You can deride what I said about Sarah Palin all you want, but that's how many Republicans saw her in the run-up to the VP choosing. I thought, during that time, John McCain should indeed have picked her -- that she was the one who might provide the game change (pun!) for the dynamics in the race to shift.
And it's also why many people, who still do, continue to like her.
I don't support her NOW or anything like that.
We complain that there aren't enough counter points to the slant in here, and here you guys are mocking this dude. C'mon.
I didn't really take it as mocking per se., just a bunch of people who never realized the counterpoint to their own beliefs (in regards to the 2008 Presidential election). I gave the most basic bare-bones reasons for why people liked Sarah Palin at the time.
Although to that Rocket Science guy: You make it seem like you don't realize that that's what I *thought at the time*. And FYI, you may feel that way about Sarah Palin, and a LOT of people will disagree with me on this, but I felt like the whole "Palin inexperience = Obama inexperience" thing was hogwash. The notion that due to John McCain's age he was all the more likely to DIE IN OFFICE -- it just felt really ageist to me. No doubt scores of people believe it's a very genuine concern, and it's not that I don't think it is, it's that, again, it just felt like it was coming from an ageist place or dismissive place.
Regardless of whether or not you think she's at all a fit for the presidency, the fact that she's a very charismatic politician who certainly did have a good record as a governor (Alaska certainly loved her during that pre-VP time) that possesses some crucial contrasts in presentation to Obama is
true.
If you think that's crazy, you need to get out of your own echo sphere. What exactly is it about her that you think excited Republicans across the spectrum for so long? You spent the entire time absolutely 100% convinced she was an idiotic moronic pick that you never bothered to entertain why the other side liked her? That's stupid, and I think far crazier and "holy shit".
NeoGAF was the only major website forum I was reading at that time during the primaries (aside from other leftie sites like Kos,, etc.), and I just found the hivemind here
atrocious. Even during the Clinton/Obama pimary. It was one of the
REASONS I had to look for other sites to read in the first place.
And at least Qazaq came around. He said he voted for Obama's re-election.
Well I'm actually really fairly liberal, so, of course.
edit:
One more thing:
It sounds like he was against the version of Obama that the conservatives drummed up, rather than the kind of person Obama really is.
Yes and no.
Obama WAS terribly inexperienced when he ran for President. He was. Even now, "community organizer"? Give me a break. (And I have been just as happy with his presidency as any typical Democrat.) More than a Herman Cain or something? Obviously not, but also obviously, I wasn't old enough to have had decades of watching presidential candidates come and go.
All of this stuff starts with preying on an opinion not being reflected or voiced -- an opinion that is genuinely held. So while I do now genuinely find Obama a caring and very empathetic man, at the time, as much as as reverse as I've come around on Obama, I still really don't think any of my initial concerns were unjustified or unreasonable. Thus, it's not that difficult for genuine concerns about his readiness, experience, past and background to be preyed upon and have it morph into opinions like the ones I held -- especially when I really felt most of the mainstream media really was ignoring all of what I felt were obvious and rational concerns.
In short, it's not about sheer susceptibility or gullibility or "falling" for a narrative per se. When we sit here wondering why conservatives shun facts and media outlets, it's because they feel there's a genuine, obvious opinion or angle they are not covering that someone needs to say.
