Gender? No, It’s the Culture Wars, Stupid

By Madison Powers,
CQ Staff

Picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was a high-stakes gamble for John McCain , and so it’s worth speculating on what the McCain camp thought it had going for it.

Maybe McCain knows what women want. Or, to be more specific, maybe he knows what Hillary women want. Maybe Hillary women really care more about physiology than philosophy. Except for the fact that prominent Clinton loyalist Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz observed in an instant that it was insulting to think that women care more about the parts they share with a candidate than their policies.

What about those policy differences anyway? Are they dealbreakers? She is for creationism, against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, against the scientific consensus that human behavior is a major cause of climate change, and for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it. And by the way, she claims not have given much thought to the Iraq War issue. If all this describes Hillary voters, he must know more than Hillary, who denies that it really was all about her and not the issues she stood for.

Maybe McCain was betting on women to be overcome by their emotions and put anger over their interests. He probably thought he was on to something as he sensed the palpable anger at the political newcomer who swooped in and stole the prize away from the well-qualified woman, who had worked hard, paid her dues, only to come up short.

(Continued here.)