VPILF

alright, so there's been a few thousand posts out there about McCain tapping Sarah Palin to be his veep, and a few people have already asked me what I think about it... so here's a couple of things I came up with.

First let me start off by saying maybe everyone else was surprised, but I've been saying since back in May that I hoped he picked her (but figured he probably wouldn't). It's true, it's even in the archives of the message board I hang out on.

I first found her name when I was looking at the British bookmakers site, www.ladbrokes.com, to see the odds on the presidential race and on the veep selections. When I saw her name I went to look her up, and liked her story.

All indications are she's a straight-down-the-line traditional conservative. Pro-life and in favor of hands-off management of businesses and pro-gun rights.

Actually, if you think about it, she's pretty much everything Mitt Romney WASN'T, which is a pretty ringing endorsement in the end... consider:

example... I can understand conservatives being in the NRA. I can understand them having a problem with the NRA. Just don't join the night before you announce you're going to run for prez. That's basically what Romney did. Palin's been pretty consistent with her positions, you can tell they're not just of convenience or an attempt to ingratiate herself to "the base", she is a person of her own principles and convictions and pretty much either you agree with her or you don't. I can even have a lot of respect for a lib if they're at least consistent of their positions and reached them because of core beliefs about human nature, not just parroting what your party tells you to say.


Besides... I can't think of any other pick that would have jazzed the right like this or so scared the lefties. I've seen so much ranting and wild-eyed the foaming at the mouth sect on the other side of the aisle. You can tell whether something a Republican did was a good move by how rabid the left gets in response to it.

Also got to say you just can't beat that timing of the announcement. I can't ever remember a time when a convention wrapped and something came along and just totally commandeered the news cycle like this. I went on CNBC.com at 1:00 in the afternoon on Friday... so you figure less than 18 hours after Obama's "coronation". The word Obama literally did NOT APPEAR on the entire front page of CNBC.com. The surprise of the Palin announcement had pushed the entire Dem. convention off the front page.

Will it matter in the end? We'll see... I do think that if McCain can, with this move, get say 12-15% of people who were excited about Hillary's campaign to vote for McCain-Palin, he's got a pretty good chance in November.

But then, who would have guessed I'd get excited by a beautiful, thin brunette with nice cheekbones and a solid conservative record named Sarah ;-)

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.