You can keep her!

[Lovetheoutdoors]

Originally Posted by neil0311

Jim Martin will be looking for a job on Dec 2. He looks like he'd do well with cold fish. BTW, Palin's approval rating in Alaska is still around 60%. She's hardly unpopular.

Hardly unpopular? There is talk about re-calling her. And what they don't tell you about those poll numbers is that she has a 60% approval AMONGST REPUBLICANS - not the entire state of electorates. And that approval rating is dropping fast. I will swap her for any of your politicians any day. I'm assuming that your politicians know that Africa is a continent and have read a newspaper in their lifetime.

[Lovetheoutdoors]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

LOL, this thread is getting to the ridiculous.

Palin got a hose job by the media.

If Alaskans are now so ashamed of her, than shame on you. She represented your state in a very good light.

Hose job? How? By asking her questions that every VP candidate should know as they're only a heartbeat away from the presidency? And she represented our state in a very good light? Again, how? By showing the world that we elected someone who is illiterate and knows nothing about government? In our defense, though, we didn't really have a lot of options when it came to our last gubernatorial election. People didn't actually vote FOR her as we mostly voted AGAINST the other guys.

[Lovetheoutdoors]

Originally Posted by kaday

I heard she thinks we are located somewhere near Russia and that she's up on our foreign policy due to proximity.......maybe you could tell her before she comes we are the other Georgia. The one that is a state in the US. She should be briefed before she comes here.

LOVE IT!!!! That literally made me laugh out loud.

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

LOL, this thread is getting to the ridiculous.

Palin got a hose job by the media. Neil, you are spot on about people confusing Tina Fey's spoofs with the actual Palin. How many times have I seen people on this thread slam Palin because "I can see Russia from my house'"? Fey said this, Palin did not.

She did say and I quote "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border" which was an outright lie and baseless acquisation.

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Palin hit a home run with us everyday conservatives. Was she qualified to step into the presidential office right away? No. But 4 to 8 years of being vice president would have seasoned her just right for the job. And I still stand by my premise (already thoroughly hashed out in numerous other threads) that her resume is no more or less qualified than the man about to assume the office.

I'll be surprise if Palin has a resume. All this talk about ordinary as if that is an acheivement. She is intellectually inept, she maybe an ordinary American which is great, but we should not be lead by ordinary people. She took 6 years graduate from 4 colleges with a journalism degree, it took me 5 years to graduate from 2 colleges with an Accounting Degree. I guess I should be Vice President too, compare her resume to my own and I like my chances. I hope she hits more home runs with the wingnuts of the republican party, she has already knocked your out of the political spectrum for atleast 4 years.

[RainyRainyDay]

Originally Posted by neil0311

Palin is one of our 50 Governors, although the elitist attitude is.."well she's ONLY Governor of Alaska. It's not NY or CA or another REAL state."

I've lived in the north, on the Canadian side of the border, but there are a lot of things the same on both sides. One is that, up there, you have huge land areas with sparse population. So there are people working in both the public and private spheres with titles like Governor, Bishop, Regional Manager, and so forth, who yeah, in some ways their role is comparable to their counterparts down south, but not in all ways, by far. As has been pointed out a lot, the state of Alaska has fewer people than Brooklyn. Or, looking closer to home, it has about the same population as Cobb County. Dealing with the geography does make running Alaska harder than running Cobb County, yes, but it just doesn't compare with running a good-sized state like Georgia, for instance.

It's a small-town world up there on the frontier, populated with small-town folks. They have lots of grit and pluck and community spirit, but it's honestly not the most sophisticated society. Suggesting a neophyte northern governor with Sarah Palin's background is not ready for the big leagues of national politics is not just liberal prejudice. It's reality. For pete's sake, the Palins are such a typical northern family - you can find folks just like 'em down at the supermarket or Zellers (Canadian equivalent of Walmart) all over northern Canada. I really couldn't believe that American Republicans seemed to think this frontier charm and pluck (which was not exotic at all to me) somehow made a person vice-presidential material. Wow!

[LahdeeDahdee]

That's your Governor you keep that mess right there, please, thank you. After all, she needs to keep an eye on Russia from her house.

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by LahdeeDahdee

That's your Governor you keep that mess right there, please, thank you. After all, she needs to keep an eye on Russia from her house.

SEE!!!!! Another who forms their view of the world around them via SNL

[neil0311]

Originally Posted by RainyRainyDay

I really couldn't believe that American Republicans seemed to think this frontier charm and pluck (which was not exotic at all to me) somehow made a person vice-presidential material. Wow!

I may be able to give that to you, but it's funny and a bit hypocritical that many Democrats thought Howard Dean would make a good President. In fact, he almost won the nomination and is now the DNC Chairman. I don't remember the same outcry about the fact that he was a mediocre Governor of one of the smallest states in the country, both by population and area (about the same population as Alaska and a minute fraction of the area). Vermont has a mostly tourist and agriculural economy, with IBM and a handful of businesses up in Burlington. Until the famous "scream," Dean's folksy rural liberalism seemed to register.

I just think that Palin has received attention and criticism waaaay out of proportion and in a manner not given to men in similar circumstances. It's also a bit perplexing that liberal women and NOW types who espouse equality for women personally attacked a woman nominated for the second highest office in the land, simply because they disagreed with her politics.

[RainyRainyDay]

Originally Posted by neil0311

I may be able to give that to you, but it's funny and a bit hypocritical that many Democrats thought Howard Dean would make a good President. In fact, he almost won the nomination and is now the DNC Chairman. I don't remember the same outcry about the fact that he was a mediocre Governor of one of the smallest states in the country, both by population and area (about the same population as Alaska and a minute fraction of the area). Vermont has a mostly tourist and agriculural economy, with IBM and a handful of businesses up in Burlington. Until the famous "scream," Dean's folksy rural liberalism seemed to register.

I just think that Palin has received attention and criticism waaaay out of proportion and in a manner not given to men in similar circumstances. It's also a bit perplexing that liberal women and NOW types who espouse equality for women personally attacked a woman nominated for the second highest office in the land, simply because they disagreed with her politics.

Thanks, I don't know much about Howard Dean but the comparison seems reasonable.

About the attention and criticism, to state the obvious, it's because women are still pretty new in the presidential and vice-presidential arena. So unfortunately, a female candidate gets regarded as a representative of all women. I would say that, by and large, intellectual American women have felt uncomfortable with Sarah Palin as the iconic high-achieving woman. I think Palin has a great deal of native intelligence, shrewdness, ambition and work ethic that serves her well. But she hasn't followed the "best and brightest" traditional route to the top via a top college, etc. By those standards, Palin is not well educated and she appears not to be one of those intellectually curious, well-informed, self educated types either.

All of this would be fine in a man, because men get evaluated individually, not as representatives of all men. One of my conservative colleagues actually IMed to me "I can't believe how women like you can put Palin down when she's such a wonderful role model for women". Yes, my colleague - a really nice guy whom I regard as friend - actually had the insensitivity to imply that SP would be a good role model for me or my teen daughter. A woman who bounced around five colleges in six years to get a degree, can't seem to put together a well-formed sentence if she's not reading it off a teleprompter, eloped while pregnant with her first child with a blue-collar husband who's never even been to college, whose own teen daughter is pregnant before even finishing high school. Yes, I'm an education snob from an academic family, sure. But role model for women? How happy would you have been in 2004 if people all over the place had been seriously suggesting that Howard Dean was a role model for you?

I think that's why the NOW brigade is so incensed. It's not just that they disagree with Palin's politics. And to be fair, I'm not suggesting that Palin has particularly nominated herself as a representative of all woman. Well, maybe a bit, but this is not all her fault by any means. It's just the way things are for trailblazers.