The Anchoress

What in the world has happened to liberal/Democrat values in the last 48 hours? It seems like the appearance of Sarah Palin on the GOP ticket has caused an immediate disintegration of all of the hard-fast rules and values that have been preached at us ‘lo these many years.

Palin was not a half hour in the ring, when a male reporter wondered, “Shouldn’t she be home raising” that Down Syndrome baby. He needed to be reminded by a female reporter that a male politician would not be asked that question, especially when there was a loving spouse in support.

Then, Alan Colmes posted (and apparently immediately took down) a piece basically questioning Sarah Palin’s instincts as a mother (does he even have children?) because she, a month before her due date, and far away from her doctor, did not immediately fall apart when she noticed some amniotic fluid leaking.

This not being her first pregnancy, Palin did what a prudent, experienced woman who knows her own body would do; she called her own doctor, kept him apprised and did not panic. She made a scheduled speech, traveled home and went to the doctor.

The left is going to try to run with this? If Palin had a “D” after her name, she’d be praised for her calm, collected manner in the situation and we’d hear how it reflects how steady she would be “a heartbeat away from the presidency”, and we would all know, because everyone would keep saying it, that - of course she would have seen a doctor had she needed to - but every woman wants HER doctor with her when she delivers, if it’s possible.

People seem to forget that women managed to birth their children - and gain some wisdom about the process - long before hospitals and the AMA were around.

The left will try to make hay about Palin’s judgment. Most women will say, however, that Palin trusted what she knew about her body, and in God.

The left seems terrified of Palin, (and with good reason; even Camille Paglia knows Palin is formidable, as she said of Palin’s first, teleprompter-free speech here):

“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling…That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.”

Actually the Dems and their women are ready to make hay about everything they can think of, but with every issue they open a mirror reflecting back to themselves. My email is full of “talking points” about the evil that is Sarah Palin, but I like the comment left in another post, by a “fab forty” woman who sees terrible, terrible things in Alaska’s governor. And, it goes without saying, John McCain.

Palin does not need my help addressing the feminists; she can easily pivot in those great shoes, but I’ll help, anyway.

There are press releases that spout how great it is that Palin was back at work, as Governor, the day after delivering her youngest child… but, that child is severely disabled! Seems she’s more interested in the photo op than her responsibilities. As a special ed. teacher, I’m appalled that she is leaving her youngest child, an infant with special needs, to a nanny to raise while she romps around the country to become VP. VP is not a ‘job’ it is your entire life… these are the “Family Values” she espouses?!? Having the income to hire a household staff is not the same as being a ‘working mom;’ it is simply managing a business. In addition, she is under investigation for an Ethics violation (abuse of power); she was for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” in a 2006 interview; then when it became a political liability she flip-flopped over to voice opposition for the project, and she owns three houses, but doesn’t apparently count two of them as they’re only vacation homes… whose the elitist? Every move she’s ever made has been to attain ‘fame,’ not to be in politics for service to the country, (beauty pageants, journalism, sports announcing, politics). No wonder McCain likes her - it’s someone just like him. I look at her and see “Handmaid’s Tale.”

I think she covered most of the talking points in that, so, I responded (slightly amended):

Comments are moderated, and that is why you were in a holding pattern. No need to keep posting the same thing. I see you have all of your talking points. I have a lot of folks on the left moralizing to me today about how Mrs. Palin needs to be home raising her child. Quite extraordinary, really. The same people who say they are all about CHOICE, and who say we should have government-sponsored day care so that moms can immediately go back to work are having issues with Palin’s choice.

Palin has chosen to raise Trig - his name is Trig, not “that child” - the same way she raised the rest of her family: with the support of her husband, Trig’s siblings and “grandparents aunts and uncles.” You know…the way kids used to be raised, with the help of the whole FAMILY, not the village. Suddenly a woman with children and ambitions and ideas who actually chooses to pursue a career is a “bad” mother, “traipsing” around the country. She should be home “having teas and baking cookies,” as Hillary sneered, I guess? Is that it?

See, that’s the problem with the left preaching to us all these years…we’ve listened to them and now we’re simply reminding you of all the things you used to believe…because suddenly it seems you’ve forgotten!

As a “special ed teacher” you probably know that the best environment for a Downs Syndrome baby is in a supportive family, one that does not treat the child any differently than the rest of the brood. Growing up, we had two DS babies in the neighborhood (bad Catholics, you know, having babies into their forties) and both boys were simply “part of the family” and part of the gangs. They played with us, they did the dishes and helped with chores; they were not “severely disabled.” They were just different.

Oh, and so the Palins have a few houses? How horrible of them. Did they buy the houses themselves or did they have Tony Rezko help them out? How many houses did John Kerry marry into? That never bothered you, I bet? How many houses do the Clintons own? I know of at least two, the mansion in Georgetown, and the house in Chappaqua they hardly use, which gives Hillary her NYS residency, and supposedly they’re building one in the Dominican Republic. I don’t begrudge them any of their good fortune…why do you begrudge the Palins theirs? And what do houses owned have to do with competency?

Let’s see…what else are you grousing about here…the class-warrior stuff:“Having the income to hire a household staff is not the same as being a ‘working mom;’ it is simply managing a business.”

Oh…and managing a business is easy? Managing a business takes some smarts. Also managing a state. Palin has been a Mayor and a Governor, and she’s “managed a business” to boot. Seems to me she has more executive experience than either Obama or Biden…or even McCain (although he did run a squadron, so that’s something). Think for a moment before you make the “she isn’t a real working mom” charge: Hillary had government staff help her raise her ONE child for the child’s whole life but was a “working mom.” Katie Couric has a staff to help with her TWO children, but she’s a “working mom.”

Oh, the big “Ethics Violation” (capitalized, even) that the left wants to whisper about but not actually discuss…go over to Flopping Aces - but only if you’re really interested in doing more than just acting scandalized, and the facts, the reports and the timelines. Palin wasn’t even governor when the events took place, and -unlike Obama, who wouldn’t even produce his damn birth certificate or actual medical records; unlike Hillary who never met an investigation she could not stall - the investigators didn’t even have to subpoena Palin because she was so forthcoming about the details.

So, you can try to peddle your smear with all this innuendo “oh….an ETHICS violation….ooooooooo” but be aware of the fact that we all know that William Jefferson is still in congress even though he had $100,000 in his freezer, and Al Gore got his Buddhist nun money because “there was no controlling legal authority”, that Harry Reid has some questionable land deals in Nevada, and so on, and so on, so if you want to play “Ethics Violations” be prepared. I suspect you’ll want to actually pack that one away.

“Every move she’s ever made has been to attain ‘fame,’ not to be in politics for service to the country, (beauty pageants, journalism, sports announcing, politics).”

Oh. My. Gawd. Do I see cat-claws? Palin used her pageant money to go to college because - as she has said - her folks were not rich; her father was a teacher and her mother a secretary. And she studied journalism (gasp!) so, are you saying that all of the great journalist/patriots like Keith Olbermann (who was also a sports announcer) and Cronkite and Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell and the rest - they cannot have a serious love of their country?

If Matthews or Olbermann run for office someday, they shouldn’t because they were “journalists and sports announcers?” Is that really what you’re telling me, after all?

“No wonder McCain likes her - it’s someone just like him. I look at her and see “Handmaid’s Tale.”

Oh! A literary allusion! How impressive. I am not sure how you relate Palin choosing to have a large family and accomplishing a great deal on her own - without coattails and such - with a story about women who are repressed and kept down, whose children are provided by obedient handmaids, and whose husbands are controlling freaks. But I suspect that deep down inside you, you are desperate - really desperate - to repeat the DU/Kos dementia that Palin actually is claiming Trig as the child of her daughter, (who had been raped by her father) but you know better to go there, because you are decent enough to know how incredibly sick that whole line of thought is. THAT is the only reason, I can think of for you alluding to The Handmaid’s Tale.

Funny, I look at Sarah Palin and think more of the feminist film “Nine to Five”. I look at her, and I see everything that someone like you, or your political party, has told women they ought to strive to be. You and your party have told us, over and over (and quite rightly) that women should be respected for the choices they make and the opportunities they bravely take, but you suddenly - when confronted with such a woman tagged with the wrong letter after her name - seem to be made ill by those things.

I look at Palin and I see a REAL “working” mom, one who actually worked “with her hands” - she and her husband BOTH were union members and BOTH commercial fishermen - a person who got involved and, because of her smarts and passion, (not because of her marriage or her connections) she progressed to the highest office in her state, all while raising a family.

But even before I see her womanhood, I see her well thought-out policies, I see her priorities. I see her not just talking the talk, but walking the walk.

I know you’re all about the identity-politics; the race card, the gender card, but I’m really more interested in Palin’s policies than her periods. And the talking points you’ve sent to me seem pretty lame. Politically pubescent.

Thanks for stopping by. When you have more talking points, just drop them in the queue and they’ll be duly posted.

Related: Sew the Scarlet A for Sarah Palin!

Meanwhile: more on Palin and the whole election from around the ’sphere - relevant and random stuff-:

Hot Air/Allah: on The GOP replacing the convention with service; as I said yesterday, it’s a great idea, and we shouldn’t let the predictable negative responses from the Dems and the press keep us from doing it. Instapundit has a poll on what you think.

Blackfive notes that Palin is CIC of Alaska and its missile defenses - cough - Obama got that sort of experience?
SDA: Scratch Alan Colmes
Brutally Honest: Palin’s husband is no metrosexual
WaPo: Palin pick not a panic
Roger L. Simon: Palin, Abortion and Gay Marriage.
Bookworm: on Nervous Democrats and also on the unborn
Broder: Not the Obama we Knew
John Allen on the religion angle
EvilRove: Is Biden exaggerating?
LATimes: Palin with Moose PETA will hate.
Iconic Midwest: Looks at how important Alaska is to our National Security
Protein Wisdom: O the HYPOCRISY! and more and a song parody
Melissa Clouthier: on knowing your body and childbirth
Estate Vaults on the changes being made this election.
IHT: Campaign shifts
Kerry: takes offense for all of us wimmenfolk.
Strata: Dem Males Sound Like Taliban (some of the Dem women, too)
Ambinder: Obama campaign was surprised
NRO: a tiff
Lefty Loons: Hurricane Gustav is Palin’s fault!
Althouse: Selective Outrage
Villainous Company: The Gay Polar Bear Vote
Douthat: He in love!
Wide Awake Cafe Sarah Northstar
Press: “Women are baffled!” (!)
Kirsten Powers: Male Chauvinist Dems

He’s hit another one out of the park. His parish is much blessed to have him:

You really have to feel for St. Peter.

A couple weeks ago, we encountered him climbing out of a boat during a storm, trying to walk on water. He floundered, and Jesus had to rescue him.

Then, last week, he ended up with a job he never sought. Jesus gave him the keys to the kingdom and called him his rock. Peter has just gotten used to that idea when, those words still ringing in his ears, he hears the guy who just called him “a rock” yelling at him, and calling him Satan.

Peter just can’t catch a break.

The apostle must have wondered at this moment, his cheeks burning with embarrassment, “What in God’s name does he WANT from me?”

It’s a good question. And it’s one a lot of us ask. As we heard a few moments ago, St. Paul had some advice for the Romans: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”

Which leads us to ask, with Peter: “What DOES he WANT from me?”

What IS the will of God?

When he was here in April, Pope Benedict asked a gathering of priests to pray for a special intention of the pope. One of the priests asked him what that intention was. And His Holiness replied: “Pray that I never get in the way of Jesus.”

I think that’s a very good thing to pray for a pope. And I think it’s also a good thing to pray for ourselves. Pray that others see Jesus in us, and through us, and that we never block what he is trying to do
…
The best we can do, in a world as uncertain as this, is exactly what Paul told the Romans: seek to be transformed.

Pray for wisdom, to know what would please God.

Pray for courage, to do as Peter did, and get out of the boat.

Pray for trust, to let God guide us where he wants.

Pray, as Pope Benedict does, to not to get in the way of Jesus.

It gets better and better…go; read in peace. It’s a keeper.

Also, for you Fr. James Martin fans out there, a listen.

The GOP Plan to turn the convention into a telethon/public service event is brilliant and I whole-heartedly support it. I hope it’s exactly what they do. Of course it will be spun as “cynical opportunism and desperation” by the press and the Dems. But that should never stop you from doing the right thing.

And really, it doesn’t matter…no matter what happens, everything is Bush’s fault, or McCain’s fault, or, - “tee-hee God’s apparently loving the Dems so much he will destroy lives and homes for them” - so we may as well just carry on and carry forth. It’s a great idea.

But here’s to praying that somehow - by some miracle - Gustav does not cost too many lives.

It’s too long to post here but one to hang on to in the hard drive, a side-by-side comparison of what Obama’s actually done, vs what Palin has done. Pretty interesting. Do read and hang on to.

Another for the hard drive: Flopping Aces has the “Troopergate” facts and timelines. It’s only interesting if you’re into soap operas, and I’m not, but what is noteworthy here is that the authorities have said they didn’t even bother issuing subpoenas, because the Palin’s were so forthcoming. Tells me a) nothing to hide, here and - more importantly - b) Palin is smart enough to know that nothing strengthens a scandal like a real or perceived cover-up. That’s something a lot more “experienced” pols never learn.

Crittenden has more.

I too loved the shoes. They look comfy, too.

More on Obama and abortion

Palin visiting some troops here

For all you emailers yelling at me that Palin “is a moron creationist” - no, she’s not.

And to you really troubled folks writing your long sad fantasy about Palin’s having actually having faked her pregnancy to cover for her daughter. Grow up. Just grow up. And if you need help, get it.

Found this over at Dirty Harry’s Place.

If you like, you can also listen to a 1/2-hour interview podcasted by IBD, and it’s interesting and heartening. She’s very well spoken.

UPDATE: And reading this piece, I find that I am more and more pleased that she is not another Ivy League lawyer who planned and plotted a political career, but rather a concerned and active, intelligent woman who simply followed her own interests and concerns, and walked through the doors and opportunities as they were placed before her. That’s refreshing - it is also so very “can-do American.”

We forget, sometimes, that Harry Truman was just a haberdasher, and not an elitist, too. (end update)

I saw some negative comments from people, today, suggesting - on the basis of what, besides simple mean-spiritedness, I cannot tell - that Sarah Palin is “Dan Quayle with a vagina.” That sentiment seems to have started here.

I found her pretty impressive in that clip. Smart, articulate, forthright and authentic.

Bookworm has McCain’s response to the Obama camp’s initial, and rather ungenerous response to his veep pick. I had always thought that a gracious acknowledgment was simply the way it was done.

Anyway, it seems like they’re wasting no time taking Palin out of context. That’s how it goes, I guess. Unsurprisingly, they’re also saying really gross things about little Trig, and about her children. Classy, classy bunch.

You read the crap they’re coming up with and you realize, they’re terrified.

But you know, in the past few weeks we’ve seen several right-wing blogs defend the Obama team against excessive nonsense (the birth certificate carrying-on, for example) - I do hope we’ll manage to see one or two blogs from the other side actually give Palin a hearing - in context - before jumping aboard.

When I hosted the online retreat a few weeks ago, we pondered - a lot - the idea of not getting in our own way, not disrupting the trajectories of our lives by insisting on our own ways, or complicating things with our own insecurities and neurosis. We also talked about the mysterious value of sacrifice and generosity.

In watching the coverage of John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, I thought about generosity and the lack thereof and how they play out, and what sort of payback they bring you in the universe.

What I mean is, yesterday, on the fourth day of the Democrat National Convention, John McCain made an ad congratulating Obama - and the Obama campaign appreciated it and wished he would do more ads like those. McCain didn’t have to do that, but he did, and it was a fairly classy thing to do. No, not classy, it generous. It showed a generosity of spirit.

Today, McCain named Palin, and Obama’s first reaction was ungracious and ungenerous.

That got cleaned up and reconsidered, and Obama even took the corrective further, by calling Palin to congratulate her, but first responses often tell us what is in the heart, and the heart of the Obama campaign lacked generosity.

Barack Obama does not easily show much generosity of spirit. He has thrown a lot of people under the bus, when political expediency has demanded it, but I’m thinking specifically of his lack of generosity toward Hillary Clinton, when she suspended her campaign. His coffers are full-to-overflowing, but he did not offer to help Clinton’s debts from them. Instead, he said he’d ask his supporters to cover Hillary’s debts, but then - when the time came - he forgot to do that

Although some of us were liking her months ago, and hoping for this moment regardless of who Obama chose as his running mate, Sarah Palin’s ascension to the national ticket actually owes something to Obama’s lack of generosity toward Hillary. Had he treated Hillary with respect, had he at least pretended to be vetting her for the veep spot and helped her debt, he would have accomplished two things: putting Hillary in his debt, and re-assuring her supporters that they could count on his respect for their interests.

Instead, Obama was not magnanimous in victory, he was sort of flinty and closed, like a spiritual Scrooge; he did not share. And that opened the door for McCain to say, “hmmm…Gov. Palin is smart, she knows energy, she’s a reformer, and a a bit of a ball buster; she’ll energize the base, and hey, maybe she’ll please some (not all) women, too.”

I mean, this is politics, after all, not beanbag. Are we going to pretend, suddenly, that opportunistic moves sully the game? That would be strange; opportunism is the pivot upon which whole battles have turned.

McCain has demonstrated a generosity of spirit many times - when he was offered a chance to leave a Vietnam POW camp, he stayed, because others had been there longer. When John Kerry’s military record was assaulted in 2004, McCain generously defended him, at the risk of offending his own party (and got kicked for it, this election, by Kerry, who did not return the favor). When Bush trampled him in 2000, McCain still campaigned for him in 2004. When his wife brought home a Bangladeshi orphan who she’d encountered in one of Mother Teresa’s houses, he said, “where’s the baby going,” his wife said, “home with us,” and there it was.

I think when we choose to be generous with our spirits and in our give-and-takes with others, that keeps things rightly aligned in our lives - it doesn’t upset trajectories and make a mess of things - and it comes back to us, too, in good ways.

I don’t know much about Joe Biden, so I can’t say, but it would seem to me that Gov. Palin also has a generous spirit. Having five children in an age when most of us have only two suggests openness and selflessness, and trust, too - a willingness to not interfere with the flow. And in an age where babies carrying extra chromosomes are routinely aborted, even by parents who love the child and believe they’re doing the best thing for their son or daughter by aborting, Palin both loved the child and let the child live. To me, again, that says: generous spirit.

In his book, One Man’s America, George Will recalls the birth of his son, Jon, who also has an extra chromosome. The hospital asked Will and his wife if they would be leaving the baby behind, which stunned them. They informed the hospital that no, they’d be taking their son home, where he belonged, with them. But the title of Will’s essay is, “Golly, What Did Jon DO?” As in, how dare Jon have a life in a world where - ungenerously - people wonder why he is even here.

Already the press - predictably and ungenerously (and seeming to be a tad uncomfortable) - has said “gee, shouldn’t Gov. Palin be home raising her Baby-With-Down-Syndrome?” I wonder how long it will be before they’ll be asking so-called experts like this one, “wouldn’t aborting the Baby-With-Down-Syndrome have been the responsible thing to do? And doesn’t Palin keeping the baby show weak judgment?”

(OMG, that didnt’ take long:Sarah Palin’s judgment is despicalble. She knowingly whelped a Mongoloid child earlier this year, probably to pander to the Right to Life Nutbags. Irresponsible decisions like hers dilutes the viability of the American Gene Pool. No wonder why we are falling farther and farther behind in an increasingly competitive global economic environment. Her OB should have cut her tubes after her first child!!!
Posted by: paul Curooke)

His name is Trig. Trig Paxson Van Palin, and her husband, Todd Palin, seems quite capable of helping out in that department, and quite willing. He seems pretty generous, too. Actually, it seems pretty progressive and counter-culture of them, doesn’t it?

It goes without saying that now that they are national people, and running against a ticket the press absolutely adores, the Palins will be grist for the usual mill. It will be interesting to watch, and to see if their generous spirits help them with what we all know will become very ugly, very quickly.

It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it, to muse on how things of the spirit can be reflected (and can affect) politics?

Meanwhile, I contributed to McCain/Palin here.

Tony Rossi sends this along: Nat Hentoff writing about Palin last May:

During her first year in office, as reported by the Associated Press on May 10, she “distanced herself from the old guard, powerful members of the state GOP (and) stood up to the oil interests that hold great power in Alaska, and with bipartisan support in the statehouse, she won a tax increase on the oil companies’ profits.” Last December, this mother of four children, Mrs. Palin, four months’ pregnant, found she was going to have a child with Down syndrome — a condition characterized by moderate-to-severe mental retardation. A school friend of one of my sons had Down syndrome; I have also known functioning adults with the extra chromosomes of that syndrome.
…
Mrs. Palin’s first reaction to the diagnosis was to research the facts about the condition, since, as she said, “I’ve never had problems with my other pregnancies.” As a result, she and her husband, Todd, never had any doubt they would have the child.

Rod Dreher hears from an Alaskan who is excited

Ann Althouse notes that some on the left are being ungenerous about Palin’s hairstyle. I love it. And Ann seems to understand what they do not. One of her commenters rightly notes that Palin has better veep hair than Biden. Ouch.

Rachel Lucas, is loving Piper Palin’s tiara, and I am too. Adorable.

Ace is blogging up a storm named Sarah, but Gustav sure seems like a pain.

Kim at Musing Minds is starting a Special-Needs Moms for McCain/Palin group.

Fausta has more.

Beth is happy

Related: Palin brings flavor to ‘08

Was exchanging emails with Deacon Greg, who is not especially interested in politics. He wrote of Palin’s speech:

I’m watching the replay on my computer on msnbc…I love that she used that “ship in a harbor” analogy … and that she said politician’s should have a “servant’s heart.” Right after I was ordained and starting my blog, a deacon wrote to me and said “Every day say this prayer, ‘Lord, give me a servant’s heart.’”

I had noticed, and appreciated, that line, too - it resonated for me in a different way; I remember being young and watching “Give ‘em Hell, Harry,” the one-man show about Harry S Truman, and really being struck by his notion of a president or any office-holder as a “servant” of the public. Most of our politicians seem to have forgotten that, these days, and recently, watching Pelosi and company tell Americans that their opinions on drilling were irrelevant, I’ve been writing that too many are uninterested in actually serving us. So, yes, I was thrilled to hear Palin say it.

But Greg, predictably, helps us to see the profundity of the role of servant, by looking at the Palin’s youngest child, wonderfully named Trig Paxson Van Palin, whose very life is suggestive that Palin (and her husband) truly has a “servant’s heart.”

Last night, my Li’l Bro Thom and I were wondering about McCain’s pick and I said, “it has to be Palin, the GOP cannot put McCain and some boring middle-manager type against Obama. Obama is too glamorous; he’s so glamorous that he could afford put Biden on his ticket, because he didn’t need more glamor! Palin, please! She’s smart, she’s feisty, she has at least as much experience as Obama, and hers is executive, she can speak without a teleprompter, and she will bring energy to the whole race.”

Someone reminded me today of what I wrote two years ago:

The next GOP candidate has to be charismatic, and yes, have a patina, however thin, of ethnicity. John Kerry and Al Gore were the last two button-downed-droning-mainline-protestant types we’re going to see as serious candidates for a long time, I think. And to be honest, Kerry was so insecure and phony, and Gore was so nakedly crazed by the end of his 2000 campaign, that their weirdnesses stood in the place of ethnicity, which is probably the wrong word. Perhaps the word I want is “flavor.” President Bush is WASP but with a twinge of cowboy and plain-folks about him that is appealing. A staid, respectable white fellow with no twinge of flavor is going to die out there. He’s everyone’s competent project manager, but no one’s CEO. Again, who has got flavor in the GOP? Rudy. Rice. Romney has a little because he is exotically Mormon, but as I said, I suspect that flavor will not travel well. In a world where “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp” is an award-winning song, a candidate has to bring more to the party than the dependability of a Maytag washer.

Palin brings some flavor. Thankfully. And flipping ’round the cable channels, oy, the press looks really, really unhappy. Andrea Mitchell sounds pained.

Gateway Pundit is finding the first negatives in the press.

UPDATE: Someone just emailed me that McCain has “made a cynical move nominating not the best for the job, but the most appealing.”

Geez, be careful there, friend. You open yourself to the question of whether the Democrats did not also make “a cynical move, nominating not the best for the job, but the most appealing.” Unless, of course, you’re ready to make the argument that Obama is truly better qualified to be president than Biden, Chris Dodd or, you know, Hillary.

The Democrats have to be careful, now, and so does the press. Much of what they’d like to say about Palin - about age, experience, identity politics, etc - will only open the door to similar inquiry about Obama. And the bottom line to those sorts of debates will always be this: Palin is at the bottom of the ticket; Obama is at the top. Talk Left is wisely trying to warn them.

Ed Morrissey talks competence.

Apparently the PUMA’s are excited.

Ace has the first hates and more. Interestingly, people who say women can do anything and should not be tied down, suddenly think Palin should be home raising her children.
Jimmie Bise is looking around and making some smart observations.
NY POST: Pictures!

I’m so glad McCain did this. But my first thought: Murphy was wrong on MSNBC - Bill and Hillary Clinton will NOT be voting for McCain in November…if McCain is elected and bites it in office, Palin will be the first female president. I first imagined that scenario back in May. Ouch, Hillary wouldn’t like that!

And, as Tim says here, if McCain is a one-term president, it sets us up for a Clinton-Palin duel in 2012. Interesting!

McCain’s introduction of Sarah Heath Palin was amusing. Every line was a blow. “Her father was a teacher!” (Slam!) “She’s a woman!” (Bang!) “She and her husband union members!” (Bang!) The audience is going nuts.

Her husband is a commercial fisherman: She has the “Deadliest Catch” audience locked up! And he’s really handsome!

Son in the US Army, going to Iraq. (The Tank notes Obama’s plan to cut defense “line by line”.

5 month old son, how cute!

Her family is beautiful, but Obama’s is, too, so that’s a bit of a wash.

She’s giving her resume; we will immediately hear from predictable quarters that she is too young and inexperienced, (here you go, right on schedule) but her resume doesn’t seem any thinner to me than Obama’s…some might think it a bit thicker. And she’s at the second spot on the ticket, not the top.

She is a clear and forthright speaker, and she gives off a lot of energy. A good, lively and slightly ball-busting speech. She seems completely at-ease and confident.

But then I have always liked strong, capable women. She’s an executive; she has a story.

WOW…she’s just co-opted Hillary’s 18 million cracks. I’m glad she mentioned Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton and left it at that, did not go into a whole litany of names, like Kay Bailey Hutchinson and Barbara Jordan. Would have been too much.

I’m just glad she’s not yet another senator. She’s a first term governor, but at least it’s an executive position.

A good, brief, excited and energetic speech. The demonization of Sarah Palin as “worse than Quayle” will now commence. The Dems and the press will hate this. Hate.

Note Glenn Reynold’s has first links and comments here, and he notes that Obama’s camp did not manage graciousness out of the box. They should have tried for gracious, at least as a first note. Lorie Byrd has more thoughts on that.

Sissy Willis has Palin being interviewed by Kudlow.

My husband just said, “they’re going to say he only chose her because she’s a woman.” Of course they will. The proverbial “they’s” also make similar - though different - churlish remarks about Obama.

He’s just flipped the MSNBC. I didn’t even have to turn my head to say, “boy, Andrea Mitchell sounds miserable and he said, “yeah, that is her…yeah, she does look really unhappy…”

So much for sisterhood.

Ferraro seems to like Palin on the ticket.

WHY do the press seem so surprised? Many of us thought Palin would be a serious contender for this slot. I suppose they’re so close to things and so “inside” they can’t always see things.

I can see Tina Fey being a natural to do Palin on SNL.

NOW - I am finally ready to say I’ll vote for McCain. McCain/Palin. Where’s my checkbook!

Bender, who was reluctant on Palin makes a good comment, below:

And we have the other side who is a real change, composed of four people who have actually lived a “real life” that is not totally bound up in politics. Even though McCain has become a Washington insider, his first life was one of hardwork and sacrifice, and Cindy has remained outside of the Washington scene — a real person, even if on the wealthy side. And now learning about Sarah Palin and husband, a hardworking couple who come from everyday America, who have done dirty-hands, back-breaking physical work for a living…So, four people who have lived common, everyday lives vs. three elites. Who wins the “change” argument? Whose “change” can you really believe in?

From my email - a mom with two kids at Notre Dame:

Sarah Palin has me more excited about this election than any in my lifetime. She was magnificent this morning. Now I will work for the campaign. Big Mac rolled the dice and I think he just might win.
Both my kids are now [at] the