Vetting Palin
The WaPo takes on the rumor that Palin was insufficiently vetted, and appears to demolish it.
My perception is that McCain was impressed from the first by Palin and was especially taken with her maverick, reformer quality, which he sensed right away. I’ve also think the McCain campaign’s ability to keep this a secret until the announcement of her candidacy shows a capacity to be tight and well-organized, which bodes well for a possible McCain Presidency.
[ADDENDUM: More on the vetting issue.]
Ok, vett for yourself, Sarah Palin in 2006 guvvy debate, I am sure this was reviewed during the process:
A little long but worth watching:
http://palintology.com/2006/08/08/decision-2006-republican-candidate-round-table/
Not surprising she beat both these guys.
That McCain knew about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy – and the political risk which comes with it – and selected Sarah Palin anyway is, I think, a comment on Sarah Palin’s talent. It is an argument against Sarah Palin being a less than capable affirmative action selection.
If McCain was selecting his VP largely b/c he wanted a woman, he could’ve selected Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, amongst other women candidates. Sen. Hutchinson is vetted, gracious, tough, politically skilled, and winsome. Sen. Hutchinson would’ve brought no risks to the ticket. Sen. Hutchinson is a national political veteran who would’ve been unlikely to verbally stumble during a tough campaign.
Sarah Palin clearly does bring risks in terms of her national inexperience and her daughter’s pregnancy. Innate talent – not affirmative action – seems clearly to be the reason McCain chose to face those risks.
I’m also heartened at Sen. McCain’s incorporation of Mrs. McCain into the VP decision process. POTUS is a tough job. A POTUS is greatly helped by having a spouse to lean on. It’s a good thing if a POTUS values their spouse’s wisdom and judgment.
Gcotharn, I see no political risk except for the people making hay out of it, it is reality that kids screw up in spite of your best effort as parents, I did, but I took responsibility for it and I learned from my mistake and moved on, that is what happens in real life to everyone, the only difference is the magnitude of the mistake, some are simple and some life changing.
People speaking about it as though it is something shameful reminds me of the early 1900s where you had to send the pregnant girl off to boarding school to hide from the “shame” are people really advocating that, are they really? When this is spoken of as a political negative that is what I see.
Hutchinson is attractive for an older babe, but she has no charisma, including the intellectual variety, to draw in independents. Palin, for the moment, seems marginally tolerable … ughhh still undecided.
I think that the media folks expect the evangelical Republicans to be horrified, or least think that they should be horrified.
The odd idea that because evangelicals are A) loudly against extramarital sex and unwed parenthood that they are B) therefore judgmental about individuals, is one of those silly accusations that reveal more about those making the claim than those accused. I find evangelicals to be quite accepting of those who stumble, but not very accepting of those who don’t acknowledge it. (Note: I am not here commenting about whether they are right in their definitions of stumbling, about which I have a mixed report card.)
Inability to even understand this distinction, much less agree with it, is part of why the traditional media (and many others) misrepresent evangelicals and other religious folk.
Just curious. You guys are joking, right.
You don’t actually believe any of this, do you?
Do you?
I think anyone with half a brain can see that the McCain campaign is fumbling around trying to put the best face on a bad situation. It’s obvious that they knew nothing about this situation with Bristol before McCain selected her as his running mate. I offer McCain’s refusal thus far to take questions directly on this matter as proof that it has surprised the hell out of him. Instead he depends on Bush attack dog Steve Schmidt to deal with the situation.
What really angers me about this situation and the way so-con Republicans have reacted to this stunning revelation is how hypocritical the GOP and Sarah Palin herself have been shown to be on the subject of abstinence and teen pregnancy. For years, at least thirty if I’m not mistaken, evangelical christians and the rest of the far right and used this issue as a club to demonize the left. For years, the right has been demonizing urban black teens who engage in this sort of thing as immoral welfare cheats who were inundating the country with illegitimate children, who were the primary reason why slashes in social service spending had to take place.
Remember Ronald Reagan and his mean-spirited anecdotes about welfare queens in the eighties? Now that the shoe is on the other foot so to speak, this whole situation is met with sympathy and excuses. You won’t hear any talk about illegitimacy now. The double standard in this situation makes me sick to my stomach. It is yet another example that the sneering disapproval directed at minorities all those years by right wing Republicans was never done in good faith. It was just political cover that allowed them to express their contempt for racial minorities in a way that was more acceptable than a racist epithet.
Kids will do things that go against their training and their parents’ wishes. I know very few families where this has not happened. Also, I’ve never allowed a candidate’s kids to enter into the decision process when I make an assessment of their fitness for office. I think most Americans will leave the kids out of this, for both Obama and for Palin. I’m not voting for Obama, but I’m with him in the understanding that you leave family out of it. The only time I’ve focused on Obama’s family members is when these ADULTS may have had an influence over his thinking and shaped his worldview and character. But only as a way of understanding him, since he hides his family’s Marxist culture.
Some have made Michelle Obama the object of some scrutiny and I can understand why, since she influences him in ways we cannot imagine, but I try to tread very lightly there.
The debate should be about policy, voting record, and character of the candidates. I won’t be voting for Obama, but I would respect him more if he was more forthright about what he intends to do. He says one thing in front of Leftist groups, and sometimes other things in front of more mainstream audiences. He has said in front of many Leftist groups that he will end the missile defense program, but has not proclaimed this in front of the wider American public. Why? I can cite other examples. I would respect him more if he was more forthright about the specifics in front of Middle America.
Anyway, we all know stories about ministers’ daughters and sons who have had sex outside of marriage. It does not make it right, but how you handle it after the deed is done is what really makes the case for who you are. And Sarah and Todd never said that they were perfect parents with perfect children.
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Nick: For years, the right has been demonizing urban black teens who engage in this sort of thing as immoral welfare cheats who were inundating the country with illegitimate children…..You won’t hear any talk about illegitimacy now. The double standard in this situation makes me sick to my stomach.
My understanding is that they are going to marry. Do you really believe that the increased illegitimacy rate in our country is to the good? Last I checked, it was around 67% for blacks ( 25% forty years ago) and around 25-30% overall.
Do you really believe it is good for children to grow up without fathers?
It’s not about hypocrisy. And it is starting to not even be about policy. It’s about taking governing seriously.
I’m voting for Obama, and I voted for Kerry and Gore and Clinton. The Democrats frequently annoy me, sometimes enrage me, with their overly complicated 80-point plans, utopian notions of “fairness”, borderline nanny-statism, and a bureaucratic solution for every problem, real and imagined.
But as imperfect as they are, it seems that the Dems are the ones that keep producing the candidates who are interested in government solvency. It seems that they have the will and the ability, mostly, to govern. Bush and now McCain have demonstrated complete and total contempt for governing. Willful ignorance, slavish devotion to their “gut”, disinterest in “opinions”, and now, this flippin’ joke of a VP vetting process.
Wake up, people. If you don’t like liberal Democratic solutions to problems, stop pretending there are no problems and come up with some solutions of your own.
The choice is not between the imperfect Democrat policies and some perfect policy, the choice is between imperfect Democrat policies and people who aren’t even trying.
Gringo:
Obviously the illegitimacy rate in the country is not something to be celebrated. My question is, where is the same empathy for urban black teens that was shown for Bristol? What you are ignoring it seems to me is that Bristol is out having premarital sex, getting pregnant with some guy when she’s not even married, all while her mother is touting herself as this holier-than-thou social conservative promoting abstinence at the expense of sex education in schools.
Don’t you see how hypocritical that is? When you say, “life happens” as one GOP delegate at the convention told Dana Bash today to excuse Bristol’s behavior, why can’t that same empathy be extended to the black or brown teen who is having sex and getting pregnant before they actually get married? Where is the sympathy for them? Oh that’s right, “these are black teenagers, and you know how they are. They’re sexually promiscuous sluts who breed like rabbits.” While on the other hand, a white teen like Bristol, because of who her mother is, gets a pass. It’s just not right.
That’s why I don’t want to hear anymore moralizing from evangelical christians on this issue. It’s kind of like James Dobson sanctimoniously praying for a storm to wash out Obama’s acceptance speech, and then having egg on his face when the Lord actually does answer his prayers, just not in the location he had hoped.
Mary, solvency? Have you seen Obamas plans for community service and social programs? Best do some research, Mccain has railed about spending his entire career, are you sure you have this right?
By the way, he is going to pay for it all with a little bitty tax increase, news flash and the data is there, tax cuts raise increased revenue, and every time they raise taxes those pesky rich people figure out ways not to pay them, do some research please.
Welcome, maryQ!
This place was starting to bore me, everyone agreeing all the time, not a single skeptic about this Palin selection.
Look forward to more from you.
Nick, a lot of those inner city girls do it for a Govt paycheck, just like their mommas and they don’t get married to make sure the checks don’t stop, that’s the difference.
OK, just for the record:
Obama is going to raise MY taxes.
Because my household income is more than $150K per year
If it were less than $150K per year, he would not raise my taxes.
And another thing-even though those of us who make more than 150K per year are few, we account for an a**-load of the wealth in the country. So it’s not an itty-bitty tax increase. It’s gonna be a big increase.
I did the research.
I figure, I can either have a functional government, or a Viking stove. While I have always admired the Viking stove, I’d like to try functional government for a while.
Tell you what-if we get Obama and this whole functional government thing is way less exciting than a Viking stove would have been, I’ll admit I was wrong.
If you don’t know what a Viking stove is, you don’t make enough money to get a tax increase in the Obama plan.
And, um, about that whole “cutting taxes raises revenue” thing, isn’t that the ONE aspect of supply side economics that has been demonstrated to be false? I have to admit, I like the idea, and it even makes sense in a logical rational way. But, emperically, it is false.
Um, lets see. Size of Federal government:
increased under Reagan
decreased under Clinton
metastasized under Bush
I did my research.
And another thing, if the Democratic congress doesn’t strangle Obama (and it’s not such a big if, because people, here, identity politics might just work because who wants to be the Dem politician that gets in the way of the black guy), I do believe that he will take a cold hard look at the government expenditures that no longer work, and slash their a**.Non-boomer liberal pragmatists tend to want robust responsiveness in government. A government “solution” to a problem should not be a permanent fixture, but a temporary measure.
K?
OMG! Sorry, Darrell, I didn’t even address community service.
OK. First of, it’s quid pro quo. You want a low interest tuition loan? Do some service. Here’s an alternative. Sell crack, become a hooker, or work in a dead-end job and then collect unemployment when your job gets shipped to Sri Lanka.
Sorry-what’s the downside here?
Wait, isn’t there already a government program like in place? College funds for government service? Isn’t it called, wait, The Military?
Only now, community service can be done by people who aren’t itchin’ to go to Iraq.
Second, this is one of the things that I, a kinda sorta dispositional conservative, like most about Obama. See, liberals have put so much faith in some anonymous Washington bureaucracy to solve our problems, we tend to think that just by paying our taxes and voting for people that almost always lose elections, we’re doing good. But we’ve tended to divest from the whole concept of “community service”. Well, no more. Yes, sure, it is a government initiative. But maybe, after some time, it just may stick. Liberals and progressives will have to stop takin’ the talk and start walkin’ the walk.
Again, what’s the downside?
And about taxes and morality-chew on this.
The Obama tax plan will RAISE Obama’s taxes.
The McCain tax plan will LOWER Obama’s taxes.
Any questions?
“Have you seen Obamas plans for community service and social programs?”
I’m sure she has, in fact I can nearly assure you that when she goes and talks to people who believe like her it is a VERY different conversation that occurs.
Obviously she has enough interest in politics to pay attention and know what is going on yet is *that* grossly incorrect. That leaves us with two possibilities – stupid or dishonest.
I really don’t think stupid (though some are), stupid just tends to rant. The above was a mix of showing us she isn’t lock step with the democrats in their liberal tendencies, trying to say she is actually “conservative”, and that Obama and the dems are really conservative (though she never used the used word, just described conservative policies).
The first two things are fairly detail oriented and establish that she knows what she is talking about (along with the whole “fair” thing). They have no use in the actual point of her assertions, but there is an actual reason for them to be there – her assertions have *no* detail or anything to back them up. So you set up with details that no one disagrees with to establish that you are a smart, detailed, and fair person and then give the *real* points that are – well – grossly incorrect.
You will find this flow of ideas common in quite a few types of persuasive writing (even in scientific journals where we are supposed to be *all* evidence).
It’s usually quite effective, however in the long term it hurts the people that rely on it heavily – after all you actually have convinced people that conservative ideas are correct and, at some point, you can not hide that your ideas are *not* that. Further someone eventually shows up that *is* what you have been conning everyone into thinking you are. Palin seems to be one of those people (and is also a large part of the apoplexy of the left – they got called on their con game), the last time it happened was the GOP’s Contract with America. Had the GOP continued being the real thing instead of deciding they could con everyone else too then we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.
Darrell:
You sound very certain for someone who provides very little evidence of any genuine research on these matters. What you are repeating is just another anecdotal indictment of people you don’t know, like Reagan’s stories of welfare queens in the eighties. FYI, black teens who have children out of wedlock do so for a variety of reasons, and to say they do it for some government check is to ignore the fact that welfare reform signed into law by Clinton at least twelve years ago has largely curtailed payments in favor of jobs.
That line is a tired one. To offer some blanket indictment on the motivations as to why black teens have children out of wedlock without any evidence or research on those who might have done this at some point again just makes my point that so-cons like yourself have never been serious in your criticism.
The two-thirds of black women having children out of wedlock that was quoted by Gringo earlier does not pertain only to black teens. That figure also includes many professional women who are doing just fine economically. Please offer some evidence next time instead of some lazy generalization that only serves to expose just how thin your thought process actually is on this issue.
Nice video about Palin, done by an excited young female supporter; who says “now I know what people must have felt when they first saw Reagan.”
This is so flattering to Palin that the McCain/Palin campaign should use it. (It also makes you yearn to move to Alaska.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quvBbcFDPI0
Nick, perhaps the difference in perspective is that while my background is liberal ( my father voted for Norman Thomas for President on one occasion) and I have never been a churchgoer, I am a post-Liberal. I am fed up with many politically correct liberals who make the assumption that those who disagree with them are ipso facto racist unenlightened ignorant yahoos. Don’t tell me that point of view doesn’t exist. It’s out there, big time.
I find liberals more smug and self-righteous than the evangelicals. Again, I am not a churchgoer. Contrary to what many liberals assume, the label hypocrite can also be applied to liberals. Big time.
I recall the death of David Kennedy from a drug overdose. The response of National Review, no friend of the Kennedys, was not to make statement about how this showed the nefarious nature of the Kennedy family, but to simply state that NR empathized with the Kennedys’ grief of losing a family member.
I would expect a similar response with regard to the pregnancy. When all gets politicized, we lose something.
I rather doubt any stone was left unturned in the vetting process – this isn’t some day care job applicant here, unless one needs to believe McCain on-the-spot chose her and Palin then made a dirty laundry list of secrets not to be disclosed.
Wake up, people. If you don’t like liberal Democratic solutions to problems, stop pretending there are no problems and come up with some solutions of your own.
maryQ — I too welcome differing viewpoints. However, I suggest a less condescending approach. Many of us are ex-Democrats who switched to voting Republican after giving these matters a fair amount of research and thought.
I am not pretending there are no problems–far from it. I suspect that we differ in how we describe those problems and what sort of solutions we consider realistic.
– indeed, Huxley, well said
“It’s about taking governing seriously.
I’m voting for Obama, and I voted for Kerry and Gore and Clinton.”
Where I went to school, that was called an oxymoron.
Ma’am, it’s hard to have jobs when people who work hard enough to employ other people suffer their capital to be stolen by the government. You need to read some history, specifically the period 1968 – 1980.
Also, if you put the word “compulsory” into a law, the result is in no way “volunteerism”. I have an acquaintance who spent time in the Hitler Youth… and later the Young Pioneers!
Guess what? He got volunteered for both!
Remember Ronald Reagan and his mean-spirited anecdotes about welfare queens in the eighties?
Tell you what, when Bristol and Levi apply for welfare, you’ll have a point.
Until then, you ain’t got squat, and you’re dragging some young people unnecessarily thru the mud. Your momma must be so proud.
If Sarah Palin where such an awful pick, the Dems would be very, very quiet about it. Let Biden eviscerate her at their debat. Deep down, you know deep down that’s not true.
The astroturf is growing thick in these here parts. FUD FUD FUD.
Nick Says:
“Don’t you see how hypocritical that is?”
Assuming Bristol was in public school and taught the regular sex ed curriculum, you don’t see any ironies butting up against your position. 🙂
And maybe they used protection and it didn’t work… again, no ironies?
And as a social science person (re: me), you don’t see how wrong it is to use a single example to make arguments about social policy? You have to base policy on the numbers / research of what does the most ‘good’… Which brings me back to part A of my message / argument…
maryQ Says:
“And about taxes and morality-chew on this.
The Obama tax plan will RAISE Obama’s taxes.
The McCain tax plan will LOWER Obama’s taxes.
Any questions?”
Yes, don’t high taxes slow economic growth which increases unemployment while slowing the growth of disposable income? So, what’s so moral about appeals to class warfare based punitive taxes? From each according to their ‘fairness’ to each according to how to buy votes for the democratic party?
She wasn’t adequately vetted, simple as that. How do I know? Because if she had been vetted, the campaign would not have allowed this disastrous deluge of one damning revelation after another. They would have managed all of this – that’s what campaigns do. At this point, it’s MORE damaging to McCain to believe he knew all this, because it makes him look utterly incompetent as opposed to simply clueless.
Neo, you yourself say that McCain “sensed” her ‘maverick’ qualities. That’s it exactly. He met her, he liked her, he chose her. Simple as that. And she’s a ridiculous choice.
Methinks you lot have lost a crucial ability, the ability to call bullshit on your own peeps. You tied your wagon to Bush and he took you right over the cliff. Now the same is happening with McCain and you’re still holding on, desperate not to give an inch to the ‘libruls’ no matter how bad it hurts.
Republicans have charged headlong into self-parody with this choice. It’s almost – almost – painful to watch. Soon you all will be talking about how “book learning” aint all that important compared to good old fashioned spit n gumption. Oh wait, we’re already there.
Meanwhile, Biden’s son is involved in a fraud case in the hedge fund industry. MSM nowhere to be found on that one.
Aren’t double standards being applied to Sarah Palin?
Remember Ronald Reagan and his mean-spirited anecdotes about welfare queens in the eighties? Now that the shoe is on the other foot so to speak, this whole situation is met with sympathy and excuses. You won’t hear any talk about illegitimacy now.
So, is Palin’s daughter going to be a welfare queen? Sounds like she is getting married and will have plenty of family support.
Once upon a time, most American women were pregnant when they married, mostly in their late teens. It wasn’t an issue, since they got married, and went on to create productive families.
Meinwhile, the left supports a candidate with little experience, no executive experience, no accomplishmeants, and radical leftist/terrorist associates.
She wasn’t adequately vetted, simple as that. How do I know? Because if she had been vetted, the campaign would not have allowed this disastrous deluge of one damning revelation after another.
She was vetted. They didn’t discover anything bad. Just like you and the DKos types haven’t.
The left is . . . insane.
There is no person on earth who doesn’t have something in his/her background like the sort of things the Left is digging up for Palin as evidence of her huge crimes.
DonS if they had vetted and knew all of this stuff, why weren’t they prepared to respond? What happened to message control? Don’t you still have Queen Rove on your side? And if they vetted why is there a vetting team up there NOW?
And further – why all the secrecy surrounding her announcement in the first place? Why not let it be known that she was being considered along with Romney et al. Then perhaps some of these revelations could have been worked out beforehand. It’s clear this was a gimmicky choice designed for shock value alone. Gimmicks are good for product rollouts, not so great for VPs.
Yes, neo, there is no one without skeletons (or polar bears and brothers in law, in this case) in their closet, but that is why you vet – so that you know what is coming and are prepared to respond. Republicans are supposed to be good at this kind of thing — as opposed to, you know, actually governing.
Prediction: She will not be on the ticket come Nov.
The answers are just too easy. Nick, sorry to go all the way back to the top after your interesting later interchange, but I saw what was wrong with your argument first off: “I think anyone with half a brain…” “It’s obvious…” When people talk like that, it means they don’t have reasons they can articulate, but they “just know,” with a more social than intellectual awareness, that their sort of people are going to think this way – and so they think it too. When challenged, you keep changing the subject, except for coming back repeatedly to how uncaring Republicans are about po’ folk. You are either going to hear this or you aren’t but it needs to be said: your beliefs are emotional and nonlogical, as evidenced by your flapping around wildly with irrelevant insults.
kamper – similar. You know she wasn’t vetted – how? There has been some disastrous deluge of one revelation after another? Except that there hasn’t. There has been a lot of accusations made, but so far the only thing that has stuck has been something the Palins brought out on their own. Maybe McCain is acting on feelings – it’s just that you are in position to judge that. Your froth leaks out and reveals you are not dispassionate.
MaryQ – I could find a lot to disagree with with you, but you are in an entirely different category. You have reasons and data and look at others’ interpretations with some skepticism. Please stick around.
Not vetted = not liked by Democrats.
There. That’s what this thread was about.
TmjUtah – ouch. Stop making us long-winded folks look bad.
Nick:
“Remember Ronald Reagan and his mean-spirited anecdotes about welfare queens in the eighties? “
No. Actually, I dont remember that at all. Can you provide those quotes or would you like to admit now that you were (and are) engaging in the usual liberal hyperbole?
I understand that liberals love to fantasize that the Republicans are run by “ultra-right” super-religious mean-spirited evangelist Christians bent upon converting the USA into a theocracy, but you gotta move beyond that Nick, and recognize that it simply isnt true.
As for your contention that “welfare queens” were simply a mean spirited invention of Ronald Reagan, your own admission that Clinton stepped in signing legislation designed to curb those very same abuses to the system gives lie to your own conviction on whether or not welfare queens were imaginary.
As too the mean-spiritedness, the recent attacks upon Palin is yet more evidence that no one does mean-spiritedness like the ever-so tolerant liberal.
Mary, “Sorry-what’s the downside here?” The downside is how to pay for it all, his own words:
We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
As well funded as the military, where is he gong to get this money? He has proposed billions in new spending and no way to pay for it, other than to tax the rich.
The stats you raise about the growth of govt miss the point of the revenues received, I didn’t say they didn’t spend it, just that tax cuts bring increased revenue, it is a proven fact and the fact can be found at the CBO website, the data also shows how big a hit we took after Sept 11th
2003
1,782.5
2004
1,880.3
2005
2,153.9
2006
2,407.3
2007
2,568.2
2008?
The bottom 50% of income earners only pay 3.1% of federal tax revenues today. The top 10% pays 70%
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/BudgetChartBook/fed-rev-spend-2008-boc-T4-The-Top-10-Percent-of-Income.html
Spending is out of control and only one candidate has railed against spending and it aint Obama, the economy isn’t in shambles now but it is fragile, it will tank very easily if the wrong policies are enacted, Obama promises the world but I see no way he can deliver without seriously damaging our country.
Thanks also for dismissing Military service as a college program, it is well understood many democrats look on the military with disdain and contempt. We will be a major target for Obama as he looks for ways to pay for his promises, it wont be pretty and it will endanger our country.