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It's about McCain (4.00 / 5)

It isn't Palin who bothers me so much, it's McCain, I can't get over that he picked her after just talking to her for about 3 hours.  He wanted Lieberman, but his aides said he would lose the base, so he picked someone he didn't even know.  

Much as I could go on about Palin for hours, it really does come back to McCain and his willingness to compromise everything he allegedly believed in because he wants to be president.  

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Benjamin Franklin

I'm a strategist for the NH Coordinated Campaign

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by: Kathy Sullivan @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 20:19:46 PM CDT

You're absolutely right (4.00 / 1)

Palin's the symptom; McCain's the disease.

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by: cmnh @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 20:47:25 PM CDT

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Until Palin becomes President in her own right. (4.00 / 1)

Whether or not they lose in November, what are the odds now that she will eventually be her Party's nominee for President?

Meanwhile, I hope people are not forgetting that buying stuff from http://store.barackobama.com is a good way to donate to the campaign.  They even have general election gear up now (complete with Biden's name).

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 20:51:36 PM CDT

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Reply: It's about McCain (0.00 / 0)

Kathy,

I look at it as we have to people running for president.

One that is truly doing to serve the common good of this nation and has made it more or less his lifes work trying to help people.

The other  a man who has spent his life serving his country doing what the government in power has asked to do. Now he wants to be the man asking others to do for him on behalf of the country the difference is clear.

This is how I see Obama and McCain

Obama would serve the people.

McCain would have the people serve the country.

Hope I'm not going too far off base.

Tom

"I'm not smart enough to run the economy."

- John McCain (r) Arizona
Interview with the Keene Sentinel, November 7, 2007

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by: TJMCNH1 @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 21:01:44 PM CDT

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Mc Cain's running the sleaziest campaign ever- Obama spokesman (4.00 / 1)

"We will take no lectures from John McCain, who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. "His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking."

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

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by: JonnyBBad @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 21:10:24 PM CDT

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the wrap and linky (0.00 / 0)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITI...

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

   Dorothy Parker

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by: JonnyBBad @ Sat Sep 13, 2008 at 21:10:53 PM CDT

Some highlights from the article. Emphasis mine. (0.00 / 0)

Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palin's first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.

"I said, 'You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor,' " Ms. Chase recalled. "She replied, 'I want to be president.' "

...

"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."

"I'm still proud of Sarah," she [Palin's first campaign manager] added, "but she scares the bejeebers out of me."

...

Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

...

Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: "Who?" Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

"I called him and asked, 'Do you know how to supervise people?' " said a family friend, Kathy Wells. "He said, 'No, but I think I'll get some help.' "

The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

...

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a "hater."

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as "bad people who are anti-Alaska."

...

At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governor's office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.

"I was thinking, I don't remember giving up my First Amendment rights," Ms. Woodruff said. "Just because you're not going gaga over Sarah doesn't mean you can't speak your mind."

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 00:23:56 AM CDT

Hope (0.00 / 0)

There was an Alaska Women Reject Palin Rally in Anchorage that didn't get much media attention, but attracted a lot of people. From the Alaska blog "Mudflats":

The rally was organized by a small group of women, talking over coffee.  It made me wonder what other things have started with small groups of women talking over coffee.  It's probably an impressive list.  These women hatched the plan, printed up flyers, posted them around town, and sent notices to local media outlets.  One of those media outlets was KBYR radio, home of Eddie Burke, a long-time uber-conservative Anchorage talk show host.  Turns out that Eddie Burke not only announced the rally, but called the people who planned to attend the rally "a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots", and read the home phone numbers of the organizers aloud over the air, urging listeners to call and tell them what they thought.  The women, of course, received many nasty,  harassing and threatening messages.

Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage.  The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators).  This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state.  I was absolutely stunned.  The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by.  And even those that didn't honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute.  This just doesn't happen here.

h/t to Daily Kos for this.

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by: jbd @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 07:44:19 AM CDT

First of all, the McCain campaign is being run by (0.00 / 0)

Charlie Black, Roger Stone and Paul Manafort plus Rick Davis.  The first three are the original dirty tricksters, left over from CREEP.  Lee Atwater and Rove are their acolytes.  These people look on political campaigns as search and destroy missions and as Fund said on Real Time the other night, the goal is power--the power to dole out public assets and resources to their cronies and supporters.

There's no concept of stewardship or government being responsive to the vagaries of man and nature.  It's simply a "to the winner belong the spoils" affair.  
So, what they're running is a popularity contest and appealing to the public's preferences and hates.  The rogues assume that the a certain percentage of the electorate just wants to be on the winning side, so whoever is perceived to be winning is who they'll vote for.
So what it boils down to is do Americans want winners who cheat?  Not if they know they've been cheating.  And that's where the press has been at fault.  The press, out of laziness, has failed to reveal the cheating that's been going on.

Just for an example: Nedra Pickler of the NY Times quotes Roger Stone's opinion on Obama's strategy and identifies Stone as a Republican consultant and never even mentions that Stone has a reputation for dirty tricks, for participating in sexual debauchery (he refers to himself as a libertine), going back to the Nixon days.

I'm not keen on guilt by association, but when someone relies on people with such a scummy reputation to manage his campaign, it's simply disgusting.

Though, I think Rosanne Barr said it best when she said the Palin designation was the most disrespectful act she could imagine.  Yes, the disrespect to the nation is breath-taking.  People are stunned!

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by: hannah @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 15:12:04 PM CDT

Re: Palin (4.00 / 1)

I don't know if this has been posted here before, but it was just forwarded to me in an e-mail.

From the New York Times, "The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket" by Frank Rich.

Here's a taste:

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin's acceptance speech. Aligning herself with "a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri" who "followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency," she read a quote from an unidentified writer who, she claimed, had praised Truman: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." Then Palin added a snide observation of her own: Such small-town Americans, she said, "run our factories" and "fight our wars" and are "always proud" of their country. As opposed to those lazy, shiftless, unproud Americans - she didn't have to name names - who are none of the above.

There were several creepy subtexts at work here. The first was the choice of Truman. Most 20th-century vice presidents and presidents in both parties hailed from small towns, but she just happened to alight on a Democrat who ascended to the presidency when an ailing president died in office. Just as striking was the unnamed writer she quoted. He was identified by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal as the now largely forgotten but once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler.

There were a number of other things I thought about when she cited Truman, but the most obvious one: that he became President upon Roosevelt's death some how didn't occur to me as a basis for comparison. It makes me cringe to think she was alluding to her own ambitions.

Palin is on the path to the Presidency, no doubt. John McCain would be the oldest elected President. He's hinted that he might only want one term. Vice-Presidents often become their party's nominee for President, and some even make it to that office whether by succession or election.

Since WWII: Al Gore (Clinton VP), George HW Bush (Reagan VP), Walter Mondale (Carter VP), Gerald Ford (Nixon VP), Richard Nixon (Eisenhower VP), Hubert Humphrey (Johnson VP), Lyndon Johnson (Kennedy VP), Harry Truman (Roosevelt VP), etc.

Even if McCain/Palin lose in 2008, she now has a national audience, the makings of a national primary constituency, and could make a come back in the Republican primaries in 2012 or further down the road.

McCain has, perhaps unwittingly, let loose Palin on the Republican Party and the American political scene at large. She could have been a forgotten minor Governor of Alaska. Now, it might be a while before we ever stop hearing about her in the national media.

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by: Alex Gallichon @ Sun Sep 14, 2008 at 17:02:18 PM CDT

I read both of these on the way home (0.00 / 0)

I noted her encounter with the reporter who had not even written a story (she issued a press release accusing him of smearing her BEFORE his story came out, so then his story would be pre-smeared as a smear). This because he did the responsible thing and called her to ask for a comment.

Her administrative petulance reminds me of stories I used to hear about Sununu the Elder when he was governor, allegedly declaring public hearings to no longer be public hearings and closing them. I'm not sure she's done anything illegal, but her disregard for process is troubling. This is the Gingrich legacy, still haunting us -- a businesslike executive efficiency, damn the torpedoes. And as Dean notes, no regard for public disclosure.

I think the Sununu comparison is apt because, at the time, Sununu was a governor waiting to be forgotten because he wasn't seeking reelection. But then he became White House chief of staff.

Rich says:

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let's advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It's an urgent matter, because if we've learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it's that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America's chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for "victory," whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

Rich is hyperbolic perhaps, but the notion of the first-term second-year governor who has never demonstrated leadership temperament eagerly waiting in the wings does linger in the mind.

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by: JimC @ Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 22:23:53 PM CDT

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Waiting in the wings (4.00 / 2)

Lets talk turkey, folks.

Should McSame pull this off in Nov., he will bow out after 1 term and it will be Palin 2012. This is their answer to Hillary Rodham Clinton. So much so, that Mitt is starting to signal his supporters.

Mitt would rather lose the presidency for his party, than lose his chance to run for that office in the future.

Let's help him.

The giant finds its gait.

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by: Jack Mitchell @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 07:15:20 AM CDT

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One term (0.00 / 0)

As much as I agree with your overall point, I've never bought the one term thing. If McCain wins, he'll run for reelection.

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by: JimC @ Tue Sep 16, 2008 at 12:42:54 PM CDT

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