If the current US polls are to be believed, the prospect of Governor Sarah Palin becoming the 45th President of the USA has receded in the month since she was unveiled as Senator John McCain’s shock choice for his running-mate. But she has at least made one vital contribution to the world which (with luck) will long out-last her political significance: the word post-turtle. Here’s what it means, according to Ben McIntyre in today’s Times:
Word of the week: post-turtle
A 75-year-old Texas rancher recently explained this term to a country doctor. The conversation turned to the US election, and Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy, and the old rancher observed: “Well, ya know, Palin is a post-turtle.” The bemused doctor asked what a post-turtle was, and the old man replied: “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post-turtle.” The rancher continued: “You know she didn’t get up there by herself, she doesn’t belong up there, she doesn’t know what to do while she is up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put her up there to begin with.”
(Hat-tip: Alice Fishburn at Comment Central).
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The problem McCain has got is that the electorate is, & has always been, far more sophisticated & intelligent than he gives it credit for.
He himself does not believe in creationism or climate change “scepticism”, but he quite shamelessly picked a running mate to push those buttons, assuming that people in small towns would lap it up & it was in short his best road to power. But, again, they are cleverer than he thinks they are, so he has backfired.
These cynical smears worked for Richard Nixon, but America has moved on. They weren’t the good old days, they were a living hell. A campaign based on “fear, uncertainty and doubt” won’t get as far.
Because if McCain starts appealing to people’s need for security, he might find that that ends up driving people into Obama’s arms as they realise that Bush has not only done nothing to keep them safe, he has made their lives more dangerous & generally worse, & McSame offers more of that.
This campaign is being fought on the issues & this is the main reason why Republicans, whose views are repellant to the silent majority of Americans, are losing. They sold their souls to what they wrongly believe to be the reactionary, stupid majority & thereby show their contempt for real Americans, who are reacting angrily.
Ain’t that the truth!
In the end McCain’s decsion to choose her will eventually hurt him.
There is a funny picture of here photoshopped on a turtle here… http://www.postturtlepalin.com