Saturday, August 30, 2008

Moose Burgers, Get Your Moose Burgers

Sarah Palin. Who? Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska for the past twenty months. What is the population of Alaska? Less than a million people – in the entire state! As a point of comparison, that’s less than the population of San Jose, California, Jacksonville, Florida and Columbus, Ohio. Sarah Palin is the best the GOP can do? Palin is the most qualified Republican woman they can find?

I have nothing against a female vice-president or Alaska – but are they freaking serious!

Choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate simply shows that John McCain is desperate. Choosing Palin also confirms – as if any further proof were needed – that the GOP is done, out of ideas, finished, kaput, bankrupt, adrift on the sea of a failed ideology. Choosing Palin does not – even though Sean Hannity tried his best to spin it so – re-establish McCain’s maverick reputation. McCain has marched in lock step with George W. Bush, down the road, around the bend, and over the edge of a sheer cliff.

The GOP run is over. Hannity, Limbaugh, Barnes, Savage and the rest of the right-wing blowhards had their time in the sun, total control of the country -- White House, Congress, Courts – and tanked spectacularly, historically, monumentally.

McCain and Palin, a doddering old man and an untested woman from an isolated state that bears no resemblance to the rest of the United States. Where Palin’s from it’s fine and dandy to support gun ownership, indiscriminate oil drilling and other nutty right-wing ideas because at the end of the day we’re talking about Alaska – a state that, frankly, was added to the union as an afterthought and means next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Bill Clinton was right – absent another stolen, fraudulent election – Obama and Biden are on the right side of history and should capture the White House in a landslide. Clinton was also right when he said that this election boils down to two simple elements: restoring the American Dream at home, and restoring American credibility abroad.

And Barack Obama was right when he framed the election this way: “If you don’t have a record to run on (and how can John McCain and his Alaskan sidekick possibly run on the Republican record? Hi folks, we’re losers and we want you to vote for us!) paint your opponent as someone to run from.” Precisely, and that’s what the dying, sputtering GOP machine will do from here to Election Day. Only now the Democrats can do the same thing, spotlighting McCain’s age and mental confusion, his temper and history of ethical lapses, and now the gaffe of all gaffes, tapping unknown, untested Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Need we talk any further about John McCain, the blatantly transparent political calculator – crassly trying to attract female votes by choosing Palin – his abysmal absence of vision, or do we now know everything we need to know?

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