So much of the conversation about McCain's pick has centered around Palin's qualifications - but this totally misses the point. So much of the conversation has also centered around McCain's pick as bold, as "maverick", as risky, but this also totally misses the point.
Palin is fully qualified, and McCain is no maverick. Why? Parsely, Warren, Hagee... and the lot.
Palin is a complete right wing religious conservative cutout. On abortion, on creationism, on guns, on the science of global warming - on the key issues that matter to the powers that rule the conservative right wing - Palin is 100% rank and file.
When you really pay attention to these conservative leaders, you realize that being knowledgeable about anything else doesn't really matter. On foreign affairs, you can just make it up as you go along. You can carry your bible around like a fodor's guide, and if you can't find the right passages in the bible to inform you about what, say, the "true" intentions of muslims are, you can, like Hagee or Parsely, just make it up. It's not about the issues at all... it's about the ideology.
That Palin is a fundamentalist is the only qualification that matters.
Forget the little shell game that the McCain camp is playing - trying to spin this as shattering a glass ceiling, or reform choice, or down-home hockey mom, or anything else. This choice was distant from being a "maverick" as anyplace McCain could go.
It was, purely and simply, a cave-in to the fundamentalists.
It fits perfectly with all the other cave-ins that McCain has done to even get this far. Nearly every flip-flop that McCain has made makes sense when seen through the prism of the conservative right wing of the Republican party. For all his talk about going his own way, the only way he has gone, and he has gone running, is toward this sect. That is the consistent thread in what Kerry laid out as the difference between Senator McCain and candidate McCain.
This is, pure and simply, old-style politcs. Back rooms where the real power brokers pull the strings... "You want this? You want is bad enough? Well, this is what you are going to do!" They rolled this over McCain, and they will easily roll it over Palin as well.
McCain may be just dumb enough to think that he can make all these bargains and not have to pay the piper. But if he ever does get into that new house that he so desperately wants, hell find Cheney there waiting for him.