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| Why Mark Steyn likes Sarah Palin |
| 2008-08-30 |
| First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy. Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one. Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night). Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a "hinterland" - a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual stage-managed "hunting" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that. Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there. Sixth (see [here]), I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 Don't be crude, Iblis. He could resign, though. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-08-30 22:03 |
| #3 McCain revolts me, and once he is elected I fully expect him to betray me, conservatives and the Republican party as frequently and as egregiously as possible. But, he has finally given me a reason to vote for him. Well done. Here's hoping McCain gets elected, then promptly drops dead. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2008-08-30 20:25 |
| #2 Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Damn, Steyn has a way with words. Wish I had said this. Laziest Democratic pietics--almost poetic. Democrats always have such self-righteous indignation for everyone but themselves. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2008-08-30 17:32 |
| #1 I wonder how many of you recall my comments here. I had registered my displeasure with McCain for what I called a calculated dissing of his conservative base to curry favor with the MSM. I am astounded, and pleased, to have McCain's VP choice neatly resolve my main concern: by picking a solid conservative with such credentials, he's leveraged the fact that that constituency takes the long-view. I am more than willing to take 4 years of McCain for 8 of Palin/Jindal, since the end result will be a lot better than 4 years of Carter followed by Reagan's 8. NO, I don't think it'll be Gipper II: It'll be Maggie II. By picking Palin, he's also immunized himself against shitting on conservatives (again, my main cocern about him), since everyone will drop on top of him like a ton of bricks if he does, since she IS one. "All our base now belong to us." I was in walmart and had a discussion with an elderly and clearly "deer hunter" couple: the wife was grinning like the cat had eaten the canary, and her husband was enthusiastic, and in downright awe of Maverick's political balls. I just sent $100 to McCain, and plan to follow up for the next two months with the same. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2008-08-30 14:20 |