Jim Wright (link via Whatever):

This just ticks me off.

Don't get me wrong here, I like Sarah Palin. I do. A lot. Her house is less than ten miles from my own. She grew up right here in the MatSu Valley, just down the road from Stonekettle Station. I've met her. My wife has met her - and we've got the pictures to prove it. She’s tough, and smart, and very Alaskan. She’s been good to the military here in Alaska, and unlike a lot of Republican Neocons these days she has a son in uniform who is serving in Iraq right now. [actually, deploys there on September 11 - o.g.] She stood up to her own party and went after corruption with a vengeance. She slapped Big Oil upside the head, something that is completely unheard of for an Alaskan politician. She not only bit the hand that fed her corpulent predecessors, she dammed near gnawed it off - which is something that fills me as an Alaskan with more than a touch of glee. I don’t agree with everything she stands for, especially her stance on core Republican agenda planks, but I do very much admire Sarah Palin and respect her.

I voted for her - after I swore I would not vote another goddamned Republican into Alaskan office. And I fully intend to vote for her again when and if she runs for reelection as Alaska's Governor.

I think her exceptional common sense, tough frontier mentality, and tenacious no-nonsense attitude is a good compliment to John McCain. I think Sarah Palin will make a dandy VP, and an even better President a few years down the line.

I also happen to think that she's the best thing that has happened to Alaskan politics in a long, long while.

So what the hell is my problem?

Well, I happen to think she's the best thing that's happened to Alaskan politics in a long, long while.

And I want to keep her. Here. In Alaska.

Okay, so John McCain has picked Sarah Palin for his running mate. I was against it months ago, more for reasons having to do with Palin’s best interest than anything else really. As I replied to reader Bobbert by e-mail:

I like what I’d been reading about Palin. She’s popular up there in a way that no other governor I know of has been. I thought she could have had a real future in national politics—but this kind of short-circuits that.

Barack Obama has been running for president longer than Palin has been governor. All the enthusiasm for her nationally has to do almost entirely with her second X chromosome and her attractiveness.

Since writing that, I’ve actually seen her (on TV) in action on the stump, at the rally in Ohio where her VP candidacy was announced. I’m warming up to the idea now and getting a much better idea of why she’s as popular in Alaska as she is. Hint: it’s not as much because of X chromosomes up there as it is in the Lower 48.

Also worth bearing in mind is how she got to be governor. She defeated an incumbent Republican governor in the primary, someone who was already a big fish in Alaska politics even before becoming governor (a little more detail here) You don’t do that, even in Alaska, without some chops.

My plea is "Don't underestimate her."

I worked on the Tony Knowles gubernatorial campaign 2 years ago... Sarah, a relative unknown, was running in the primary against Frank [Murkowski] and a wide field of well-liked Alaskan politicians, and was treated like a joke, right up to the primary election night when it became clear that she was the Republican candidate.

The general election season continued the theme... To many of us it felt like the Democratic party didn't ever take her seriously. We all knew Sarah had a chance of winning, even a good chance, ...but no one predicted the landslide that developed, or her ability to maintain an 80% approval rating.

Sarah is a shark. She is smart, and she is shrewd. However, she comes across as extremely personable; you can't help but like her in person. She is a good public speaker, I've seen better from her in Alaska, and considering how little time she had to prepare for today's speech, I think we'll see much better from her in the near future.

The biggest mistake we can make is to write her off, ignore her, or think she won't bring anything to the campaign. Quit with the jokes and the remarks about how cute and quaint she is. Stop with the pats on the back and the hurr hurr stuff...

Our job is to remember and remind everyone else that it is John McCain running for President and not Sarah Palin... We don't want people thinking about Sarah as the President.

I say this because I believe Sarah could win if she were the one running for President...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 22:21:04 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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