Huffpost has a great banner with Palin’s “First five days” as VP candidate.
Day 1. McCain introduces VP Pick Sarah Palin.
Day 2. Palin is under investigation in a nasty conflict involving her sister, a state trooper, an ugly divorce and the firing of Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, shown here.
Day 3. Fellow Republican and Alaska State Senate President Lyda Green, shown here watching Palin speak in 2007, told the Anchorage Daily News on Saturday “She’s not prepared to be Governor. How can she be prepared to be Vice President or President?”
Day 3, cont.’d: Sarah’s mother-in-law, Faye Palin, echoed the sentiment. “I’m not sure what she brings to the ticket other than she’s a woman and a conservative. Well, she’s a better speaker than McCain,” Faye offered.
Day 3, cont.’d: Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said he and Palin play no role in national defense activities.
Day 3, cont.’d: Report surfaces that Palin was nearly recalled as Mayor of Wasilla.
Day 3, cont.’d: Andrew Sullivan reports that in an interview with Alaska Business Monthly, Palin, shown here with her husband at a snowmobile race, confessed “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
Day 4: From 2003 to 2005 Sarah served as one of three directors of the “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.,” a 527 group. In July 2008 the senior Alaska senator was indicted on seven counts of corruption.
Day 4, cont.’d: Members of a fringe Alaska secessionist party say Palin, shown here with a hunted caribou, was a member in the 90s.
Day 4, cont.’d: Reports surface that Palin received millions in earmarks as mayor of Wasilla. Palin has been critical of the earmark system.
Day 5: Washington Post reveals Palin hired a lobbyist who honed his skills under now-jailed Jack Abramoff.
Day 5, cont.’d: An Alaska State Senator reveals the McCain campaign is stalling an investigation of Sarah Palin.
Day 5, cont.’d: Video footage reveals Palin talking to her church congregation about how her policies are “shaped” by God.
Day 5, cont.’d: McCain sends a dozen campaign operatives to Alaska to deal with current Palin scandals… and anything else under the ice.
I didn’t even have to list or fawn over her daughter being pregnant (it’s not relevant to what I feel the focus should be nor am I focusing on the questions swirling about the birthright of her newborn “Trig.”)
Mainline Republicans and Evangelicals are falling over themselves praising this woman asserting their own venture into “history” and the women’s movement. While I appreciate whatever sentiment they might squeeze through their tight lips, I wonder if they’ve lost focus on what this country really needs, what matters most to Americans and what has happened to this country over the past 8 years that demands serious policy, serious attention and not gimmicks and social pandering on the same old wedge issues.
I’ve always been politically progressive, there is no masking that. I’ve always been career minded and for the past 10 years earnestly working toward career often shortsiding my personal development and putting my career first. It’s a choice I’ve been privledged to have, and my right as an American to work for wage and choose a career and where I want to take it. I commend Sarah Palin for doing the same.
However, as the addage always says “with rights comes responsibility and definition of priorities.” I don’t have any specific beliefs about gender roles defined by religion or specific agenda, but I believe parenting and family is the highest calling and biggest responsibility anyone can be given. You can’t run a pro-family, pro-life social platform and live the complete opposite by shlepping an obviously struggling and damaged family through the mud and in the spotlight. I don’t think liberal bloggers care that the daughter is pregnant, I think they are completely bewildered by all of this.
