Palin the Scapegoat....

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
Palin the Scapegoat....
11
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 2:15pm

INTERESTING ARTICLE from POLITICO:


McCain camp trying to scapegoat Palin



John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.


And it has decided on Sarah Palin.


In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”


Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?


Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”


Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision?


And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn’t you expect that your running mate’s fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn’t you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?)


McCain didn’t seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he “didn’t know her well at all” before he chose Palin.


But why not? Why didn’t he get to know her better before he made his choice?


It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August.


Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?


But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.


And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”)


As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is “going rogue” and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing?


In truth, Palin’s real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to.


And that undercuts McCain’s entire campaign.


This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war.


“The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain told a crowd in Miami on Wednesday. “I’ve been tested, my friends, I’ve been tested.”

But has Sarah Palin?

I don’t believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points.

So, in Atwater’s opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own.

McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign’s bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign.

Are voters really expected to

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2008
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 2:19pm
It seems strange to me that they would say anything disparaging about Sarah Palin. That just puts John McCain's judgment in question, which I think is a horrible thing to willingly bring up. I think a lot of them are jumping ship, in case. They don't want their careers going down the tubes with this political campaign.

pregnancy Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket
Phot
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2007
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 2:21pm

I was thinking this morning that it feels almost like McCain's campaign is trying to hurt him.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-09-2007
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 2:24pm
I had a feeling they would throw her under the bus.
Jess


Photobucket
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2008
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 2:33pm
I have had that thought as well. But I've also thought that maybe she is being a "rogue" candidate and has purposefully not listened to the advisers so that she can distance herself from the campaign in the event that they lose. She can say things like "I said publically that I didn't think it was a good idea to pull out of Michigan" and so on in order to help her own political career.

pregnancy Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket
Phot
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-19-2006
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:24pm

He really can't blame her too much since he chose her.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-26-2007
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:35pm

Sorry all,


I don't buy it at all.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2008
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:39pm

This is a story running on every major news network, including Fox News, so I don't know what you are claiming isn't true about it. This story broke over the weekend, which was almost a week ago, and yet there has been no sort of announcement from the McCain campaign saying that this was false.


ETA: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/30/win-lose-palin-going-away/

Phot
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-19-2006
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:42pm

I actually did not read the whole article so I am a little red faced.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-26-2003
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:42pm

being honest - i read these articles as "divide and conquer" from the media.

i don't know what is going on in the McCain camp and i can only guess why someone would leak discouraging information. it's not that the story itself surprises me (in fact it could have been predicted, in fact i think i did predict it!), but i do think the timing is convenient and an unnamed source is shady.

Bea

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2008
Thu, 10-30-2008 - 3:54pm
That's why part of me thinks that they are saying these things, as anonymous sources, so they can put her in a position where she can distance herself from the campaign so her political career won't be ruined. It's hard to be successful when you're the VP on a losing ticket, but if they can put her in a position where she is able to say she "knew better but they wouldn't listen" to her or something like that, I think she would still have a shot at a successful career.

pregnancy Photobucket Photobucket Photobucket
Phot

Pages