Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
Alan Keyes
Alan Keyes
Haven’t we seen this GOP move on Barack Obama before?

In 2004, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate seat, the GOP sent in their “race” candidate Alan Keyes, to shake up “identity” voters whom they assumed would find Obama too “foreign” or his name too difficult to pronounce. We now see how effective that strategy was. However, in the Alan Keyes Archives is the debate between the two then Senate candidates on October 12, 2004 which is fascinating in and of itself, and confirms what I’ve said all along; Obama really has been consistent on many of his positions if anyone cares to pay attention or read his book The Audacity of Hope.

But now we have another version of that 11th hour scenario with Sarah Palin, governor of the great 49th state of Alaska. Just 3 months shy of her 2nd year as governor, Palin has been tapped to potentially be one heartbeat away from the highest office in the free world. Since I and many others know so little about her, and she hasn’t written any autobiographies, out of fairness, you can link to her official bio: http://gov.state.ak.us/bio.html. And here’s a link to the Anchorage Daily News.

Obviously, this move gets press and takes the spotlight off what many describe as one of the most successful DNC conventions, if not the best ever. And of course in true form and for the sake of drama, the media and Palin herself are feeding this through the prism of what it means to disaffected HRC supporters. Will Palin bring in the anti-choice, evangelical base within the Republican party? Will she appeal to Log Cabin Republicans? Will soccer moms trade in their kid’s cleats for ice skates and hockey sticks? Will the fellas make her the first pin-up candidate? I’m not making that one up based on the comments in the blogsphere.

Will the white, heterosexual, independent woman’s vote trump the white heterosexual blue collar man’s vote? Will the gender vote trump the issues vote regarding choice and equality? (That’s the real question regarding Palin as the gender pick.)

Is Sarah Palin John McCain’s Eliza Doolittle? Or is this the Laine Hanson scenario, as played by Joan Allen in The Contender, the Senator who had to defend her credentials to be confirmed to fill the seat of the recently deceased VP. Maybe I need to cue up The Contender again. Laine Hanson had grit. She was a maverick. She also had a past that was being vetted on the public stage and came under the scrutiny by the old double standard for women and their sexuality. Imagine if a candidate said this today:

LAINE HANSON: The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves, that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very Chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church.

Hurricane Gustav may blow this story off the page for a second, but even in that context, Palin shouldn’t be ignored.