Yesterday, Crooks and Liars ran a post highlighting just one more reason why John McCain is a chauvinist1 asshole who’s sole motivation for picking Sarah Palin is her working ovaries.
He said in a Fox News interview:
As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased. She has excited and energized our base. She is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America. She has a wonderful family. She’s a reformer. She’s a conservative. She’s the best thing that could have happened to my campaign and to America [Emphasis mine]
Now, he knows by now that Palin has been a dead weight on his campaign. Major newspapers across the country have cited her as the reason that they couldn’t trust McCain’s judgment enough to endorse him for President.
The Salt Lake Tribune said:
Then, out of nowhere, and without proper vetting, the impetuous McCain picked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. She quickly proved grievously underequipped to step into the presidency should McCain, at 72 and with a history of health problems, die in office. More than any single factor, McCain’s bad judgment in choosing the inarticulate, insular and ethically challenged Palin disqualifies him for the presidency.
The Chicago Tribune has never in 161 years endorsed a Democratic candidate for President- until now:
McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate–but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin’s exposure to the public. But it’s clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment’s notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.
McCain didn’t pick Palin to bring his ticket up. He picked Palin because he thought he could siphon off disgruntled Clinton supporters. But he also didn’t want to have to contend with a strong, intelligent woman. Palin is much easier to control- and she’s anti-women’s rights which is just dandy for a man who voted against Lilly Ledbetter and thinks the health of a mother is an extremist tactic to make everyone have to get an abortion.
I guess one could argue that McCain was referring to the rad fems with which I’ve also had issues. They’re the ones that insist the men apologize for their penises or they’re in league with the devil. But somehow I think he’s actually referring to any woman who believes she has the right to equal pay for equal work, a good education for her children, healthcare for her children, right to go to a pharmacy and actually get the birth control script filled, and the right to have a rape examination without having to pay for the kit itself2. Those are the feminists that are antithetical to Sarah Palin.
I don’t like Sarah Palin. And anyone that’s followed this blog and/or followed my tweets knows this. The reasons why I don’t like her are exactly the reasons that John McCain chose her. The biggest one is that she has willingly put herself in a place where she is used unabashedly as a puppet. It doesn’t matter to her, of course, because she just wants to be President and the easiest way to do that is to wait for McCain to kick over. But she is no one of whom strong, independent, intelligent women should be proud. She would gladly put us all in Biblical subservient roles if it meant that she could grab that power ring. The worst, though, is her weakness.
Here is a woman that has depended on men to get her to the top of Alaskan politics. This is not surprising because women in a lot of places can’t seem to get a foothold with out shamelessly using those with a pair of balls swinging. You would expect this woman to be strong, outspoken and literally able to take on the world. But Palin isn’t. Her husband is never more than 5 feet from her side and Alaskans have even come to call him the “Shadow Governor” because he’s played such a huge role in her administration. John McCain won’t allow her to have a press conference or speak with “unfriendly” reporters because he doesn’t trust her intelligence enough to give her that rein. Now I’ve found out that her staff prevents her from reading newspapers (all of them that are placed in front of her) and watching the news because it might depress her.
A woman that is hoping to become the Vice President of the United States is afraid to read the papers because she might get depressed. Process that.
We’re supposed to believe that she was chosen because of her strength? I’ve known many a strong woman in my time3 and it would be a cold day in hell before any of them would allow themselves to be stifled like Palin has been stifled. They would be proud of their position and dare anyone to take them on. They would make the women of this country proud and not make our stomachs churn with disgust and anger. There is nothing in her actions or her demeanor that should make most American women proud. She certainly isn’t the type of woman that I want my own daughter’s to emulate.
She’s being told to shut up, sit down, be pretty and read the damned script. McCain wants nothing more to do with her than that. I would feel bad for her if she had the intellectual capacity to see what he was doing with her. I don’t though. And neither should the “faux” feminists who still insist that McCain is the right choice because of how Democrats and the progressive blogosphere treated Sen. Clinton. When McCain chose her he spit on regular-Jane feminists– we American women who are proud of our strengths and want the best for ourselves and our children — and laughed in our faces. He mocked the PUMAs and other (real) Clinton supporters. And Sarah Palin is happy to go along with all of it. She deserves all the derision she gets.
Popularity: 50% [?]
- I know that’s no longer the correct term, but I don’t care. [↩]
- This is a very short list, of course, because I’m lazy and running out of time [↩]
- And sometimes believe myself to be one. [↩]
I like geeky stuff, politics, squirrels and monkeys.