McCain, Republicans Steer Clear of Gustav as Storm Clouds Swirl Around Alaska Gov. Palin

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McCain, Republicans Steer Clear of Gustav as Storm Clouds Swirl Around Alaska Gov. Palin

OhioNewsBureau  

By John Michael Spinelli

COLUMBUS, OHIO: As Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a first-term Democrat, hits the campaign trail Tuesday in his home state to tout why he endorses Sen. Barack Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, for president, the concerns of safety and security that gathered prior to the arrival today of Hurricane Gustav on the Louisiana Gulf Coast have been overtopped by the storm clouds now swirling around the pick last week by Republican John McCain of the virtually unknown and barely vetted Sarah Palin, a first-term Governor of Alaska, who most Republicans are forced to rally around while Democrats, especially the women who supported Hillary Clinton because of her position on core issues, believe her selection shifts the burden of proof from Obama's readiness to lead back to the quality and related-experience of the Republican ticket.

As Gov. Ted Strickland, whose executive office experience in terms of time is equal to that of Palin, campaigns tomorrow for Sen. Barack Obama across Southeast Ohio, where he will host town hall forums on the economy with voters in various communities and discuss Barack Obama’s vision for helping working families, rebuilding our faltering economy, and adding jobs in Ohio and across the country, in order to get America back on track, some say the election focus Republicans wanted to campaign on over the next 63 days, whether Obama is ready and qualified to lead, has show shifted back to McCain and Palin, 44, whose limited experience, legislative or executive, is now a factor should anything happen to McCain, 72, should he be elected president this year.

Perspective on Palin

To put perspective on the now hardening talking points by Republicans defending Palin as “one touch cookie who has stood up to powerful members of her own party, fought corruption and sold the former Alaska Governor’s airplane on eBay,” her rise from PTA mom to city councilman and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, population about 6,700, to Gov. of Alaska, population about 466,000, is the center of a new storm that Republicans cannot avoid as easily as they tap danced their way around Hurricane Gustav.

Research into Palin’s election wins for mayor and governor reveal that in her second term run for mayor (Wasilla mayor’s are term-limited to two terms), while she garnered 73.4 percent of votes cast in 1999, that figure was 909 (24%) of a total vote of 1,238 for a so-called "popular" mayor, a figure representing 32.7 percent of the 3,786 total registered voters at the time.

When she ran for governor in 2006, the same year Strickland won his office with 2,435,505 votes (60.5% of votes cast but only 30.98% of registered voters), Palin’s win numbers, by comparison, paled. Obama won 2,108,828 in 2005 to become a US Senator. But such comparisons of big, populated states like Ohio and Illinois to a gargantuan-in-size state like Alaska that’s a midget in people power will always looked skewed. But for McCain or Republicans to put Palin on the same plane as a big state governor like Strickland, representing over 10 million resident, or even that of sitting senator Obama who represents a state with nearly 13 million people in it, is far fetched and far flung.

Of the approximately 670,000 residents of Alaska, of which 466,258 were registered to vote in 2006, only 238,307 (51.11%) voters participated, and the Pain/Parnell ticket garnered less than half of them (48.33% or 114,697 votes), which in turn represented 24.5 percent of all registered voters.

Palin Pick: Prudent or Puzzling?

Palin is now being portrayed as the pick of the litter among Republicans and even Democrats, if Connecticut US Senator Joe Lieberman, a running mate many say McCain really wanted but couldn’t choose because his pro-choice leanings would have infuriated the Christian, conservative right-wing block of the Republican Party, a group Republicans and McCain don’t want to stay home in November, is factored in.

And with women who were gung-ho for New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton during the primaries and who McCain strategists thought picking Palin would induce them to cross the political isle to vote for her because of gender, the news of her position on important issues, confounded today that Palin’s 17-year old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock comes as both a little shock and as a little reminder that Palin, who wants to ban abortion and overturn the federal law permitting it known as Roe v Wade, for all the spin being generated about how she stands by her strident socially conservative principles has been unsuccessful in teaching her daughter to be abstinent, a favorite plan by pro-life advocates who contend life, and individual rights, start at conception.So it appears that McCain, while energizing his base by selecting a running mate who is causing others, including some of the people who ran against him in the primary, to scratch their heads, has now turned the focus back to Palin and to himself, for having made this choice. His status as a maverick who bucks his party might now be interpreted as a guy who’s a loose cannon who might make equally unvetted, from the gut decisions that, if he’s president, could put us all in a real fix.

With a president like George Bush whose decision making based on gut instincts was at first romanticized as the best way to decide between right and wrong but which has now been discredited as a poor comparison to carefully thinking through situations with the help of trusted, experience aides, one of which is the vice president, for McCain to roll another Bush-like hand grenade into the public discussion (namely Sarah Palin of Alaska) about of which direction the country should take now that President Bush has preemptively attacked two sovereign nations, replaced the budget surplus he inherited from former president Bill Clinton with record debt and used his executive powers to sanction spying on American citizens and the torturing of others, makes him, not Obama’s readiness to lead, the focus of voters, who by a nearly 80 percent margin believe the nation is on the wrong track going forward.   

The support of a governor like Strickland for Obama, who he said is the best choice to be America’s next president because “His plan to grow the economy and create new jobs is exactly the approach we need for Ohio,” makes a virtual unknown first-term governor whose total vote gathering so far is miniscule when compared to other candidates McCain could have chosen from, a burden not an asset.

Rasmussen's daily presidential tracking poll for Monday shows Obama leading McCain 47-44 ("leaners" included). Despite the closeness of the race at this point and despite the many months McCain has had to make his case and provide detailed plans for what he would do, how he would do it and where the money would come to do it and all the negative publicity for his rival, Obama still leads.

As the pick of Palin is further investigated, as we see in this article, which says the McCain campaign was not as truthful as it should have been about whether the FBI was involved in her vetting, the storm clouds now gathering could form its own eye and dump a lot of unwanted coverage on McCain and Republicans.

But in the end, McCain and Palin, will have to show they won’t be another four years of Bush/Cheney. With each of them having little (in McCain’s case) and no evidence (in Palin’s case) of having spoken out against the failure of the Bush years, Strickland’s statement that “Ohio’s future lies with Barack Obama—not four more years of the same failed Bush policies under John McCain” will be the score to beat. 

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