Hero McCain Picks Heroine Palin

Gov. Sarah Palin with husband Todd and daughters Piper, Willow, and Bristol. In the past three months I've had nearly 8,000 "hits" on this site. Today, I will go over 10,000 -- in one day! Thanks to visitors. Keep returning, and you'll have the most relevant information about Sarah, who's a regular reader of my blogs. God bless you, Sarah! Much more to follow.

My political buddy Sharon Caliendo of Norman, OK, broke the Palin Story last night shortly before 3 a.m., and I took a chance on put it on my blogs then. Much more will be on here today and tomorrow about a thoroughly remarkable human being, Sarah Heath Palin.

If you want to have fun, go over to a truly ecstatic web site, Adam Brickley's at http://draftpalinforvp.blogspot.com. Adam has been in total managerial charge of the national Draft Palin for VP effort. Adam just turned 21 (!!!!!!!!!!!).

I'm so delighted that some (all?) of Sarah's children are able to participate in this historic moment. Piper (age 7 now?) is going to become a national media darling. I believe Sarah will make a great vice-president. I also believe she will make a great President of the United States. In my somewhat hyperbolic way, I called her "Mt. Rushmore Material." (But I don't think that's really hyperbole.)

Jack Kelly, national security analyst and columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade -- and a great buddy -- wrote the following piece about Gov. Sarah Heath Palin. Jack paid me the compliment of being the one who recommended Sarah to him. God bless the USA. If you want to have fun, go to http://palinforvp.blogspot.com and you will see the first case of Blog Ecstasy in recorded history.

By Jack Kelly

"Who? When?

Republicans including, I imagine, Sen. McCain himself are asking these questions about his selection of a vice presidential candidate.Ideally, a presidential candidate wants a running mate who will help him or her win the election, and (maybe) to govern afterwards. But most will settle for a veep who isn't a drag on the ticket, as Dan Quayle was for the first President Bush.

Traditionally, a presidential nominee has chosen a running mate to balance the ticket

geographically, or to appease a faction of the party. The most successful example of this was when John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson, though neither liked the other, and LBJ joined the ticket only because he thought Kennedy would lose.Bill Clinton broke with this tradition when he chose another young (purported) moderate from a neighboring southern state. By picking Al Gore, he hoped to reinforce his campaign theme of generational change.

Which way will Sen. McCain go?

The potential running mates most often discussed have downsides nearly as great as their upsides. Gov. Tim Pawlenty helps only in Minnesota, and not enough, according to current polls, to make a difference there. Sen. McCain's friend Sen. Joe Lieberman would bring in some moderate Democrats, but could further antagonize conservatives already suspicious of Sen. McCain. Gov. Romney would have little appeal to working class whites unhappy with Sen. Obama, and evangelicals fret about that Mormon thing. A Huckabee nomination would irritate economic and foreign policy conservatives as much as it would please evangelicals.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is a rising star. But he's only 36, and he's been governor for less than a year.There is one potential running mate who has virtually no down side. Those conservatives who've heard of her were delighted to learn that McCain advance man Arthur Culvahouse was in Alaska recently, because they surmised he could only be there to discuss the vice presidential nomination with Gov. Sarah Palin.

At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska's relatively brief history as a state. She's also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.

This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness.Two years later, when she won the "Miss Wasilla" beauty pageant, she was also voted "Miss Congeniality" by the other contestants.Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality.

Fire and nice.

A happily married mother of five who is still drop dead gorgeous. And smart to boot.But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Sen. McCain has been accused of rounding.

Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She's a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she's staunchly pro-life. Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal said Sen. McCain should run against a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, a la Harry Truman.

If he should choose to do so, Gov. Palin would make an excellent partner "The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah," pollster Dave Dittman told the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes.

Sen. Barack Obama's support has plunged recently among white women. Many Hillary Clinton supporters accuse him -- I think unfairly -- of being sexist. Having Sarah Palin on the ticket could help Sen. McCain appeal to these disgruntled Democrats.Running mates usually aren't named until the convention.

But if Sen. McCain should name Gov. Palin earlier, it would give America more time to get to know this extraordinary woman. And because she's at least a dozen feature stories waiting to be written, she could help him dominate the news between now and the conventions.Another reason for selecting Sarah Palin early would be to force Barack Obama to make a mistake.

He'd have to rule out choosing someone like Virginia Sen. Jim Webb as his running mate, for fear of exacerbating charges of sexism. And if he chose a woman other than Hillary, the impression Democrats are wimpy would be intensified.

Links to important Palin Material: http://michaelschuyler.blogspot.com/2008/04/sarah-palin-subject-of-new-biography.html is a review of the only biography available on Sarah that I published in April. And this one: http://michaelschuyler.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html is from July.

Obama: Not Really Presidential Material

Almost always the column here is "site-specific," but this time I'm reprinting a column from my national blog. Today on my Pennsylvania blog I talk about a critical issue you won't hear about from the national media: the need for Republican candidates for Congress to dovetail their campaigns with that of John McCain. As this week unfolds, I'll be talking about the question of why Senator Clinton stays in the race. One reason is that she's aware of the devastating shortcoming of Barack Obama, as illustrated by the piece below. Clinton may end up campaigning for Obama, but she will do it with her fingers crossed. She's now looking ahead to running against President McCain in 2012. Meanwhile, McCain is looking closely at Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate. Yes, we live in what the Chinese call "exciting times."

Obama speaking and curing Pastor's insomnia .

A political campaign "biography" emerges as pure fiction . . .

One of the best conservative columnists in the U.S. is Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jack's work appears every Sunday in the P-G and the Toledo Blade. His most recent column is "The Potato Test: Obama Generates Even More Gaffes Than Dan Quayle."

Kelly says, "In last week's column, I twitted Mr. Obama for saying he'd campaigned in 57 states, for not knowing that his home state of Illinois borders on Kentucky and for claiming the Cuban Missile Crisis (October, 1962) was defused by President Kennedy's summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev (June, 1981). Earlier, Mr. Obama said 10,000 people were killed when a tornado struck Greensburg, Kansas, last year (the death toll was 12), and assumed Afghans speak Arabic (they don't)."

In this week's column Kelly examines Obama's latest fabrication, where he said his "uncle" was one of the American soldiers who "liberated Auschwitz." In fact, as we've all been reminded, it was the Russian Red Army that liberated that particular death camp. Also, Obama didn't have an "uncle" in the U.S. military, because his mother (Anna Dunham) was an only child. (Any uncles on his father's side lived in Africa and were not in the American military.)

Responding to such observations, Obama's camp replied that the candidate had misspoken. He was really referring to his great uncle, Charlie Payne, who had been a member of the 89th Infantry that had liberated a slave labor camp associated with Buchenwald.

The national press basically left the issue there, but Jack Kelly doesn't.

Obama's great-uncle (still very much alive) apparently didn't serve in the Army. According to the Kansas Historical Association, Payne enlisted in the Navy on November 10, 1942. There's no evidence he was ever anywhere near Buchenwald.

On other occasions, Obama has invoked his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, whom the Illinois Senator claims "signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed." In fact, Mr. Dunham enlisted not on December 8, 1941, but rather on June 18, 1942.

Obama has said Grandpa Dunham "heard the stories of fellow troops who has entered Auschwitz and Treblinka." Unfortunately for Obama, Treblinka -- like Auschwitz -- was liberated by the Red Army, so it's unlikely his grandfather heard any stories about those particular death camps.

How long do we have to put up with Obama spinning fantasies about his life and the lives of family members? In his own life, Obama has NO real links to the military, so he invents them, somehow feeling his tall tales will help qualify him as a credible commander-in-chief.

Jack Kelly is doing the nation a service in pointing out the Senator's constant fabrications.
In many ways, the Illinois Senator remains the most mysterious of men. However, the more we do know, the more disturbing this strange individual becomes.