I suddenly find myself in the position of actually considering voting for a candidate that I pretty much loathe.
The more I learn of Sarah Palin, the more I find myself willing to vote for that rotten SOB McCain.
I look at a map of Alaska, and two things immediately catch my attention: Russia, on the left side of the map; and Canada on the right. Alaska doesn’t have common borders with any other US state. None.
While not exactly widely disseminated, it is no secret that the governors of border states do a lot of diplomatic and international work. The Texas SecState has an entire section titled: Texas Border and Mexican Affairs; the California Governors Office runs Trade Missions in multiple foreign nations, as does the Arizona Dept of Commerce International Business section.
And both Texas and California have only one international border.
All of Alaska’s borders are international.
The Alaska Executive branch has an office called, “The Governor’s Office of International Trade”. Right now, I can’t get the link to open, but I’m relatively sure that this office is primarily tasked with doing things … well … internationally.
*scratch, scratch*
I may be a bit off, but seems to me that Governor Palin has a couple of years of Executive Branch International experience under her belt. Not as much as I’d like, true, but a sight more than some other folks.
On top of all that, Governor Palin has cut government spending in Alaska — not as much as I’d like, but still — and she hunts (moose!), fishes, and has worked in the private sector.
Plus, she (allegedly) seems to have had an artistic elbow as point guard and captain of her schools State champion basketball team. (The whole sinking-the-critical-free-throw-in-the-last-seconds-of-the-championship-game-on-a-fractured-ankle just kind of being icing on the cake.)
*sigh*
Yes, this is someone I can vote for.
LawDog
The VP’s are certainly important in this race, as neither of the candidates are likely to survive their term if elected… RRR’s are allready lining up to shoot at Obama, and McCain is on his way out due to his cancer and old age.
I’m still wishing none of the above were an option-
I think, with Palin on the ticket, I might be able to ignore the stench from McCain when I cast my ballot.
I really don’t know as much about her as i will come to . However i would be remiss not to point out what a classy lady she presents on the tewee to contrast with her ” barracuda ” reputation. I thought that her mention of hildibeast and fancy-nancy as accomplished women was classy,and gracious especially when you contrast how they accomplished what they did vs how she has . The lady is as near to Reagan as we are likely to see anymore, and I do have doubts about McCains health holding up to the rigors of the office . I was just going to forgo the entire election this time around and not vote , but now i am enthused about both this election and the next one .
Do I want to know what an “RRR” is?
Anyway, over at Sharp As a Marble, Robb’s got my thoughts summed up in one image. It’s just a blue campaign sign. At the top, it says “McCain” in ten-point font.
At the bottom, it says “PALIN” in letters big enough to take up the whole sign.
I gonna get me a McPain/ Palin bumper sticker and cut off the McPain part!
Sarah Palin as VP has made it where I will not be holding my nose while voting for McCain
All the talking heads have pointed out that people vote for the top of the ticket. The VP usually has no effect except perhaps in their own state.
That doesn’t seem to be the case in THIS case… and it is true that she stands a better chance of having to take the wheel herself than any VP candidate in recent memory.
As someone pointed out above that’s actually a good chance for EITHER candidate and I’d rather have Palin in the driver’s seat than Biden.
When it became clear that McCain was going to be the GOP Presidential Candidate I was disgusted. I will not vote for McCain. The only way I could ever vote for his ticket was if I thought I was setting up the VP to become a future president. That seems to be the case now. Why the hell couldn’t the GOP scare her up to run for pres? Look at the excitement she is generating! After all I think I can vote for Palin in the hopes that she’s next up for the hot seat. I’d love to see her go head to head with Hillary on the next go around.
My thoughts on the matter, too, LawDog! No surprise there. We think frighteningly alike! Pax reflects my feelings, too.
I’ll vote for McCain/Palin. After all, anything else would be an Obamanation!
The rotten part is that we have to vote for McPain in order to get Palin.
Good lord, but I’d like to see a LADY anywhere in the White House!
My jury is still out on Palin. Emotional enthusiasm is what got us Obamasamaramadama and his fanatically radical wife, whose seething hatred can’t be disguised.
I don’t particularly like McBland, who seems to be a legislative gypsy (but then, so was Winston Churchill), and his treatment of his first wife leaves me feeling disgruntled.
However, men are visual creatures, and despite the prejudice of the media, the present Mrs. McCain is undeniably beautiful.
McCain spent over five years coping with unimaginable cruelty, probably thinking of the wife he left behind. He returned and that wife no longer existed. I wonder if I’d still feel the same way if the first Mrs. McCain had not done some coping herself with an accident and crippling all on her own?
I didn’t notice anyone having a cow over Reagan’s divorce from an attractive and very classy lady; maybe that’s why? Jane Wyman had no baggage.
McCain’s is not the first marriage to break up in a crisis. I’m glad McCain finally admitted failure in that. I’m also glad he’s a private man-something of which the media has been increasingly intolerant over the last several decades.
As to Palin, she’s a largely unknown factor, and unfortunately, it’s too late in the day to find out what I’d like to know before the election.
However, as I have said before, I’d vote for Hilary (cringe!) before I’d vote for Obama, but both tickets make me uneasy.
LawMom
I’m with you, LawDog – and I’m thinking McCain will last about 2.5 to 3 years before the incredible strain of the office takes him down.
Palin is a little too pro-life/pro-creationism for my tastes, but she’s running for an executive office, not a legislative one, so I can live with that.
Don’t forget she’s also commanding the Alaska National Guard and has a son who is a US Army Infantryman heading to Iraq in a few days.
Some fun facts I stole from Misha (as well as a link to Redstates ‘tale of the tape’ comparing Palin and Obama.
And she’s an ACTUAL political outsider, not a product of decades in the Senate of the Chicago political machine.
Orion
You might want to check out the following link before committing to Palin:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/08/29/DI2008082902052.html
As far as McBush goes, his flip=flops moved me right out of his camp many months ago. I mean, come on, the guy was tortured. And now he says that it’s OK for the US to do what we excoriated other countries for doing. And he flipped on women’s rights, and and and. The only thing he has going at this point is 2nd Amendment, which isn’t enough for me.
I wouldn’t get that excited about her international trade experience without getting some details. After all, googling “Nebraska international trade” turned up an equivalent office there. I’m not saying she doesn’t have international experince, since I don’t know. When I think of the Alaskan economy, all I think of is drilling for oil, crab fishing and subsistance hunting, and only crab fishing seems likely to involve international trade.
I’m also not comfortable with the ongoing ethics probe about trying to fire her ex brother in law. While nothing is proven, there is a lot of risk that an indictment could come between now and November, plus the Dems are sure to play it up. Handing ammo to your opponent doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m also not keen on drilling in ANWR, but I’m probably in the minority on that around here.
Dear LawDog:
I would like to thank you for referring me to the Arizona International Trade Department.
If you will click at the following web address, you should be able to access information from the official webpage for Alaska’s government:
http://www.gov.state.ak.us/trade/
Looking at it, apparently, Alaska does trade with at least twenty nations, particularly Japan, Korea, China, Canada, and Germany. And it appears that this office is one with which the Governor is directly involved.
Guess that puts the lie to those who say that Gov. Palin has had no foreign policy experience.
Oh, and for the brave chap, “Anonymous”, who says that Wisconsin has a similar agency, I am willing to bet that Wisconsin does not equal the $3 to 4 billion dollars a year in international trade that Alaska does.
Even better are the words that Gov. Palin has to say about international trade: “In all our efforts, we will keep Alaska residents first. We will help Alaska businesses succeed in their key international markets. We will improve Alaska’s positive international relations with our key trading partners.”
I wonder what she would do about NAFTA and CAFTA.
At any rate, she has my vote. As I have remarked elsewhere in my weblog, I guess I’ll also hold my nose and vote for McCain.
All the reports about Palin’s “troopergate” tend to act as if it were only an issue of a nasty divorce and child custody. What is seldom reported is that his actions would have him fired and prosecuted in almost any other state: he tasered his 11 year old stepson; he drank beer in his patrol car; he illegally poached game; he threatened to shoot his father-in-law.
The real investigation should be into why this man has a badge and a gun.
I laugh at those who call her “inexperienced” and accuse McCain of hypocrisy, since he has often cited Obama’s lack of experience. After all, she’s running for executive office, and before finishing her first day as Mayor she had more government chief executive experience than Obama, Biden, and McCain, combined.
Wow anonymous, I didn’t know that the melanoma on his face that was removed more than five years ago and hasn’t surfaced since was killing him.
Typical of liberals that they are all for taking care of people and inclusiveness. Unless you disagree with them, that is.
I feel the pain of this conundrum. I can’t bring myself to vote for Obama or McCain, but this Palin is making me second guess. If she were running for President my mind would be made up already. I will be paying close attention
If her husband wasn’t already one of the first people, I would not be surprised to learn how she simultaneously fought off an indian attack while nursing and pulling arrows out of her husband with her teeth…a la Maureen O’Hara in a John Wayne movie.
The only way I could vote for McPain is if God Almighty was his running mate.
Donna
kbcraig… thank you for noting the Troopergate thing. There was a whole lot more to that story than the nutroots and *cough* mainstream media are reporting.
I have been dreading the approach of November 4, as McCain was not my first choice, but this has given me a boost of a more hopeful spirit toward McCain defeating the dyed in the wool Chicago politician.
I am almost reticent to say hope… as that term seems to have been hijacked by the Obama-droids, but hopeful I am and more than just a bit excited.
IMO, I believe McCain listened to the base and realized that we do not want more of the same old RINO crap.
farm.dad…. Sarah-cuda?
MITX
http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/08/29/palins-troopergate-beating-msm-distortions-to-the-truth/#more-7482
Info on Troopergate
MITX
I started this election going Tancredo or Hunter, Tancredo or Hunter, then thinking bag it, the conservatives are gone, I’ll vote Constitution Party and let the Republicans know they can’t take conservatives for granted.
See, I was familiar with Romney, who championed the plan to socialize medicine in Mass… but, well… then he drops out and gives a speech that was so amazing that it could actually make me believe he was a changed man, and a right-thinking individual. I have never heard a political speech that made me reconsider things like that, but he was… dropping out, so I became angry.
Then I look at the Dems and discover that it was the old political hack against… a racist who was black, but for some reason it is OK to vote for the racist simply because he was black. What??? So I was hoping that, of the two of them and McCain, Hillary might win (while I vote 3rd party) just to spurn the Conservatives into regrouping and taking the Republicans back from the libs that have infested the party.
But no, Obama wins, and I started to fear I would have to pull the McCain lever… for a couple months, before I found myself thinking that no, voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil, and McCain is McAmnesty, and that IS EVIL.
But then he does this, and… might I actually be enthusiastic about voting for him? Not because it is him, but because he might die and then she’d be president and she could run with Jindal? A conservative rebirth thanks to… McCain?
What the heck is the world coming to?
I’m a fairly conservative Calif Republican (which would probably make me a RINO anywhere else).
McCain was/is not my first choice (I voted for Fred in the primary, even though he’d already dropped out). McCain/Feingold still irritates the snot out of me. McCain probably would have gotten my vote (Obama never would), but it really doesn’t matter (I live in a red county, but in blue Calif).
The choice of Palin means that I may actually send money to the campaign, not for him, but to get her in Washington.
Now if she’d just continue the tradition of the VP shooting a lawyer…
I have been trying to learn to control my gorge sufficiently to vote McCain without puking on the voting machine. My attitude is perfectly summarized by either Kevin Baker or Kim Dutoit in their bumper stickers; respectively, “F* it, McCain” and “Because I love my country more than I hate John McCain”. Now I actually have someone I can vote for. It is a brilliant move on team McCain’s part to make his possible death in office an advantage. The defining characteristic of a maverick is making you take positions you thought you’d never take. Well, here’s three cheers for heart disease!
I’m not sure I agree with everything Palin stands for. But of all the people in the executive race this year, she certainly impresses me as the most genuine.
(And “bernard”, while I haven’t posted on this thread previously, you might want to google the words “manitowac” and “bucyrus” before you go ridiculing wisconsin’s trade office. Just a thought.)
Lawdog,
You are correct in your statement that Governors of border states do have international relations experience. The small states of VT, NH, and ME all have trade relations with the .ca gov in Ottawa as well as the PMs in QC and NB. Most recently, there has been a international dispute over the softwood pulp market that was initiated in these 3 states along with NY.
Furthermore, state level law enforcement, commanded by the Governor, works with Border Patrol, ICE, and Immigration Canada on joint excercises, ICE traps on roadways, and day to day goblin pursuit.
To claim that the Gov of an international border state has no “International Relations” experience is just more BS from B. Zeus Obama and his gang of thugs.
As long as the president is alive, the VP is a political toy with no power. As much as I admire McCain’s choice of Palin. She is only helping him get elected not governing. I will now consider voting Palin/McCain instead of Baldwin, but I am not sure yet.
Campers… They -all- suck. Some just seem to do it a little less obnoxiously.
I just want to see the democrats work themselves into a catch-22 frenzy trying to come up with a way to tactfully say that a woman with no experience in Washington shouldn’t be elected (heck, I’m guessing she’s spent more time in Washington than His Annointness has…). Was watching Carville with a coupla buds on Saturday night, and I was anticipating watching Gollum’s head ‘splode…
“In 2007, 30.5% of Wisconsin exports went to Canada ($5.8 billion)
…
Mexico is the second largest export market for goods produced in Wisconsin, with 9.9% of all Wisconsin exports heading to Mexico ($1.9 billion)
…
Furthermore, Wisconsin exported $326 million of merchandise to Brazil.
…
In 2007, 20.2% of all Wisconsin exports went to Europe, second only to Canada. [my note: that’s about 3.8 billion.]
…
in trade with China in 2007; exports to the Asian country grew to $1.2 billion, an increase of over 35% from only a year earlier.”
All these numbers came straight from the web-page of the Wisconsin Department of Commerce International Office Network. The total is 13.3 billion, so, Bernard, you’re quite correct that “Wisconsin does not equal the 3 to 4 billion dollars in International Trade that Alaska does.” It does slightly more than triple that amount. Wisconsin does *more* trade to Canada alone than Alaska does in total.
I’ll betcha that Wisconsin has more people on welfare than Alaska has…
Wow, seems like LawDog was just talking about reading comprehension problems in Texas…
I posted the Anonymous (I need to get in the habit of using that Name/URL option) about her international trade experience and troopergate, and would like to clarify a few things.
First, I didn’t say Wisconsin, I sad Nebraska. I can’t even guess how the two were confused. I specifically chose Nebraska because it has no oceans or international borders.
Second, I was addressing LawDog, not the general public, in saying he should reserve judgement. LawDog said:
“Right now, I can’t get the link to open, but I’m relatively sure that this office is primarily tasked with doing things … well … internationally.”
Note the opening of his statement. My point was that even Nebraska has in international trade office, and that until LawDog was able to open the Alaska website he doesn’t really have much information upon which to base his assertion of her international experience. I also included a disclaimer that I was not intending my comment to question her international experience, because at the time I didn’t have any more information than LawDog.
Lastly on the trade point, Bernard Brandt provides $3-4 Billion for Alaska’s international trade. Guess what, Nebraska had $3.6 billion in 2006, matching Alaska without any international boarders.
Regarding troopergate (why does _everything_ have to be insert_controversy_here_gate?), if as KBCraig asserts (sigh, not attacking KBCraig, but qualified because I have not verified this myself) he was commiting acts unbecoming an officer (sigh, _again_, not accusing him of a specific crime but an off the top of my head rollup of the activities described) then the sitiuation around the firings is different from what I have heard. However, and to me this is a big however, the Republican controlled legislature in Alaska thought it was worth appointing an independent investigatior. And again, I was not saying she was unfit, but to quote myself “Handing ammo to your opponent doesn’t make sense to me.”
McCain’s camp said today she has been to Germany and Iraq in support of the Alaska National Guard, and she has been to Ireland.
She has, apparently, not been to Russia or Canada.
Just sayin’
(Blame my wife for me being here. She someone found your blog and has been cackling for the last hour).
RZ – what is the OTHER hat the VP wears? “President of the Senate”. While his or her vote only matters in a tie vote, it does happen.
“Guess what, Nebraska had $3.6 billion in 2006, matching Alaska without any international boarders.”
Borders don’t matter much when you export more wheat than some entire countries. Nebraska is the breadbasket of the US and the US is the world’s number 1 wheat exporter.
+1000
You got it there Lawdog,
r
I have been rightly whupped upside the head by both Sara and Rick for engaging mouth/typewriter before initiating brain/fact finding. Rick was kind enough to point out that it was Nebraska that he had talked about, which has only $3.6 billion in international trade as against $4.6 billion for Alaska, rather than the $14-or-so billion for Wisconsin. My apologies, and I will try to put brain before mouth in future.
Nonetheless, whether it is $14 billion or $4.6 billion or $3.6 billion, the point is that, as McNamara saith, sooner or later it adds up to real money. I would add that it also adds up to real international executive experience, which is more than can be said for the other three candidates for POTUS and VPOTUS.
Sorry, Mark (which should have been written in the item above instead of “Rick”).
Otherwise, everything else stands.
Me, too.
I won’t be writing in Luke Skywalker, after all.
I hate to point this out, but it seems like a terribly bad idea to vote for a president you don’t like because of a running mate you like. It is important to consider how fit the VP would be as a president, but the chances are rather low that they will actually be president.
The main job of VP is to head the senate. A mayor’s job is close to that, but someone without experience in the US senate is going to have to do a lot of work to gain respect in the senate, even within his or her own political party. Palin’s hard line may earn her the respect of a few, but I think it would be telling to talk to her state legislators and see what they thought of her ability to build fair and well rounded discussions of issues.
If you want Palin for president, then vote for her, not McCain. McCain is not “on the way out”, any more than you or I. Sure, the possibility exists, but if you actually want Palin specifically for president, you are gambling against very slim odds.