
{"id":1372,"date":"2008-08-30T07:46:35","date_gmt":"2008-08-30T14:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2008-08-30T07:46:35","modified_gmt":"2008-08-30T14:46:35","slug":"punchy-pundits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/30\/punchy-pundits\/","title":{"rendered":"Punchy Pundits"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin: 10px;\"><center><small>Gov Palin &#038; Bike<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-content\/2008\/08\/palin-bike.jpg\" alt=\"Gov Sarah Palin and Harley\" \/><\/small><\/center><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s likely that Sarah Palin is a decent person, though she&#8217;s virtually unknown. But setting aside any of the substance of knowing her, since her selection I&#8217;ve heard pundit after pundit claim that her selection will cement the PUMA (party unity my ass) Hillary Democrats to vote for McCain.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWhat do we know about Mrs. Palin? She&#8217;s pro-life and pro-gun. On these two issues alone, I can&#8217;t imagine that pro-choice, anti-gun Democrats are going to flee an Obama\/Biden ticket in any substantial number. I don&#8217;t know what these pundits are smoking, but keep it away from the rest of us. That assertion is ludicrous.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nFundamentally, I think the VP choices show a great deal about each candidate&#8217;s judgment &#8211; in fact, they&#8217;re demonstrating publicly their &#8220;first hire&#8221; in advance of securing the office. Obama&#8217;s choice of Biden demonstrated a calculated selection of a running mate that would complement his strengths and weaknesses while he governs.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWhat exactly does McCain&#8217;s choice say? I think it is a &#8220;Hail Mary&#8221; (maybe better as Hail Sarah?) pass to neutralize three issues: historic ticket of Obama (hey, we&#8217;ve got a minority too!), age (notice McCain&#8217;s 72nd birthday went mostly without comment yesterday), and having a bonafide conservative on the ticket (which many neo-cons don&#8217;t think of McCain.) But was his choice calculated to help govern?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nSince 40% of the population would vote Democrat or Republican regardless of the ticket, the remaining 20% actually select our leaders. While the choice of Palin will help secure the 40% base, it will likely hurt the 20% of people who will make a choice (hopefully on the merits.) I remain interested in seeing McCain and now Palin&#8217;s speeches at the Republican National Convention next week. I&#8217;d like to hear the substance of the ticket and make some comparisons to what we heard last week from the Democrats. But, I have to admit, I&#8217;m skeptical.<br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gov Palin &#038; Bike It&#8217;s likely that Sarah Palin is a decent person, though she&#8217;s virtually unknown. But setting aside any of the substance of knowing her, since her selection I&#8217;ve heard pundit after pundit claim that her selection will cement the PUMA (party unity my ass) Hillary Democrats to vote for McCain. What do [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[188,187,183,186,180],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}