Sarah Palin's appeal

The race for president has stopped being about John McCain and has become about his pick for vice president, Sarah Palin. It has become Obama versus Ohh-Momma.

Unlike Barack Obama, McCain is man enough to pick a strong woman and not let his ego be bruised by the attention that she may get. By Obama not having the guts to pick Hillary, he will fall prey to the hubris that has cost us men dearly since the beginning of time.

McCain is, by most accounts, no longer physically an attractive man. I am not saying he is ugly, but sex sells in America. Well, it technically cannot sell. That is prostitution, and the government does not allow that because it cannot tax such an all-cash business. But sex can be given away. And the appeal that Sarah Palin has is nothing short of astounding. You have to say, given that he has already pulled off the Southern guy's trifecta by marrying his wife (pretty, rich and her dad owned a Budweiser distributorship), McCain can pick his women.

Like another famous Republican governor and ex-sportscaster, Sarah Palin has taken the nation by storm. She has been described as "Ronald Reagan in a dress," exciting the GOP base.

Although I disagree with her on religion and abortion, I find Palin a more palatable candidate than Obama, Biden or McCain. Unlike ideological zombies on the left and the right, there is something small-town and commonsensical about Sarah Palin. The more the big-city liberal elites attack her, the more the country circles its wagons to protect her. She appeals to all of us who live or grew up in a small town and who were excited when the Wal-Mart opened there.

Those of us who grew up in towns that barely had a zoo are tired of being looked down upon by big-city elites. We had a zoo in my hometown, but it was really just the guy who had the most animals in his yard. But we took pride in little victories, and we will also take pride in Sarah Palin, faults and all.

Daughters in our country do not learn what it takes to be a strong woman from angry liberal elites from Wellesley or Yale. They do not abandon their hometowns and families for the selfish professional world of big cities like New York or Boston. Women today learn to be strong from women who are really out there in the world like Sarah Palin. Who, like her, work in their hometown for a cause such as the PTA or CASA.

And who, with no family connections and based only on a desire to make her town better, runs for mayor of, as the liberals remind us daily, "the tiny town of 9,000 people." Yet she got more votes than Joe Biden did in his run for president in Wasilla, Alaska, and a 70 percent approval rating as governor -- the highest in the country. Compare that to the 18 percent approval rating of Nancy Pelosi or our Congress.

Come November, Barack Obama, who overlooked the strength that a woman brings to any situation, might well fumble the best chance a Democrat has ever had to become president.

Obama is a well-mannered and articulate man. He is also a finely tailored empty suit that the media has to helped model for us dummies in America who just do not get their socialist vision of "change."

Sarah Palin represents women whom we actually know and respect. She is our wife. She is our mother. She is what many of us hope our daughters will become. Few parents really want their daughter to become an angry Gloria Alred or Steinem, always seeing the glass ceiling in every setback.

I submit that a large majority of us, ridiculed by the leftist media, would like our daughters to become like Sarah Palin. And in that lies her profound appeal.

Ron Hart is a southern libertarian columnist. E-mail: RevRon10@aol.com.