So let me get this straight: Barack Obama, with 8 years of state experience and 4 years at the national level, a man who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations committee and has made several trips to Iraq: not qualified to be commander-in-chief; Sarah Palin, with NO federal-level experience, NO foreign policy experience, and only a year-and-a-half of state-level experience, a woman who was the mayor of a small town of less than 7,000 people in Alaska back when this presidential race began in late 2006: obviously ready to take over as America’s commander-in-chief at a moment’s notice!
But she’s got two X-chromosomes, so all those Hillary supporters who are upset that Obama didn’t pick her to be his VP will swoon for McCain now that he’s added a woman to the ticket. Because, women are all alike, aren’t they? Any one of them is interchangeable with any other. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a woman who has been in the Senate for almost 8 years and a player on the national stage for 16, a woman who has not merely spoken passionately on women’s rights, education, health care, national security and so many other issues but has engaged in the public arena to fight on behalf of these causes to make America a better place; like her or hate her, she has wrestled with the great issues of our time....
So, obviously, she’s completely interchangeable with Sarah Palin, a woman who is younger than Obama and was the mayor of a small town in Alaska when Hillary announced her candidacy for president and whose signature accomplishment as mayor was to saddle her town with a mountain of debt from a botched bid to acquire land to build a sports center; a woman who opposes all abortions, even the case of rape or incest; a newbie governor in the pocket of Big Oil (her husband even works for BP) who led a self-righteous crusade to "clean up Alaska politics" but has allied herself with such corrupt figures as indicted Senator Ted Stevens; a politician who is being investigatedfor allegedly firing the Public Safety Commissioner for his refusal to fire a state trooper involved a custody battle with Palin’s sister; a governor who wants creationism taught in Alaska public schools; a woman who just a month ago said she wasn’t interested in the job since it wasn’t "productive" but admitted that she doesn’t know "what it is exactly that the VP does every day."
And Palin has so much experience with big issues like illegal immigration: every now and then, a drunk Russian will stagger into Alaska across the frozen Bering Sea in winter. Sarah Palin: Fighting the Vodka Drunks Up There So We Don't Have to Fight Them Down Here!
Yes, Hillary Clinton is interchangeable with a woman who sued the federal government to stop the EPA from adding polar bears to the "Threatened Species List" because there’s no evidence that global warming is man-made, much less that it’s making it harder for polar bears to swim between ever-shrinking ice-floes.... They can always swim harder, after all.... or evolve stronger legs for swimming, survival of the fittest and drowning of the "unfit" and all that.... But that’s right, she doesn’t believe in evolution either.... Then God must really hate polar bears and who are we to interfere with God’s smiting?
One thing Sarah Palin definitely does believe in is pork-barrel spending. Oh, sure, she said today that, "I told Congress — I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves." Why so modest, Governor? Less than two years ago you campaigned for federal funding for the infamous "bridge to nowhere" After Congress stripped the funding for the bill, you declared last September that "It’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened." Once Congress turned you down, you decided not to waste state money on this boondoggle—exactly the same thing as telling Congress "thanks, but no thanks" and building it yourselves! She’s such a straight-talker, just like McCain! Isn’t she great, folks?
And the good people of Alaska are fully behind her VP bid: "’She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?’ said [State Senate President Lyda] Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. ‘Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?’" John Harris, Alaska’s Speaker of the House, also a Republican, had this ringing endorsement: "She’s old enough. She’s a US citizen." Exactly! What more qualifications does the potential leader of the free world need?
Palin herself made the reason for her selection perfectly clear: "It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all!" Yes indeed, the highest glass ceiling of all, the one we never thought would be shattered in our lifetime: the glass ceiling that tells women that there are limits to the lengths Republicans will go to patronize and condescend to them and to insult their intelligence, that the Republican Party is a party of principles, not pandering. Can we shatter this highest of glass ceilings? Say it with me now: YES, WE CAN!!!