Monday, September 1, 2008

Sarah Palin: has McCain given up?

As you should know by now unless you live outside the US or in a cave the Republican presidential candidate (it'll be official in a couple days) has selected the governor of Alaska, a young woman named Sarah Palin, to be his running mate. She's only been governor for about two years is a former beauty pageant contestant and mayor of a small town. She's pretty conservative on their key issues: abortion and, well, abortion.

She's younger than Obama, so it's hard to see how she helps him criticize Obama's lack of experience (though she is only running to be vice president, though if McCain were to win, he would be the oldest elected president in US history, at least the first time; not sure if Reagan was older for his re-election, though I don't think so).


Without going into any issue, I wonder if McCain is giving up. I wonder if he thinks he can really win this election. His choice of vice president makes me think he can't and that he knows it.

The polls have a virtual tie right now. With the Republican convention getting cut short and Gustav getting all the media attention, I'm not sure that the republicans will even get a boost in the polls after the convention has ended (as is normally the case).

She doesn't help lure undecideds (polls seem to indicate this), though that may be McCain's role. Her job may be to shore up the conservative vote, which is not too thrilled about McCain. Of course, I wonder how many of them want a woman one step from the presidency, a concern that could be pretty big given McCain's age. Of course, Thatcher had a pretty good run in the UK so maybe voters won't care.

The overall reaction seems to be negative except among conservatives, so it doesn't look like she helped. We'll see if that's the case.

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