When I started on deciphering the Sarah Palin pick it was most certainly from a reactionary point of view. Despite being aware of the issues with TrooperGate that appeared on this site and elsewhere weeks before her selection she was not on my radar screen as Vice-Presidential nominee.
I was just as eager to see this as selection as "raw meat" thrown to the lions. I discovered that I couldn't be more wrong. Follow over the break for how I view the selection of Sarah Palin.
I truly had figured they would recruit someone that was on their way out of office on their own terms or someone already out of office. I was expecting a candidate that had little chance of re-igniting their office-holding potential, a candidate that could run on the McCain ticket for name recognition value only. This would be with the likely understanding that they were going to lose. But it would also be with the understanding that both names on the ticket would be side-lined forever on the Republican national stage. This would be in much the same way as they did with the Dole/Kemp ticket. By essentially throwing the election they would be eliminating two nagging voices within their ranks that come from an "old" Republican brand and no longer can provide anything to move the "new" Republican brand forward.
I was expecting a surprise nominee with respect to the fact that it would be someone that wasn't being talked about or someone that was mentioned merely in passing. So I was quite surprised when Palin was selected. The media seemed surprised. The talking heads seemed surprised. Though at this time one has to wonder about how genuine that surprise was after all. Even at this site people had identified a flight from Alaska to Ohio and suggested it would be Palin. It forced her spokesperson to "lie" that she was in Alaska and would be conducting business according to schedule on Friday, August 29th. It isn't really a lie when you are trying to keep a harmless secret - not unlike one does for a surprise party.
What has become quite apparent to me is that the Republican strategists were going to be bringing her in all along. Fred Barnes may have been the first to suggest Palin publically more than 13 months before her selection. Not sure what kind of reaction that generated but I got the impression it was a bit to the negative. So the next to suggest her was Les Kinsolving. That name may or may not be familiar. But if you ever watch a White House briefing and everyone is asking about the hot topic of the day or week and all of a sudden you hear a question that is on a topic so far afield of anything going on - that would be him. Bill Kristol would bring her up later. Glenn Beck would get to put part of her story stealthily into the air. For those that don't know he also has a child with special needs. So you see the angle played there. Larry Kudlow brought her into the picture later during the artificially high gas-price debates. So they were bringing her into the picture. She was hardly a surprise in that regard. They played it that way. But to me it just wasn't so.
Clearly, their first expectation was that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party nominee. In their minds, it would be their "easiest" candidate to challenge. They would run against her as if it were 1992 all over again and conflating Bill with Hillary as one in the same and making the case that the American public rejected the "Clinton" democrats with the 2000 elections. Whether that was true - it wasn't - is irrelevant to them. Whether that would have worked is, of course, hypothetical as would the exercise as to whether the Democratic Party could have overcome it - which I think they could have.
So where would Palin fit in terms of a Republican ticket running against a Hillary Clinton ticket. Firstly, it would give them an opportunity to have a woman attacking Hillary. They certainly had no qualms about attacking Hillary on their own but instead of using surrogates like Ann Coulter they could use someone on their ticket. Now Sarah Palin is not even in the same galaxy as Hillary Clinton in terms of accomplishments. But knowing they would be running in a race in a highly polarized electorate would mean the election would be of the 2000 and 2004 ilk. It would come down to one or perhaps two battleground states and whichever states those would be would be "chosen" by the Republicans. To me that meant Ohio and Pennsylvania. Perhaps this occurred to the Republican strategists as well.
The Republicans also came to the game prepared with a Plan B. There is no doubt they played the what-if card in that what if Hillary did not get the nomination. And I think that their opposition research would have shown that were Hillary not to be the nominee it would not come about without a strong fight that would factionalize the Democratic Party throughout the primary season. So the emergence of Obama out of Iowa did not exactly leave the Republicans unprepared. But they had to play wait-and-see until Super Tuesday to be sure that Obama was going to be able to stay in the race. I am certain that there own polling showed that would be the case.
Simultaneously at that time, the Republican primaries were all over the place providing the perception that they were a divided party. I don't buy that for a minute. I do believe they needed to see how Obama versus Clinton played before anointing their chosen one. One only needs to see how quickly they cleared the decks going into Super Tuesday to push McCain forward. They knew there was going to be a divisive Democratic fight and they knew they had created the perception of a divisive Republican fight. But I think it was smoke-and-mirrors. If their research indicated it would clearly be Hillary Clinton coming out of Super Tuesday they were going to anoint Guiliani. Otherwise, it would be McCain but only if he agreed to go along with the program - Plan B. And the ultimate vice-presidential nominee under Plan B would be no different - Sarah Palin.
Under Plan B the Republicans still had the opportunity to benefit from Plan A if the Democratic Party put Hillary Clinton on the ticket but they had a ground game to go for a win with Plan B on its own.
So what would Plan B look like. The first thing would be to go to McCain and inform him he would be anointed if he played ball. That would mean that he would have to become McBush. The second thing was that Huckabee needed to stay in the race to make sure there was visibility for the Christian conservatives. The Republican strategists knew that their own party disliked McCain. They knew the Democratic Party knew this as well. To many democrats it would appear that a McCain nomination would be the gift that kept on giving. And, as it turned out, it certainly kept giving all throughout the rest of the primaries up to convention time.
So how is that either way we were going to see Palin. My first thoughts on it were that if the anonymous sources were right and McCain was denied his original short list for vice-presidential candidates then what we were seeing amounted to a shot-gun wedding where the Christian conservatives were offering their lock-step votes in exchange for having Palin on the ticket. But it occurred to me that what is more likely is that the moneyed Republicans had lost complete control of their party. It was no longer the case where the moneyed Republicans would be in charge and throw a few bones and a whole lot of money to the Christian right. But the Christian conservatives, and especially the far-right (dare I say) militant conservatives are not playing for bones they are playing for keeps. It was now the case that if the moneyed Republicans wanted to have any chance of having control in Washington that they would be doing this election on the Christian right's terms not theirs. I suspect the moneyed Republicans believe they can turn this around back to their advantage. Perhaps they can. But likely it will be only if the McCain/Palin ticket loses.
I don't want anyone to have the wrong impression. We need to overwhelmingly defeat the Republicans in this election cycle. We need to reject not only the moneyed Republicans and their myopic visions of American prosperity but Christian evangelicals and their myopic visions of a theocracy where the head of state is Jesus and the President is merely his representative. Some would say we already have that with the Bush administration. But that would be granting them a higher pedestal than which they have actually achieved - an achievement that won't be reached even if they were to win and have Palin in the Executive branch.
As DailyKos member DogEmperor has diaried extensively Sarah Palin is associated with the dominionist wing of the Pentecostals. But more than that, she is associated with the militant wing of the dominionists - in the Joel's Army vein. These people are a different breed altogether. They have been infiltrating and taking over established Pentecostal churches and spreading their vision and their mission. And that mission is to militarily clear the decks and prepare the world for the return of Jesus. Sarah Palin is but a means to that end for them. Knowingly or not, she is their foot soldier that will dive across the barbed wire to move them further up their beachhead.
Going a bit too far into fantasyland? Perhaps. But on the day after Palin's selection and upon reading up on what DogEmperor had to offer it occurred to me that there is already an on-going, though certainly veiled, Republican enabled religious battle taking place.
That is the war on "illegal" immigrants. In truth we know it is a war on immigrants, period. Illegal or otherwise. And at first it seems duplicitous in the sense that the moneyed Republicans benefit by hiring illegal immigrants for their factories, farms, and slaughterhouses, cleaning crews, etc. And so you would see the old and tired class warfare game the Republicans have always played - "Hey, those illegal immigrants are stealing your jobs and your tax money!". When that hardly reflects reality at all. As we know, if the Republicans could get away with it we would all be working six days a week and ten hours each day for a dollar a day while they pile up their money hand over fist in the export markets. But something wasn't right at all with the way this war was conducted this time around.
If you recall, Bush tried to introduce the "Guest Worker" program. At the time I dismissed it as a disingenuous, flippant attempt to distort what was going on. Perhaps to bait the Democrats into seizing on it in a mistaken bi-partisan attempt to address the issue. Certainly it would be a continuation of the Bush administration’s methods of legalizing illegal behavior - the people hiring the illegal immigrants - to the benefit of Republican supporters. But at the same time you had the "Border Security Fence". And that presented apparent dissension within the Republican ranks. The former was "seemingly" a bone offered to the Democrats and the latter being a bone to the Republican base. As I see it those were both bones thrown to the different bases within the Republican Party.
Which one of those gained the most traction. The border fence. In addition you had the "volunteer" groups "patrolling" the border. So what finally fell into place for me on Saturday, August 30th was the realization that the war on immigration wasn't an economic card being played it was a religious card being played. The legal and illegal immigrants coming from Mexico and elsewhere in Central and South America are overwhelmingly Roman Catholics. The population growth in this country amongst those groups suggests that there will also be a growth in the number of Roman Catholics in this country. For the dominionists and the evangelical conservative Christians the Roman Catholics are who they need to destroy more so than any other mainstream religious organization. They would have no chance of achieving their theocratic visions were the Roman Catholics to grow to a near plurality in this nation.
Perhaps I am wrong. I hope I would be. For it well not bode well for this country and our citizens if this path is the one to which we are being driven. The Christian conservatives, and even the Pentecostals, see these extremists as dangerous. And while they share the theocratic vision, they don't share the means to the end. They fear a backlash that could set back all of their gains. That could even destroy their movement. That said, I believe that destroying Sarah Palin is absolutely necessary. But the only voters that can matter in that regard are actually the Christian conservatives. Surely within this base there are those that thing they can control the extremists by throwing them a bone. The extremists are also playing for keeps. I think that the "moderate" evangelicals are losing this battle.
We can target Sarah Palin all we want on issues that are important to American voters. But that won't change a single voter from the religious right base. For, no matter what she says, she is representing the "family values", "social issues", and "moral" issues and carrying the water for them. The ultimate goals of the differing religious factions with the Republican may be different but as long as she can maintain a pristine representative of the shared, common, "issues" the Republicans are going to hold strong. As much as many here would prefer that we don't, we need to destroy Sarah Palin exactly on what her strengths are with regard to the Christian right. We need the pastors of their churches encouraging their flocks to stay home on election day. We need individuals within that community to stay home. The only way to do that is to target those issues.
The Obama/Biden campaign rightly should go after the Republican ticket and attack John McCain on every issue there is that matters with the American public. They need not attack Sarah Palin on anything but her lack of experience. They could leave all of the scandals alone - every last one of them - and come out ahead. But someone has to go after Sarah Palin.
One thing that was certain from the time it became clear that the only way the Republicans would even have the smallest chances of electoral victory for the White House would be to try to make the election a referendum on Obama. The Republicans already knew that the Democrats would be running the election as a referendum on George Bush. And, as it seems to me today, they have played exactly into what the Democrats are running on. The question in mind is why.
Perhaps they are trying to win the Presidency. But what if that isn't the case at all. What if they are hoping to get Sarah Palin through unscathed for a future run - at the top of the ticket? Get rid of the "Maverick" or to the Christian right the "Heretic" while preserving the evangelical base. On some levels that makes sense especially if the moneyed Republicans have truly lost control of the party.
What if they are using Sarah Palin to try to shore up House and Senate seat elections? It wouldn't be the first time that a party used a distraction to bring massive attention and resources to bear on a single race so that other races that were doomed to defeat have a chance. This may be the case as well.
They are certainly playing it both ways. They are pitching Palin/McCain to their Christian conservative base and at the same time pitching McCain/Palin to their moneyed base. And they want to have it both ways. But which one of them are they willing to sacrifice on the political altar? McCain is the obvious answer.
Make no mistake, Sarah Palin won't be running on her record. She won't really be running at all other than to attack Obama - and only Obama - to build up her "street credibility". To understand just how important Sarah Plain is to them one need only re-listen to her speech and where she got her applause lines. After identifying her husband a proud member of the United Steelworkers Union - applause. After identifying herself as going after corrupt Republican officials - applause. After saying that she took on the Oil and Gas companies - applause. It was like being in the Twilight Zone. All three of those things would ordinarily generate resounding boos. That certainly made a statement.
Taking McCain down is something that must be done. Doing so won't particularly harm the Republican Party. Taking down Sarah Palin as well, rather than just McCain. will set back the Republicans even further. If we don't we will have to face her down the line. And the "new" Republican party will be stronger along the Christian base than it is today. Only next time, they may run not only on the "family values", "social issues", "moral issues", and "character issues" but on the third-rail issue of religious "tolerance". Some may say "Bring it on!" but I don't think that is the direction this country needs to go. Bringing religion to the forefront rather than keeping it in the background can lead to no good outcomes. That is the fight the religious right wants. We shouldn't give it to them.
So take down Sarah Palin. It may even result in a fight for control of the Republican Party. Perhaps even its implosion. Wishful thinking, I know. But one has to have dreams that one day could be true.