McCain Locks in the Crucial Vagina-American Vote

Sure, Palin may be a hard-core conservative who opposes abortion in all cases--including rape, incest, and health of the mother. And she may be opposed to all forms of birth control, including condoms, even for married people (save the blastocytes! overturn Griswold!). It also may be the case that she doesn't support equal pay for women (the silver lining on that being that we'd presumably get a thirty-percent discount on the vice presidential salary).

But all that is nothing to Palin's possession of the all-important girly parts. We women will have no choice but to hop onto McCain's bandwagon! Fiendishly clever! Well played, sir, well played. Now if only he'd shown this much foresight with the vital polar bear constituency.

As a postscript to this, it does appear that perpetuation of stupid media narratives can sometimes have positive effects:

The main reason McCain knuckled under to the religious right by picking Palin is that he actually believes there’s a large army of embittered Hillary loyalists who will vote for a hard-line conservative simply because she’s a woman. That’s what happens when you listen to the TV news echo chamber. Not only is the whole premise ludicrous, but it is every bit as sexist as the crude joke McCain notoriously told about Janet Reno, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

I do so love to observe Republicans trying to play identity politics--they're so bad at it. It's like they can't conceive how anyone who isn't a white man could possibly be qualified to do anything. So they see Democrats coming up with various minority candidates, and they say among their white-dude selves: "Wait, they want a black man? Does anyone know a black man? Hey, I hear Alan Keyes has some time on his hands. Why don't we ship him to Illinois to run against this Obama fellow?" One being essentially the same as any other if you're going to throw standards out the window and not pick a white dude, right? No wonder they think Affirmative Action is a scourge.

See? Works for Geraldine Ferraro. Game, set, and match.