I’m sitting here watching TV, awaiting confirmation that Gov Sarah Palin of Alaska is to be John McCain’s running mate.

Who?

I’ve never heard of her either, but I can already tell you she is 44 years old, a first term governor and the mother of 5 children. She’s a “hockey mom” whatever that is; she loves guns and is conservative.

And?

And its a fucking masterstroke of political theatre. With this one slick move, McCain has just stolen Obama’s post convention thunder. Not only that, but Palin’s gender will pull in lots of former Hillary Clinton supporters - and she probably shouldn’t, since she most likely has nothing in common with Hillary or her positions.

I bet the Obama campaign is collectively shitting themselves right now. They shouldn’t be.

The Republican party is hardly the party of feminism and this very calculated maneuver by McCain should not fool anyone. It shouldn’t, but it will.

All anyone needs to know is that both McCain and Palin are “pro-life”, a term I despise. What they really are, are anti-choice on the subject of abortion and they don’t think a woman has the right to decide what is best for her body and her life and that’s just plain wrong.

If you don’t agree with having an abortion, then don’t have one, but fuck off if you think you should be able to dictate the same to anyone else.

Palin is from Alaska, a favourite state for big oil companies. Think Bush and Texas, its about the same.

Who knows? Maybe I’m wrong and Palin will bring in a new sense of feminism to the GOP. And pigs might fly!

All of this smacks cynically of fear and pandering and the sort of desperation I never expected to see from the Republicans. She may be perfectly qualified to be a heartbeat anyway from the presidency, anything is possible. Who even knew she was on the short list?

The one thing I am certain of is that this campaign just got really fucking interesting and the next couple of months are going to be fun fun FUN!