Well, I had planned on blogging today about Barak Obama's Democratic nomination presidential acceptance speech last night. And then the news of John McCain's vice presidential pick began to leak out.According to reports, McCain has picked Sarah Palin, the young Alaskan governor. She is pro-life, a mother of five (one child with Down's Syndrome), a former Ms. Alaska runner-up, and clearly an outsider to Washington.
McCain has definitely succeeded in changing the conversation from Obama's historic night. This will give some excitement and interest to McCain's campaign. And this is a play for disenchanted Hillary Clinton supporters, who are disappointed that she was not the Democratic nominee. These are positives for him.
On the negative side, she only has two and a half years of experience in state wide office. This makes it harder to make the experience argument against Barak, which is easily one of the best arguments against him.
This is definitely a gamble, which speaks a lot of McCain's personality. It looks like he really is a Maverick.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/29/sarah-palin-seen-as-gop-rising-star/
What do you think of McCain's pick?
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1 comments:
I would also say that this looks like a pick that will excite the conservative base of the Republican party due to Palin's strong pro-life and family values. It looks like McCain will try to run an ideological campaign, trying to excite the base, while seeking to appeal to the Hillary voters by picking a woman.
The media has always said that Republicans should go to the middle and try to appeal to independents. Republicans, however, have had great success in the past appealing to the base and winning. Conservative candidates have won. Such was definitely the case in 2000 and 2004.
Will this work this year? Well, that remains to be seen. As a political matter, self-identifying Republicans are down, and self-identifying Democracts are up. This make an ideological campaign tougher this year.
It should be very interesting. While I do not place hope in politics to change the world, I find it very, very interesting.
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