DCFOUNTAIN.COM

Never mind the fact that Palin’s positions are the polar opposite of Sen. Clinton on practically every single issue most women care about. Never mind the fact that a President McCain — with a proud legacy of rarely deferring to anyone at all, even his own party, during his 30 years in Congress — hardly could be expected to begin suddenly deferring to the judgment of a total novice almost half his age with no experience whatsoever handling any matter of national importance.

Anyone who thinks otherwise certainly is operating in a parallel universe commonly known as fantasy. Poor Sarah Palin. McCain is using her simply to gain office; that much is clear. Has anyone bothered to tell her that afterward she’s simply window dressing? Or perhaps she is more calculating than we realize, and indeed is counting on McCain being unable to serve his full term.

What’s so deeply troubling is that Sen. McCain is so desperate to win that he would jeopardize the nation’s vital interests to do so, by selecting a grossly unqualified second-in-command to succeed him. Not only is she lacking in experience, her far-right extremist ideology would make George W. Bush look like an entrenched liberal.

In fact, McCain has been fighting such ultra-conservative ideologists for three decades. That he now would select one of the most orthodox conservatives of all as his running mate smacks of disingenousness and belittles what is left of his once esteemed reputation as a political maverick.

After eight disastrous years of a president who 80 percent of the country now agrees put us on the wrong track by failing to understand the consequences of his policies, America cannot afford to elect a successor who less than a year ago boasted of supporting those very same policies last year 90 percent of the time.

Nor can we afford to risk yet another unproven neophyte and extreme ideologue inheriting the Oval Office. In either case, the end result would be the same — to finish the job of destroying the nation’s economic, military and geopolitical stability that Bush & Co. began. Far too much is at stake this year to allow that to happen.

George and Dick never quite understood this, and by all accounts neither do John and Sarah. But running — and ruining — the country are NOT the same.

Poor Sarah Palin. Maybe someone should remind her that Crockett’s story ended poorly, gaining him legendary prominence only after his famed death at the Alamo.