It's Not About Sarah.

The press and the public seem to be fascinated with Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate. We are evidently sexist, elitist or blindly liberal if we don't see the value in this candidate. If we claim she doesn't have experience, we are blind to the same charge against Barak Obama, because he has never had to make "Real" decisions like rejecting the bridge to nowhere (thanks but no thanks is the mantra)

There is little doubt that Palin evokes images of a better looking Rosanne Barr, a kind of Gidget goes to Washington persona. She's good looking, smart, tough and looks like she could be someone from your neighborhood. She has accomplished a lot in her short government career and like most politicians some of it's good and some of it's...well not so good. She is the stuff of mythology. Working side by side with her good looking hunky husband, killing moose in the Alaskan wild, and raising her large family, she's the mythological woman who can do everything. Why not run a country?

As David Brooks, New York Times columnist has pointed out she embodies the everyman image of the can-do American with the added advantage of not being a professional politician nor a pointy headed intellectual. She has the mythical common sense that defies education and all of those experienced politicians years of public service. She reaches across the aisle to build consensus. She fights and defeats corruption, even in her own party. She leaps tall buildings in a single bound... Okay, I've gone to far. And like most good fiction stories there is enough of a whiff of truth in all of these perceived traits and experiences to give her a veil of reality.

But there is one thing that makes Palin patently unfit for office. She's a Republican. Yes, an unapologetic member of the party that has brought you the last thirty years of grief, if your a member, or maybe a former member, of the middle class. With a mindless mantra of we need less government, less handouts to welfare queens, adherence to free market economic principles, privatize government and other such bright ideas, we have gotten Enron, the aftermath of Katrina, the dot com bubble. contaminated food, bad drugs, he mortgage crisis and the current melt down in the financial markets. The Republican answer to all of this is a huge social welfare program to save the world from unwanted pregnancies by preaching abstinence and preventing abortion, stigmatizing gay and lesbian people, arguing about the meaning of patriotism and a stupid war in Iraq.

While the middle class disintegrates, more of us do without proper health care, good paying jobs become more and more difficult to find, the cost of living keeps going up and the globe gets warmer and climatically more unstable. Gidgit and her friends want us to worry about the horror of gay marriage, the tragedy of not teaching creationism and the unfairness of allowing rape and incest victims to simply decide not to bear children that result from these atrocities. Instead of the things that really matter to all of us Republicans, Democrats and Independent citizens of this planet. Sarah Palin is a decent person who undoubtedly believes strongly in her adherence to conservative political stance on the issues and that is why she should not become that person that is a heartbeat away from being the President of the United States, as well as why John McCain should not be our next president. It's not who they are, it's what they believe in that disqualifies them for office. They are simply wrong on the issues that are important.