{"id":822,"date":"2008-09-04T06:36:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T11:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/2008\/09\/gop-convention-wednesday-recap.html"},"modified":"2008-09-04T06:36:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T11:36:00","slug":"gop-convention-wednesday-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2008\/09\/gop-convention-wednesday-recap.html","title":{"rendered":"GOP Convention &#8211; Wednesday Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 153, 0); font-style: italic;\">A post from bloggerette Kim:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Today, I have a couple of firsts in my life.  The first one is that I&#8217;m  not going to &#8220;comment&#8221; on a blog, I&#8217;m actually going to write one.<\/p>\n<p>The second is that, yes &#8220;for the first time in my life&#8221;, I&#8217;m actually  ashamed to be a woman that might get attached to last night&#8217;s disgusting  display at the Republican National Convention.  I, like everyone else,  started a path of trying to get to know who Sarah Palin was when she was  the surprising pick by John McCain for the VP of the United States.   Immediately, my reaction was, &#8220;He picked a women and it was a ploy to get  Hillary voters.&#8221;  Having thought that, I was still willing to give her a  chance to show why he picked her.  Unfortunately, I still haven&#8217;t  figured that part out yet.  I, like many others, am willing to leave  everything personally about her pregnant teenage daughter out of my  mind, as kids are off limits (and I&#8217;m not dumb enough to think it  couldn&#8217;t happen in my family).   But the mother&#8217;s policy making ideals and  judgments, even about her raising her family, are not off the table.   They will determine what policies she goes after if elected.<\/p>\n<p>From what we&#8217;ve learned, she doesn&#8217;t believe in birth control,  sex-education, pro-choice, etc.  If she had believed in the first two of  those things, we wouldn&#8217;t really have to discuss the third one or her  views on it quite yet.  But since we do have to discuss it in America  far too often, isn&#8217;t the Pro-Life movement about more than just  abortion?  Shouldn&#8217;t it also be about the choices you make for ALL  lives?  If so, then why personally, did she choose to put her baby Trig&#8217;s  life in potential jeopardy while in labor with him and get on a plane,  fly as long as she did, pass by very reputable hospitals, just to get  home?  This, after all, was a high risk pregnancy for a couple of  reasons&#8230; first, she knew it was a challenged baby, and second, her age  alone puts her in that category. That decision does speak to judgment in  my point of view, and one that should be on the table for debate.  And  then, politically, pro-life should also be about the death penalty as  well.  After all, even President Bush said that he would always come out  on the side of life (well, with that one exception of the death penalty  law).<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, we&#8217;ve learned that both her pregnant daughter and her  soon-to-be husband have both dropped out of school.  Now I know that  Sarah being the mother of a 17 year old, can&#8217;t tell her not to drop out  (any more than she could tell her to not have sex).  But, wouldn&#8217;t she  try to counsel her that it would be in the baby&#8217;s best interest to have  parents that are at least high school graduates.<\/p>\n<p>All this could be left aside if it wasn&#8217;t for the fact that John McCain  brought her on to the national stage and introduced her as a great  mother with great judgment and practically the second coming of Jesus  (if you listen to the extreme Christian right of the party).  And that  brings me to why I am so ashamed and embarrassed at the thought of being  lumped with a woman like I saw on TV last night.  She spent much of her  speech being that &#8220;pit bull in lipstick&#8221; that she referred to as the  hockey moms.  She was demeaning, sarcastic and downright nasty with so  many personal attacks to the opposite side, that I almost had to turn it  off.  The hypocrisy of the Republican party based on good Christians  values was repulsive.  Isn&#8217;t that the same group that is supposed to  love everyone and treat people as they want to be treated?  Aren&#8217;t they  supposed to be the party that is based on What Would Jesus Do?   Well, I  know as a real Christian, that Jesus wouldn&#8217;t have done what she or any  of the other speakers did last night.  It was personal for them last  night.  I wish everyone watching those speeches last night, would also  watch the fact-check sessions today to hear the real facts about the  very few discussion points about policy that came out.  But not to  worry.. there weren&#8217;t many of those.  The whole evening was devoted to  slams.   On the plus side for her&#8230; she wasn&#8217;t the only one I was  disappointed in.  You see, I once thought Mitt Romney would be the best  choice the Republicans had to win, but even his own party decided he  wasn&#8217;t good enough.  I decided that last night for myself as well.   Huckabee&#8230; another slamming Christian that got rousing applause each  and every time he slammed.  And as for Rudy&#8230; I can&#8217;t even go there.   He was just not even worth my typing ability.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, there is one thing I can say the Republicans did well last  night&#8230; even masterfully.  Their strategy in this speech made a pit bull  out of Sarah, and it played perfectly to their notion that no matter what  any Democrat says about her today&#8230; they can scream sexism.  And yes&#8230;  it&#8217;s already happened.  It happened immediately after when Harry Reid  said her speech was &#8220;shrill and sarcastic&#8221;.  The women commentators even  said as woman that was a bad word to use.  However, as a woman who won&#8217;t  vote for someone simply because they are one too, he was spot on in that  assessment.  Of course you couldn&#8217;t call a man&#8217;s speech shrill, but that  was what it sounded like to me too.  I&#8217;m just not the kind of dumb woman  that they were hoping would fall for this speech.<\/p>\n<p>I happen to think that after last night, it&#8217;s a sad day for women&#8230; not  a good one.   If any other woman, in any aspect of her life, acted as  our potential VP did last night, she&#8217;d be called far worse than shrill  and sarcastic&#8230; and has been many times.  So if she can act like this,  why can&#8217;t we say the same about her? <\/p>\n<p>When this campaign season started, I was actually saying that if McCain  got in the race, I could almost see me voting for him. That was before  he did a complete 180 so that he could play to the base.  I was a bit  lukewarm on Obama, but knew I would vote for him over McCain.  Now,  after having watched both party&#8217;s conventions (and even before watching  McCain tonight), I&#8217;m way more aligned with the Obama camp.  He tried to  inspire people, while the RNC just tried to tear him down.  I&#8217;ve had  enough of the hypocrisy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;\">Brought to you by Tim&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/\">-Read the whole blog here-<\/a><\/span><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post from bloggerette Kim: Today, I have a couple of firsts in my life. The first one is that<\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\"><a href=\"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2008\/09\/gop-convention-wednesday-recap.html\" title=\"Read GOP Convention &#8211; Wednesday Recap\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}