When Miers was tapped by GWB for the Supreme Court, even his most fierce supporters lost their shit. She was unqualified and unremarkable. So, he had to let her go.
Now McCain has chosen Palin, and she is similarly unqualified and unremarkable. And, as before, many conservatives are now losing their shit. However, he cannot take back this important decision; to do so would look so, so bad.
Of course, he picked her for at least three reasons:
First, she is a woman, and he wants to get as many disgruntled Hillary supporters as he can.
Second, she is from Alaska and in favor of drilling more or less everywhere, which could strengthen support for his energy policy.
And third, he wants to secure the far-right social conservatives, who vote on abortion, gays, and guns.
Given these pluses, Palin might seem okay -- a clever and surprising choice. However, as people begin to look her up on the internets with the Google machine, what they will find is a person who should absolutely not be one heartbeat away from the Presidency.
I have never been a huge fan of Hillary, but I can recognize her strengths. She is intelligent; she is experienced; she knows the issues backwards and forwards; and she has gravitas. I did not support her during the primaries, but I would have voted for her in a second had things worked out differently.
Palin is no Hillary Clinton, and for McCain to prop her up like this is insulting to women.
Given the inevitable criticism from Democrats as well as the inevitable criticism from Republicans, I really do think that this pick could sink McCain.
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I wrote this earlier today, but could not publish it until midnight. Several people have already commented on this point, and I even saw something on The Cafferty File about it. Apologies for the redundancy! However, I think this is an important point for all of us to make.