The Sarah Palin Factor

(This is a small portion of an Op-ed that will appear in Newspapers on 9/5/2008)

Can Sarah Palin Fix the GOP?

In August the John McCain campaign raised $16 Million on the Internet. More than half of that was raised on one single day, the day that McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his VP choice. Mitt Romney had the help of some millionaire buddies who cared nothing about social issues, but Gov. Sarah Palin brings the support of hundreds of thousands of small donors and millions of campaign workers. She is a social conservative and a populist who does not tolerate corruption. Wall Street doesn’t like her because she forced Big Oil to pay higher royalties for Alaskan oil that is owned by the people of that state.

The far left is afraid of Gov. Palin because she is just like the average working mom in America. Her husband is a blue collar oil worker and her teenage kids get into trouble just like their kids. She has one son in the Army headed to Iraq and a teen daughter who got pregnant before marriage. Those two kids alone bring millions of voters to the McCain – Palin camp.

Sarah Palin can also help the McCain ticket in a way nether Mike Huckabee or Fred Thompson could: Mitt Romney and his surrogates had no opportunity to spend millions of dollars tarnishing her reputation during the primaries as he had others. The left leaning media may try to do the job for him, but again, she is too much the American mother to bash without a backlash.

With Gov. Sarah Palin the Republicans have a chance to stay in the White House for another four years, something that would be unthinkable with a President of the same party that has only a 30% approval rating. It appears that the political party which has the image of being the “white male party” may well be saved in 2008 by a female governor. And, she can shoot a gun more accurately than Vice President Dick Cheney or most other male members of the GOP.