Former liberal reporter turned nytimes.com blogger Timothy Egan on Friday posted a snotty profile of McCain's new "militantly anti-choice...echo of Dan Quayle" running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, "Ms. Alaska [1]."
She hunts! She fishes! She eats moose burgers! She can gut a salmon as well as dispatch an incumbent governor! She's a rural mother of five who clings to guns and religion -- exuberantly!
In choosing as his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, two years removed from her only other political job as a small-town mayor, John McCain has certainly offered up a giant-killer - "Sarah Barracuda," as she's known in the Last Frontier State.
Egan salutedPalin for taking on the "kleptocracy of Alaska's Republican politics," but only to set up this cheap shot:
But she has her own ethics concern, the subject of an investigation of whether the governor's office was involved in the firing a state trooper who was in the midst of a nasty divorce from Palin's sister - Troopergate with a bit of Alaska Gothic thrown in.
Egan didn't mention Palin asked for the state attorney general to look into the allegations as well, demonstrating confidence it would come to nothing. After more criticism, Egan brought out the heavy labeling:
Militantly anti-choice and evangelical, the 44-year-old gave birth to her last child five months ago. (There were complications - the child has Down Syndrome - a point that she brings up in explaining her convictions.) Does she woo women, the disgruntled ex-Hillary supporters? That may be a tougher sell, given that she's bound to back the kind of Supreme Court justices who will remove abortion protections....Tough, independent, a feisty feminist - that's one image of the Republican pick. But there's also the echo of Dan Quayle. In Alaska, big dreams come to life quickly. They just as swiftly crash.