Or maybe even for President in four years time?It seems that John McCain has decided to go with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate.
It's a superlative choice that's really going to let the Democrats know they're in a fight for the Whitehouse.
She is a dream candidate for the Republicans - she's extremely photogenic (even now, as opposed to her beauty queen heyday, right), married to an Inuit (there goes a slice of Obama's ethnic vote), the mother of a Downs' Syndrome kid and a soldier on active duty, and she has actual experience of governance (unlike Obama, Biden or McCain).
She'll appeal to the ethnic vote, to the swing vote and to the still disgruntled Clintonista sisterhood vote.
An election that ought on paper to have been a Democrat landslide is now blown wide open. They have the wrong candidate, the wrong vice-presidential candidate and the wrong election strategy (Roman pillars for the acceptance speech? WTF?)
By contrast, McCain is quietly playing a blinder. Palin is a genuine heavyweight candidate, despite her beauty and relative youth. Alaskan politicos allege that the political landscape of the territory is littered with the corpses of those who've opposed her in the past.
She will give Biden a good debate and she will shore up the demographic holes in the McCain vote.
Despite the Obamania of the convention, the much-awaited bump in the polls has not materialised for the Democrats. McCain remains doggedly in touch.
It will be interesting to see the polls following the Republican convention. I suspect by then McCain will be neck-and-neck with Obama if not in front.
Certainly, the media agenda hijacking of the Democrat convention by today's announcement is a genius move by the GOP that the Democrats have nothing to respond with.
If they keep boxing clever like that, no amount of waffly Obama rhetoric will be able to propel him to the Whitehouse come November.
What's worse for the Democrats is that if the McCain ticket does get elected, then Palin can run against Obama or Hilary or whoever the Dems choose in 2012 with four years of executive experience under her belt.
The real nightmare for them would be for McCain to die about three years into a term of office. They'd be looking realistically at eight years of Bush junior, followed by three of McCain, followed by nine of Palin.
3 comments:
Selecting Palin makes perfect sense. She is strong in republican areas where McCain is weak and she will definitely steel some of Hillary's 18 million votes.
Christ, voters in the US seem incredibly fickle. Instead of sticking by the party their desired candidate is with, they're voting the GOP as an "F-You" to the Democrats. Seems like cutting their noses off to spite their faces. Smart tactics by the Republicans, no matter how much I'd hate to see them get yet another 4 years. Not that I have much faith in Obama.
That's a particular trend of the Clintonistas, who'd rather see a woman on the ticket no matter if the ticket was Republican or not.
The Dems really have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by running such an upside-down ticket, Peter.
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