Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Sep 7, 2008 at 1:48 PM Pacific

Palin-McCain. More Of The Same.

Sarah Palin is more than a distraction.

She is, in fact, a window into the kind of president John McCain would be. After all, her selection is the single most important political decision that he has made this entire campaign. And what McCain's decision tells us is that if he were to win this election, he would be at least as bad a president as George W. Bush -- and possibly far worse.

A McCain-Palin Administration would deliver:

• STAY THE COURSE ECONOMICS: Just like George W. Bush, neither McCain nor Palin talk at all about our economic problems, in large part because they don't even know they exist. We already know about McCain's mansions, but not as many people know that thanks to high oil prices, Alaska's economic situation is much stronger than the that in the rest of the United States. And the only plans they offer are the same as Bush's.
  
• EVEN MORE RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL EXTREMISM: For the past eight years, George W. Bush and Karl Rove have tried to divide this country along religious and cultural lines. By appeasing the far right wing of the GOP, John McCain has taken that trend towards polarization and put it on steroids. To gain a political advantage, he is willing to put a true religious zealot within a heartbeat of the presidency (edit: even though she's unqualified to be president).
  
• THE SAME OLD LIES AND DECEPTIONS: Both Palin and McCain lie with reckless abandon. They don't care. In fact, they get off on it. Remind you of how the administration sold the war in Iraq (aided, of course, by none other than John McCain)?

As Democrats, we sometimes have a tendency to shy away from ripe targets at the first sign of trouble. We can't let that happen this time. I know that McCain is getting a convention bump, even leading in Gallup's tracking poll. But if we interpret that as a sign that somehow Sarah Palin is a huge asset for John McCain, I think we'd be making a huge mistake. At the same time, as Sean Quinn argues, we can't allow ourselves to fall into the trap of reacting to Palin.

Instead, we need to continue pressing the case that we've been making all along: John McCain means four more years of Bush politics and policies. Now that he has selected Sarah Palin to run alongside him, our case is even stronger. And it's precisely because our case is so strong that I'm convinced we will win this election.