The New ‘Ethical’ Face Of Republicanism? August 29, 2008
Posted by bensix in Uncategorized.trackback
McCain has chosen Sarah Palin, the Governer of Alaska, as his Veep. Much focus will be placed on the fact that she’s young (younger than Obama, in fact) and a women, but I believe that there’s another significant factor in the choice.
In 2004 she resigned from her position as the Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, protesting against the dismissal of her whistleblower complaints against favouritism and other unethical practises. This led to fines for several officials.
Since then, she has campaigned against leading figures from her own party, and has gained a reputation as an honourable politician. One Weekly Standard columnist has described her as “a politician of eye-popping integrity” (yes, coming from the Weekly Standard, I know).
With this in mind, it appears that McCain is attempting to break away from the popular vision of the Republican Party, not merely in age and gender but in individual principle.
A slight problem, however, is that only this month she’s had an investigation established into her sacking of a Commissioner. Little appears to have been found as yet, but if the Democrats realise the Republican strategy they may target it nonetheless.
Update: Andrew Sullivan notes that, while the GOP are obviously praying for attack on Palin’s ‘inexperience’, she doesn’t appear to have any foreign policy experience whatsoever.
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I’ll tell you this, the amount of US bloggers who were undecided are suddenly seriously thinking McCain…What the fuck?
How can a Veep pick suddenly erase the terrible 8 year record of the GOP government, with McCain standing as a Bush-a-like?
I’ve just about given up on the American people, they deserve to be hoisted by their own petard.
The best are those who are voting for McCain ‘because of his judgement’. I’d like to ask them to tell me, off the cuff, at least three judgements that he’s ever made.
Ben
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