Just to be clear from the outset, ya, I'd hit it.
Also, I wish I were the one clever enough to come up with VPILF, but alas, that ship has already sailed and you can visit the VPILF website. God bless the internet.
That aside, wow, what a choice. Sarah Palin, the Republican Governor of Alaska. I generally dislike the small-state running mate (see: Joe Biden) because I've always thought a VP adds little to a campaign if they can't help you carry a couple states you wouldn't have otherwise. That was part of my dislike of Obama's biden pick, and it rings true here as well. Everything else about this pick makes McCain look like a genius.
All the lip service at the convention aside, I'm not convinced the Hilary voters are jumping on the Obama bandwagon, and I think it's very, very possible that a women veep behind an old man with health problems could draw a fair amount of the aforementioned disaffected Hilary voters. The media is running with the fact that she hunts/fishes for some reason, I think the bigger point is that she's a mother of five including a child with Downs and a child getting shipped to Iraq in a few months. Women tend to be more emotional voters than cerebral ones (i swear i read that somewhere) and I can see her playing that story to garner a nice chunk of female voters.
Furthermore, she's got the right kind of views for the conservative base of the GOP. She's pro-life and pro-gun. Not that the latter matters, all the nutjob far righters really care about is abortion-and now she gives the McCain ticket credibility to them on it.
Which isn't to say it's a perfect choice. She does take away the inexperience attack the McCain camp is consistently leveling on Obama, and it remains to be seen whether or not she will be as effective an attack dog as Biden, but I think the positives far outweight the negatives for McCain. She also does have some supposed expertise on energy on account of being the Governor of Alaska, but I'm not sure how that will translate to the campaign proper.
In short, I think it's a bold and genius pick from McCain. I think this election just got a lot more interesting.
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