2008 Vice-Presidential Debates: The "Mavericks"art

I don't know if this is going to work, but I'm trying to post the first 10 minutes or so of the 2008 vice-presidential debates, Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden. I want to call attention to Palin's repeated attempts throughout this debate to portray herself and John McCain as a pair of "mavericks." I think this is excellent, deceptive subterfuge on Palin's part, drawing this sort of alignment between herself and John McCain, when the two really aren't that close policy-wise in terms of their personal politics.

Think back four years. During the run-up to the 2004 election, people were talking about a John Kerry-John McCain ticket as an astute and viable option for the Deomcratic ticket, a match-up that would really attract the moderate, independent vote. How quickly the political landscape changes and how quickly people forget.

I think the McCain-Palin ticket speaks to the beginning of a deep and serious fracture within the Republican party. Palin represents the Reagan-Bush legacy of the party, the Evangelical right from the South and the West that has a stranglehold on the GOP, whose views have become the party's ideological foundation. What was once ultra-right-wing conservatism has moved to the center of the party. Palin now represents the party's centrist views. This has left moderate Republicans underrepresented, without a standard-bearer of any sort, but specifically without a new generational face; but more importantly, I think moderate Republicans are starting to feel seriously disenfranchised, as if their party is a going in a direction they can no longer support. We're not at the point of schism yet, but I think the situation is creeping close to the situation of the Democratic Party in 1968, and I think a catharsis of that sort is needed. The moderate Republicans need to break off from the agenda of the conservative Christian right.

I think John McCain is essentially part of this moderate, pragmatic Nixon-tradition of the Republican party, but his campaign has consistently shown his inability to break away from and distinguish himself as his own moderate Republican in opposition to the ultra-conservative, right-wing base of the Republican Party. Nothing displays this problem more than McCain's choice of Palin as VP.