The Worst Vice-Presidential Nominee in U.S. History

[joreth]

I'm not even going to touch on the absolute horror of Sarah Paulin's beliefs - the fact that she is a member of a church that supports the militant group that is basically the Christian al-Queda, she's against a woman's right to choose (not just abortion, but birth control too), she's abstinence-only, she's a fucking ID proponent, and she tried to pass off her daughter's teenage illigitimate birth as her own (and poorly, I might add).  Here's an article from someone who actually once believed that McCain was a good choice as Republican candidate and why choosing Sarah Paulin is the worst thing McCain could have done WITHOUT even getting into the obvious "crazier than a shithouse rat" beliefs (all underlining emphasis mine):

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/the-worst-vice-presidenti_b_122491.html

An article by a MCCAIN SUPPORTER:

"Selecting Sarah Palin as its choice for a vice presidential candidate is perhaps the worst such choice in American History. To be fair, maybe there are worse choices, but I don't know how bad William O. Butler was when he ran with Lewis Cass against Zachary Taylor.

But it's far worse than Dan Quayle, who was a sitting senator. Worse even than Geraldine Ferraro, who at least served in Congress for three-terms. And far worse than William Miller, a choice so obscure when selected by Barry Goldwater that he (honestly) later did an American Express commercial asking, "Do you know me?" And that ad was after the election. But even Miller had been a Congressman for 12 years. And been a prosecutor during the Nuremberg War trials against Nazis. Sarah Palin lists her credits as a hockey mom.
...
And so I felt that John McCain, for all his weaknesses, was the lesser of all evils and was glad he got the nomination. Throw that out the window. McCain-Palin is an unthinkable disaster. ... It's always said that the most important decision a presidential candidate makes is their pick for vice president. It shows their thinking and judgment. John McCain, in his first decision, has just told the world that he believes Sarah Palin is the most qualified person to be a heartbeat from the presidency. ... it's near-impossible to look at the list and suggest to the American public that Sarah Palin is the best choice of Republican women to be vice president. And again, this is ignoring the men he who could have been chosen.
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It's not that Sarah Palin is inexperienced. It's that this is gross political misconduct. ... on a grassroots political level, her nomination takes away the Republicans' ONLY weapon in the campaign - calling Barack Obama inexperienced. .. She has so little experience that she makes Sen. Obama look like FDR, Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar combined. ... All they have is "Dear Democratic women: please pretend our VP candidate is Hillary Clinton. Just forget that she's pro-life. And against most things Democrats stand for."
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What this does in the most profound and grandiose way possible is give lie to John McCain's pompous posturing that he Always Puts America First. And that undercuts the most prominent campaign issue of his entire career, that everything he does is for reasons of honor. There is nothing honorable about making Sarah Palin your vice presidential nominee. Nothing. Unless you define honor as "blatantly pandering."
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when people around the nation were waiting to hear about Sarah Palin's qualifications and gravitas to be Vice President of the United States, the first five minutes of her speech were spent talking about her husband being a champion snowmobiler. ... In the end, the only case she herself made for being on the ticket was praising Hillary Clinton! That's it, period. Now, it might be enough to attract some women -- but it doesn't make a case for the ticket. Why? Hint: some women did vote for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman. But most women voted for Hillary Clinton because she was a Democrat, as well as a woman, who stood for important Democratic values they seriously believed in. ... And, in the end, it all focuses back on Barack Obama, with his indictment of eight years of the Bush Administration and of John McCain's flawed judgment - and John McCain's defense of all that. "

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What the religious fundies don't seem to understand is that Argument From Authority is a logical fallacy.  They do this same stuff when trying to discredit science.  They campaign to find any quote at all that can be attributed to a "scientist" that will seem to imply that the scientist believes in god.  That we all embraced his scientific notions because he's a "scientist", so therefore we should embrace his "religious" notions because he's an authority figure.  That's not how it works.  It's the CLAIM, not the person.

The same thing goes with gender issues.  Feminists and egalitarians want a woman in positions of political authority, sure.  But we don't want them in positions of authority because we think the shape of their genitals is important.  We want them in positions of authority because the shape of their genitals is IRRELEVANT.  Which means, we do not want a woman in office because she's a woman, we want a QUALIFIED PERSON in office and we do not want QUALIFIED WOMEN to be overlooked.

Sarah Palin is just flat out not qualified.  From her lack of experience to her values and beliefs that threaten to undermine the very system our nation was founded on, she is not qualified to be second in command to the leader of our country.

And she's a disgrace to both women and men everywhere.

*Edit: leora has done quite a bit of early research on just who Palin is and what she stands for, plus some rather insightful musings on her interpretations of the early data.  Check out her journal for more information.  This was mainly a rant and to point out that even the Republicans don't like her.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

Several of those claims are wrong. She is for abstinence-only education but claims to support birth control. She does not define birth control, so she may well be against the pill, IUDs, and plan B, but there is no evidence she is against condoms.

Also, it's unlikely that her son is her grandson given that her daughter is about five months pregnant currently and the child is about four months old.

[joreth]

I haven't done much looking into the whole son/grandson issue, but it was pointed out somewhere that if she wasn't faking the pregnancy, then she intentionally endangered the life of her own premature, Downs-syndrome baby for the sake of her political career which, IMO, is even worse.

I didn't really go into detail her claims about birth control, etc., but being against any form of birth control (without the scientific evidence to support that it's actually harmful, which is not what she is claiming as far as I know) while not including condoms in that ban only reinforces my own opinion that she is not "feminist", her membership in a group that calls themselves "feminist" notwithstanding. It's still anti-woman's-right-to-choose if you only support the one form of birth control that requires male cooperation.

The majority of the claims in the article stick with her lack of experience, not the more sensationalist issues surrounding her that *I* find most appalling, and those issues I did not go into detail about.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree... her pregnancy with Trig raises a lot of questions. I have no idea what she was thinking when she got onto a plain while in labor.

However, as to birth control, she ~may~ be against those forms. Or she may not. There is no reliable information either way on the internet. All we have is her statements that she is absolutely against abortion in all cases and for all reasons except if the mother will die, but she is in favor of birth control. Neither "abortion" nor "birth control" is defined. That is what leads t the uncertainty. Until she clarifies her view, it's hard to judge her. We just don't know her stance.

[leora.livejournal.com]

There is a meta-issue that I find scary...

someone was selected for whom so little of her views are findable. I highly doubt McCain knows the details of Palin's views either.

There are a lot of issues for which I cannot find any clear information on what her position is.

One of the things I really liked about Obama was how detailed the information on his campaign web site is about exactly what his positions are and how he intends to act on them.

We have a few details about Palin and a few clear positions like her extreme anti-choice view, but we have very, very little information about most of her views. And the info isn't on McCain's web site anywhere I could find it either.

[joreth]

As far as I can tell, she was chosen simply because she is female, which is a pandering ploy to win over the Clinton supporters, but she's an ID proponent (apparently she announced that explicitly over the weekend), and she's anti-abortion, which makes her not quite against any of McCain's big issues.

I agree that McCain probably doesn't know anything else about her and I am insulted that he thinks I would vote for a woman simply because she's a woman, even though she's in direct opposition to my values. This kind of misinformed belief on how to reach the citizens of the nation is frightening. I just can't stomach the thought of a man like that running the country. He is completely out of touch with the people he wants to rule. Whether I agree with Obama or not on any given issue, he at least has made quite wise decisions on how to reach out to people - he seems to understand people and how to appear to give them what they want without significantly compromising his own beliefs.

And I find that infinitely more valuable in a presidential candidate than one who is completely out of touch with reality.

[leora.livejournal.com]

The more I read about her, the more I think it was a combination of pandering to women and pandering to conservatives. She's there to bring in the Christian Right. And they do like her.

She goes against McCain's stated environmental stand. She goes way against it. She's to the right of Bush on environmentalism.

But she's there to be a woman and to be strongly pro-life and Christian.

She is definitely a Creationist. Do you have details on her ID stance? I know she believes in Creationism, but I keep getting mixed reports on her exact stance about ID in schools. A direct quote, preferably a long one and with context would be awesome.

I have found the view that you should teach both but I've also found articles saying that her position is that if it comes up, then teachers should be allowed to discuss it.

Exactly what that means is open to question though too... A lot of her views have annoying ambiguities in how they are stated. Usually what I do is research the voting record for a better idea, rather than going based on what people say, but she doesn't have much of a record on these issues. She's been at the state level, not the national level, and so she's never had the power to really affect things.

[joreth]

Unfortuately, my knowledge of her ID stance comes from Dragoncon. At D'con this weekend, I spent a great deal of time in the science and skeptics tracks and during one of my panels, someone burst through the door and announced that, just that morning, a few minutes prior, Palin said on air that she believes ID should be given equal consideration to evolution in science classes. Several other people throughout the day made the same claim that they, personally, heard the broadcast and were not merely repeating that first guy's statement.

I was unable to get internet access and wasn't in my room long enough to watch TV, so I couldn't independently verify it.

I'm of the opinion that creationism should only be taught in school alongside all other religions' creationist stories in a theology/religion/mythology course as it has been proven, scientifically and legally, that ID and creationism are not science. A teacher being asked that question should refer the students to the appropriate religious/theologous authority. Therefore, I consider even the more ambiguous statements of "if a teacher is asked, it should be discussed" to be equally insidious and damaging to "both should be taught" - perhaps even more insidious as it is more subtle.

In the very rare circumstance when religious issues being discussed in public schools does not violate the separation of church and state (for example, elective world religion classes, or history lessons that include the impact religion had within the context of a historical event), it is my opinion that the only way those circumstances don't violate the separation is when they discuss all religions. Creationism in schools and "teach all the alternatives" is clearly a Christian subterfuge to get Christianity into the school system, since they do not propose that any OTHER mythology get "equal time". When they say "discuss all the options", they mean "discuss BOTH the options", as though no other religion's beliefs are valid.

In the panel I attended on Issues with Education, many teachers of disciplines other than science stood up to tell tales of problems teaching their subjects too. For example, a history book said "Muslims believe that Mohammed did X" while simultaneously saying "Jesus did Y" ... not "Christians believe that Jesus did Y".

But this is more ranting on religion in schools, so I'll stop now.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I agree with that.

I'm actually fairly pleased with how my school taught religion. I went to public schools until college. Religion came up twice. It came up in social studies when we read about and discussed the history and beliefs of Hinduism, Buddhism, and possibly some other religions, but I don't recall a this point. It was mainly in the context of: this is the basics of what these religions believe. We were studying it, I assumed, because it is part of the culture of the regions. We were also studying other things about the regions.

Religion also came up in English class, sort of. We had to read portions of the Bible. The teacher explicitly stated something like: no matter what you believe, the Bible has a huge effect on culture and literature, you will need to be familiar with what it says to be an informed person.

That seemed to be true then, and it does still seem to be true now. Given that the demographics of my classes was roughly 50% Christian and 50% Jewish it meant that many of us really hadn't read the New Testament and had only rough ideas about what it said.

I also got religious training in Hebrew School, but that is obviously a completely different thing. And I did read Genesis and Exodus because of it (it was a book a year thing, but only for the older kids, so I never ended up doing all of the books. I read Leviticus on my own later and still haven't read Numbers or Deuteronomy or all of the New Testament. I tried to read The Book of Mormon once but the writing was even worse than reading the translated Bible. I am not intellectually rigorous enough to want to read this and still hold with the opinion that any book written by a divine being should be better written and easier to read.)

[joreth]

I went to Catholic school, and my exposure to religion was more fair than what I hear in public schools. Religion was ONLY discussed in religion classes. Yes, it was mandatory to take religion classes at my school, but religious principles were not discussed anywhere else, with the very rare exception similar to your experiences - when religion of the region was important/influential of the culture of that region in history/social-studies/literature.

We had 8 semesters of religion class and one of them was a mandatory World Religion class, in which we briefly touched upon all the other major religions around the world. We also had an elective upper-class English course that studied world literature, which, of course, touched upon that culture's religious beliefs. All lessons in religion were in the vein of "this is the philosophy we are studying", not "this is the belief system you should have".

I had 7 years of Health Ed, which included sexual biology, from 6th grade up through senior year, each year being age-appropriate and progressively more complex. Never once was it abstinence-only. We discussed it in pure biological terms and completely removed religious opinion on the matter. In biology, we were taught that Evolution was *the* theory with no mention of "alternative theories" since, y'know, there *are* no alternative theories being bandied about the scientific community (not that they wouldn't accept one, if one somehow managed to be better than Evolution, which currently has *all* evidence supporting it).

Attending the various religious ceremonies was mandatory, but participation in them was not. I could sleep during the Christmas mass if I wanted to and did not have to accept communion, but I did have to go. The main reason was that all the teachers were attending and there wasn't anywhere else for us to go that was supervised.

The only time I ever encountered any resistence was when I had to do an oral report on any world religion and was denied the opportunity to do my report on Satanism and during my religion class, each student was expected to participate by leading a "prayer" at the beginning of class. The "prayer" could be about anything and on the student's own religion. Since I was atheist, I was not allowed to skip the prayer entirely because it was graded under "participation", but I was offered the alternative of playing soothing music and leading a "meditation" instead, which I did even though I disagreed with the principle of allowing paganism but not allowing atheism. Upon reflection, I wish it had occurred to me to use the time to explain atheism, perhaps using something like Greta Christina's post about Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, but my atheism was not well-formed and I had virtually no philosophical resources to guide me back then.

I'm shocked and appalled that I got a more fair and unbiased education in a private Catholic school than our children do in public schools.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Found it!

link

You are correct. She supports teaching Creationism in schools.

That clears up one of the things I was trying to figure out that I got mixed info on.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

I was informed that she was chosen because she embodies the conservative christian view with good family values (this is from what Dave and Ray and I listened to on Sirius radio yesterday).

[joreth]

There are lots of people who embody the conservative christian view with "good family values". And many of those people have much more experience and much more clearly stated viewpoints, so why didn't McCain choose a more qualified candidate with the same values?

Because she's female. The fact that she happens to agree with most of McCain's issues is what allowed McCain to choose a female as his running mate in an attempt to swindle the previous Clinton-supporters.

Why he chose such a poor candidate in his pandering to women, I'll never understand. Even, as the article states, Condoleeza Rice would have been a better candidate, from his perspective.

But his poor decision-making only emphasizes to me how much we need Obama to win.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

Err, yes I left out the part that yes, she was chosen because she was female, and the stuff I stated above.

I really think they thought they'd get a bunch of Hillary voters with their choice.

And you're entirely correct, she's got piss poor experience, plus the fact that the news was stating she'd used her power for personal gain, to get people she didn't like fired.

[phyrra.livejournal.com]

How can she say she's feminist if she's against condoms, against birth control, and against Pro-Choice?

[joreth]

She's a member of a group called Feminists For Life, which is a pro-life organization. I find the logic internally inconsistent, so I can't effectively answer your question, other than to simply point out her membership in that group.

However, as leora points out, the reports about specifically which methods of birth control she is against are contraditory, but as a proponent of abstinence-only, that philosophy includes anti-birth control sentiments, so regardless of the contradictory reports, her self-inclusion in the abstinance-only program implies, to me, that she is actually against all forms of birth control.