Posted on 09/12/2008 1:30:58 PM PDT by missanne
This was supposed to be the year that a woman achieved the White House. Problem is, we've got the wrong woman. It was supposed to be the year for a woman of the caliber of Hillary Clinton, tested in the halls of learning, of law, in 12 years in the governor's mansion, in two terms as First Lady, in the policy trenches, in politics, in the media, in the Senate, in foreign affairs and in numerous presidential debates. She's been tested, tested and tested again.
I desperately wanted a woman for president, but not the untested former small-town mayor and beauty pageant princess, Sarah Palin, who got her first passport in 2007, has spent two years as Alaska's governor and was mayor of a town of 7, 025. As I watched Palin at the Republican National Convention describe that big old untraveled world out there as "dangerous," I was left with one feeling: fear. Oh my God, she sounds like a teenager. She's too politically immature, too unschooled, too lacking in depth. I wanted to give her an iPod, not the keys to the White House.
At a time when we need foreign affairs experience the most, we've got a woman who seems more like a neophyte beauty queen ready to answer what she would do about world peace than a serious candidate for vice president, or, God forbid, president if the 72-year-old McCain, who's had two bouts with cancer and almost six years of torture as a POW, dies in office.
There are so many other concerns about the barely vetted Palin that I hardly know where to start. Let's begin with her ethical problems and misrepresentation of herself as a reformer and outsider.
While she claims to have championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she hired a lobbyist to annually make the case in Washington to support earmarks to the town totaling $ 27 million. And in her two years as governor of Alaska she has requested nearly $ 750 million in special federal spending (the largest per-capita request in the nation ), according to The Associated Press. While she says she rejected plans for the so-called "bridge to nowhere," she did so only after the plan was ridiculed as such.
McCain's ridiculous claim that Palin has been in charge because she has primary responsibility for national security as commander of her state's National Guard misses the point that governors lose charge of their units to the Defense Department once those units are called to military service.
The "ever-so-thrifty"Palin is also relying upon $ 95, 000 in state taxpayer money to defend herself against attacks that she fired her public safety commissioner because he refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced her sister. They're calling it "Troopergate. "And that governor's jet she put on eBay ? The state had to pull it off and sell it at a $ 600, 000 loss to a brokerage firm.
And let's look at her "family values"record and right-wing credentials. For me they don't come close to making up for her lack of foreign policy experience, but apparently they do for social conservatives who seem only to care that she's anti-abortion and pro-guns.
For this crowd, it matters little whether an asteroid is ready to strike the Earth. As long as Palin is an "avid hunter and fisher, " and even better," shoots machine guns," she passes muster for the chairman of the state highway commission from Siloam Springs and delegate to the Republican convention. In fact, as far as social conservatives are concerned, it doesn't matter if the war in Iraq becomes the war in Iran as long as Palin meets their family values criteria. For these folks, being smitten by Palin is apparently reason enough to vote for McCain for president, even though they don't like him.
The family-values crowd may be comforted by reports that Palin apparently follows the same messianic philosophy as George W. Bush, but that's what got us into trouble in the first place. She was online (her church has pulled the video ) telling ministry students at the Wasilla Assembly of God that the United States sent troops to fight in Iraq on a "task that is from God," according to The Associated Press. During an address last June, she urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $ 30 billion natural gas pipeline in Alaska because it was "God's will."
To such remarks as this, Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said," I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches... The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God."
Palin's inexperience impales McCain's presidential aspirations. She needs to spend at least enough time outside this country to get college credit for a semester abroad before vying for such a high-stakes position. Bottom line is, just four in 10 Americans think she has enough experience to be president, according to a Sept. 4 ABC News poll.
I'll say one thing for McCain. He likes them significantly younger and beautiful (first wife Carol Shepp, famous swimwear model, whom he divorced for Junior Rodeo Queen of Arizona, Cindy Hensley, after Shepp underwent at least 12 surgeries following a car accident ). Now comes Palin, the potential future president of our country, former Princess of the Fur Rendezvous, Miss Wasilla and runner-up for Miss Alaska.
For the sake of the nation, let's pray fervently she's also the runner-up in this presidential contest. --30-- Barbara Warner is a former congressional press secretary and White House appointee at the U. S. Commerce Department. She lives in Siloam Springs and writes a monthly column for the Benton County Daily Record.
barf alert?
Leave it to a rag from Arkansas to use the term “Sarah Gate.”
Hey y’all are from Arkansas? Did you ever find those Rose Law Firm files or figure out how your tested former first lady made that killing in Commodities?
Why don’t ya get back to us on that, would ya? Have a nice day and thanks for stopping by.
Put some ice on it, Barbara honey.
Why, exactly?
Funny how Whitewater didn’t seem to bother the MSM in 1992.
Another BaBA
We have WaWa
We have Streisand
and now we have this dimwit.
Barack Obama prays to jesus every day he says. No one is bothered by that. But Palin remarks to a congregation about the troops doing what she hopes is gods will and it’s just too much for the filthy aborto crowd.
“barf alert?”
Definitely needs one.
I guess being tested is all that matters, not how you DID on the test.....
susie
Huh, when did first lady become an elected position?
The moonbats dont realize how much they are helping Palin LOL
Liberal ladies must have become used to playing second fiddle in Fayetteville.
same ilk drivel
sry didn’t get past the second line
perhaps the view will hire ya when ur lib rag fails
It must be almost time to dig up Ramsey Clark and Carter The Nut.
This is not reporting this is some liberals wishful thinking. It is the media’s wet dream, but the news is Sarah is has open a can of whoop-ass all over Obama.
Concur...getting out spare keyboard!
er, ‘wife’. (What a Freudian slip!)
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