“Hockey Mom” Palin a Dilemma for Democrats
Scott Lingamfelter
Sep 05, 2008

Well, I arrived home after a very exciting week in Minneapolis where we nominated John McCain for President and his Vice Presidential running mate, Governor Sarah Palin.  You should not be surprised that the Democrats are attacking McCain.  But they are having a tough time dealing with Palin.  Don’t get me wrong, they have attacked her on several fronts.  But what has been interesting is the way they have probed those fronts to see what works for them. 

This afternoon, their attack line is “she’s a bad mother” because she wants to be Vice President and that will take her away from her kids.  Mind you, this is from the same Democratic Party who says Republicans don’t respect working Moms.
They have also told us that Sarah Palin is not experienced enough.  Even the Potomac News Editorial writers have bought into this sad line of thinking.  But again, remember that Sarah Palin has more experience at the bottom of the GOP ticket than Barak Obama provides to theirs. 

And of course, less we forget, Democrats will say that “her resume is inflated” with overstated achievements.  Ok, in politics that happens now and again.  But Obama’s resume is so thin that if you inflated it 10 times it would be the size of a golf ball.

In truth, Sarah Palin creates a huge problem for the Democrat strategists use to propping up Obama with puffed up rhetoric and sophomoric sound bites.  If they attack her on “experience”, they will open themselves to the same harsh criticism, only in Obama’s case, his experience is less than Palin’s.  Strike one.

If they go after the “bad mom” angle, they will explicitly be criticizing working moms, many of whom were Hillary supporters.  That strategy will backfire badly among a group Obama has vulnerability with now.  Strike two.

If they accuse her on an over-inflated resume, maybe they won’t feel so bad if Republicans remind folks that in Joe Biden 1987 presidential campaign, he plagiarized a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labor Party. Strike three.

It appears that McCain’s pick of Palin has Democrats spinning like a top.  And maybe they’ll simply try to ignore her altogether.  But you can bet on one thing.  She won’t ignore them.  She’s hockey mom, and not likely to sit quietly in the stands.