But Biden dug Palin's hole even deeper. After noting that he opposed same-sex marriage, Biden said he was glad McCain and Palin agreed with he and Obama that same-sex couples should have complete civil rights protection (paraphrasing). Ifil asked Palin if she agreed. Nervous and frozen, faced with choosing a disastrous political answer for swing voters or alienating the Christian right, Palin, for the one and only time in the debate, said she would answer only the very specific question asked, which was whether she supported same-sex marriage. Plain said she did not.
Palin falied to say she did not support full civil rights for LGBT people. That had to send some hard-core right wing Christians into apoplexia! Having worked for years against anti-gay ballot measures and for Equal Rights ordinances and legislation in Oregon, I can't even describe how strongly fundamentalist Christians (I know I am generalizing) oppose legal equality for LGBT people. They literally believe it will lead God to withdraw his protection from America and bring about all manner of pain and woe.
And they just got to see their darling Sara Palin choose the political expedience of not upsetting independent voters over expressing her Christian principles. The Christian right will have to suck it up and accept McCain and Palin, but it will hopefully temper some of their enthusiasm, when their enthusiasm is the main reason Palin was forced on McCain.
THE LOCAL YOKEL AS POLITICAL SAVIOR
Briefly on this: Sara Palin’s wholly unprofessional, forced, cutesy and folksy, down-home charade was another step downward in the GOP’s attempts to push "regular folks" on us AS LEADERS OF THE FREE WORLD. Never mind any semblance of ability, decorum, wisdom, knowledge, work ethic, speaking ability. The test, thinks the GOP and their echo blockheads, should solely be whether we like the person and whether the person is like us. I am also deeply concerned about Palin’s constant references to "Joe Six-Pack". I really, really do not want someone who drinks a six-pack every night to be President or Vice President. Call me crazy.
She was so over the top with her "ya-knows" and ya-betchas", the oozing, plastic sincerity, those exaggerated and often wrongly placed, high-pitched emphases, and especially with the winking, that I am becoming suspicious of what she is up to. Winking? Multiple times and in that childish, sit-com way that crunches up half the face? As pointed out in a DailyKos diary I lost track of, can you imagine winking like that in a job interview? The debates are best understood as the candidate’s job interview to the entire country. I almost wonder if the Republicans and their masters are trying to see how low they can get us to go, how little standards we really have. Their ideal president is a malleable blank slate who will do anything they want, and maybe they want to see how blank a slate they can really get away with.
I hope after watching the down-home and folksy, endearingly inarticulate and unpolished guy we all wanted to have a beer with flush the nation down the toilet for eight years, the American people will opt for intelligence, eloquence, competence and professionalism, but who knows. We like TV make-believe so much and especially, lately, make-believe "reality" TV, that perhaps we actually prefer the fantasy that anyone can be President – if she can just make us like her enough – to the reality that only extraordinary people should ever hold THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB AND MOST POWERFUL OFFICE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.
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