Dubya Report contributor Publius wrote us recently:

OK, let me get this straight:
 
On the Republican side you have a candidate who was at the center of a major political/financial scandal that cost the taxpayers billions, who cheated on and ultimately left his disabled wife in order to marry an heiress worth 100 million, many years his junior, who herself stole prescription drugs from the non-profit she nominally headed in order to feed her addiction to prescription painkillers. He chose as his running mate a person who, despite the claim that she is a bold reformer, headed the PAC for the one of the more corrupt members of Congress, lied about her opposition to pork barrel gifts to Alaska, has evidently used her political power to fire on more than one occasion public officials who disagreed with her, or thwarted her will on purely personal matters, and is now parroting Bush/Cheney claims of executive power over the duly constituted authority of the State legislature seeking to investigate her wrongdoing. And this is not even talking about the lunacy of opposing contraception and advocating abstinence even faced with the unwed pregnancy of her 17 year old daughter.
 
On the Democratic side you have the son of a teenage mother who raised him as a single parent, who by dint of superior intellect and drive graduated near the top of the most prestigious law school in the country, eschewed corporate practice to work as a community organizer, and goes on to a life in politics, and has, by all accounts, an exemplary, monogamous family life, who chooses as his running mate a blue collar guy who, after his wife was killed, commuted every night from Washington to Wilmington so that he could tuck his kids in and feed them breakfast in the morning.
 
And the Republicans are considered the party of family values? It makes me want to scream.
-- September 2, 2008

This seemed such a nice concise summary of current topics that we thought we'd use it as something of an outline for the current article. Herewith....

... major political/financial scandal that cost taxpayers billions...

The "major political/financial scandal" refers, of course, to the "Keating Five." Asked at a May 10 news conference whether his campaign intended to raise McCain's involvement in the 80s scandal, Senator Obama replied that all of a candidate's record was "germane to the presidency." The McCain campaign responded: "Apparently, Obama’s lively calls for new politics ended today."

The matter reappeared last month when a McCain campaign TV ad suggested that Chicago real estate developer Tony Rezko, recently convicted of fraud and bribery, helped Obama buy his house. There have been no serious allegation that Obama did anything unethical, but the ad renewed interest in McCain's membership in the "Keating Five." On September 3, OpenSecrets.org reported that individuals at a law firm founded by the eponymous Charles H. Keating had contributed more than $50,000 to the McCain campaign since June, making them the sixth-largest contributor during that period. A Keating firm client, Cincinnati billionaire Carl Lindner, and his son, have also raised $300,000 - $600,000 for the McCain campaign.

The "Keating Five" were five US senators: Democrats Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, and Donald Riegle, and Republican John McCain. The five met with federal savings and loan regulators at the request of Charles Keating, who controlled Lincoln Savings and Loan, a troubled California bank. Regulators had discovered that Lincoln had been concealing large losses, and was violating a 1985 rule limiting the "direct investment" of its federally insured deposits that a bank could make in risky debt or real estate. (Observers have noted the similarity between this practice and those that led to the current subprime mortgage crisis.)

The five senators, and Alan Cranston in particular, blocked funding of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation so that it couldn't carry out its primary mission of shutting down fraudulent savings banks. On April 2, 1987 the senators met with Edwin Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, to urge him not to take any enforcement action against Lincoln Savings. They met a week later with officials of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBSF), who had direct responsibility for regulating Lincoln. At the April 9 meeting the FHLBSF officials informed the senators of their intent to bring criminal charges against Lincoln officers, and that the bank would fail if it continued its investment practices. Because of deposit insurance, individuals were buffered to some extent from the failure of Lincoln itself. Lincoln's parent company, however, sold uninsured bonds targeted particularly at widows. Lincoln's failure cost taxpayers at least $2 billion.

At a "news conference" at which Keating asked and then answered prepared questions, he asked whether his political donations to the senators encouraged their intervention. "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so," he said. Keating's contributions totaled approximately $1.3 million.

McCain is the only member of the five still in office. He was the only Republican, and unlike the other senators his relationship with Keating went well beyond the political. McCain, his wife, children and a nanny made nine trips at Keating's expense, some on Lincoln S&L planes. Three trips included vacations to Keating's luxury home in the Bahamas. Required by law to reimburse Keating for expenses, McCain only did so years later after the scandal broke. McCain also had a direct conflict of interest in the Lincoln S&L matter. A year before he met with the regulators, McCain's wife Cindy, and father in-law, invested more than $350,000 in a Keating shopping center.

According to William H. Black, who was counsel for FHLBSF during the Lincoln S&L investigation, McCain was the "most important support for Keating's effort" to obtain concessions from Reagan administration agencies, because he is a Republican. "More generally, Senator McCain was the Senator most opposed to financial regulation in general," and enforcement of the limits on direct investment in particular. Writing on the 21st anniversary of the "Keating Five" meeting, Black noted

As his March 25, 2008 speech on the ongoing mortgage crisis makes clear, he continues to call for greater deregulation of the kind that is causing our financial crises to become more severe and more common.

... cheated on and ultimately left his disabled wife in order to marry an heiress ...

McCain's first wife, Carol Shepp, grew up in Philadelphia, PA, and became a successful model. In 1958, the year McCain graduated from the US Naval Academy, she married his classmate Alasdair E. Swanson. In the early 60s McCain and Swanson were stationed at Pensacola, FL, but in '64 Carol sued for divorce claiming her husband had been unfaithful. McCain married Shepp/Swanson in Philadelphia, in 1965; McCain adopted her sons, and they had a daughter together.

When McCain's plane was shot down and he was captured by the North Vietnamese in 1967, Carol became active in the POW-MIA movement, and according to friends interviewed by the LA Times "dedicated herself to her children and kept the family together."

Christmas Eve 1969, her third without her husband, Carol McCain left her parents' home to drop off some presents at a friend's house. She was discovered hours later next to her car, which had skidded into a utility pole and thrown her through the windshield breaking both legs and her pelvis. She had 23 operations, which left her 5 inches shorter, was in the hospital for six months, and when released was confined to a wheel chair and needed a catheter. She insisted that doctors not try to get word of her injuries to McCain, saying "He's got enough problems, I don't want to tell him." Texas billionaire and sometime presidential candidate H. Ross Perot paid her medical expenses.

When John McCain was released in 1973 he told reporters that he was happy to see his wife and family, but friends say he was "appalled" at the changes in Carol's appearance. Whether for that reason, or midlife crisis, or something else, according to McCain biographer Robert Timberg "John started carousing and running around with women." He met Cindy Hensley at a cocktail party in Hawaii in 1979. "He kind of chased me around . . . the hors d'oeuvre table," Cindy told Jay Leno on a recent Tonight Show appearance. "I was trying to get something to eat and I thought, 'This guy's kind of weird.' I was kind of trying to get away from him."

Over the next six months McCain pursued Cindy around the country; she was 24, he was 42. McCain's version of events is that he divorced Carol before he began dating Hensley. According to court documents, however, McCain did not sue for divorce until February 9, 1980, and that he had "cohabited" with Carol until January 7 of that year — or the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley. In his autobiography McCain indicated that months intervened between his divorce and remarriage. According to the LA Times, however, McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980 while still married to Carol.

McCain's behavior strained his relationship to former president Reagan and wife Nancy, who were close to Carol Shepp McCain. "Everybody was upset with him," former Reagan aide Nancy Reynolds told the Times.

Ted Sampley, a Vietnam special forces veteran and veterans' rights advocate told the Daily Mail (UK):

I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.
 
When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.
 
Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.
 
This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.

... who herself stole prescription drugs from the non-profit she nominally headed ...

McCain moved to Arizona where his father-in-law, Jim Hensley, owner of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship based in Phoenix, gave him a job. Hensley also introduced McCain to local politicos and businessmen who would soon facilitate his campaigning for national office. When McCain was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 Cindy moved to Washington, DC, but returned to Arizona in 1984.

In 1988 Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT), a nonprofit providing medical assistance to poverty-stricken or war-torn areas of the world. She hired Tom Gosinski in 1991 to be AVMT's director of government and international affairs. A year or so later Gosinski wrote in his journal that he and others at AVMT had begun to suspect that Cindy McCain was addicted to painkillers and possibly stealing from the organization. Gosinski wondered why John McCain did not intervene:

He must either not see that a problem exists or ... not choose to do anything about it. It would seem that it would be in everyone's best interest to come to terms with the situation. And do whatever is necessary to fix it. There is so much at risk: The welfare of the children; John's political career; the integrity of Hensley & Company [Cindy's parents' business]; the welfare of Jim and Smitty Hensley [Cindy's parents]; and the health and happiness of Cindy McCain.
 
I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. Senator has driven her to: distance herself from friends; cover feelings of despair with drugs; and replace lonely moments with self-indulgences.

Gosinski was also concerned that the fallout from a DEA audit of AVMT's inventory would threaten the organization's existence. Cindy McCain fired Gosinski in January 1993, claiming AVMT was having financial problems. Gosinski approached the DEA in the spring of 1993 and voiced his suspicions about McCain's addiction. He suggested that she had pressured AVMT doctors to write prescriptions for her and filled them using employees' names (including possibly Gosinski's). The DEA subsequently confirmed that prescriptions had been dispensed in Gosinski's name. Gosinski eventually decided to sue for wrongful termination, having come to believe he had been fired because Cindy McCain suspected he knew of her addiction.

The DEA investigation was secret, but ironically the episode became public information when McCain's attorney, John Dowd, asked the Maricopa County, AZ attorney to investigate Gosinski for extortion. As reported by the Phoenix New Times

In a "confidential" April 28 letter to Romley, Dowd blurted, "We believe that Mr. Gosinski is aware that in the past Cindy had an addiction to prescription painkillers. . . . Given Cindy's public position, exposure of this sensitive matter would harm her reputation, career, the operation of AVMT, and subject her to contempt and ridicule."

A defense attorney who spoke to New Times at the time of the DEA investigation suggested that Cindy McCain "probably could have gotten ten to sixteen months" in prison. Another suggested that it is not uncommon for the DEA to seize the offender's property, which in this case would have included Cindy McCain's interest in Hensley&Co., and the McCain's Phoenix residence.

Subsequent reports in the Arizona Daily Star implied that Cindy McCain had completed a "diversion" program. (Diversion programs, which enable offenders to avoid criminal charges, typically include payment of a fine, completion of an education or rehabilitation program, restitution to any victims, and agreeing for a period of time to avoid situations that might lead to another offense.) In response the US Attorney's Office in Phoenix issued a statement clarifying that Cindy McCain had requested a diversion program, and had agreed to reorganize AVMT and pay for the costs of the federal investigation.

On August 22, 1994, in a classic Washington-style media manipulation — get the story out with the spin you want, even if it's a negative story — Cindy McCain granted interviews to a local TV station and three reporters. She tearfully recounted her addiction to prescription painkillers and admitted having stolen from AVMT. The local press duly parroted her story, not knowing that the revelation had been orchestrated by Jay Smith, John McCain's Washington campaign media advisor. Cindy McCain's interviews were granted on the day her court records were to be made public. Amy Silverman, who had been covering the case for the Phoenix New Times wrote:

Candor is the McCain trademark, but what the journalists who slobber over the senator fail to realize is that the candor is premeditated and polished. John McCain shoots from the hip — but only after carefully rehearsing the battle plan, to be sure he won't get shot himself.

... running mate ... lied about her opposition to pork barrel gifts to Alaska ...

Whether or not the choice of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate was another shot from the hip, as the apparent lack of vetting suggests, in introducing her McCain presented her as a reformer who fought corruption. Yet the record shows that she served as director of a so-called 527 group — a technically independent political organization that can raise unlimited funds from corporate donors — supporting Senator Ted Stevens. On July 29, 2008 Stevens was indicted on seven counts of corruption. He is accused of failing to report expensive gifts from now-defunct oil company Veco, including a new first floor on his house. Stevens endorsed Palin during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, and the two filmed a TV commercial that was removed from her web site after McCain announced her as his running mate. When Palin was mayor of Wasilla, AK, she hired a Washington lobbying firm headed by Stevens' former chief of staff, Steven Silver (more on this below). Inexplicably, McCain sidekick Lindsey Graham spent Friday, August 29, telling TV news organizations that Palin "took on" Ted Stevens, adding "If you can take on Ted Stevens and that crowd in Alaska, you can handle the Russians."

In her remarks following McCain's introduction, Governor Palin claimed that she opposed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" (a $233 million project to provide access to Ketchikan's airport on Gravina Island, population 50). "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere," she said, adding "'If our state wanted a bridge,' I said, 'we'd build it ourselves.'" McCain repeated the claim to Fox News's Chris Wallace, and it was echoed by other campaign spokespeople. But according to the Ketchikan Daily News Palin supported the bridge project in August 2006:

We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge, and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative.

After McCain and others in Congress made the bridge a symbol of wasteful government spending, the specific project was dropped, although the funding was retained in a transportation bill. In September 2007 Palin's office issued a statement saying that the governor had "cancelled all state work on the Gravina Island bridge project, which gained national fame as a symbol of what critics said was wrong with federal budget earmarks." "I think that's when the campaign for national office began," Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein told the Anchorage Daily News.

The Wall Street Journal, often an outlet for conservative political sentiment, published an article on September 9 titled "Record Contradicts Palin's 'Bridge' Claims." The Journal noted that Palin's claims that she opposed the bridge project "comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006." The article continues:

Why is this one issue such a big deal? Sen. McCain's anti-earmarks stance has been paramount to his campaign. The Arizona senator has blamed everything from the Minneapolis bridge collapse to Hurricane Katrina on Congress's willingness to stuff bills full of pork barrel spending.
 
As such, Gov. Palin's image as a "reformer" is part of the story line the McCain campaign needs to complement the top of its ticket.

Ironically, according to the LA Times, three times in recent years McCain's catalog of "objectionable" spending included items from Palin during her tenure as mayor of Wasilla.

• 2001: a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project
• 2002: a $1 million spending bill for a communications center that local law enforcement said is redundant and creates confusion
• 2002: $450,000 for an agricultural processing facility requested during Palin's term and funded by Congress soon after she left office

According to the Times, Wasilla had received little federal funding before Palin became mayor, and Palin's initial efforts to obtain federal funding were largely unsuccessful. That changed once she hired lobbyist Steven Silver, former chief of staff to indicted Senator Ted Stevens. After Silver was hired Wasilla received funding for several projects including in 2002 alone an additional $600,000 for transportation, and $1.5 million for a water and sewer project.

While Palin was mayor of Wasilla, population 7,025 (according to the city web site) she obtained approximately $8 million in federal earmarks. Wasilla was one of just six incorporated localities in Alaska to pay registered lobbyists in 2002.

In 2008, as governor, Palin submitted requests to Congress for $197.8 million, including $2 million to study crab productivity in the Bering Sea. As Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense succinctly put it, "... [W]hile Sen. McCain was going after cutting earmarks in Washington Gov. Palin was going after getting earmarks."

... used her political power to fire on more than one occasion public officials who disagreed with her ...

As mayor and again as governor, Palin fired top law-enforcement officials because they weren't sufficiently loyal or subservient. Arguably this quality and history appealed to Republicans who are still dealing with the Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department.

After her election as mayor of Wasilla in 1996, Palin tried to fire six municipal department heads because they had signed a letter supporting her predecessor. She eventually did fire the fire chief and police chief. Police chief Irl Stambaugh sued Palin in 1997 for wrongful termination and gender discrimination, charging that his was fired without cause, the real reasons being his perceived disloyalty, and that at 6 feet/200 pounds he intimidated Palin. Stambaugh's lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge.

By the time Palin was elected governor in 2006 she was involved in what some observers termed a "vendetta" against her ex-brother-in-law, an Alaska state trooper named Mike Wooten. Palin had helped arrange Wooten's five-day suspension for alleged personal misconduct prior to 2006. A month after taking office, Palin's husband Todd met with state safety commissioner Walter Monegan at the governor's office and pressured Monegan to reopen the Wooten case. Monegan responded that the case was closed and there was nothing to be done. According the the Washington Post, Governor Palin called Monegan a few days later, and he gave her the same response. Palin brought up the matter again at a meeting at the state capitol in February 2007, Monegan told the Post, and he warned her to back off.

Despite his warning, Monegan said, Palin continued to press the Wooten matter in emails, and indirectly via phone calls from her chief of staff, from the state commissioner of administration, and the state attorney general. Attorney General Talis Colberg acknowledged calling Monegan and conveying his response back to Palin that there was nothing to be done. Monegan has also reported that he warned the individuals contacting him about the Wooten matter that the state faced a legal liability if Wooten sued. Nonetheless, "first dude" Todd Palin continued to collect evidence against Wooten, and admitted providing Wooten's boss, Col. Audie Holloway, with photos of Wooten driving a snowmobile while off work on a workmen's compensation claim. Alaska’s Deputy Attorney General Michael Barnhill told the Post that Diane Kiesel, the governor's personnel director, also called Holloway about the snowmobile incident.

Palin fired Monegan on July 11, 2008, claiming that she wanted to move the public safety department in a different direction. Monegan then told his account to theAnchorage Daily News, including the assertion that Todd Palin had showed him materials gathered by a private investigator hired by the family, which accused Wooten of drunk driving and child abuse among other allegations. Governor Palin has asserted that she was not involved in efforts to pressure Monegan, but among two dozen or so phone calls among state officials the state attorney general's office found at least one in which the caller described "Todd and Sarah" questioning why Monegan was still "representing the [public safety] department."

As discussions of a state legislature investigation began, Palin at first denied wrongdoing and apparently welcomed an investigation, saying "Hold me accountable." The legislature initiated a formal investigation on August 2, 2008, to explore whether Palin had "used her public office to settle a private score"; a special prosecutor was appointed by a bipartisan committee. State senator Hollis French raised the possibility that the investigation might lead to impeachment — something that Palin's office was quick to cite as evidence that the process would not be fair. By early September Palin's attitude toward the investigation had changed. Her lawyer asked the legislature to stop, and on his advice Palin filed an ethics complaint against herself. The ethics complaint shifted responsibility to the state Personnel Board, which was expected to hire an independent investigator.

"This is not an open and transparent attempt to establish Gov. Palin's accountability. It is an attempt to drag out the investigation until after voters decide the fate of her vice-presidential bid," an editorial in the Anchorage Daily News declared. "Instead," it continued, "Gov. Palin should honor her pledge to cooperate with the Legislature's investigation, conducted by former state prosecutor Steve Branchflower."

The editorial went on to call for the legislature to grant subpoena power to its investigator. The investigation is scheduled to finish by October 31.

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin also fired the town librarian. According to the Anchorage Daily News, upon taking office in 1996 Palin asked popular town librarian Mary Ellen Emmons if she would censor books if asked to do so. As reported in the Wasilla Frontiersman, according the the News, Palin asked Emmons about censorship on three separate occasions. One occasion was a Wasilla town council meeting in October 1996.

Wasilla housewife Anne Kilkenny witnessed the exchange. "Sarah [Palin] said to Mary Ellen, 'What would your response be if I asked you to remove some books from the collection?" Kilkenny said. "I was shocked," she continued. "Mary Ellen sat up straight and said something along the line of, 'The books in the Wasilla Library collection were selected on the basis of national selection criteria for libraries of this size, and I would absolutely resist all efforts to ban books.'" Emmons received two letters asking for her resignation, described by Palin as "loyalty tests" for public officials who had supported her predecessor. Emmons eventually resigned in August 1999.

... opposing contraception and advocating abstinence even faced with the unwed pregnancy of her 17 year old daughter ..

"This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need," feminist icon Gloria Steinem wrote recently in an LA Times op-ed piece.

McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
 
Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

"Don't they have birth control up in Alaska?" a Republican-leaning woman friend of columnist Froma Harrop wondered aloud.

Until now, one could counter the Democrats' argument that a McCain presidency would amount to a third term for Bush. After all, McCain is a deficit hawk. He cares about the environment. Many pro-choice voters were willing to overlook McCain's generally anti-abortion stance on the belief that he didn't really care about the issue. And the widespread concern regarding McCain's age could have been assuaged by the choice of a competent vice president.
 
Then who does McCain pick for VP? A 44-year-old who parades her dysfunctional family as a poster-child for conservative values.

"If that view has any currency among Republican-leaners," Harrop wrote, "you can imagine what other independents are thinking. Or disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton."

Now What?

Much has been made of Palin's breathtaking lack of preparedness for office. Conservative gnome Charles Krauthammer decried "the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time." The always concise Economist put it this way:

When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior’s sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.
 
Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: "I've been so focused on state government; I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq." She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.

But cognitive scientist and linguist George Lakoff, who has written much in the last few years about the need for Democrats and progressives to connect their political rhetoric to progressive values, warned against what Arianna Huffington recently called a "Trojan Moose". Echoing McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, albeit differing in implication, perhaps, Lakoff wrote:

... [T]he Palin nomination is not basically about external realities and what Democrats call "issues," but about the symbolic mechanisms of the political mind-the worldviews, frames, metaphors, cultural narratives, and stereotypes. The Republicans can't win on realities. Her job is to speak the language of conservatism, activate the conservative view of the world, and use the advantages that conservatives have in dominating political discourse.

The reason to oppose Bush and McCain and Palin, Lakoff argues, as he has elsewhere, is that their radical conservative agenda is fundamentally anti-American and harmful. He praises the Obama campaign for their consistent message that "America is based on people caring about each other and working together for a better future-empathy, responsibility (both personal and social), and aspiration." On the other hand, in the conservative value system — based on an authoritarian patriarchal model — "social programs are immoral,... the market is the ultimate financial authority.... foreign policy strength is the use of force,.... In fundamentalist religion, the Bible is the ultimate authority; hence no gay marriage. This is how John McCain was raised and how he plans to govern. And it is what he shares with Sarah Palin."

What's at stake, Lakoff concludes is nothing less than our ideals, and our future.