Disaster

I appreciate Jerome Armstrong’s schtick (everything is good for the Republicans, bad for the Dems) but seriously, the idea that Palin is a “gamechanger” in a good way for McCain is laughable. If Palin ends up a net positive for the Republicans, I’ll turn in my Pundit (Blogosphere Division-Class C) License without a fuss.

It’s far too much to hope for, but it would be nice if this pick also helped the media to understand just how anti-choice the Republican Party is. I probably concede too much by thinking that John McCain just doesn’t care very much about abortion, and that his strong anti-choice record is a product of disinterest and political calculation. But the nomination of Palin ahead of the plainly more qualified Kay Bailey Hutchison is only intelligible in the context of the GOP’s anti-choice base. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what John McCain thinks about abortion; it only matters how he will act, and the culture of the modern GOP restricts him to only the most anti-choice options.

The choice of Palin over any number of vastly more qualified women on the Republican side also tells us a bit about how McCain interprets the candidacies of both Clinton and Obama. McCain thinks that Clinton and Obama are both, essentially, affirmative action hires; they rose to prominence not because of qualification or talent, but rather because the one is a woman and the other is black and the Democrats go for that kind of thing. The antidote? A woman; any one will do, since (in the Republican view) you’re already throwing qualification to do the job out the window when you eschew a gnarly white dude.