HuffPost: Why Some Smart Women Think Palin is a Good Choice ( Read it substituting Obama for Palin, Black for Woman )
So for whatever reason they have chosen, some smart women have fallen in love with the “idea” of Sarah Palin. She’s smart. She’s gutsy. She’s a woman. And she would be the first woman ‘this close’ to the Presidency.
And what happens when these smart women are presented with contradictory evidence? “Let’s go back to the relationship analogy,” Dr. Susan says. “When our eyes finally open to someone, we have choices. We can either get out of the relationship (divorce), or we stay and deal with the cognitive dissonance.”
But Dr. Susan says that some women feel they don’t have a choice. Their core belief is so strong that they don’t believe they have an alternative. For example, perhaps they are strongly against pro-choice. Or they want a woman in the Executive Branch no matter what. Or they cannot subscribe to any of the democratic platform of ideas. At that point, they have no choice but to continue their idealization of Palin, thereby finding a way around their cognitive dissonance, albeit in an unhealthy way.
So in order to keep idealizing her, our smart friends either deny (that Alaskan report didn’t find her guilty of doing anything unlawful), rationalize (and besides, they were partisan), or ignore (I never heard about any report. Besides, I just like her!).
The bottom line? When it comes to our smart women friends, we probably aren’t going to be able to change their minds about Sarah Palin. They are either still idealizing her, or they have a core belief too strong to accept any alternatives. But at least now we know why these smart women are choosing to consider Palin qualified and will check the Republican box on the ballot. We just don’t have to like it.