"Country First" Bullshit

The GOP's theme at its convention (with a surprise guest: Hurricane Gustav) is "Country First."

That is unadulterated horseshit and that can be shown most clearly by McCain's pick for his running mate.

If McCain gave a fuck about the country, he would have picked a running mate who could not only do some of the heavy lifting for him, but who would be prepared to step in as the 45th president. As much as I dislike Joe Lieberman, he is qualified for that job. Lieberman knows the Federal government and, even though he gets a lot of it wrong, he is a foreign policy guy.

But no. McCain's pick of Palin is about as cynical and as pandering a choice as there is.

It is cynical in that McCain is assuming that millions of women will vote for him because Palin is a woman. (And before you respond by saying "well, Blacks voted for Obama," I call "bullshit" on that. The African-American vote did not automatically go to Obama; he worked hard for it and he was helped by the ham-fisted comments of Bill Clinton.)

It is pandering because the pick of Palin is a sop to the conservative religious Right, the same group of people who want to cram their religious ideology down the throats of the rest of society.
These are the same people who used the levers of Federal power in an attempt to interfere in the affairs of a single family. These are the same people who seek to place religious ideology on the same level as scientific theory.

George W. Bush is from that mindset. Bush has run the country on a management style of "don't confuse me with the facts." If the facts are not in agreement with Bush's ideology, he disregards the facts.

Palin has shown no signs that she would be any different.

UPDATE: Now it seems that McCain indeed wanted Lieberman, but that he caved to pressure from the Supernaturalist wing of the GOP to choose one of their own.

Maverick, schmaverick. It is pretty clear which group calls the shots in the GOP.