I have enjoyed this day and reading all of the comments about Gov. Sarah Palin.  I find it fascinating how various people look at candidates when they are first introduced, especially, when it is someone who is not known by most Americans.  How much do we really know about the Governor?  I truthfully cannot say that I know very much about her.

I have seen many comments about her lack of experience.  Due to the responses I have read, how about a little quiz to check out her competency and its possible impact on the election:

1.  In 1968, the two VEEP candidates were Edmund Muskie and Spiro Agnew.  Which candidate was more experienced and which one became VEEP?

2.  In 1988, the two VEEP candidates were Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle.  Which candidate was more experienced and which one became VEEP?

It seems that not all Republicans in Alaska approve of the McCain-Palin ticket.

The reaction wasn't so rosy elsewhere. State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to tell her the news.

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

...

House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez, was also astonished at the news. He didn't want to get into the issue of her qualifications.

"She's old enough," Harris said. "She's a U.S. citizen."

http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/5 10249.html

To be fair, in the article a former Republican opponent does offer praise and suggests that she should not be underestimated.  However, these reactions from her own colleagues are somewhat shocking and underscore various criticisms of the pick that have been discussed today.
 

<Crossposted at [redacted]>

Good evening everyone!

Blogs do not (yet) drive public opinion.  The overwhelming majority of voters have probably never heard of DailyKos and certainly haven't heard of MyDD.  We aren't there yet.  We aren't much better than an echo chamber.  We can raise money pretty well and we're not that bad at organizing.  We can, on occasion, do some good opposition research (though the Republican bloggers have done a better job of it thus far).

We really aren't kind of a big deal (yet).  This is very important and it speaks to a misunderstanding.  We're self-centered, and we overestimate both the good we can do, and the damage we can wreak.

ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg has a fascinating piece up on McCain's decision making process in choosing Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

Apparently Palin was a last-minute pick, was only vetted this week, and was only chosen by McCain once it became clear that his desired pick, Lieberman, wasn't feasible.

It wasn't until Sunday night that John McCain, after meeting with his four top advisers, finally decided he could not tap independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to be his running mate. One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt. McCain concluded he could not go that route.

The next day, McCain studied the three men at the top of his shortlist: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. All had different strengths and negatives, but McCain was not satisfied. None of them had what McCain believed he needed to do -- and would have done -- with Lieberman.

The campaign secretly flew Palin into Dayton last night. She and McCain met privately for a couple of hours. McCain concluded she would "shake up the system" and was "a maverick," qualities he believed Lieberman would have brought to the ticket. But she also would appeal to conservatives -- which Lieberman most certainly would not have done.

After their meeting, McCain concluded he was comfortable with his choice. He notified Pawlenty this morning that he was going in a different direction.

I had been wondering in the back of my mind if the success of the Dem Convention - and Obama's bump in the polls - had led McCain to panic. Now we have confirmation that he did indeed make the decision to pick Palin while all of this was going on - and made the final call during or after Obama's acceptance speech.

1) It sucks all the talk away from Obama's big night and makes his speech a one day news story because this will now dominate the news cycle for over a week.

2) It gives McCain the perfect foil to talk about the experience thing. Who cares if the VP is relatively inexperienced he/she is not the president but what if the president himself is the inexperienced one? Then sir you have a problem. Every attack on her for inexperience just forces the press to compare her real executive experience with Obama's part time job in the Illinois legislature. And as for his US senate experience -well Obama said it himself "if I were to decide to run for president I would have to start now before I even serve one day in the Senate". Please, McCain is begging you -attack her for inexperience.

3) It makes McCain/Palin the ticket of change as much or more so than Obama. McCain loves that moniker and is comfortable with it. Her youth makes him the candidate of the future and definitely livens up the ticket. It also gives them real street cred that this is not just the same old Washington politics, not the same old Republican party. This is aimed at all those independents that are not yet comfortable with Obama and even those that might have thought they were may yet change their minds. For all the mud you are going to throw at her and for all you try to belittle her she actually confronted corruption in her own party and won. Show me those kind of credentials for anything Obama has ever done.

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

It's been roughly 10 hours and 30 minutes since John McCain announced his VP pick Sarah Palin.  Since that time - I think its safe to say that the American public and particularly the media and blogosphere have been chomping at the bit to get their sexist rocks off.

As shakesville says:

We defend Sarah Palin against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.  For the record, there is plenty about which to criticize Palin that has absolutely fuck-all to do with her sex. She's anti-choice, against marriage equality, pro-death penalty, pro-guns, and loves Big Business. (In other words, she's a Republican.) There's no goddamned reason to criticize her for anything but her policies.

And as DoctorScience says - The biggest single danger of Palin's candidacy is that it will bring enough foaming misogyny out of the Democratic side to repel some female voters over to McCain.

Let's take a look at a few examples from the last 10 hours, shall we?  

A clever blogger started the website VPILF, and I think it speaks for itself.

Progressive sites like KOS, commenters post lovely pictures like this.  Or declare Link To Sarah Palin Nude?

Suggestions that Palin is a puppet and her husband is really the Governor of Alaska.

And while the media has too many examples to being up - one comes to mind...

Palin has been the VP pick for all of five minutes, and already one of the (male) reporters on CNN just asked another reporter something along the lines of, "Now, Palin also has a baby with Down's Syndrome. Those children require an awful lot of care. Do you think she'll be able to balance taking care of that baby with being Vice President? I mean, having a Down's Syndrome baby takes up a lot of time and energy.

I guess the lessons from the Democratic primary didn't catch.

ROFL!!!

"I am so disgusted with McCain and whoever led him in that direction. He has REALLY messed in it." - my maternal grandmother, about 10 minutes ago

LOL, thank you McCain! My 71-year-old lifelong Republican grandmother is voting for OBAMA!

Do you know why? Because of PALIN. Because McCain is old. And she's afraid he'll die, which would mean a woman with no experience and no real accomplishments would become president. And my Gammy's 74-year-old church friend is also voting for Obama. They've kept it a secret between themselves (because they hate Democrats, and it's supposed to be an embarrassment to vote for one). The most pro-life people you'll ever meet. Southern Baptists. Super social conservatives, fiscally conservative. Horrified by Wright. Bought into the "Obama is a Muslim" thing for months and sent me god knows how many emails about it. Thought he might be the ANTICHRIST. Don't think we should pull out of Iraq.

And yet... they're voting for him. That's right. They're Voting. For. Barack. Obama.

"He's either an incredibly gifted liar, or he's exactly what this country needs right now. I think Obama is a different thing. I really believe what he's saying."

That was her reaction to Obama's speech last night. McCain screwed himself out of a vote with Palin. Obama WON himself a vote with his impassioned speech. I'm so excited I can barely think straight. No one in my family has EVER voted for a Democrat (except me, of course, but I don't count).

"Michelle's speech was wonderful, just wonderful. And this thing about her not being patriotic is just a lie. She's pretty much right about how blacks were treated in America."

I'm in shock. Really. In SHOCK. My 71-year-old grandmother is an Obamacan.

PS. My grandmother is from Alabama. And she used to LOVE McCain.

A bad mother? Down-syndrome kid doesnt cut it for me. That has to do with her beliefs. Whether you believe in abortion or not, you do not abandon your child when it has just been born. Especially one with down-syndrome. You see, I'm a family values voter. My promising young sister (captain of her soccer team, accepted to MIT and Yale, also died from a back alley abortion. Our family did not have health insurance, and she did this without our family's knowledge.

Being the case that McCain over-exploits his POW status, and Palin (unlike Biden, and even McCain) exploited her son's Iraq war service (which you're not supposed to do for the safety of the troops), she will exploit her new-born baby with down syndrome to impose upon all women her views on the right to choose.

Well like McCain can afford 10 houses because of his auspicious circumstances, Palin could afford to have and leave behind 5 children, including a sick new born baby with down syndrome. She could afford health insurance, afford 5 kids. My sister couldn't. She was shamed into having a back alley abortion so as not to burden my parents, and this is what happened. She died.