but she's influenced my thinking a great deal, in terms of what makes the GOP tick. One principle she gives a lot of weight to is the "tribal" nature of GOP politics. For one thing, they're not motivated so much by what their own leaders stand for (or actually do), but by who their leaders make enemies of (that would be us). This whole "internal consistency" thing we spend so much time scratching our heads over is mostly beside the point. Which, as a theory, clears up a whole lot.
I can see that everyone's been vastly engrossed and downright obsessed by all these revelations about Sarah Palin's bad parenting, reproductive decisions, daughter's sex life etc, over the past few days, but I doubt any of that will persuade people to vote against McCain. Indeed, I think the religious right will find the liberal sniping at her personal choices to be galvanizing while everyone else will see it as a lively sideshow, but unimportant in terms of their vote.
Anyway, the only people who make a fetish of other people's reproductive choices are social conservatives and they will forgive her anything because she's a right wing Christian. There are, of course, many many other things about Palin and her selection that are very damaging, but in my view this Jerry Springer, Jamie Spears stuff may even help her more than hurt her. (This whole thing has a bit of that old "dragging 100 dollar bills through trailer parks" vibe, which actually ended up making Clinton more popular, not less.) Here in Murika, people love to gossip about others' foibles and they love to compare their own lives to those who have made other choices ---- but they don't hold ordinary everyday problems against them. Redemption R Us.
Today I hear that the media is asking if she will stay on the ticket, because of all the "problems" her pregnancy story has caused. barring something else, I think she'll stay. The memories of Eagleton are fresh enough that nobody wants to repeat them --- McGovern was the one who suffered for both the choice and the removal of him. And this one is even more dicey. Palin's a woman, she's from a rural state and she's become the poster child for the religious right.
This was always going to be a turn-out election and without the churches to counteract the Obama campaign's modern ground operation, they don't stand a chance. They can't risk angering James Dobson's army and I don't think they will unless something a lot more damaging than the mundane news of a knocked up seventeen year old comes out
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/defying-his-mortality-by-digby-i-can.html