Amanda Marcotte says that Sarah Palin is a clever choice for McCain to have made but immediately heads to the abortion issue to disqualify her, dissing Palin as:
a female anti-choicer, a straight-up sexist colluder. The base will be appeased that she shares their anti-woman sympathies, but the swing voter will simply see that she’s a woman and assume that she can’t be anti-woman. Sadly, as we feminists know all too well dealing with those women who collude with sexism, it isn’t at all true or inevitable that a woman will be a feminist.
For Marcotte it issue is abortion and keeping the procedure freely available. Same for Ann at Feministing, who tosses in a couple of other leftist "must-haves" among Palin’s sins:
She’s against marriage equality and supports a federal gay-marriage ban, but has made sure to note that she "has gay friends." Though she has signed on to same-sex partner benefits. She believes schools should teach creationism. She’s also pretty terrible on environmental issues, and is a huge advocate of drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
…
Republicans are more open to a certain type of woman — one who is strongly against things like equal pay, universal health care, and reproductive freedom. In other words, the party is pro-woman-candidates, as long as they enact anti-woman policies.
Is agitating for abortion the definition of feminism? Plenty of women I know disagree profoundly with Roe v. Wade and its effects on women and a society marred by the absence of its children. Narrowing the focus of what it means to be pro-woman as Amanda and Ann have done has lead the left to adopt rigid, artless patterns of thinking, the exact opposite of what liberalism is supposed to stand for. We all have our gods and it’s apparent what many liberal bloggers worship.
Andrew Sullivan, on the other hand, blunders his initial take on Palin even more badly.
The first criterion for a veep – and I’m simply repeating a truism here – is that they are ready to take over at a moment’s notice. That’s especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That’s more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two
termsyears under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain’s pick with Obama’s: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.
While I agree with everything Andrew wrote, it’s obvious that whatever truisms apply to the vice-president apply 1000 times more to the actual president.
As president, Barack Obama’s qualifications barely surpass what Sarah Palin would bring as vice-president. That’s the real issue as relates to experience and liberals would do well to remember it.
The Obama campaign and Taylor Marsh also fail to get the obvious:
"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same," said Bill Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman.
McCain campaign spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker:
It is pretty audacious for the Obama campaign to say that Governor Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. She has a record of accomplishment that Senator Obama simply cannot match. Governor Palin has spent her time in office shaking up government in Alaska and actually achieving results — whether it’s taking on corruption, passing ethics reform or stopping wasteful spending and the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ Senator Obama has spent his time in office running for President.
That says it all.