Legion of Angels News Archive

With colleges back in session and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on board as the Republican vice presidential nominee, social conservatives are intensifying efforts to woo young voters, a demographic they once all but conceded to the Democrats.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has long enjoyed a huge edge among college students and voters in their 20s. Republicans now are seeing their first real chance to make inroads with that group. The key: Young voters may see the 44-year-old Gov. Palin as in tune with their concerns in a way that Sen. John McCain, her 72-year-old running mate, could never be.

“She reminds me of my friends,” said Allyson Wartick, 20, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Just two weeks ago, the mood on campus “was definitely, ‘Obama is the cool place to be,’” said Jennifer Kacerosky, 21, a senior at the University of Florida. This past weekend, though, she went to a football game sporting a McCain-Palin button, and “it was, ‘Where’d you get that? I need that!”

Gov. Palin’s down-to-earth image and her family travails — a pregnant teenage daughter, a baby who she says keeps her up at night, a schedule so busy she says it’s often macaroni and cheese for dinner — appeal to young voters who say they had a hard time relating to Sen. McCain. He’s been in Congress longer than many college students have been alive; he’s a hero from a war they know only from history books; he admits to being clueless about email and texting and Google. Sen. McCain has just 312,000 supporters listed on his Facebook site. Sen. Obama has 1.7 million.

Polls taken after the Republican convention don’t show Sen. McCain cutting into the Democrats’ lead among young voters; his support hovers around 33% in that group. But conservatives aren’t giving up. They plan to focus their youth effort on a few issues, including abortion. Although voters of all ages rank abortion quite low as a political priority, polls show the under-30 crowd is receptive to strict limits on abortion, and young evangelicals — potential swing voters this election — are more conservative than their parents on the issue.

Sen. McCain opposes abortion in most circumstances, but some conservatives view him as less than forceful. They see Gov. Palin as their true champion. She supports a total ban on abortion except when continuing the pregnancy would kill the mother.

At a string of Christian rock concerts in the swing states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the nonprofit group Redeem the Vote plans to mobilize voters by interspersing the music with calls to end legal abortion.

The antiabortion group Students for Life, meanwhile, has announced plans to flood YouTube with videos urging young people to activism in the fall campaign.

In Florida, conservative student groups plan a statewide “I Vote Pro-Life” rally later this month. Elsewhere, young antiabortion activists plan to talk up Gov. Palin’s position through phone banks and door-to-door visits. Emily Espinola, 23, a senior at Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio, expects her grades this fall will suffer. But it’s worth it, she said, if it boosts Gov. Palin to the vice presidency. “I love her so much,” Ms. Espinola said.

Democratic activists say Gov. Palin’s appeal to youth is real. “It means we have to work that much harder,” said Laurie Rubiner, a vice president at Planned Parenthood’s political arm. Still, she views abortion as a winning issue for the Democrats. A Pew Research Center poll from 2006 found that 46% of people age 18 to 30 believe abortion should be banned outright or permitted only in a few circumstances. But that still means more than half support legal abortion. And many young people know someone who has made the choice to end a pregnancy; some 600,000 abortions a year are performed on women under 25.

John Green, a political analyst who focuses on religious voters, said the right’s optimism made sense: “It’s certainly plausible that Republicans could recover some of the youth vote, especially among evangelicals and serious Catholics.” The question, he said, is whether they have enough time to take advantage of Gov. Palin’s appeal.

Sen. Obama has spent well over a year building ties to young voters and college campuses. Young voters are notoriously hard to get to the polls, unless they’re repeatedly contacted in person. “It’s not clear,” Mr. Green said, “that the McCain campaign has the infrastructure.”

Source — The Wall Street Journal

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin left open the option Thursday of waging war with Russia if it were to invade neighboring Georgia and the former Soviet republic were a NATO ally. “We will not repeat a Cold War,” Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate two weeks ago.

Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Pressed on the question, Palin responded: “What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against … We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.”

She added: “It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.”

Palin spoke the same day Putin insisted that Russia has no intention of encroaching on the sovereignty of Georgia, following a brief war that left Russian troops in firm control of two breakaway regions. Putin also aggressively defended the decision to send troops to Georgia, saying Russia had to act after Georgia attacked South Ossetia last month.

On other matters, Palin said she “didn’t hesitate” when McCain asked her to be his running mate, a surprise selection that shook up the presidential race.

“I answered him ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate,” said the 44-year-old Palin, who has been in office less than two years.

Questioned about whether she felt ready to step in as vice president or perhaps even president if something happened to the 72-year-old McCain, Palin said: “I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we’ll be ready. I’m ready.”

Gibson also read Palin a comment she made in her former church — “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God” — and asked whether she thought the United States was fighting a holy war.

Palin said she was recalling Abraham Lincoln’s words when she made the comment and said: “I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.”

She said she didn’t know if her son Track who is headed to Iraq was on a mission from God.

“What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer,” Palin said.

Source — Yahoo!