Well, there you go… John McCain has opted for Veep choice Sarah Palin… Here are 10 reasons (in no particular order) that Obama/Biden should lose sleep…
- Palin is going to hold a healthy appeal to those famous 18 million Hillary stalwarts. That’s a no brainer.
- Palin is a life member of the NRA. And speaking as a life member of the NRA myself (1992) I can say the following with first-hand authority… The NRA has absolutely no problem supporting a woman. (The first female NRA president was Marion Hammer, and she took office in 1995.) In short, expect the NRA to pull out all the stops on this election.
- McCain is super-saturated with foreign-policy experience, military experience, and life experience. On the other hand, Barack was born August 4, 1961… Eight months after JFK gave his famous inaugural speech.
- Both McCain and Palin have sons (Jimmy, (USMC) and Track (Army) respectively) in the military. It’s going to be a nightmare for Barack and Joe to argue the invalidity of the Iraq War… To do so would be to question the character and intelligence of the young McCain and Palin. Add to that the success of the Surge (which Barack still won’t acknowledge) and all of Iraq becomes a third rail for the Dems.
- Palin appeals to unions. She conspicuously mentions them in her acceptance speech.
- All recognize that McCain is a maverick and a bulldog, but Palin is a sleeper of the same ilk. She is immensely popular in Alaska (in the ballpark of a mind-numbing 80%). Also Palin is known as a free thinker. (And that link is a “must read”).
- The economy ain’t as deep in the tank as was predicted.
- Obama runs on the exhausted “Not-Another-Third-Term-of-Bush/We-Need-Change” Campaign… Too bad that Barack (and Rezko, and Ayers, and Pfleger, and Wright, and who knows who else) are all just part of the old Chicago/liberal political machine. Oh, there’s change out there all right… But it takes the personages of a 70+ year-old curmudgeon, and a 44 year-old former beauty queen who’s faced much more than her fair share of challenges in this world.
- Palin knows her energy issues, (again, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin)… Methinks McCain may decide to drill in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after all.
- Finally, Palin doesn’t bring the “Primary Baggage” with her that Biden did… (Remember the infamous “on the job training” comment? )
This should be interesting… But still Barack and Joe have very serious reasons to lose sleep…
Alan Speakman
