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My Thoughts on Palin
Now that we’ve had (just under) three weeks to get to know Governor Palin, I think it’s time I posted some of my thoughts on the whole thing.
I’ll start by saying that I was quite shocked when the Governor was announced, and was somewhat convinced that the whole thing was a joke. I assumed that the election was going to be quite over with after reading about her stances on the issues, but I have been quite surprised as to the outpouring of support that she has garnered John McCain. I had assumed that McCain was already going to receive the support of the conservative base (as he has sufficiently changed his stance that he does fall under the umbrella of conservatism now), while I may have been wrong (or perhaps not) it does appear that the final nail in the coffin (… not the best analogy) has been driven in, and the conservative base will indeed support John McCain quite willingly.
In the first few days after the announcement, websites like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and yes, even my beloved Huffington Post, engaged in some deep attacks against Palin (that was after they were able to find out something about her, other than she was a woman, which seemed to be all anyone knew the first few days). Looking back, these attacks are about as bad as I’ve seen against McCain (and on conservative sites such as Fox News Town Hall, Drudge Report, and the awful site World Net Daily against Obama), but seemed much worse because of the short amount of time in which they were perpetrated. Some of these attacks were laughable, but others were, I think, quite important to the office of the President of the United States.
Now, as far as Palin as a person/the Palin “worldview.”
One quick side note on worldview- I am getting tired of that term. It was cool at first, now it’s quite overplayed, yet I can’t really think of any simple world to use interchangeably, thus worldview stays (for now… your days are numbered overused phrase!).
One other side note- Proximity to Russia does not an experienced Foreign Policy resume make.
Ok, back on topic. Here is my reasoning for the lack of (my) support for Palin.
First, Palin does not believe Global Warming is man-made (link), or at least pre-VP pick she expressed doubt over the issue. This would coincide with her worldview (I may be off base right here, but she appears to fall in line with the Darby-ist end time escapist eschatology) that the world’s going to end anyways, so why bother doing anything about it? The environmental issue holds a big spot in my heart, so I want politicians in office who will work for environmental change. Sarah Palin seems to fall short here.
Palin on Iraq as God’s will (link) is another issue which she is severely at odds with me. I’m not of the opinion that the murder war on anyone is God’s will. Now, I know that she went was hit with this by Charlie Gibson, and responded by invoking Lincon (and politifact finds that these two phrases are similar), I would say that her statement doesn’t ring like Lincon to me. She does seem to be (in her speech) implying that Iraq is, in fact, God’s will. I can admit there is some room for budging here, but I’m calling like it appears to me.
On the issues Palin appears to be a lock-step conservative, both economically and socially, an idealogical viewpoint that I find myself more and more distanced from each day. John McCain, you could make the argument, is more of an independent (I say could, I feel like he’s moved more to the right whilst chasing the Presidency). Because of this staunch conservatism, I don’t think I’d ever bring myself to vote for Palin, nor encourage anyone else to do so.
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A note about the comments section, lets keep it clean in here, now vicious attacks against Candidates (or other commentors), if your family I’m gonna request you read over your comment BEFORE posting it. I’d prefer not to have to shut down a comment section on another one of my posts.
Live Blog: McCain’s speech
This’ll be my fist live blog, so I don’t know how well it’s going to go over (and the fact that it’ll go late and I will be up at five in the morning), but we’ll give it a shot and see how it turns out. I think I’ll do a test run during the O’Reilly factor interview with Obama, if that doesn’t go over we’ll I’ll probably cut it off.
Wish me luck.