The meat behind the Palin stories

[barking_iguana]

Everything we've been reading, both true and long-standing false rumors, are symptoms. The real story is that she was an impulsive decision made by a desperate and uninformed campaign at the last minute. According to The New York Times, the McCain campaign didn't know

• She lawyered up in the troopergate scandal.
• She was a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which wants out of the USA and holds that the statehood vote was invalid.
• Lord know what else, because the vetting team didn't arrive in Alaska until Thursday, the day before she was announced.

The article says:

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory...

“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

There are also all sorts of quotes from Alaska Republicans saying they couldn't find anybody who had been contacted as part of a vetting process.

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

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There are campaign tactics, there are ethically questionable campaign tactics, and then there is outright disregard for the well-being of the nation. John McCain is 72 and though people find it awkward or impolitic to mention, he's not what he once was mentally. And this is the care he puts into choosing his emergency backup?

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

That really is McSameness, because outright disregard for the well-being of the nation is a characteristic of Bush. However McSame wouldn’t even have a neo-fascist with misguided regard for the well-being of the nation to do the work for him, the way Bush does. Bush spends most of his time mountain biking and otherwise vacationing, but McCain would be there all day issuing stupid, contradictory orders, appointing horses and goats to the Senate and whatnot.

He doesn’t even have to be suffering from some kind of dementia; from 30 to 60 years your brain is great; but after 60 or 70 years you go downhill (and with luck you live to be 90 or 100 and then you have a really bad day).

I suspect we really just shouldn’t be electing 70-year-olds to a first-term presidency unless the person has gotten a really thorough examination and is declared a latter-day Grandma Moses, with documentation.

But imagine how much goofier this campaign would have been had the nomination gone to Rudolph Giuliani! It would have been a ROFL a minute.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Dick Morris remains funny, even with revisions: http://pundits.thehill.com/2008/09/01/palin-designation-nullifies-obama-bounce-2/#more-3480

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

She "defied the entire corrupt Republican establishment in Alaska"

Which entirely explains why she was in the Ted Stevens 527 and hired a Ted Stevens campaign manager-type to lobby Congress while she was mayor of Wasilla.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Soon Morris’s blog entry is going to be revised to say how he was appalled by the Palin pick and wondered what McCain must have been thinking.

This Wasilla seems to be the meth capital of Alaska.

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Lyda Green is, I believe, the rival that the shock-jock was calling cancer and a bitch while Palin laughed uproariously.