Tag Archives: Sarah Palin

‘Hockey Mom" Palin is also ‘Army Mom’

Posted on by

My friend and colleague Hugh Hewitt notes that Sarah Palin is the first mother of an American soldier to be nominated for the second highest office in the land. I would add “soon to be deployed” to the descriptive before “American soldier.”

Do you realize how far this will go to disabuse the country of the made-up liberal lie that Republicans long for war? Do you realize how many mothers with kids in Iraq and Afghanistan will trust McCain-Palin to lead the American military strategically and into war only when necessary, given the high personal stakes BOTH of them have in the outcome? McCain has two sons in the military, one of whom just returned from a tour in Iraq. The other is at the Naval Academy and may be deployed to Iraq by the end of the year.

For the record, Joe Biden’s son will be deployed to Iraq in October. Biden’s reaction? “I don’t want him going.”

Campaign 2008 and age bias

Posted on by

Reading other blogs and watching the media coverage of this presidential campaign since Obama’s convention speech and McCain’s VP announcement, it seems that the American public desire an impossibility in their presidential candidates.

They want their president to be young AND experienced. The two cannot go together.

I am frankly amazed at the kind of age bias that is directed at John McCain. If the media were saying about Barack Obama’s race the kind of things they are saying about John McCain’s age, there would (hopefully) be an outcry from the American public. But it turns out you can make fun of old people and get away with it.

Barack Obama has answered the question of his youth and inexperience with Joe Biden, the same way JFK did with LBJ. John McCain has answered the question of his age and experience with Sarah Palin, the same way GHWB attempted to do with Dan Quayle. The difference between Obama’s decision and McCain’s decision is that Obama’s decision works against his own “change” message by putting two Washington establishment liberals at the top of the ticket while McCain’s decision actually works in favor of a new direction for Washington politics by bringing in a woman who has absolutely no connection to Washington. Even Dan Quayle was a Washington insider.

So your choice this time around really comes down to the youth and inexperience of Barack Obama balanced by the aged but experienced Joe Biden, a ticket made up of two men who are in lockstep ideologically, which if you evaluated it honestly is nothing more than the same liberal leadership Democrats have offerred since LBJ; or the age and experience of John McCain who has been daring enough to choose as his running mate a youthful woman with limited experience – none inside Washington – but who is ideologically opposite McCain on some economic (i.e. oil and drilling) and social issues (i.e.,civil unions and embryonic stem cell research).

Which ticket really represents “more of the same”?

Palin meets Donald Miller’s standard on homosexual rights

Posted on by

In an interview with Christianity Today prior to leading the benediction on the opening night of the Democratic Convention in Denver, emergent leader and author Donald Miller said,

In terms of gay marriage, I see it as a constitutional issue. Until we become a theocracy, I think that judges should look at it from a constitutional issue. Whether I think homosexuality’s wrong, personally? America is not God’s country. It’s not considered a Christian nation anymore. You have to look at everybody, not just Christians and say, what are the rights of these people based on this constitution.

Turns out that as governor, Sarah Palin laid aside her personal convictions against state funded health benefits for the homosexual partners of state employees and vetoed legislation that would have denied them because she was convinced the constitution of the State of Alaska, as presently written, allows for them. She supports an admendment to the state constitution that would not require taxpayers to support health benefits for the homosexual partners of state employees.

In a somewhat hostile article on Palin’s campaign for governor, The Anchorage Daily News wrote on November 5, 2006:

A significant part of Palin’s base of support lies among social and Christian conservatives. Her positions on social issues emerged slowly during the campaign: on abortion (should be banned for anything other than saving the life of the mother), stem cell research (opposed), physician-assisted suicide (opposed), creationism (should be discussed in schools), state health benefits for same-sex partners (opposed, and supports a constitutional amendment to bar them).

Palin and her staff complained that efforts to raise these issues in public were divisive and hypothetical. The normally unflappable candidate seemed put-upon when she faced a string of such questions in the last debate, on public television and radio Thursday night….

Palin said her reading of the Bible would not “bleed over into policy.” But she has based much of her campaign around a close fundamentalist reading of another text – the state constitution – which she cited in nearly every debate as the source of her guiding principles.

Howard Friedman at the Religion Clause blog gives this perspective on Palin’s commitment to the constiution over Scripture when it comes to governing:

Her respect for the state constitution was illustrated by her first veto as governor. Alaska’s Supreme Court had ordered the state to provide health benefits to same-sex partners of public employees, finding that this was mandated by the state constitution’s equal protection clause. Palin vetoed a subsequent attempt by the legislature to enact legislation to take away the same-sex benefits. After being advised by the state attorney general that the legislation was unconstitutional, she said that signing the bill would be in direct violation of her oath of office. (Anchorage Daily News, Dec. 29, 2006 article.)

Sarah Palin’s story should assuage the fears on the left that politicians who are also committed Christians are conspiring to replace the constitution with a Christian Theocracy based soley on the Bible. Palin illustrates how a Christian can live by the principles of their faith without using their faith to infringe the rights of citizens in contradiction to the laws and standards of the people of the state.

Sounds like Palin is a candidate the emergents can support.

(HT: Howard Friedman)

Obama admits ‘hair trigger’ criticism of Palin announcement

Posted on by

The first reaction from the Obama campaign to John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as his VP was to diss small town America. His campaign put out a statement which said in part:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency.

There is a pattern of elitism in the Obama campaign. Remember that this is the same Barack Obama who described working-class voters as Americans who “…get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Now Obama has distanced himself from his first harsh response to the Palin pick, blaming it on a ‘hair trigger’ reaction by his staff. Ben Smith at at Politico.com reports:

At a stop in Monaca, Pa., Barack Obama seemed to distance himself from his campaign’s first, harshly critical response to the Palin pick.

“I think that, uh, you know, campaigns start getting these, uh, hair triggers and, uh, the statement that Joe and I put out reflects our sentiments,” he said, according to the pool report, apparently criticizing his staff for going overboard, as he did occasionally in the primary.

He was referring to a more gracious statement of congratulations he issued later with Biden, which he then reiterated.

Let’s see: he tells Rick Warren tough questions are “above my grade grade,” and now he is allowing senior advisers to make ‘hair trigger’ statements. Does this sound like the kind of president we want with his finger on a nuclear trigger?

The Palin "Scandal"

Posted on by

Already Dems are focusing in a so-called “State investigation” into whether Sarah Palin pressured a Public Safety Commissioner with oversight of Alaska State Troopers to fire her former brother-in-law who is a state trooper. The state trooper had gone through a nasty divorce with Palin’s younger sister.

The Palin’s say they put no pressure on the commissioner to hire or fire anyone. They merely informed the commissioner of a death threat against the governor’s sister made by her ex-husband.

Trust me, folks. This story has no legs. If this is the best “scandal” the Dems can come up with in an attempt to discredit Sarah Palin, wait until the McCain campaign unleashes the skeletons in Obama and Biden’s closets.

There is a fairly balanced media story about this whole thing here.