John McCain’s selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate surprised many political observers, who expected a higher-profile choice like Tim Pawlenty or Mitt Romney. What surprised was Palin’s relative obscurity. Not surprising was the crass pandering Palin’s selection represents, to disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters on one hand, and to the Religious Right on the other. Time will tell, but I doubt McCain’s campaign can have it both ways and successfully appeal to these very different groups simultaneously.

Palin’s speaking persona is engaging; her content, unimpressive. Palin introduced herself and her family well; from there, it was downhill. She ignored many policy issues squarely addressed in Barack Obama’s content-packed acceptance speech, wrongly mocked Obama’s community-organizing experience as lacking “actual responsibilities,” railed against unspecified “Washington elites,” “special interests,” “the Washington herd,” and “oil company lobbyists” – hypocritically, since, while running Washington the past eight years, her own Republican Party has virtually rubber-stamped oil interests’ views. Unlike Obama’s and Biden’s addresses last week, Palin’s speech ignored Americans’ economic pain, or compelling stories of Americans squeezed by foreclosures, lack of health insurance, and job discrimination. She hurled plenty of right-wing “red meat”: less taxes, less Big Government, more war in Iraq, and single-minded zeal for more oil drilling, accompanied by delegates chanting “drill, baby, drill.” In the process, Palin probably ignored that her audience wasn’t only conservative Republican delegates in St. Paul, but also millions more, far more ideologically moderate and diverse, viewers. Political scientists know national-convention delegates are very unrepresentative of their parties’ identifiers: on average, Republican delegates are further right than Republicans in the electorate are – and much further right than the electorate as a whole. I doubt this reality much concerned Karl Rove’s deputy, Steve Schmidt, who now heads McCain’s campaign, favoring the brass-knuckled personal negativity that has defined McCain’s advertising lately.

In the early 1990s, Religious Right leaders pursued “stealth tactics” to gain control of the Republican Party, with considerable success. Today, Republican stealth tactics (attempting to conceal Palin’s extreme conservatism) continue. As vice president, Palin would be the far right’s rubber stamp in the White House, pushing more right-wing Supreme Court nominees like Clarence Thomas and salivating at overturning Roe v. Wade. Palin’s radical-right positions include opposing endangered-species protection for polar bears, denying human-induced global warming, favoring criminalizing abortions even in cases of rape and incest, and supporting teaching creationism in public-school science classrooms. As mayor, she sought to ban some books from Wasilla’s town library. Addressing her church, she described the Iraq war as “a task that is from God,” and supported a proposed natural-gas pipeline as “God’s will.”

My May 30 Free Press column, “GOP is Too Far Right,” documents the right’s stranglehold on today’s Republican Party, whose moderate contingent shrivels with every passing election cycle. Sarah Palin’s selection as running mate does nothing to counter these realities; in fact, it further exemplifies them. If McCain wins, the most ideologically extreme running mate in modern history will be one 72-year-old’s heartbeat away from the presidency.

Fred Slocum is an associate professor of political science at Minnesota State University. He is part of a Free Press team of readers asked to comment more frequently on issues of the day. He considers his political views Democratic.

Footnotes
1)McCain apparently believes that disappointed Clinton supporters, especially female Clinton supporters, will flock in droves to a Republican ticket with a woman on it. He may be right, but I doubt it: see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/van-jones/palin-youre-no-hillary-cl_b_122479.html. One Clinton supporter, noting Palin favors banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest, said “Sarah Palin is to women’s equality what Clarence Thomas is to civil rights.”

2)Palin and Clinton are both female, but similarities end right there. Clinton is pro-choice on abortion; Palin is staunchly anti-abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. Clinton has a long record of support from feminist political groups; Palin is an ardent supporter of Religious Right causes, and it is no secret that the Religious Right is hostile to the feminist movement and its goals. Indeed, the Religious Right usually portrays feminists as enemies of what they view as the “God-ordained” role of women as homemakers and subservient to their husbands, a doctrine even reflected in the ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of beliefs. See also http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/sarah_palins_address_to_the_rn.html.

3)Indeed, Palin’s slap at community organizers was downright insulting, but not isolated, as other Republicans cheerfully joined the “let’s trash community organizers” parade; see http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2008/09/04/gop-mocks-community-organizers/.

4)In Republican-speak, “less taxes” or “lower taxes” really means “less taxes for the rich” and “less taxes for corporations.” Republican tax policies have relentlessly and unapologetically shifted the distribution taxes away from the wealthiest and onto the middle class, and John McCain, in voting for repealing the estate tax (2006) and in reversing himself to now favor making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, favors more of the same.

5)In reality, while Republicans regularly claim to oppose Big Government, their real concern is minimizing government intervention only in economic matters: environmental protection and worker safety laws, and other government regulation of business, taxes (favoring tax cuts heavily slanted to favor corporations and the rich), and assistance to the less fortunate (favoring cuts, cuts and more cuts, and privatizing Social Security). Grover Norquist zealously pursued wave after wave of tax cuts to forcibly shrink the federal government to a size where one could “drown it in the bathtub.” In a party now virtually joined at the hip with the Religious Right on social issues, few Republicans are concerned with government intrusion into, if not dictation of, people’s moral decisions. On abortion, the party again adopted a rigidly anti-abortion stance: if you are pregnant, you WILL carry the pregnancy to full term, whether or not you want to, no matter what the circumstances. Republicans led the 2005 effort to force government intervention in private medical decisions, when congressional Republicans led the charge to force Terri Schiavo to remain in a vegetative state and connected to a feeding tube, against her and her husband’s wishes. Republicans, in league with the Religious Right, regularly lead efforts to establish and extend government discrimination against gays and lesbians, in recognizing relationships, adoption, foster parenting, and in hostile and discriminatory ballot resolutions like Colorado’s Amendment 2 (1992) and Oregon’s failed Measure 9 (1992), among others.