I've not been in much doubt about McCain's essential mysogyny - calling his wife disgusting names in public, jokes about rape, dumping his first wife when her looks were affected by an accident and picking up his [first] beauty queen as his second wife. But this VP pick takes the cake - John McCain sees women as a collection of biological parts to be exploited in any way possible. Any Hillary Clinton supporter who is swayed by the Palin pick as a reason to vote for McCain is as mysoginistic as he is, regardless of their gender.
We already knew that McCain is a troglodyte and an opportunist when it comes to women and their issues - his previous support for reproductive rights was quickly jettisoned when it got in the way of his political ambition. He seems to be able to suppress his fundamental contempt for women some of the time, but still it comes out on a personal level - disgusting "jokes", offering up his wife for a lewd "beauty" (read, "T&A") contest at Sturgis, etc.
But choosing a younger woman of no national experience, with questionable ethics, as his running mate demonstrates to me, once and for all, how bad McCain's judgment is, and how deeply runs his dislike of women who can think and talk for themselves. McCain clearly cannot contemplate the notion of having a woman in the White House on close to an equal footing with him who could challenge him on official business. I have no use for either Elizabeth Dole or Kay Baily Hutchinson, but at least they've been Republican women on the national stage for years - but McCain didn't pick them, he picked the former beauty queen, someone close enough to the kind of woman his wife is that he will be able to share a stage with her comfortably. I don't know exactly what was wrong with more established Republican women - but I can guess that not only were they too old and not pretty enough for John, they were too likely to question his judgment at some point, a prospect he clearly couldn't handle.
The person who should be most deeply insulted by this, of course, is Hillary Clinton - what an enormous slap in the face from a Senate colleague she has known and worked with for years. Clinton is of course qualified to actually be President, but McCain has suggested, by the implications of this pick, that her supporters had no interest in Clinton's mind or policies, only in her biology. I do not know, in Sen. Clinton's shoes, how I could next encounter McCain without whupping him upside the head, as my grandmother used to say.
Any Clinton supporter who even thinks for a minute about voting for McCain because he's picked a "woman" for his running mate is not only insane, they're also just as much women-haters as he is.
Oh, and Gov. Palin? Watch out for any more biker rallies John McCain might want to send you to during the campaign - he's desperate enough to enter you in a wet T-shirt contest without telling you first.