you used this show to make that statement.

Dobson: You know, Dennis, the things that concern me about John McCain are still there. I made those comments not just based on emotions, but based on his record and some of the things that took place—embryonic stem cell research, and other things, the campaign finance, and other things. Those are still there. So, there’s still concerns. But I tell you, when I look at the choices that are ahead and what the implications are for this country, and now especially with this selection, with just an outstanding V.P. candidate as a running mate, I tell you what I am relieved and very excited.

Prager: Well, if you’re very excited given your previous reservations then I have to believe, and certainly based on the handful of calls I’ve been able to take the first hour before my “Happiness Hour,” I took the calls and people were so excited, palpably excited. Jim Dobson, and I got to tell you… if your base is energized then that is the biggest nightmare that the left has.

Dobson: I was just with about 300, maybe 400 people in a large auditorium, and they put Sarah Palin’s speech on the screen and we sat there and watched. I’m telling you it was electric. These were conservatives, you know. They were mostly Christian, but not all of them were. I mean to tell you, it set that crowd on fire. If that’s any indication, I think we are going to see some things.

Prager: We sure are. Well, you made my day. I just want you to know that.

Yep that was sure! Here is the key to her speech:

I was just your average hockey mom in Alaska. We’re busy raising our kids and serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side. I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council. And then elected mayor of my hometown, where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first. I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the offenders to account. Along with fellow reformers in the great state of Alaska, as governor I stood up to the old politics as usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good old boy network. When oil and gas prices went up so dramatically, and the state revenues followed with that increase, I sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska. And we are now embarking on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

I signed major ethics reforms and I appointed both Democrats and Independents to serve in my administration. And I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we’d build it ourselves.

Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk. To just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built. Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good.

Now, no one expects us to agree on everything. Whether in Juno or in Washington. But we are expected to governor with integrity, and good will, and clear convictions, and service (ph) heart. Now, no leader in America has shown these qualities so clearly or present so clear a threat to business as usual in Washington as Senator John F. McCain.

This is a moment when principles and political independents matter a lot more than just the party lines. And this is a man who has always been there to serve his country, not just his party. And this is a moment that requires resolve, and toughness, and strength of hearts in the American president. And my running mate is a man who has shown those qualities in the darkest of places. And in the service of his country.

That’s exactly what we need! Someone to make sure that the conservitive principals have their voice in the white house and now conservative will be very comfortable voting for them. So what did Obama have to say?

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

(APPLAUSE)

So — so let me — let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

(APPLAUSE)

Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE)

We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

(LAUGHTER)

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

A lot more of big government taking care of you little people. Is that what we really want? Do you really want a government that will take care of you and make sure that you have everything that you need? Or would it be better that we just take care of our selfs and thous around us and we (not the government) will move this country forward. If you want to get taken care of then Obama/Biden is defiantly your vote and if you want to achieve something for yourself then McCain/Palin is your vote.

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