What a difference just a couple of days makes.  It seems that Sarah Palin’s VP run is blowing up on the launchpad.  Who knows though, maybe the McCain Campaign will soldier on with her regardless.
For starters, there is the so called troopergate scandal.  She fired Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he refused to fire a state trooper who was Palin’s former brother in law.  Palin claims he was fired for failing to fill vacancies, whatever that means.  Why he was fired and her guilt or not of wrongdoing is immaterial.  Why the hell would McCain want to bring this onboard his campaign.  It’s not like this broke yesterday, it has been ongoing for a while now.
Secondly, her 17 year old daughter is pregnant.  In and of itself, this is not a big deal.  It happens.  The problems start because this was the story the campaign put out to deflect the rumors that Palin’s four month old son is actually her grandson.  I think the rumors are just rumors but they chose to dignify them with the response that it couldn’t possibly be true because her daughter is five months pregnant now.  Even better, this is being used to shore up anti abortion, evangelical votes.  It’s a great talking point that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant, but is keeping the kid and marrying the father.  So while the Obama camp is bending over backwards to keep this out of the discussion, McCain is tripping over himself to campaing on it.
Third, she was for the “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it.  No surprise here, she was very much in favor of bringing in lots of money via congress until it was a scandal that could affect her chances of winning an election.
Fourth, as recently as ten minutes before running for mayor of Wasilla she was a member of a Pro Seccession political party, advocating for Alaska to leave the union.  You may or may not have an opinion on Alaska’s statehood (I don’t, I didn’t even know it was an issue until this morning) and she is certainly entitled to hers but again, why would the McCain camp want that anywhere near their campaing.  Could it be that they learned about it from ABC News just like I did?
All this leads to one question: did the republicans, McCain, or any of his people do any research at all on Sarah Palin?  It looks increasingly like they did the bare minimum when vetting her.  McCain himself has said that the process was very thorough.  It seems more likely that they chose whatever ultra right wing woman who looks good on camera they could find to get all the Vagina Americans (thank you Daily Show) to vote McCain in November.  If the vetting process was so thororough, why didn’t they seem to know that six months worth of scandals were going to hit during the long weekend before the convention?  Why is Cindy McCain going on National TV saying the proximity of Alaska to Russia makes for good foreign policy experience (why does that McCain campaign have so little control over the candiates spouse that she is allowed to say shit like this)?  Why is Palin’s resume being padded with her tenure on the PTA?
The republicans are already in trouble this week.  Hurricane Gustav was going to hit New Orleans, this close to the three year anniversary of Katrina, right in the middle of the Republican convention.  RNC spinners lept into action and it seemed like McCain would be giving his acceptance speech with New Orleans in the background.  Gustav dropped to a category 1 before making landfall though and it was a non event (politically anyway).  Personally, I felt like the Republicans had nowhere to go but down on this one.  If Gustav was Katrina redux then McCain would be polling in the 20s very shortly.  If New Orleans survived a category 5 then they would get a bump, maybe.  Instead, they got a “performed as expected” and the focus remains on Palin.
Palin was mayor of a town smaller than my high school, governer of a state the size of Little Rock, and has no experience pertinent to being President.  She brings nothing to the table for McCain.  However, McCain can no longer claim that Obama is not experienced enough.  It was a bad choice.  It’s all good from my end though.

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