The Lofty Lantern

With the news that Sarah Palin’s unwed 17 year old daughter is pregnant, many are predicting that the GOP will be thrown into disarray. They’re wrong; this will prove a boon in mobilizing the fundamentalist vote and will help humanize the pro-life movement in the eyes of mainstream voters.

It’s true that Sarah Palin was unable to keep one of her five children from choosing to stray. Yet given the consistent failure of abstinence-only indoctrination, this situation should be familiar to every fundamentalist in the country who has seen it play out in the life of a friend or family member. Already they are seeing it as a cause for solidarity:

Bristol Palin is not going to abort her unborn child. She’s going to keep the baby and marry the father. Good for her. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did happen, and now she’s going to do the right thing — the hard thing. Again: good. Mother and child — and father — need support.

Sarah Palin has stood by her daughter’s side through a crisis, and persevered. Rather than having an abortion, her daughter is getting married. Her family is growing and stable, and she’ll soon have the joy of being a grandmother. In their eyes it’s a perfect example of how pro-life ideology can transform a bad situation into a happy ending.

I expect that most moderates will also appreciate this development. Every parent hopes to one day have grandchildren, and recognizes that simply being there to hold their child’s hand is often more important than anything else.

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But can somebody explain to me why Chris Cilizza thinks that Alaska Republican Governor Sarah Palin would be a “Hail Mary” pick for John McCain? The basic distinction between the safe picks and the Hail Mary picks are that the safe picks are all white men while the Hail Mary ones aren’t.

I get why Bobby Jindal is a risk. He has some, shall we say staunch, conservative views that will turn off a lot of voters. And, as we horrifyingly saw in the 2003 campaign, when his ethnicity did become an issue (because of the well-named Kathleen Blanco), that could also cause problems for a Republican campaign.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, doesn’t share those problems. Her position on abortion is just as extreme, but her story (A child with Down’s Syndrome, etc) will mitigate many of the concerns of independent white women (who, truth be told, will decide this election as they have the last handful).

While we’re asking for explanations, when will the story be told of Rob Portman’s PR staff? Is there any office this guy doesn’t get considered for? He had press releases issued in previous years as to whether he’d run for Governor of Ohio, Senator of Ohio, and even President of the United States. The guy is a former junior Congressman who served a few months as US Trade Representative and a few more as Director of the OMB. I get that Ohio matters, but he’s not even from a swing district like Columbus, or even from a region the Republicans have trouble in. He’s from Cincinatti, one of the safest districts in the entire country. It even elected Jean Schmidt. Twice. For a Republican, winning an election there ain’t exactly Truman beats Dewey is what I’m saying. And yes, the guy has economic experience and McCain is weak in that, but do you know what Portman was doing in Congress? He was on the Ways and Means Committee. That’s a terrific committee to be on if you want to stay in Congress, because every person with business before Congress has an excellent reasons to donate money to your campaign. For a national campaign? Not so much. I’m not saying that Rob Portman is a bad guy, or shouldn’t or won’t be playing a crucial role in the McCain campaign or a McCain Presidency. Hell, he’d be an interesting Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of Commerce. But it isn’t exactly astonishing that the people pushing him are invariably “Washington insiders.” Portman is a Washington insider.

Some of you might note George Bush Sr., who is the only person to be about as odd a choice. I’d note that there is a huge difference, politically, if not in reality, between a former Director of the CIA and a former US Trade Representative. I’d also note that the only reason Bush got the VP offer in 1980 was because he actually ran for President and stunned everybody with how strong of a campaign he’d run. Portman has done no such thing. Let’s get him off of the list of viable candidates already

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