On my dad, besides the actual issues and who lined up where with his changing views (retirement really has changed him a lot!), he thought McCain was A. Too old, and B. Looked like a pervy old man. LOL.

If female voters really went over to McCain when he chose Palin, that shows that those female voters really don't care about the issues. At all. Because Palin and Clinton are on starkly opposite ends of the political spectrum.

And anyone with half a brain who cares to look can see that.

I'm telling you, political commentators are often not worth their salt. McCain's people are not that stupid, and they don't think voters are that stupid. More likely, it was because she's conservative. The fact that she had a vagina and is hot were a plus.

Maybe

I think it's a combination of the two. People were operating under the mistaken assumption that McCain wasn't conservative, so the party was trying to fight that popular assumption...Palin was vocal enough on the socially conservative issues that the far-right base would embrace her.

If he was just looking for a woman, as I've said before on the board, I would have rather it had been Kay Hutchison. Her economic policies would have worked with the "base," but she probably would have been considered too liberal socially (as she's spoken out in favor of Roe, and to some people, the social discussion begins and ends with abortion). Plus, she's in her mid-to-late 60s, and I think McCain wanted someone more youthful on the ticket.

I disagreed with too many of Obama's policies to consider voting for him, but the Palin choice was extremely disappointing to me. I'm hoping that in the next 2 years (before mid-term elections) and next 4 years (before the Presidential election), the party is able to re-group.

LMAO at pervy old man. I didn't think he looked like a perv. I just thought he looked...embalmed.

I got sick of hearing about Palin fulfilling the "naughty librarian" stereotype for some men. As in she takes her hair down, shakes it, removes the glasses, and gives a BJ in the library stacks. :rolleyes:

Oh, I'm not calling anyone else out on their lack of deep Jindal knowledge. I don't claim to be an expert myself. Any hard look at Louisiana politics just makes me want to re-read All the King's Men.

I just occasionally peruse some sites that occasionally track and condemn his claims about faith and science.

While I'm not really in favor of capitalism from an ethical standpoint, that's what we have in this country. If we want to be capitalists, we should let capitalism do its job which means weak businesses go under while strong businesses merge to create mega powers.

After the crumble, we'll have an upswing as we always do. What we're doing now mirrors what we did in reaction to the Great Depression. We pumped tax payer money into the economy and extended the depression all the way into WWII. That's not to say that the war ended the depression. I'm just highlighting that the Great Depression lasted at least the twelve years from 1929-1941.

We're not even in a full-on depression yet and we've already got two enormous stimulus packages plus the latest mortgage bailout nonsense that Obama is working on now. I understand where he's coming from and why he's doing it, but I don't think it's the right move.

I just figured you could enlighten us.

I'm by no means an economist or economic scholar, but it seems like you're equating the US system with more of a pure capitalism, a laissez-faire system. I don't know that that's completely accurate.

The "Great Depression" is a tough comp, because I don't think anyone really knows how much FDR's social programs helped. I think a lot more credit has to be given to WWII and the business that came out of that. But, that's getting into my "FDR is Overrated" kick...

It isn't accurate. This is not a pure capitalist system.

I don't think the social programs worked to right the economy; however, they did drastically improve our quality of life.

And although you might disagree, I think it's a shame that the McCain campaign was Palin's debut on the national stage.

I think her policies are a lot less socially conservative than they were framed. I think she actually has kind of a western libertarian streak when it comes to most social issues and the government's role, but maybe because of how the campaign needed to use her, that wasn't the message that got out.

Being resolutely anti-abortion holds a lot of people to the party too even though the current perspective is that it hurts more than it helps. While it hurts the party to seem neanderthal, if the party backs off social issues and presents no contrast on those points, there's a big group of people who will be up for grabs every election who are presently really reliable GOP voters. It's a gamble I'm not sure will pay off and since it reverses a position the party has held for a long time, building a real sense that the GOP in its core principles doesn't want to be the morality police will take time.

Maybe Jindal sells intellectually attractive socially conservative positions next time around.

ETA: okay, maybe it's not a big block of voters, but I think a significant number of people who have pulled the level for the GOP nationally in the last 10 years have done it because of social issues. If the party wants to drop them because they have come to realize that they really aren't the government's job and that's a principle to build a party around, that's one thing, but if it's just a cost vs. benefits analysis with voters, you've got to figure out what you are selling instead of the social programs the Dems have got. "We'll leave you alone" may not be enough in a hostile economic climate.

OMG, does Rush Limbaugh know??

I think you're probably at least partially right, but it seems like there was at least a little more strategy involved. This view ("bringin' in the womens" as it were) was popular speculation at the time, but as inept as McCain's camp was in the "small-picture" stuff, I'd be shocked if they made this poor of a "big-picture" maneuver - it seems much more likely that Palin was intended to motivate the base with someone who could play both "attack dog" and "snake charmer" while McCain reached across the aisle for moderates. Sort of a "good cop/bad cop" thing, with the added bonus that the bad cop would be what most "common" American males would consider attractive. Remember: attractiveness matters.

It seems like this plan was not so much ill-conceived as ill-executed, since Palin went absolutely balls-to-the-wall beyond what I think McCain envisioned (and the Newsweek piece seems to back this up). She got off the leash, as far as what the McCain camp expected.

The thing is, as insane as this plan sounds in retrospect, it appeared to work for a brief moment - McCain's post-convention bump was large and quite real, and seemed to portend good things. However, once the buzz died down and the questions grew louder, Palin simply couldn't keep the ball rolling, and McCain's guys saw the writing on the wall and bailed.

It probably wouldn't have mattered, given the state of the economy at the time, but it sure would have helped to bring in someone (ANYONE) with real economic experience (like, as you noted, Romney).

While I don't mind publicly stating that I felt a mob existed, I feel less comfortable publicly stating my opinion on who makes up the mob. I think that should be something left to pm or not said at all.

Prior planning prevents poor performance

I said this awhile ago about Palin, there were waaaay too many variables for that to have been an effective strategy for success on an already shaky platform

Now if Jindal is to be the next up in line for runing for president, the GOP has 4 years to see what he is doing now for LA, as well as vet him to see if he will be able to do what McCain wasn't able to do.

Again something else I stated a while back...don't forget PUMA.

I stated once before the was an "Oooh look at me, I got a girl" vibe from McCain when they brought in Palin and the way that it showed like the GOP didn't know her as well as they claimed that they did also was ANOTHER reason why the McCain camp faltered.