A Breakdown

The title is a clever play on words.  Analytical, political, nervous.  Take your pick.

I have received a number of emails about teh so-called "pundit wars," and have read most of the "declarations" [bak atcha, Peggy!] of the columnists who are running away from the McCain-Palin ticket as fast as they can.  There are several themes in common, and for my own sake, I'd like to spread them out on the table and organize them.

Sarah Palin is the problem.  Let's review the bidding:

1. John McCain caved to identity politics: it's obvious that she wouldn't be his pick if she weren't a woman. [Heather MacDonald]

• That she was a woman definitely helped her, but this minimizes to the point of insult her exceptional record as a reforming executive with extremely high approval ratings from her electorate.  Also ignores the frequent mentions of Bobby Jindal as a veep possibility.
  

2. There were more experienced women (Kay Bailey Hutchinson, for example) who were leap-frogged for the young tootsie. [Peggy Noonan]

• Peggy expressed this opinion when she thought her mic was turned off.  Whoops.  Note how she leap-frogged the identity politics problem.  Really ignores the terrible weakness of a KBH-McCain ticket: old, and not very conservative.  And Kay has her own baggage (see below.)
  

3. She's inarticulate and she really blew it with the Katie Couric interview and is a huge embarrassment. [Kathleen Parker, Heather MacDonald, Peggy Noonan, the entire Leftwing Blogospere and MSM establishment]

• This is the least defensible criticism of Palin, for two reasons.  It reeks of piling on, and it ignores the culpability of the McCain campaign and their horrid mistakes with regard to her interaction with the press.

4.  "I don't know what she believes." [Peggy Noonan]

• Barack Obama is the clear choice for pundits who are upset with the Republican candidate for veep who's speeches and record are too tedious review.  She is, after all, inarticulate. Hope, change, and snappy uniforms- that's what we want!
  

5. She's not an exemplar of traditional values.  Exhibit A: her pregnant, unwed teen-aged daughter Bristol.  Exhibit B: She (Palin) has a special needs infant and she yet  she persists in the advancement of her career. [Heather MacDonald, to a lesser extent Bill Bennett, Sally Quinn, the entire Leftwing Blogosphere, etc.]

• This is fair, on one level.  I think that many of us traditionally-minded conservatives are very disturbed about the general erosion of values as exemplefied by our leaders.  But: the sins of the children generally are not visited upon the parents, as we have seen in every political race and nearly every politician's career  since the 1970's (to pick a decade at random.)  And, Palin has an unusually strong core family commitment as demonstrated by the birth of her Down's Syndrome child, and her marriage.  It also strikes nearly every reasonable person as unfair to hold Mrs. Palin to a different standard than the other men in the race, especially when her husband and extended family are obviously so supportive of her career.  Personally, I'd like to see the folks that view this as a huge problem to take this to the armed forces, where women and men are being deployed for many months away from their very small, and not so small children, and their spouses.  Sometimes, public service requires monumental sacrifice of individuals and their families.  Would I make that sacrifice? No.  But I am not exceptional in the way that Sarah Palin is.
• In a related matter, I would like to point out that one of the reasons Kay Bailey wasn't under serious consideration: her adoption of two children (infants) when she was a Senator in her late 50's.  I personally know many people who are grateful she isn't running for the senate again because they can't bring themselves to vote for her for that reason.
  

Secondarily, the Republican Party itself is the problem.

This is what Chris Buckley said, between asides about how classy he is and about how he is more in tune with his father's personal principles than anyone else, "My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith."   Of course, dear ol' dad was unaware of Joe Lieberman's political and financial ties to domestic terrorists, organized crime, and the voter-fraud cottage industry that is ACORN.  And anyway, he didn't endorse Joe for president.

Nevertheless, his criticisms of the Republican party are largely valid- he won't find anyone arguing with this statement: "Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff..."  The rest of the sentence would get a split vote among honest conservatives.  But the point is, it was only six years of Republican government, Republicans who ditched their conservative principles, such as they were.  Am I the only one who never thought GWB was a conservative?  I think not.  I think even Buckley père said that Dubbya was conservative, but not a conservative.

I'm sure it's very important for Mr. Buckley to believe he's where his father would be now, but to the rest of us, it doesn't matter.  It's an entirely rhetorical question whose auto-answer is made for  self-justification.

And last, I just want to have sex with Barack.   "Mr. Obama has a first class temperament and he's a mountain" must be some sort of foot-tapping, red hankie code.  Hey, why should the racists have all the codes?

When we clear away all the noise, and silly references, oblique and otherwise to the onslaught of nasty emails that these jumpers have brought on themselves, at bottom, they are saying, "Barack Obama would be a better president than John McCain."  In fact, the jumpers mostly have left off direct criticism of John McCain himself.  But from a conservative's legitimate point of view, the unreconstructed Marxist who is corrupt and inexperienced, who has shown manifest incompetence in the area of actually getting anything done legislatively, who voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act would not make a better president than John McCain.  In fact, he wouldn't make a better president than Sarah Palin.  Or Joe Lieberman.  Or Joe the Plumber.

But I'm willing to bet he'd be as good as Joe Stalin.

Comments

[aelfheld]

Buckley, Christopher, conveniently forgets that his father's endorsement of Lieberman was in the service of ridding Connecticut, and the U. S. Senate, of that bloviating gasbag Lowell Weicker. He also consigns to oblivion the repeated, public, criticisms his father made of Galbraith's politics and economics.

[Sparrow]

Well said.

[aelfheld]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15715&R=13C7A16026 (via Mark Steyn http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzM4YmM2NTlhM2ExNjliNmU3YmUyNWQ0MjVhZjZlM2I=)

[Tom the Redhunter]

<em>"Mr. Obama has a first class temperament..."</em> Sheesh. How could anyone say that after watching McCain destroy him in that third debate? Obama was flustered and clearly rattled throughout. He stammered and stuttered in his responses.

And this is the guy who says he's going to go up against Chavez and Ahmadinejad?

Right.