A politicalized version of Anita Renfro, Sarah Palin definitely livens up the cadaverous McCain. She's the vivacious, fun-loving, smart-alecky best girlfriend that every woman, including me, would love to have: She's a Sisterwoman of the first order. May God bless her.
However, watching the Republican convention last night, I waited in vain for someone to promote the pro-life position, since we are all supposed to vote for McCain now that he has chosen pro-life Palin as his VP running mate. No one promoted the life issue while I was watching, not even Palin, whose speech directly followed Rudy Giuliani's. That positioning in itself was disturbing to me: the Republican Party is a split personality; the Giuliani personality is the dominant one.
As for McCain finally realizing how important social conservatives are to the Republican Party, I think that is the usual wishful thinking. Palin's appearance at a Republican National Coalition for Life reception honoring her was canceled at the last minute, according to this ABC News Political Radar blogpost which contains the following quotes from Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum:
"I think this is clearly somebody in the McCain campaign who doesn't understand where the votes are coming from," Schlafly told ABC News. "They only told me this at 10 o'clock last night, and it was a call from somebody down-the-line in the McCain campaign.
"The pro-lifers who paid $95 to come to this event because of Sarah Palin are going to be very unhappy," she added.
To paraphrase, I'm afraid that the pro-lifers who vote for McCain because of Sarah Palin are going to be very unhappy.
I think the Republican party is willing to put up with Palin's pro-life beliefs as long as she continues to support Israel, which may be the real glue in the McCain-Palin ticket. Despite all the "Country First" signs at the convention last night, the Republicans are still firmly ruled by the Israel-first neocons, of whom McCain is definitely one.
As long as Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin are firmly pro-life and pro-America first, they will be considered fringe candidates. Personally, I love fringe.
Nevertheless, wiser Catholics than I make compelling arguments for voting the Republican ticket this year.
My head spins. I think I'll watch the Momsense video again. That is something I can really understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment