Sarah Palin, a.k.a. Don't Get Sold a Bill of Goods

There are certainly things for conservatives to like about Sarah Palin, John McCain's choice for VP. She is, generally speaking, a fiscal conservative and has shown a fair measure of independence from the more doctrinaire party types in her state. However, let's keep in mind a couple of critical points before John McCain suddenly becomes your candidate instead of Bob Barr:

(1) Sarah Palin is horrendously underexperienced. Right now the Democrats have nominated a candidate for president who has not yet finished his first term in the US Senate and who was, not very long ago, just another state legislator in Illinois. The Republican Party, apparently keen to throw away the lack-of-experience argument, has nominated someone whose views may mesh with your own more than, say, Barack Obama's, but good Lord, she is actually less experienced than Obama. Do we know a thing about this person's foreign-policy views or her qualifications to address foreign-policy issues? This is not a game of "pick the attractive candidate who occasionally says the right things." Selecting a vice-president is serious business. With John McCain a cancer survivor and already 72 years old, Sarah Palin could very well be carrying around the nuclear briefcase in the near future. That ought to worry you...a lot.

(2) The top of the ticket is still John McCain, and that should to be a deal-breaker for conservatives and all those for whom liberty is the main issue. As I've written over and over, McCain is no friend of freedom. He is a big-government type eager to spread his "national greatness" theory (perversely and incorrectly labeled "conservatism") around the world. He has brought us the debacle of campaign-finance reform, a foreign policy that is positively expansionist in its reach, and a disdain for individualism and liberty that is staggering.

There has been some talk in the media that the Palin pick is meant to bring home conservatives to the GOP, and, presumably, away from Bob Barr's candidacy. Don't believe the hype. If picking a first-term governor who occasionally walks the walk (e.g., her record on gun rights is excellent) on the issues, but has not a clue about foreign policy--and quite possibly not much more about national domestic policy--would be all John McCain needed to do to get your vote, I would immediately wonder how likely you were to cast a vote for freedom and liberty in the first place. True conservatives were more principled and intelligent than to accept John McCain as their president before he picked Sarah Palin for VP, and they still are in the wake of this puzzling nomination. Vote Barr '08 and stop the nonsense.