CNN has it. No link yet. In your face, Keeler! 
She’s been my McCain VP prediction, and my preferred choice, for months now. I think it’s a good move. If you’re keeping score, I predicted John Edwards for Obama- man, was I way off! After that little fiasco, I moved on to Clinton. That didn’t work out either. I like Joe Biden, so I’ll be fine, thanks.
For those that never heard of her, she’s the governor of Alaska, relatively new to the political scene. Her bio will soon be all over the place, but for now, here’s her wiki page.
This is supposed to be officially announced later in Dayton, Ohio.
Here’s that CNN link.
Here’s an interesting pro and con from Jonah Goldberg at The Corner.
LisaRenee at Glass City Jungle:
In talking to quite a few people recently, especially moderate to conservative women who had voted for Clinton, the idea of a Palin pick was appealing to them for a variety of reasons. One of which of course is that she is a woman, another was even while dubbed conservative she has demonstrated the ability to stand up to political corruption.
Yes.
Here’s the official announcement site, via The Corner.
Clips & Comment has NBC video, along with some hope that a connection to Ted Stevens, the indicted Alaska Republican senator, can be found.
One thing about this pick, it puts the maximum breaks possible on the Obama convention bounce. If McCain had picked Romney or Pawlenty, it would’ve generated news of course, but the Palin pick generates something more than that. Pro or con, I think people will be having a more passionate response to this choice- and that’s something the McCain campaign was missing. It may or may not pay off in November, but the effect is certainly helpful now, the day after the Dem convention ended. Obama’s speech will barely have 24 hours in the news cycle.
Jill Miller Zimon at Writes Like She Talks:
…this is a HUGE miscalculation based on thinking that women chose Clinton because she’s a woman. That voter did it because she’s a pro-choice woman, not because she’s female. The campaigns have a lot to learn and accept about how women choose. Sexism is really going to sting them - because we just do not vote that way. As proven by Obama’s win.
Some women will vote for a woman because she’s a woman. (Nothing wrong with that when it’s for a first.) And why were so many Democratic women so strongly for Clinton? It’s not because she’s stronger than Obama on abortion rights. But there is a point there. Pro-life women were probably already on board with McCain. On the other hand, a lot of people, even many women, are not single-issue voters on abortion.
Buckblog: “It smacks of pandering.”
Plunderbund:
With his VP pick of Sarah Palin, John McCain has just thrown away one of the only reasonable attacks he had against Barack Obama: lack of experience.
Yeah, it was reasonable now that he can’t use it anymore. Heh. But that is a valid point. As I wrote in comments at Ben Keeler’s Ohio Politics blog:
Interesting that Obama’s pick tends to undermine one of his arguments against McCain, Washington business as usual, while McCain’s pick would tend undermine McCain’s argument against Obama, inexperience. Though out of all four people on both tickets, she’s got the most executive experience, i.e., some.
Americans have preferred former governors as their presidents since Jimmy Carter.
More round-up by Eric at Plunderbund. Some lefty lowlights include Tim Russo at Blogger Interrupted:
McCain thinks that because Sarach Quayle Palin has vaginal tubes, women who supported Hillary will suddenly flock to him.
Vaginal tubes. Classy as ever, Tim. Also Chuck at the Chief Source:
Now John has a new trophy around. As we should all be aware, John left his swimsuit model first wife when she started gaining weight and shrinking as a result of a car accident. He left her for Cindy, who was much younger and prettier….and had a lot of money to help him run for office.
But Cindy is now old and frail, so she must be concerned that very attractive Palin is going to steal her man.
I’m not overly familiar with that blog, but that strikes me as beneath that writer. It’s just sexist stereotyping, isn’t it? (It’s ok when liberals do it.)
Less disagreeably, here’s De Magno Opere: “Brilliant choice - if you want to stamp out the Obama flame for a day or two - and want to lose.” I had a similar thought. The greatest payoff for the Palin pick might just be today and maybe tomorrow, for squelching the Democrat convention bounce, which is already at 8 points according to Gallup- more than my humble prediction- and that mostly doesn’t include Obama’s speech last night. Michael also links to this story on the investigation into Palin’s “controversial firing of former state Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.”
