The full article
When John McCain announced the half-term Governor of Alaska and former mayor of a city of a whopping 9,000 people as his running-mate, Democrats thought they saw a political piñata, and their eyes lit up.
Where to swing for first? Her pregnant daughter? Her alleged drug-abusing son? Her own marital indiscretions? How about the state trooper she had fired when he broke her sister’s heart? And hey…is that baby really hers?
Sure, Sarah Palin brings a host of questions with her to the general election. But whether it was a full-on setup or not, Democrats took the bait. In doing so, they forgot about every issue that was allowing them to pulverize John McCain in the months before.
They forgot about the housing crisis that McCain said didn’t even exist. They forgot about the simmering tensions with Iran after almost seven consecutive years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They forgot about rising unemployment, a floundering education system, a faltering economy, and a rural infrastructure that has deteriorated over the last eight years while George W. Bush ignored it. Instead, they went after Sarah Palin.
Democrats should have attacked Palin for two things, and two things only: her frightening lack of any kind of foreign policy experience, and more importantly, her stances that are so diametrically opposed to the interests of American women on the issues most important to them.
The simple truth is that Sarah Palin never should have been an advantage to McCain in drawing female voters, especially the disillusioned former Hillary backers. Forget, for a moment, that she lacks a Y chromosome. On any Republican male, her issue positions would have been those of one of the most anti-woman politicians in the country. Even the most successful female Republican officeholders have some kind of moderate stance on women’s rights issues.
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