WASHINGTON: Sen. John McCain has stunned the political world yesterday by tapping a relative novice to be his running mate: GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
The Barack Obama campaign wasted little time trying to deflate the news of McCain selecting a woman to be his potential vice president to draw voters who were backing Hillary Clinton as the first woman POTUS (Presidents of the US).
“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Gov. Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe vs Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree that McCain’s choice of Palin is the biggest political gamble in American history, designed to energize the Republican base, as many consider her a reformer with guts. She’s a National Rifle Association member, a right-to-life feminist, and a mother of five. But her choice is still a huge gamble. She’s only been in office 1 1/2 years, and with McCain turning 72 years old yesterday, the question everyone is asking is: Can this woman qualified enough to become president of the US? “Sen. John McCain’s long-ball choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (pronounced PA-lin) was both brilliant and a clear and convincing sign of his total desperation heading into the Twin Cities after Sen. Barack Obama’s knock-out convention,” writes Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“...This bombshell was a dark horse pick for McCain, because she’s hot where he’s not, a young former beauty queen and athlete who just gave birth to a child with Down syndrome, an act of personal heroism that had the evangelical right in a complete swoon. More than 80 percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted. She was already the pick of grass-roots conservatives who had a ‘Draft Sarah Palin movement’ going.”
