The GOP apologists for Palin would be hilarious if they weren't so serious in their defense of her. They are falling for the oldest bait-and-switch in the book with these "myths" they are debunking. It's called sitting up a strawman argument and then channeling all their energy into fighting a ghost so they could feel good about being hoodwinked by their party.
As someone who has voted Democratic, Republican and Independent, it is really quite sad to see so many Republicans abandon critical thinking and leap on the Palin-as-victim-of-the-liberal-media bandwagon that seems to be so popular with some elements of the Far Right.
Sarah Palin is no more qualified to be vice-president that the mayor of any city with a population of less than 10,000 people. McCain appealed to the raw, undisciplined emotions of the mostly anti-intellectual rural voters who were oh so eager to take insult at Obama's "guns and religion" comment this spring.
Republicans justify Palin's lies and near-slander in her convention speech by citing how sh**tty the New York Times is as a paper, as if they have to have some moral equivalent of Fox News to throw back at all these imaginary "libs" who are threatening their hold on reality. It's pathetic, as bad as the Democrats' incessant whining when Reagan was president.
Not all Republicans are like this, thank God, but that McCain would appeal to the most insecure and reactionary segment of the party in thrusting the manipulative and vidictive Palin on the American People speaks volumes about his priorities, not to mention his enormous ego and obvious guilt-shame complex for his past failings as a military man. McCain himself even writes about his guilt on this topic in his autobiography.
The McCain-Palin ticket represents the worst of America: Petty, shallow, willfully ignorant, stubborn to the point of self-defeat. They are like a two-headed monster growing from the same Republican Party that gave us the Bushes and their ilk. They are not friends of the American Way but rather beholden to and dependant upon a strange disconnect that has prevailed in the GOP since at least the Iran-Contra affair: When the media uncovers some ugly truth about Republican politicians, a certain segment of the populace is automatically encouraged by the standard right-wing, quasi-fascist blame-the-media paranoia to tune out the truth about their candidate and spew venom at the messenger instead.
It's childish, it's not at all becoming of an educated American, and it's wearing thin. Unless the GOP is successful in suppressing the vote this year in several states like they were in Ohio in 2004, it isn't going to work anymore. That heretofore entrenced segment of hate-the-liberal, hate-the-media voting bloc the GOP has counted on the last 28 years will be forced to grow up politically, whether they like it or not.
And to the Republicans who have become so good at taking political criticisms personally and dreaming up wild liberal-media conspiracies at the first mention of anything the least bit critical of Sarah Palin, relax. What you are going through now is the same thing that happened to liberals at the end of the 1970s, after some 20 years of shaping the direction of policy in Washington. The same knuckleheads who dreamed up school busing were shuffled to the sidelines of history, where they will soon be joined by the knuckleheads who dreamed up abstinence-only education and a thinly disguised fear of science known as Creationism.
A belief in evolution and a belief in the Christian God are not mutually exclusive. A belief in the theological underpinning of the "Left Behind" series and science, however...well, that just doesn't sit too well together.
So this will be a watershed election, and if America stays true to the spirit of renewal and self-cleansing and underlying optimism that brought us this far, Obama will win and win big. He will not be a perfect president, but he will be a better one than McCain could ever hope to be. If the GOP somehow manages to wrest another election away and thwart the voters' will, I am sure I won't be the only American remembering the words of Thomas Jefferson:
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."Getting to know Palin - is 66 days long enough?
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1310313-palin-mccain
