A few interesting religious angles in Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece about how Sarah Palin got picked.
First, the young blogger who brought her to the attention of the conservative blogosphere was a "Messianic Jew" (a type of evangelical) who believes that "the hand of God" played a role in choosing Palin: "The longer I worked on it the less I felt I was driving it. Something else was at work."
Second, editors at the conservative magazine, The Weekly Standard, became impressed with her when a magazine fundraising cruise stopped in Alaska. One memorable moment: Palin's lengthy grace before eating.
Most important, Mayer confirms a key point that had been previously suspected: McCain wanted to select Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent, but was convinced that doing so would prompt a floor fight at the Republican convention from social conservatives who would object to Lieberman's pro-choice views on abortion.
A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain's top aides, told me that "McCain and Lindsey Graham"--the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain's closest campaign companion--"really wanted Joe." But Keene believed that "McCain was scared off" in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.
If McCain loses, and if it appears that Palin was a net-minus, religious conservatives will have to grapple with their role in electing Obama.
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And the rest of us will be deprived of four years of comic relief. But the real losers will be the people of Alaska. They get Mrs. Moosebreath back.
A younger, more vital John McCain might have picked Lieberman and risked the floor fight, leading to (possibly) the positive transformation of the Republican Party and possibly to victory in November. Or it might simply have "blown up" the Convention.
We'll never know, and I think Obama will be a better President, so I'm not sorry things turned out this way.
The article below is interesting. Just a day or two after Palin's nomination, James Dobson was glowing about the selection
Ultra Secretive Right Wing Group Met Vet Palin
Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.
CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." This year, thanks to Sarah Palin's selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.
More detail:
http://tinyurl.com/58hhzt
So, Steven, the robocalls were "somewhat misleading" in that they left out the fact the born-alive law could have conflicted with existing law that already protected those infants, but they were "close-to-accurate" as the wording of the born-alive law, so they're OK?
If you want McCain to win the presidency, why not take your aspirations a step further and plan for a credible White House for a change? This kind of stuff probably won't help in the election and definitely hurts any mandate the winner acquires. It's poison, and there are many conservatives who swill it down. Fortunately, there are many who don't.
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