9 Comments: Should Palin Be a Focus?

by: elwood

Tue Sep 09, 2008 at 19:26:53 PM EDT

1. People don't vote based on Vice Presidential candidates. They don't decide races; I can't think of a case where they have even tipped one.
2. Well, wait: maybe the Dole-Mondale debate in 1976? Dole snarled about the "Democrat wars" in his lifetime, lumping World War II and Vietnam together? It was a close race and he sure didn't help Ford. But the big debate story was Ford "freeing Poland."
3. But we've never ever had a Presidential candidate this OLD. That logically should make the running mate a bigger factor.
   
4. I understand the logic of "Don't attack Palin - attack McCain's judgment for picking her." But I don't think that little subtlety works.
5. However, I don't believe McCain DID pick her. I don't believe he had that much latitude. Leaks - apparently from his own camp - say he wanted Ridge or Lieberman. McCain doesn't call the shots in his own campaign? He is too weak to stand up to the religious zealots in his own party? I think that has legs. He is too insecure to share a ticket with a Huckabee or Brownback? That has legs.
6. McCain will do his damnedest to overturn Roe (and Griswold too, if you're keeping score). He will get the opportunity to ensure that - pivotal vote John Paul Stevens is nearly 90. The independents and "moderate Republicans" he needs don't want that. The best way to make sure everyone knows that McCain is extremely anti-choice may be to talk about Palin. Does McCain endorse her positions? If not completely, spell it out in detail Senator.
   
7. She is a phony and she is weird. John McCain is a phony and he is weird. Neither is a maverick. If we tried, we couldn't avoid her own status while exposing his.
8. The two Presidential debates will be a Big Deal. The single Vice Presidential debate will be a minor side show. She will do well enough in that debate. People who talk about how she "can't face the press" are just helping the Republicans lower expectations. (The reason she can't face the press is all the scandals and lies - not that she cannot think on her feet.)
9. So: she should not be a focus - but she should be in the frame of the picture we present through November. The focus will be on McCain; she will be at the side reminding everyone that a) he is a puppet who can't pick his own running mate; b) this weird extremist was good enough for him; and c) she is the President if the old man can't finish the term.