So, I’m sympathetic to being frozen in the headlights, and I guess I can certainly disregard my current Obama-love-in as being a fairly emotional, culture-wars kind of choice. I was pretty upset with Palin’s convention speech, but I guess it’s the case that such things are aimed at the base. And, heck, sometimes I have days when I don’t remember the names of the papers I read.
But, dude, when you confuse federalism with its exact opposite: there you lose me permanently. If you’re supporting state’s rights, as Palin says she does in this clip, that means you’re opposed to federalism, not a supporter of it, as she then goes on to claim. Handy mnemonic: strong federal government is what the Federalist Papers were all about.
Goddammit: maybe Alaska should secede, and that way Palin would have to pass a real civics test for once in her life. Consider my non-vote clinched for the constitutional lawyer ticket.
Anyway, here’s my prediction for tomorrow’s debate: Palin will do okay for most of it, yet there’ll be two or three spectacular screw-ups which the Democrats will spit their coffee out at, and the Republicans will defensively (and somehow, vaguely convincingly) claim is all down to the evil, evil moderator. Swing-voters won’t care a jot either way, and Obama will continue to hold the lead.
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:27 am
[…] how palin lost my non-vote […]
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:46 am
“Federalism” is used in a somewhat confusing way in the US. Palin calling herself a federalist is consistent with the way federalism has been used in US politics in the last 20 years or so. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Federalism for more background.