It is being reported that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is the GOP vice presidential pick, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Palin is a social conservative who is strongly opposed to abortion and same sex marriage. In addition, she is pro-gun and wildly popular in Alaska.
In Palin, McCain has chosen someone with no experience on the national stage and no foreign policy experience. But she is a reformer, popular with conservatives and is considered tough enough to deal with what may come.
In the Vice Presidential debate, however, she will go up against Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has personal relationships with heads of state and other world leaders.
In other words, in the vice presidential debate Biden wipes the floor with her.
So who is Sarah Palin? Good question:
Palin is the first woman governor of Alaska, elected in 2006. She was also the youngest ever elected at the age of 42. She is the mother of five children, the youngest of whom was born in April and has Down Syndrome. She ran on a clean government platform in '06 to defeat the incumbent Republican Governor Frank Murkowski.
She's been governor of Alaska for two years and served on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996 and became mayor of Wasilla in 1996. She also served as Ethics Commissioner for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 2003-04.
By the way, Wasilla has a population of about 5,400. That's smaller than the village I'm living in now.
This certainly is an "outside the Beltway" pick. Palin has no foreign policy experience. She is younger than Barack Obama (Obama is 47, Palin is 44). She has served only two years as governor of Alaska and before that served as a city councilmember and mayor of a village that would be, if it was in my home county of Orleans, the third largest village in this county.
This is an interesting pick. We'll have to see later on what McCain was going for with this one. |
