ZetaTalk: Government

ZetaTalk: McCain's VP

written August 30, 2008

McCain Gambles on Inexperienced Conservative [Aug 29] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ The choice

represented a bid by Mr McCain to win over disgruntled former supporters of Hillary Clinton,

undercutting Democratic efforts during the convention to reunify the party. Ellen Malcolm, president of

Emily's List, a pro-Democrat group that supports women candidates, challenged the notion that Ms Palin

would appeal to former Clinton supporters. 'McCain clearly sees the power of women voters in this

election but has just as clearly failed to support any of the issues that they care about,' she said,

highlighting Ms Palin's support for overturning the Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

Did John McCain shoot himself in the foot with his VP choice? Big time. He was losing, and desperate, as the private

polls his campaign had been taking revealed the gap between he and Obama to be far larger than the public polls

reveal. Obama has energized voters, so that many young people and people of color have registered to vote. The count

of new Democratic voters far outnumber new Republican voters, by a factor greater than 4 to 1. These new voters are

not included in the polls of likely voters - those who voted in the past two presidential elections. Then there is the

enthusiasm gap, where Democrats are more likely to make it to the polls in November. Given that the arguments the

McCain camp were making were not making any headway against Obama, they were desperate for a game changer.

Seeing the significant number of disgruntled Hillary fans making claims they would vote for McCain, this seemed like

the largest voter block that could potentially be swung to McCain. So what is wrong with this choice?

First is that he has offended Hillary's strongest block - older women who had been discriminated against during their

lifetime - and treated them like second class citizens. Standard fare, after not being given equal pay and opportunity for

equal work, is being thrown over for a younger woman. McCain has already been branded for this tendency by his

history of running out on his first wife, a former beauty queen who was crippled in a car accident. McCain then took

up with Cindy, an unspoiled beauty. Now with the VP choice he has selected another beauty queen far younger than

McCain. Regardless of all arguments, the element of being dismissive of women's true qualifications for office and

chosing women only for their beauty, is obvious. This is intuitively obvious to the older women voters McCain hoped

to attract. Standing next to McCain, Palin seemed like his mistress, a reminder of McCain's age and that his attitudes

toward woman are from a different era. Obama has a wife who is a strong woman, competent and even earning more

money than he at her day job. McCain now stands in contrast to Obama on this issue, and is losing on this issue to an

extent not yet evident in the polls.

Second, McCain has gone beyond his tendency to surround himself with lobbyists and to be susceptible to money

interests and plunged himself into a new and very fresh scandal - abuse of power. The Keating 5 scandal is in McCain's

past, wherein he went to bat for Keating during the savings and loan crisis, trying to get regulators to go easy on his

friend Keating. This is far enough in the past to be put aside by most voters, but what does his choice of Palin as VP

say about his judgment and tendencies? She is embroiled in a controversy, an investigation, that could result in

impeachment proceedings against her in Alaska. Without question she wanted to fire her former brother-in- law from

his job as a state trooper and insisted, in person and through intermediaries, that this be done. This in and of itself

would be considered a lightweight scandal in scandal-prone Alaska, but when she fired the highly competent head of

the Department of Public Safety simply because he refused to do her bidding she crossed the line. This is not only

criminal. This is grounds for impeachment and reflects badly on McCain's judgment.

http://www.zetatalk2.com/index/zeta470.htm[2/5/2012 11:43:11 AM]

ZetaTalk: McCain's VP

What is McCain Thinking? One Alaskan's Perspective.

August 29, 2008

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/what-is-mccain-thinking-one-alaskans-perspective/

Sarah Palin's sister Molly married a guy named Mike Wooten who is an Alaska State Trooper. Mike

and Molly had a rocky marriage. When the marriage broke up, there was a bitter custody fight that

is still ongoing. During the custody investigation, all sorts of things were brought up about Wooten

including the fact that he had illegally shot a moose (yes folks this is Alaska), driven drunk, and used

a taser (on the test setting, he reminds us) on his 11-year old stepson, who supposedly had asked to

see what it felt like. While Wooten has turned out to be a less than stellar figure, the fact that Palin's

father accompanied him on the infamous moose hunt, and that many of the dozens of charges

brought up by the Palin family happened long before they were ever reported smacked of desperate

custody fight. Wooten's story is that he was basically stalked by the family.

After all this, Wooten was investigated and disciplined on two counts and allowed to kept his