Sarah Palin????

UPDATE: From Dover Bitch at Hullabaloo: "McCain got what he wanted and needed the most: Nobody is talking about the magnificent speech Barack Obama gave last night."

That's very much true. However, I wonder if the whole "there's no such thing as bad publicity" trope is going to hold true on this.

Cody (via email): Whaaa?

Cody 2: "The producers of SNL must be scrambling to call Tina Fey, who must be thanking god for her good luck." [Dennis agrees - the resemblance is striking.]

Melissa (IM): I totally didn't expect it at all...this election is becoming more like a sitcom than reality. I'm reading feministing right now... trying to understand what the hell is happening :)

Atrios: "Proof that all the very well connected journalists know absolutely nothing."

Andrea Mitchell (via Atrios): "The campaign has just given up the experience argument."

Dave3544: So McCain is basically going after the Hillary vote. Giving up the attack on Obama for not having experience and going after the women. Doing so in the most craven way possible.

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect: The pick of Palin is dripping with transparent condescension, the notion that the enthusiasm behind Hillary was simply the result of her being a woman, that it had nothing to do with what she actually stood for, and in that sense it's equally sexist. Palin is essentially a hard-right ideologue, and therefore nothing like Hillary as far as substance is concerned. It's not very different from running Alan Keyes against Barack Obama in 2004.

Ann of Feministing: Let me say right off the bat that, overall, I think it's great that Republicans have chosen to elevate a woman to this level -- no matter what their motivations. I want to see more women of all parties involved in politics. But, as we stated over and over in the primaries, a politician's gender isn't everything. It's merely one factor to be considered. And quite frankly, Palin's political views suck.

Kevin Drum: And what I was thinking about was what a bizarrely contrived and calculated choice it is. I mean, aside from six years as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,715) — about which I'm sure we'll be hearing much, much more — her political experience consists of 19 months as governor of the fourth smallest state in the union. That's it... It's hard to think of a more intensely cynical, focus-grouped, poll-driven, base-pandering VP choice in recent memory. Even Dan Quayle isn't in the running. This is ridiculous.

Jill at Feministe (though it's more about CNN than anything else).

Jonathan Singer at MyDD: "It has been forty years since someone as inexperienced as Sarah Palin has been put on a national ticket..."

Dennis' co-worker: This was a reactionary pick, decided in response to the convention. Bad idea.

Dennis: The media is going to have a field day accusing the Democratic Party and its base of sexism because Hillary lost the nomination. Women (and some men) everywhere are going to rip their hair out in frustration, because the media, like McCain, doesn't get that Hillary Clinton's appeal is due to a combination of her policies and the fact that she is female. Palin's preferred policies, as noted above, are not good for women. The media (and the McCain campaign) will fail to understand that women act in their own rational self-interest, and are not, in fact, led around by their uteruses. One almost wonders if this is a product of men being led around by their.... never mind.

Maybe more later, but I highly doubt it. On the plus side, I really like the name Sarah Palin, for some reason.

UPDATE: I removed the duplicate feministing post and added a new line from Cody. Also, I think Sarah Palin is an NPR correspondent or a movie star's name: Too good to be true.