A former John McCain advisor and Sarah Palin wrangler has admitted that thanks to the former Alaskan governor's disastrous turn as major party running mate, the chance that another woman will be nominated for Vice President is slim. Actually, scratch that: there's an Alaskan snowball's chance in hell that this year's GOP nominee will pick a lady to run alongside him.
Republican operative Nicolle Wallace expressed doubt that the next nominee for GOP Veep will have two X chromosomes, implying that Palin's candidacy was to blame but stopping short of pointing out why. (Hint: because she sucked)
"I think in the post-Palin era you can't go back. That happened," she told Buzzfeed.
Wallace noted that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina are two women that should be elevated in the Republican party. But, you know, Sarah Palin "happened." It probably wouldn't be smart for Republicans to nominate another women, because they're all kind of the same, right?
Wallace's (likely apt) prediction is a frustrating testament to the tokenism inherent in McCain's choice of Palin in the first place, and of voters in general. The public is incapable of seeing a woman as anything besides her sex, and therefore every woman in politics is constantly being judged as a figurehead representing all women everywhere. If she fails, it's because she's a woman; if a man fails, it has nothing to do with his sex. It's a frustrating state of affairs to say the least, not to mention kind of silly when you think about it. Concluding that because Sarah Palin's an idiot, all women must also be idiots and shouldn't be nominated for high political offices is like buying a professional baseball team without knowing anything about baseball and drafting only players that look like Manny Ramirez, and then concluding that because the Manny lookalikes aren't that great at baseball, no one who looks like Manny Ramirez should ever be allowed to play again.
But logic and talk of Sarah Palin have no place in the same sentence. For now, we're being asked to accept the fact that where Hillary Clinton made 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, Sarah Palin ascended her ladder and replaced the pane with new, double reinforced rimless glass. But at least the glass has a nice view of Russia.
Nicolle Wallace: Palin will shadow 2012 veepstakes [Buzzfeed]