Dan, you're missing an important point and the real thing that divides that left from the right. The right believes in absolute standards that we can't live up to. It's the recognizing and agonizing around our failings that sets us up with the proper relationship with our God. The left believes in a set of rules that we can actually follow and that make the world a better place. When Larry Craig gets caught nobody is surprised. Evil lurks within all of us and he would agree. As long as he continues to hold that what he was caught for is wrong, even if he claims that he wasn't caught doing it, there is no conflict or hypocrisy. When Bill Clinton gets caught in a simular manner he proves as a lie the idea that we can have livable rules and that we don't need a forgiving God.

Put another way, one side believes that human beings are inherently bad, the other that we are inherently good. When somebody from the "inherently bad" camp does a bad thing he or she is just proving his or her own point. When somebody from the "inherently good" camp does a bad thing they have proved themselves to be wrong.

Maybe "Palin" can be our next "Santorum"???

Like I said, little Bristol will be a source of inspiration, hope and strength. I wouldn't be surprised to see little shrines to Alaska's own little white angel popping up during the convention while speakers decry those n*****s who are always having kids out of wedlock and leeching off the state.

it's the economy, stupid.
No one's goign to convince anyone their idea of God or rules to live by are fundamentally flawed and the belief expressed in 21 is "fundamentalist" just as much as a fundi Xian's.
Fucking up in a set of rules never, ever proves to the rules setters that the rules per se are invalid.

Obama better find a way to change the subject back to economy if you all want us to win.

Oh maybe you could help, too. It's as if Slog is now following the GOP playbook.
1. Introduce VP candidate with interesting personal story.
2/ Blow's OBama's speech off the front page.
3. Sit back and enjoy as liberals get into a tizzy denouncing her...family choices....shooting moose....using gas in snowmobiles...WHATEVER it's all stuff the liberal left hates but their talking about it totally alienates the swing voters.
Whateever they seize on about the Palin lifestyle, it will get us votes!

Masterful. You guys are so predictable. Please stop being tools. Every minute someone in the USA isn't talking about Obama's economic plans which include tax cuts for 80% of us....is a minute lost.

He has not yet gotten over his economic message. t's a tie race. Waving the hyporcrisy of right wing values in the face of right wingers makes us lose votes among swing voters, the way it always has, in the losses of McGovern, Kerry, Mondale, Dukakis etc.

It's the economy stupid.

@4: Ahhh... PC. I think that you've missed the point. Just as much as the VP story is inspiring for the Republican base, it needs to be refuted by the Democratic base to help keep the liberal rank-and-file inspired.

Heck, I'll agree that this isn't a winning strategy if it were to be followed by the campaign. But it isn't, and Obama knows it. After the convention, the ticket is going back to hammering away at their messages about the economy, leaving the personal attacks to the tabloids.

So the angry mob maternity test to be done on little Trig Palin has been put off? We are now to believe that this is Bristol Palin first child, not the second? It seems just like yesterday... I do hope when Bristol's water breaks her Mom doesn't make her finish out the school day, complete her science project, then hang the home coming decorations like Bristol told the committee she would, then fly her to a hospital in Boise or someplace south like that.

#4: Yes, the campaign itself is not beating the Sarah Palin story whatsoever from what I can tell.

Troopergate and a former membership in a seccessionist party are legitimate concerns as they show McCain must not have vetted her at all. Didn't BOTH parties learn their lesson on this after McGovern's VP turned out to have had electric shock therapy?

@1 - You're missing a point as well, though. People on the right make claims about ways to make the world a better place, just like the lefties do. Don't let gays marry, and it'll make families more stable. Teach your kids abstinence - it works and protects them from pregnancy and disease better than sex education. Gay people can change.

And yet, when these maxims are proved spectacularly wrong over and over again, the right is just as evasive and doggedly stubborn as the left. They will never change these opinions no matter how much evidence is dumped in front of them, because to do so would challenge their ideas about how the world works and call into question some of the beliefs that have been so comforting to them.

@8,

I watch the right wing very closely and I've never heard them say that keeping the gays from marrying will keep marriages stronger. What they say is that gay marriage is an attack on the institution of marriage and that it would be redefining marriage for the first time in 3000 years (or whenever the KJV was written).

And they never claim that teaching kids to abstain will keep them from getting pregnant. They do claim that astaining is the only thing that will work but they do seem to have noticed that teens don't do what you tell them to do.

They want a world where people do bad things and then bad things happen to them. And they do want a world where teens get pregnant and then put the child up for adoption. Remember Operation Rescue? They were quite open that the reason they got started was the Randall Terry's wife couldn't find baby to adopt. The preachers of that bent would often point out that the shortage of adaptable babies is about the same number of abortions.

youth worker, i appreciate your perspective. it would behove the left to try to understand the fundies and other xtians better, and play accordingly. i think obama understands this. he's going to ignore palin, except where there are serious qualification/policy/ethical criticisms to make about her, and he's saving that for later. good on him.

VTIT sounds cute. Dan, think you can score us a pic?

@2: No, Palin has a name that is sacrosanct to a lot of people. It would not be as popular a choice to dirty the Palin name as it was to go after the less-common Santorum. Michael doesn't deserve that, and in fifty years, whose going to know it came from Sarah, not Michael?

@9: They do NOT want teens to put their kids up for adoption. They want the kids to NOT get pregnant, and if they DO get pregnant, they want the kids to suffer for it. This was pretty much the basis of their argument against CA's recently passed law that you can drop unwanted children off in hospitals within a few days of birth (to provide an alternative to the traditional dumpster).

Also, "adoptable babies" = white? Or what? There are hundreds of babies that are waiting to be fostered or adopted, but a lot of them (in CA anyway) are Latino, which for some reason matters to Republicans.

The reason the conspiracy theories got so much traction is that the reality presented by Palin was so fucking unbelievable. Palin's water broke in Texas, then she got on a plane and flew to Alaska? I mean, I could have some sympathy for a mother trying to protect her teenage daughter (so long as it didn't involve abuse of power, like forging birth certificates, or insurance fraud (insuring the child as her own)), but how much sympathy should we have for a woman in labor who places her own health at risk, places the health of her about-to-be-born child at risk, gets on a commercial flight and risks causing an emergency landing?

One of the biggest turnoffs for Obama supporters is his superiority. He has this air about him that says "look, but don't touch".

Sarah Palin? She is saying, "my life is your life...screwed up".

Voters will respond...

Yes, please.

"Her pregnancy is a private matter," okay good, so is if I want to have an abortion, do recreational drugs, etc.

Well, any time someone decides to keep their baby I'm going to say that they're Palinning it.

no john @14, it's called "class." obama has it, palin doesn't. you get so confused...

@ 9 -

Your argument is a distinction without a difference. Yes, you're correct - the right wing argues that ALLOWING gay marriage will WEAKEN straight marriage. My bad. Though honestly, arguing that BANNING gay marriage will strengthen gay marriage is almost the same. Either way, you missed my main point: any evidence counter to their argument is dismissed. Massachusetts hasn't had significant increase in divorce since allowing gay marriage? Irrelevant.

I stand by my original assertion that the religious right has argued that abstinence-only education is superior to comprehensive sex education in terms of preventing unwanted pregnancy or stds. The evidence indicates otherwise, but again, the evidence never matters with these people. It is all about conviction, and not about reality.

Yeah, the right won't have much trouble with this. Teens get pregnant, it happens in every family out there. What's important to traditionals is that the teens pay for the sin (obviously, to teach anything but abstinence would be to condone the sin). "You make your bed, you lie in it," as my mother says.

The way to capture middle America is to go after McCain's ineptitude, and his flagrant unconcern about vetting the person he's putting a heartbeat away from the presidency. After Obama's speech I read quotes from people saying they liked him, but he seems too inexperienced so they were going to vote for McCain. Hammer McCain's lack of judgment here.

@18,

I've never heard them suggest that gay marriage will weaken straight marriage. They are quite careful to always suggest that it will destroy the institution. It's a bit of a tautology. By "destroy the institution" they mean "change it in some significant way". Well, yes. That's the whole point.

There is one exception to that. Dobson has suggested that if homosexuality is permissible then women will give up having sex with men.

that's fascinating, youth worker. i always assumed that the real fear behind it was that men would give up having sex with women. i didn't realize that they're more scared of lesbianism! wow. when did he suggest this? do you have a link?

@ 20 -

The stupid spam filter won't let me post more than two links at a time, but here's some right-wing sites where people voice concerns about 'weakening' marriage.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=906

http://www.idahovaluesalliance.com/papers.asp?id=38

A few more...

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gallagher081303.asp

http://swc2.hccs.edu/proberts/diginetxpress/spring2006/social/johnston.xml

Youth worker is right. Listen to her (him?).