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Three boulders emerge as the turning points in 2008: celebrity metaphor, the Palin effect, and financial crisis. The first emerges at the end of July and showered radioactive dust over the Democratic Party's election campaign until, five weeks later, Barack Obama demonstrated his hero bonafides at his convention speech. Immediately afterward, the newly hopeful Democratic campaign was knocked off balance again by the energy burst of Sarah Palin as she exploded on the national scene. Then, even as ship Obama succeeded in righting itself—the half-life of the Palin effect was shorter than celebrity metaphor—the financial crisis loomed suddenly like a giant iceberg threatening to capsize both campaigns. The Republican craft listed dangerously, the Democrats' hardly founders. By early October, the rushing stream of the election had divided, marking the effective end of the 2008 campaign.

George W. Bush depended on evangelical voters for his election, and he maintained a close relationship with Christian Right leaders, who supported him on the Iraq War even when other Americans did not. Christian Right pressure forced his administration to endorse a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. But evangelicals were disappointed by their lack of legislative victories in Bush’s second term. They blamed the “liberal” judiciary for their failures but ultimately became disillusioned with Bush when they clashed with the administration over a Supreme Court nomination. By the end of the Bush presidency, some pundits predicted the collapse of the Christian Right, but strong evangelical support for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 demonstrated evangelicals’ continued loyalty to the Republican Party. Yet it also appeared that the Christian Right’s political style was changing, as younger evangelicals embraced the conciliatory approach of megachurch pastors such as Rick Warren.

At no point during the 2008 election campaign did the John McCain image generate much dramatic force. When Steven Schmidt assumed control over image making in early summer, even he could not liven up the image. Schmidt tried redressing the deficit of excitement by attacking the image on the other side. With the celebrity campaign running out of gas, Republicans needed to generate performative power from their own side. When McCain named Sarah Palin his choice for vice president, she officially assumed the junior partner position. Symbolically, however, the reverse was the case. The dimly lit McCain figure was plugged into the high-wattage image from Alaska. Palin had the dramatic power and the prospective political glory. Palin's paint job sparkled, and she was clearly built for power and speed. This new Republican model projected the right image, and she had many of the special features the public desired.

The Palin effect deflated before the financial crisis, and her polluted representation had already brought down John McCain. From that point on, the civil power of the Republican Party's election campaign was in decline. The outcome of the democratic struggle for power is neither inevitable nor determined. Despite their recent misfortunes, the Republicans still had a chance. The looming economic boulder presented grave new dangers, but it also offered opportunity. Financial crisis was a cause, but it didn't trigger an inevitable effect. What it created was a new stage for the unfolding of political drama, for those struggling for power to perform, and for citizen audiences to decide. The economic boulder broke the surface of the rushing river for objective reasons, driven by events and institutional logics that stood outside the cultural structures and meaning struggles of the political campaign.

This chapter focuses on the occasion of Republican John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential running mate because this event signaled to many voters an abrupt change in McCain's ideological position. In other words, Palin served as an exogenous shock, with the potential to “send a message” to the public about McCain's ideological stance. Using panel data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES), this chapter analyzes the extent to which Palin's selection altered perceptions of McCain's ideology; the extent to which the perceived ideological shift to the right benefited several election-related outcomes such as favorability toward McCain, vote preference, and turnout; and the extent to which the net impact of the shift helped or harmed his candidacy.

This chapter analyses the role of women in the conservative movement. It sets Sarah Palin against the background of a tradition of mobilization by right-wing women and explains how the growing movement of conservative women activists differs from liberal feminism.

Sarah Palin, introducing the phrase “death panels” during the healthcare reform debate, injected a particularly sour flavor into the already troubled discussion of the control of healthcare costs. The field of bioethics had started in 1960 with a shortage of dialysis machines and a committee in Seattle whose task it was to select those who would live and die. One could indeed call that a “death panel.” Moreover, a number of bioethicists in recent years have openly argued that rationing would be needed to control healthcare costs and that some kind of committee would be needed to establish the criteria for doing so. Yet, although those discussions have gone on, it also became clear that, in part because of Palin, rationing is a word that cannot be used in the political arena, thus precluding a serious public discussion. Three forms of rationing are described: (1) overt rationing, (2) indirect rationing, and (3) covert rationing. The latter two are now far more likely than the former, but a way must be found to have an open discussion and fair, clear ways of actually doing so; otherwise, covert rationing becomes a real possibility.

This chapter lays out the primary arguments of the book and introduces the methodology used, which includes semi-structured interviews with activists, participant-observation, textual analysis and analysis of national survey data. This chapter illustrates the unique opportunities the Tea Party offers conservative women and the challenges such women face with the Republican Party and in shaping other American women’s attitudes

This chapter looks at the ritual hockey game of palin. Ritual hockey constitutes an engagement with “potential affines”—potential friends and enemies—in a number of different ways and at a number of different levels. This engagement may be one of symbolic warfare or of reciprocal exchange, which can perhaps be viewed as structurally equivalent forms—a fact suggested by the interchangeability of the terms for “friend” and “enemy.” By constructing and elaborating on difference, ritual hockey functions as a key way Mapuche people expand their social networks; and it is through this expansion of relations with others that they create themselves.

This chapter will explore feminist possibilities presented through steampunk, and negotiate the complexities of gender empowerment through Victorian style. Although not a universal sentiment, many would argue that steampunk exists as an egalitarian ideal, where gender dichotomies are blurred. Accordingly, this chapter will investigate feminist claims and attempt to reconcile the notion that “Victorian” can also be feminist, or at the very least, feminist in style. In order to explore this thesis, the chapter draws on several resources in steampunk fashion, as well as the representation of women on fan sites, and in media portrayals. The critical analysis in this chapter will examine the comic Steampunk Palin as the primary text, and argue that claims of feminism and an egalitarian ideal are premature.

This chapter looks at the racial politics of the right, asserting that the “real America” narrative forwarded by the McCain/Palin campaign was rooted in the racially coded populist discourse that the right has aggressively forwarded since the late 1970s. According to this discourse, the nation is endangered by cultural and demographic trends characteristic of the present age—non-white immigration, secular liberalism, gay rights, feminism, “black racism,” political correctness, and Islamic terrorism. Obama was viewed as the embodiment of these threats, a foreign other who stood in opposition to the interests of “everyday Americans” and the nation itself. The chapter illustrates how a vote for the Republican ticket is supposedly a vote to uphold the sanctity and security of conservative, white, Christian America.

The perception of a vice presidential home state advantage influences campaign strategy. To demonstrate this, this chapter presents an empirical analysis indicating that competitive states are disproportionately represented among finalists in the vice presidential selection process. Additionally, based upon descriptive analysis of the selections of John Edwards (2004), Sarah Palin (2008), Joe Biden (2008), and Paul Ryan (2012), this chapter demonstrates that campaigns re-allocated time and resources in the running mate’s home state in accordance with the perceived effect of the selection on home state competitiveness. Also, this chapter examines campaign visits and spending on campaign advertisements in Wisconsin in 2012, which in each case indicate that the Obama and Romney campaigns increased time and money commitments in the state following the Ryan selection, in patterns that indicate the expectation of a home state advantage.

This chapter assesses the electoral influence of vice presidential candidates using a nationally representative dataset - the American National Election Studies (ANES) survey. The results indicate that feeling thermometer ratings of vice presidential candidates have a statistically significant and positive effect on a respondent’s likelihood of voting for that candidate’s presidential ticket. However, the results also indicate that presidential feeling thermometer ratings are of far greater importance when predicting vote choice. Additional analyses predict the feeling thermometer ratings of vice presidential candidates using candidate characteristics. This analysis provides limited evidence of ticket-balancing effects, specifically with regard to the running mate’s gender and political experience.

This introductory chapter examines the political context in which Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin launched their bids for national office, paying attention to the civil rights and feminist movements of the past that has since shaped their 2008 campaigns for president. But all of this history—the centuries of the political exclusion of white women and African American women and men; the struggles and setbacks as they created places for themselves in civic life as citizens, voters, party leaders, and elected officials; shifting political values and the changing fortunes and identities of the Democratic and Republican parties—shaped the conduct and meaning of the 2008 election. Yet the chapter contends that their successes in 2008 were hardly simple American success stories—while these candidates were breaking barriers, they also were juggling the familiar tasks of a presidential bid.

This chapter assesses the Palin campaign as an exercise in political storytelling. In this media-saturated age in which party labels may not tell us much about a candidate, personal biography has become a key way that the public comes to “know” a candidate. The chapter argues that the most effective storytelling for the Palin candidacy focused on her background as a westerner. By highlighting Palin's big-game hunting on the Alaskan frontier and her “maverick” record of reform in the state house, Republican operatives tried to embed Palin in a long line of stories of presidential candidates and the American West. Attentive as they were to the political possibilities of Palin's identity as a westerner, the chapter shows that the Republican campaign never fully dealt with her identity as a western woman, despite the rich history of women's political advancement in the West.

This chapter suggests that it is Palin's candidacy, rather than Clinton's, that gives us the better measure of the impact of the feminist movement of the past forty years. That there are women—and men—in the Republican Party who were genuinely energized in 2008 by a tough female candidate unapologetic about her political ambitions suggests that the position of women in the party and in American politics has shifted in the decades since Second Wave feminists sought to transform the role of women in society. The chapter thus considers the seeming contradiction of a feminist, pro-life Republican and recalls a time, as recent as the mid-1970s, when feminist women filled the party's highest leadership roles. It argues that Palin's ongoing popularity shows how profoundly the feminist movement has changed American values.

Twentieth-century suffragists argued that Barak and Deborah’s political partnership represented equality of the sexes. Regina Jonas, ordained in 1935, was the first of many female rabbis using Deborah as support for women’s ordination. Christian women invoked Deborah to defend female ministry. In the 1950s, writers emphasized Deborah’s “housewifely” nature. Female scholars, entering the academy in unprecedented numbers in the late twentieth century, offered feminist critique of the patriarchy found in Judges 4-5. As a growing number of women joined the work force in the 1980s and 1990s, evangelical women imaginatively explored Deborah’s home life and public life in order to work out their own conflicted feelings about being working mothers. In 2008, evangelical supporters of the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin celebrated her as a Spirit-anointed “Deborah.” Popular fiction writers gave Deborah a romantic life, imagining Deborah’s sexual liaisons with Lappidoth, Barak, and a lesbian lover, Jael.