Bwa?

When I read the announcement in my paper this morning, I inwardly groaned. I generally like Palin - she's way better than the alternatives - but a) she's going to make a shitty VP (and eventual president, when McCain kicks it) and b) her being on the ticket is going to drag my home through the mud. We're already getting referred to as some podunk, permanently intoxicated wasteland where we subsist on welfare and PDF cheques.

And it's not even been two hours.
I'm hoping that this all goes away, but that seems unlikely.

Has McCain lost it? Has he just gone and lost all of his remaining braincells?

• The dyed-in-the-wool-never-Obama Clinton supporters tend to be more liberal than average, not less. These aren't Blue Collar Dems, these are the far-from-centre people who go on about the patriarchy ad nausem. A fervently pro-life Palin is going to drive them away.
• This undercuts McCain's message about experience greatly. He won't be able to level that at Obama without anyone with two wits saying `Well, Palin was a Gov for how long, and you're putting her at the top of the list when you kick it?`
• She brings a state that, well, probably was leaning towards him anyhow. With a grand total of 3 EVs.
• She's embroiled in the cronyism probe, for the firing of a DPS employee who was in a bitter divorce with her sister. The probe isn't going well. It's going pretty un-well. Obama is going to point to that, point to the trouble in the DoJ under Bush, with the hirings and firings for political and personal reasons, and say `do the math.`

I didn't expect him to pick Mitt-the-Gitt, but Palin? We'll see, but it looks like a horrible call.