Sarah Palin = Clarence Thomas

Is McCain out of his mind?

That’s a good question. McCain picked someone whose sum total of experience is having served as governor of a teeny tiny state for less than two years.
Alaska? A tiny state?
Yes. Alaska is one of the smallest states by population. San Antonio, Texas has nearly twice the population as the entire state of Alaska.

Some people are calling her Sarah Quayle Palin, but I think the more apt analogy is with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Sarah Palin was picked for two reasons, and experience wasn’t one of them. First, she’s a woman. And second, she is a fundamentalist rightwinger.
There are many other women in the Republican Party far more experienced to take on the job of Vice President starting with Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and former N.J. Gov. Christie Todd Whitman. Then there is Sens. Olypia Snow, Susan Collins and Elizabeth Dole and Govs. Jodi Rell and Linda Lingle, all with more experience than Palin.
But none were apparently rightwing enough to satisfy the James Dobson-wing of the Republican Party.
That is where Sarah Palin fits the bill. Vigorously anti-choice, even in cases of rape and incest, and a favorite of the anti-public education homeschool crowd who pushes for “creation science” to be taught in the classroom, Palin promises to be a reliable rubber stamp on all evangelical religious right issues.

That is the way it was with Clarence Thomas back when George Bush the Elder passed over dozens of far more qualified black jurists to elevate Thomas to the Supreme Court simply because of his hard-right political views.

BeldarBlog has been pushing for Palin as VP since early June and he is clearly elated. Below is a comment I left on his blog back then:

I think Sarah Palin is a very interesting choice. But I am a bit surprised that Beldar is so enamored with her. As others have already noted, she has little experience on the national stage and if she happened to have a D after her name rather than an R would Beldar still agree that she was a good choice for the other party?
Let's face it, she is a one-term governor of a teeny, tiny state. Yes, I mean tiny in the population sense. Alaska has fewer people than Rhode Island afterall. Why, twice as many people live in Hawaii. It is the 47th smallest state population wise and only merits one representative in the U.S. House. Texas has 32 by contrast.
In fact, more people live in Austin than live in the entire state of Alaska. Twice as many people live in San Antonio. So that means that Mayor Phil Hardberger is respeonsible for twice as many people as Gov. Palin.
I'm still betting that McCain will go with a Hispanic VP - someone like Sen. Mel Martinez - to try and make inroads with that ethnic group. You say that identity politics is stronger with Democrats, yet I think it is almost guaranteed that McCain will pick a woman or a minority for his VP. I would be shocked if he did otherwise.