Much is being made on political web sites and in the main stream media about which voters Governor Sarah Palin can and cannot deliver come November. Dissatisfied Hillary supporters? Republican Women? Feminists? Some conservatives and many liberal pundits don't like the choice, calling it a desperate pander to lure unhappy and hurt Hillary voters. Possibly, but I don't think so. But even if that is true, the unintended consequences have begun to far outweigh any other targeted gains.
In 20 short months she has passed major ethics legislation, taxed oil companies who she said had bribed legislators to keep taxes low and then turned the money over to the citizens of Alaska, and finally put in motion a $40 billion natural gas pipeline to, in her words, "help lead America to energy independence". Now that's change you can believe in and count on. She has done more in changing and cleaning up the landscape of politics in the country's largest, and likely one of the dirtiest, states in the nation than most politicians do in a lifetime.
So what the McCain camp knows now, even if they didn't before, is that Sarah Palin, while she may bring in new women, she most assuredly has charged up the base and woke the sleeping giant that helped put George Bush in office, and even Democrats know that at the very least that means they now have a fight on their hands and what we have learned is, Sarah Palin has never shied from a fight.
A victory for Republicans in November seemed unlikely earlier this year, perhaps earlier last week and Sarah Palin certainly does not equal victory. But as she shook Alaska to its core, she has shaken the Conservative base out of its slumber, and it took a gun totin', hockey coaching, corruption busting, mother of 5 to do it.
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