Palin Options

[Robert]

Just wanted to point out I called Palin as VP over 4 months ago, for all the same reasons the decision was made now.
If McCain wins, I honestly believe this will be what puts him over the top.

Also you couldn't ask for better timing to make this announcement.
The DNC convention ended last night with a huge bang an there's not a single leading news story about it.
The news is 100% about Palin as VP.
Talk about stealing someones thunder.

I hope they win an McCain dies the next day.

[Shred]

Mayor. What an achievement. I think the smallest Town that I have audited is about the size of Wasilla. Pretty basic. You simply need a small grasp of budgetary accounting (not real accounting), a grasp of how the Mil rate, assessment and valuation works. And the ability to put up with crap from the Citizens. Not brain surgery. Pretty sure Obama could handle it.

[HammaTime]

Maybe it was because I was tired, and this came at the end of a very long day, but I found McCain's speech to be one of the oddest moments in modern political history.

He argued that we need to drive out the folks in Washington who created our dire economic situation (this morning we learn that unemployment has leaped over 6% making it official, this is a Recession!), just don't lift the curtain to see that the very folks in the hall applauding him are the ones who have brought us the disastrous 8-years of the Bush presidency. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us." And to think, his first choice was Lieberman! Unbelievable!

I saw some polling results today that perhaps illustrates our disconnect in reacting to Palin. It backs up some of the focus group responses I've seen. Even though the polling sample is small, it backs my feelings as a life-long Independent - McCain-Palin just aren't cutting it.

The highly partisan seem to think she is the party's savior, but she leaves the rest underwhelmed. And yet, I couldn't get past the thought that someone like Palin should be the party's nominee, someone who hasn't been a member of the insider-club for 28 years, someone who hasn't filled out his campaign staff with the very lobbyists he claims to be fighting. There is a significant disconnect here. What is he really saying? "Help us drive us out of office!"

Peggy Noonan was right when she claimed that the Palin choice was political B.S., but in an odd way, perhaps this country needed some B.S. to get itself over the B.S. we endure on a daily basis from the folks in Washington. Is Palin a "change agent?" Hardly, just review her record. She contributed to excessive government spending as she pursued pork barrel projects - some of these were the very projects McCain had highlighted as being incredibly offensive.

The McCain of 2000 would have been believable would he have made this argument as the party's nominee that year.

Instead, his party, the very people standing in that auditorium last night, allowed Karl Rove and his ilk to engage in outright political assassination during the 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina. They claimed that Cindy was a drug addict. They claimed their daughter was a result of her having an affair with a black man. They claimed McCain had gone insane in Vietnam and now was unstable and could not handle the rigors of office. They flooded the state with push polling that made all of these accusations and more. The result was the true candidate of change in 2000 was soundly defeated.

John McCain doesn't like to lose, but he had his nose rubbed in it. So much so that he clearly saw the only path to success was to adopt the ways of the very forces who had handed him defeat.

Robert, I salute your brilliance at picking Palin when most folks had never heard her name. She is clearly a formidable candidate, but she is on a flawed ticket and, perhaps, she steps onto the national stage at the wrong time. It seems the B.S. has only gotten deeper.