# And again -- who IS Sarah Palin **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 2, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686 "2008-09-02T15:30:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/341 "2008-09-08T19:38:20Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > I’d also make a five buck wager that this guy is not enthused over the McCain VP pick… Now _there’s_ a bet I’d absolutely refuse, seeing as how it’s a certainty I’d lose. 🙂 > [@](#): > > [http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDg5NzEzNGUyNmNlMGZhMjI0YmJmOWJhYzE0NWE0ZmU=](http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDg5NzEzNGUyNmNlMGZhMjI0YmJmOWJhYzE0NWE0ZmU=) > > . . . > > The most important difference: I value executive skill more than most conservatives do I think. Some NRO readers seem to imagine it’s just a matter of having the right convictions and sticking by them. I think it is way more complicated than that. A good executive requires convictions yes. And backbone agreed. But a good executive needs a solid floor of background knowledge so that he / she can sift sense from nonsense in policy proposals. A good executive must be willing to listen to a wide range of views, including some that are not immediately acceptable. A good executive must have a sense of timing: avoiding the equal evils of haste and procrastination. A good executive must have the power to explain and defend his / her actions to a wide variety of audiences, from the largest to the most specialized. > > . . . > > I don’t think academic credentials matter at all in the presidency. (Unlike eg the Supreme Court or the Federal Reserve.) I even believe that there is rapidly diminishing marginal utility for IQ. Clinton was surely smarter than FDR, Nixon smarter than Reagan, Adams smarter than Washington. We are talking about a particular set of decision-making skills - and there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that Palin possesses them. Worse, from my point of view, is the assumption that because she is a conservative Christian that she therefore has intelligent conservative views on every other subject, from what to do with Fannie Mae to what to do about Iran. That’s a greater leap of faith than I can make. > > . . . > > Again let me stress: I am not denying that Sarah Palin may have great skills. She may well. I am insisting that neither you, nor I, nor John McCain has any valid reason to believe that she does. This is not an argument about the attributes she lacks. It’s an argument about the information we lack. **I am pleading with my fellow conservatives: Please demand more and better knowledge before you commit yourselves to a political leader.** That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/342 "2008-09-08T19:49:13Z")
Thanks, **Aleq**. Here’s what I asked: [QUOTE=Oy! to Washington Week] To Sarah Palin: Can you please name the three biggest areas in which your political goals differ from those of George W. Bush and in what way they differ? [/QUOTE] Do you think that’s ok? ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2008, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/343 "2008-09-08T23:48:45Z")
**Shayna,** I swear I didn’t look up anything else by that guy–just my gut feeling that anyone who thinks well enough to come up with that article is not going to be jumping on the Caribou Barbie bandwagon! 😛 **Oy!,** I think that’s a reasonable question–I think I’d go further and ask her straight out some pretty pointed questions. One example would be if she supports the overturn of Roe v Wade, and if so what does she think the punishment should be for a woman convicted of getting an illegal abortion? Or does she think the punishment should be exclusively on the doctor who performed it? I’d also want to ask what her comprehensive energy plan would be to reduce American independence of foreign oil by 25% in the next four years. I’d also ask that since she supports more drilling in US reserve areas, does she also support a “drill it here, keep it here” restriction that would not allow ANY American produced oil to be shipped overseas or to any other country? I think the answers to those questions would be quite illuminating. I think she’s primarily an oil company shill who’d back away from a policy of that nature like it was radioactive cat shit. I’d make sure to ask what her policy would be to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming–make her say right out loud she doesn’t believe in human caused climate change. That oughta go over like a fart in a car considering more than 80% of the American public DOES believe in AGW. I’d ask if she supports teaching creationism in schools and if so how does she defend that under the separation of church and state? My guess is on most of this shit is that she’d kick it back under a “state’s rights” BS statement–that’s McCain’s favorite trick. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/344 "2008-09-09T01:46:16Z")
I don’t know where else to put this, so I’m putting it here. Like most people, I’d have been hard pressed to pick out Sarah Palin on a map before she got the VP nod. I always liked McCain, at least before he started snuggling up to the President (which, yes, he probably had to do to get nominated; time will tell if he’s the same cranky grandpa I wanted to vote for once), and what I’d heard about Palin didn’t bother me as much as some. She’s against abortions, even her own? At least she’s not a hypocrite. She’s for creationism being taught in schools? She seems to be in favor of it being mentioned as an alternate hypothesis but it doesn’t sound like she’s planning to replace evolution with it or present it in the same light. She struck me as a woman who I could respect, even if her political convictions were almost exactly opposite my own. But I heard her speech on the radio and was turned off very quickly by the nasty rhetoric, the crammed-in bits of folksy narrative, and the pimping of her family on the stage (for the record, I think it sucks when she does it, when Obama does it, when Clinton does it, when anyone does it. Don’t trot your family out on stage and expect them to be left alone. I am not voting for your wife/husband/baby.) told me she was nothing more than the identical excrement in new hosiery accessories, possibly on a different day. 😉 Curiously, many people were not of my opinion. I admit I didn’t listen to the whole speech, so maybe there were some sparkling bits after she made the “community organizers have no responsibilities” jab. I didn’t listen to or watch Obama’s speech or Biden’s, though I did read Obama’s speech and loved it. Even more curiously, I caught a short clip of Palin’s speech on video later on and felt instantly warmer to her. I think that may be my disconnect: she’s a pretty and charismatic woman, and something about WATCHING her made her somehow more appealing. I found my own reaction rather jarring. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/345 "2008-09-09T01:57:11Z")
> [@Shayna](#): > > Well, it seems all that cramming hasn’t been too effective so far. I can’t wait until October 2nd. I’m thinking she’ll be better prepared by then. I’m also thinking they will know the question that are going to be asked. Things are still piling up though. I just read an article about a republican official in Alaska who has asked for Palin’s emails for another investigation and Palin has refused to release about 1100 of them. The lady is just no trustworthy. She’s a tough politician but she’s a true politician in the Bush mold. Self serving and dishonest. ---
**Author:** ![Ca3799](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9f8e36/32.png) [@Ca3799](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ca3799)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/346 "2008-09-09T02:52:35Z")
[QUOTE=SmartAleq] “state’s rights” [/QUOTE] That keeps popping up on another board I visit, and I’m not sure what it is all about. The poster(s) say abortion should be a “states rights”, not federal, issue. Do they mean that they want each state to not necessarily make abortion illegal, just unavailable? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/347 "2008-09-09T03:31:44Z")
It means they want the decision protecting it as a Constitutional right to be overturned and for each state to decide for itself whether to make abortion illegal. There are still some pushes to make abortion illegal across the board on a federal level too, though. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/348 "2008-09-09T04:05:50Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > It means they want the decision protecting it as a Constitutional right to be overturned and for each state to decide for itself whether to make abortion illegal. There are still some pushes to make abortion illegal across the board on a federal level too, though. But primarily it’s about overturning Roe v Wade, which would leave the decision in the hands of each state. Nevermind that the people who need abortions the most are the ones who are the poorest and least likely to be able to leave the state to go to one where it is legal. Nevermind that some of the states most likely to criminalize abortion are among the geographically largest in the country. And who cares if we lose a pregant woman or 6000 to back alley abortions? After all, if they were decent people, they never would have gotten pregnant in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/349 "2008-09-09T04:06:51Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#): > > **Shayna,** I swear I didn’t look up anything else by that guy–just my gut feeling that anyone who thinks well enough to come up with that article is not going to be jumping on the Caribou Barbie bandwagon! 😛 I could tell you were just going by your gut feeling – and it’s quite a smart gut you’ve got there, girlfriend! Glad I could confirm what you correctly suspected. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/350 "2008-09-09T05:20:02Z")
On another topic (apologies if this has already been covered in one of the Palin threads, but search doesn’t seem to be working for me at the moment): Is there a GQ-ish answer on how Palin’s baby managed to stay asleep that much at the convention? I didn’t see a whole lot of the proceedings on TV, but I don’t think I ever saw the kid awake, and I’d have thought that being in that noisy an environment would have woken it up. Do babies really sleep that soundly? Or do DS babies sleep that soundly? Or did they pump the kid full of Benadryl? ---
**Author:** ![Slacker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@Slacker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slacker)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/351 "2008-09-09T05:25:57Z")
> [@Hunter\_Hawk](#): > > Is there a GQ-ish answer on how Palin’s baby managed to stay asleep that much at the convention? That’s not too unusual. Infants usually still take a couple of long naps during the day at that age. My son is six months old and he takes one or two 2 hour naps during the day still. As for the noise, usually it’s the louder the better. Babies are supposedly used to loud noise; living inside the womb is apparently like listening to a vacuum cleaner running all day every day. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/352 "2008-09-09T05:40:33Z")
> [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](#): > > Even more curiously, I caught a short clip of Palin’s speech on video later on and felt instantly warmer to her. I think that may be my disconnect: she’s a pretty and charismatic woman, and something about WATCHING her made her somehow more appealing. I found my own reaction rather jarring. She has the ability to stick a knife in you with a smile. And maybe give it a little twist, too. Hear it on the radio, and all you feel is the knife. See it on TV, and you get the smile to go along with it. In fact, in her speech she delivered a lot of those lines in a sort of mischievous way, which made it seem more like a friendly tweak. If she’s said the same lines while pounding her fist and scowling, it would have come across the way you heard it on the radio. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/353 "2008-09-09T19:56:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > She has the ability to stick a knife in you with a smile. And maybe give it a little twist, too. Hear it on the radio, and all you feel is the knife. See it on TV, and you get the smile to go along with it. > > In fact, in her speech she delivered a lot of those lines in a sort of mischievous way, which made it seem more like a friendly tweak. If she’s said the same lines while pounding her fist and scowling, it would have come across the way you heard it on the radio. This, then, would be the fabled ability to tell you to go to Hell and make you happy to be on your way? ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/354 "2008-09-09T20:01:50Z")
> [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](#): > > This, then, would be the fabled ability to tell you to go to Hell and make you happy to be on your way? What’s wrong with me? I never felt the charm of George W, and I don’t feel Sarah Palin’s charm now either. They both just put me off from the moment I saw them. And yet most people find them likeable. What am I lacking that just doesn’t get it? I like John McCain - not as president, but as person. But Bush and Palin? Can’t stand 'em. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/355 "2008-09-09T20:18:24Z")
> [@Oy](#): > > What’s wrong with me? I never felt the charm of George W, and I don’t feel Sarah Palin’s charm now either. They both just put me off from the moment I saw them. And yet most people find them likeable. What am I lacking that just doesn’t get it? I like John McCain - not as president, but as person. But Bush and Palin? Can’t stand 'em. I hear ya. They seem so transparently full of crap (even if it’s crap they actually believe), but without any real charisma (which I find different than having an assertive personality, which they both do have). I only have to assume that it’s one of those “You have to be there” things, meeting them in person, because there isn’t anything real or genuine about either of them to these eyes. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/356 "2008-09-09T20:30:05Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > What’s sexist is the choice of Palin itself. It’s not just that they ceynically assumed all women are so stupid that they’ll vote for anything with a vagina, but that they took an even lower road of bypassing the women in their party who are actually qualified to choose a bimbo in go go boots to try to sex up the appeal of the ticket for white trash men. Putting Palin on the ticket was a deeply cynical and chauvinistic choice. She no different than any of the blonde Fox News bots who wear micro-skirts and mechanically read teleprompters, only they have a little more polish than Palin and lack the screechy voice and irritating Fargo accent. > > McCain hired the political equivalent of the bikini babe who poses on the car. But they were right. White women have flipped 20 % in her favor. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/357 "2008-09-09T20:35:34Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > But they were right. White women have flipped 20 % in her favor. I don’t believe they’ve flipped. I think more conservative white women might be getting interested, but I don’t believe that 20% actually switched from Obama to McCain. I refuse to believe that that many women are that stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/358 "2008-09-09T20:46:00Z")
Flipped? No. As Arianna Huffington pointed out yesterday, Palin is a Trojan Moose designed to take the attention away from the old guy. It has worked well hasn’t it? Maybe when she stops getting all the “sweetheart” press, the women will see her for what she is. > **[Sarah Palin: A Trojan Moose Concealing Four More Years of George Bush](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sarah-palin-a-trojan-moos_b_124867)** > > Palin and the circus she's brought to town is designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing. Read MoreVideo: Sparring With Chuck... ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/359 "2008-09-09T21:13:40Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > I hear ya. They seem so transparently full of crap (even if it’s crap they actually believe), but without any real charisma (which I find different than having an assertive personality, which they both do have). I only have to assume that it’s one of those “You have to be there” things, meeting them in person, because there isn’t anything real or genuine about either of them to these eyes. OK, at least it’s not _just_ me. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2008, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686/360 "2008-09-09T22:09:36Z")
Oh no, it’s SO not just you! I listen to my instincts about people–sometimes it’s difficult for me since I will get a strong dislike of someone without any valid objective evidence that I should be wary of them, but on many more instances than not my instinctive revulsion towards someone is borne out later on by their behavior. I don’t like to talk about it because it’s just the kind of snap judgement I dislike in others but I can’t stop the way I feel and when I see McCain and Palin I get the same feeling I do when I spot scorpions and rattlesnakes. And Jerusalem crickets, but that’s just a personal phobia. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-again-who-is-sarah-palin/461686.md?page=19)