I’ve had mixed feelings about the choice of Palin, with the one big sticking point for me being that she is a still relatively young mother of five, including a very young child with Down’s Syndrome. I have some difficulty reconciling her purportedly strong conservative family values position with her willingness to set her family effectively second to her political ambitions. Granted, that might be too harsh a criticism and she may be a true patriot with no political ambitions at all, just a willingness to serve and a strong sense of duty to country.

However, that aside (until further notice), I do think the choice is very clever, which leads me to believe that the idiot McCain couldn’t have made it on his own. He has someone smart on his staff, apparently. It’s a brilliant political tactic to fight history with history, so to speak. The first black president, or the first female vice-president: one or the other will definitely happen. We’ll have to see which of the “special interest” swing demographics holds more sway over American politics. Either way, Obama and the Dems thought they had the lock on the “historic election of 2008.” This move effectively steals that thunder and tips the scales decidedly Republican.

She’s going to make it exceptionally difficult for Biden to debate with her, as well, without coming off looking like a big mean political elitist bully.

Why do I have visions in my head of the Obama camp and Dem leadership sitting in stunned silence, throwing blank stares at one another when this announcement was made?

“Duh…what do we do now?”