Time's Joe Klein: What Palin Pick Reveals about McCain

[flpoljunkie]

How McCain Makes Obama Conservative
by Joe Klein

As the week progressed, it became apparent that Palin stood diametrically opposed to McCain on issues large and small. She passed a windfall-profits tax on the oil companies — the very sort of tax that McCain excoriated Obama for favoring — which successfully swelled the coffers of the Alaskan treasury. She didn't believe global warming was a man-made phenomenon; McCain had confronted Republican orthodoxy on that issue — boldly, at first, and timidly more recently.

Palin was a blatant porker when she was mayor of Wasilla, hiring a lobbying firm to rake in the projects; she was close to the corrupt megaporker Senator Ted Stevens, a frequent McCain adversary and champion of the mythic bridge. Rather than putting "country first," her husband had been a member of a local secessionist fringe group called the Alaskan Independence Party, whose slogan is "Alaska first," and Palin apparently attended or spoke at several of the group's meetings. Her lack of interest in foreign policy and national security was the opposite of McCain's obsession with such issues. She called the Iraq war a "task that is from God."

Indeed, it seemed Palin and McCain held common ground on only two high-profile issues — an admirable rebelliousness when it came to their party's hierarchy and their opposition to abortion rights. Given the fact that McCain's top two choices for Vice President, Lieberman and Ridge, favored abortion rights, it would not be unfair to conclude that McCain's devotion to this issue was more political than personal.

The Palin selection — peremptory, petulant — was another example of McCain's preference for the politics of gesture over the politics of substance, as is his sudden fondness for oil exploration ("Drill here, drill now.") and hair-trigger bellicosity abroad (Syria, Iran, Russia). His lack of interest in actual governance is disappointing; his aversion to contemplation seems truly alarming. He has done us all a favor with this pick: he has shown us exactly what sort of President he would be.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1838571,00.html

[Serial Mom]

Here is link to windfall profits story.... very telling about GOP double standards

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3921151&mesg_id=3921151

[hisownpetard]

1. Well stated. Thanks for posting!

"His lack of interest in actual governance is disappointing; his aversion to contemplation seems truly alarming."