Sarah Palin marginalised by republican elite; the BBC reaction

Exciting to see Sarah Palin as McCain's choice for VP. Energises the base, yes; causes debate, yes; emphasises that being a woman and being pro-life are not mutually exclusive, that in fact woman are generally more pro-life than men. What worries me is that Bush was elected by Christian Conservatives, but his presidency was suborned to the Neo-Con and big business agenda; Palin will get social conservatives to vote Republican again, but she will be marginalised by McCain - the socially conservative agenda will be shelved after the Christian right has done its job as voting fodder. The compensatiion for this wory has been the horror of politically correct types on the BBC; Palin is an affront to all those who want to colonise women's issues for the left, and to paint social conservatives as irrational and ill-informed; both agendas the BBC supports wholeheartedly; however, highlighting the many flaws and biases of the BBC doesn't mean that the republican insiders will not betray social conservatives. Apparently Karl Rove was one of the insiders advising McCain to pick a pro-life candidate instead of McCain's preferred candidate, Joe Liebermann, the pro-Iraq War democrat; Karl Rove referred to evangelical leaders as "the nuts". Will we see the same when (as looks likely) McCain wins? after wooing the Christian right and social conservative movement in the election, the new administration will treat their views with contempt when making policy.

Incidentally James Naughty has been rather complementary about Palin - her personal impact at least if not her policies. The BBC will still not take social conservatism seriously as a set of political, social and ethical viewpoints. They either ignore it completely, so starving it of the oxygen of publicity or they charactiture it. Justin Webb, the America correspondent for the BBC characterised social conservatives as people whose foreign policy opinions amount to thinking that Al-Qaida is a bad thing and that Mexicans should stay in Mexico; what a trivialisation, if not distortion of an important political set of views. The BBC has a mandate to report objectively.

Note that on Friday's Today program, after the sympathetic but humorous sketch on America's rednecks, the two "serious" commentators were Simon Schama and Bonnie Greer, both on the liberal left. On Sunday's Broadcasting house, the commentators on Sarah Palin are both negative; they invite a comedian, Charlie Higson on who expresses his worry about Palin's environmental views; would they invite a right-of-centre comedian on? Rory Bremnar ia sketch on the Andrew Marr show trashes the conservative party by saying something like the Republican are an unevolved species; fair enough, if he were to say something similar about the democrats. To be fair James Naughty on Today during the week has been relatively sympathetic to her - at least in reacting to her personality - but there is no objective considerations of socially and morally conservative views. The very fact that Sarah Palin exists and is candidate for US VP may help to change that.