The answer is, yes - I prefer to go down in flames, hitching a ride with the Valkyries to Valhalla rather than cheerleading for a man who would choose a woman as his running mate with such a wretched moral sense.

I have, with few exceptions, tempered my criticism of John McCain’s proposed policies during this latter part of the campaign, concentrating instead on the horse race because frankly, there are many conservatives more qualified than I and more familiar with the issues who are doing a much better job than I could in making the conservative case for McCain despite his more problematic stands on issues.

I have also, for the most part, given a pass to McCain on the question of judgment, although I think the post mortems on McCain’s campaign will reveal some monumental blunders on the economic crisis as well as their electoral strategy (where they expended limited resources).

On the question of the Palin pick, however, I have had no such qualms in supporting McCain. Marc Ambinder (no fan of Palin) explains why the Alaska governor was really the only pick McCain could make:

A Sunday morning quarterback still makes a persuasive argument for picking Palin. In this environment, the Republican candidate could only win if he consolidates his base and wins a majority of persuadable votes; the Democrat simply has to turn out Democrats. Though McCain at one point wanted to pick Joe Lieberman, he’d have cut a leg from the stool and replaced it with one that, aside from his party affiliation — independent Democrat — has no real appeal among independents anymore. One step backward and no steps forward. By the time the news began to leak out that McCain wanted Lieberman, the trail balloon was also leaky. Republican delegations made it clear that they’d walk out on McCain. We still don’t know why McCain decided that the risk wasn’t worth taking — that’s for another Draper piece — but we know that he suddenly shifted back to someone who had impressed him early on, someone who, at the time, could check the two boxes: excite Republicans and convert independents and persuadables. Whether the vetting was complete or rushed, whether Palin and her advisers were completely forthcoming about her record…. again, wait for the Draper piece. The point here is that the choice was defensible. That almost every piece of information that has come out subsequent to the pick has hurt Palin can be interpreted in several ways: either the media was preordained to crush her spirit from the beginning, or the McCain campaign didn’t know about them, or they’ve been distorted beyond any sense of the rational.

I would add that Palin defenders have hit the nail on the head when they make the case for distortion, bias, double standards, and outright lies and rumors being printed by the MSM. The case of Palin’s belief in creationism is a perfect example. The rumor started on a site written by a Palin hater in Alaska that she believed people walked the earth with dinosaurs and that she wished to teach creationism “alongside” evolution in Alaskan schools. The rumor was printed verbatim and passed off as truth in the Los Angeles Times among other outlets.

Palin never said any such thing nor does she believe that creationism has a place in a public school curriculum. It was a lie made up out of whole cloth, swallowed by the press, and given wide distribution by liberal blogs who never bothered to check the provenance of the story. Pattericio points out that the Times never retracted one bit of the story.

Ambinder makes the same case I’ve been making since Palin was chosen; that McCain basically had no choice but to pick her. (For your Romneyites I only have one word: Mormon).

But this doesn’t negate certain facts. Palin is unready to hold high office and won’t be, in my opinion, for perhaps a year. The public isn’t buying the counter argument and her negatives are so high now she has become a huge drag on the campaign with two groups that McCain absolutely must win over if he is to win; white women and independents. Palin may have solidified the base but you don’t win too many elections getting 30% of the vote.

No doubt a large part of the problem has been the unfair treatment she has received in the media. But you can’t just explain away the voter’s unhappiness with Palin by ascribing all her negatives to media bias and manipulation. The American people are a little smarter than that.

Perhaps they sense something about her that Palin worshipers fail to see. It certainly doesn’t help Palin’s case when she makes a statement like this:

Brian Williams: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under this definition? Sarah Palin: [Sighs] There’s no question Bill Ayres, under his own admittance, was, um, one who sought to destroy, er, our US Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities, that, uh, er, that would be unacceptable. Uh, I don’t know if you’re going to use the word “terrorist” there, but it’s unacceptable and, uh, um, it, er, would not be condoned, of course, on, on our watch, but [sigh] I don’t know what you’re asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayres as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that. Brian Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers, protesters in cities where fires were started, molotov cocktails were thrown, people died. Sarah Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayres anyone else who would seek to campaign to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

There is no mistaking her answer. I sought out a fuller transcript in order to ascertain her exact words as well as her full response and any follow up question asked by Williams.

Sarah Palin is refusing to call people who would bomb abortion clinics terrorists. Yes, she condemns their actions. But she is parsing the definition of terrorism so as not to offend that small, but vocal part of the conservative base who may not see clinic bombers as heroes, but refuse to place their actions in a a moral context that equates the tactics of the jihadis with the Eric Rudolphs of the world.

This is moral cowardice. The purpose of bombing abortion clinics (it hasn’t happened in a decade) is exactly the same as fanatics who set off car bombs in crowded markets; that is, to intimidate and to terrorize people.

Have Muslim fanatics set off more bombs than Christians? Of course they have. But if you are going to base a moral judgment on numbers of dead, then you are probably able to parse the moral guilt of Hitler compared to Stalin - or perhaps Hitler compared to Idi Amin. The death of innocents perpetrated for political ends, be it fewer abortions due to the terrorizing of women and fewer abortion clinics due to their destruction, or the blowing up of a marketplace to intimidate and frighten people into abandoning support for their government is terrorism. It is always terrorism. It was terrorism yesterday, it is terrorism today, and it will be terrorism tomorrow. And anyone who can’t make the moral judgment that this is so is, in my opinion, a coward - especially since if Palin had admitted that bombing abortion clinics was terrorism, she would have angered a small but significant part of the conservative base.

Don’t believe me? Here are some observations by those moral titans in the anti-abortion crowd about whether bombing clinics is terrorism:

“No, you pro-abortion baby killing fanatics are the terrorists. What is a terrorist? Someone who murders innocent people. That is YOU. You pro-abortion babykillers murder innocent children each and every day.” — Rev Donald Soitz. “We have shed the blood of the innocent in the womb, and we are now reaping it in the streets.” — Rev. Flip Benham, Operation Rescue Ever since then, whenever someone brings up a terrorist attack carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, you are expected to practice the Fairness Doctrine and give appropriate lip service to the “Christian” attacks on abortion clinics in order to demonstrate that neither side is beyond reproach. Of course, there is something to be said about the fact that when “Christians” attack, they are not supported by a body of religious figures that can be recognized as a legitimate authority, are wholly condemned by the Christian community both far and wide, and are doing so not for religious reasons but because in their minds these abortion clinics are clinics of death where babies are daily being killed and thus their existence means the continued death of another child. Somehow it’s hard to generate the same feelings against someone who wants to preserve life as it is to generate against someone who uses planes as torpedoes. But I digress. Perhaps the most telling thing about how absurd this argument is are the simple numbers. A simple glance indicates that, across America, there have only been 168 attacks against abortion clinics since 1982, the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Bureau reports. These attacks come with surprisingly little casualties, and most attacks are rather measured in property damage, rather than human lives lost. Therefore to run it on average, every year there will be six or seven abortion related attacks across America, with a marginal increase in these numbers in Canada and Australia (one in Australia’s history, for example).

Moral equivalency between jihadis and Christians is not, cannot be based on comparative body counts but only on the intent of the attacker - the only possible moral context you can place any attack on innocents. Palin’s parsing is an ignominious example of a politician who would rather pander to the extreme of her base instead of taking a clear, unambiguous moral stand against political violence. She should be condemned for this by those on the right who claim moral ascendancy over the rest of us due to their religious beliefs as well as any thinking conservative who cares about the moral standing of our candidates.