CNN: It's McCain and Palin

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In summary, John McCain has chosen Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin is a relatively unknown politician who has only been in office for two years. She is a Republican and is likely to be a strong supporter of the oil industry. The VP debate is likely to be interesting, as Biden is likely to bully Palin.
  • #281
Ivan Seeking said:
This alone will probably kill any chance of winning that he had.
I don't see how you can say that. From what little I've gathered so far, the Evangelicals are totally fired up. And the daughter's pregnancy only rallies them closer. The person I feel terrible for is Bristol herself - no matter what she may have wanted before, she has absolutely no choice now.

And then, to compare Palin to Obama! What a riot! He was President of the Harvard Law Review, and she played basketball. He was a professor of Constitutional Law, and she has a BS in journalism. Alaska has a population of about 660,000 - there are Congressional districts about that large in Chicago!
Do you think the social conservative base of the Republican population cares about any of those 3 points? She's more like them. And she will fight for the causes that are most dear to them. End of story.

There's only three ways in which this can be dangerous:
1. What effect does this have on the moderate/independent segment of the population that were leaning McCain?
2. How will the VP debate go?
3. What happens to the undecided Hillary gang?

I think the first point is going to lose McCain some votes, but not as many as he will now have got from a more enthused Evangelical base. The second point could go either way - if Palin (with short, well rehearsed and jingoistic phraseology) appears to not get thrashed by Biden, that will be seen as a huge win for them. On the other hand, if she looks clueless or actually tries to engage in an intellectual debate intead of producing the prescribed talking points, that could be very bad. The third, I think, is the most harmful. McCain will now have lost more of the Hillary supporters than he could have gained with any other pick. I don't think this is a large enough number of people to matter though.

Whatever her ideology, qualifications and intellectual capability may be, she is definitely a person with a lot of moral fortitude (how misguided those "morals" may be is irrelevant), and that's what a lot of people will see.
 
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  • #282
BobG said:
She covers up her first pregnancy by getting pregnant again incredibly fast?

I pray this is not the case. This whole thing might become like McGovern selecting Eagleton who turned out to have had a nervous breakdown lurking in his past.

I am prepared to believe that things are as represented. However, this latest development and the rather close 4 month-5 month thing - when pregnancy times to term already as I recall pretty much depend inexactly on mother's remembering last periods or ultrasounds placing observations within distributions, does not exactly close the door on the rumor that its release would apparently seem intend to dispel.

I guess I must labor under being naturally suspicious of convenient excuses - when the excuse seems as improbable as the rumor it's intended to dispel.
 
  • #283
turbo-1 said:
It gets worse, Bob. A very cynical friend of mine wants to bet me that Bristol's current pregnancy is fake and that she will suffer a tragic (fake) miscarriage in late October. I can't take it! Writers for soap operas couldn't have come up with this stuff!

That's exactly the lame plot they would come up with and never even give an explanation of why any of the characters did any of the things they did.

The better plot line would be that the family finds out the baby has Down's syndrome and realizes that while the dependent daughter is covered under parents' medical insurance, the daughter's dependents aren't. The family and the doctors all conspire to destroy and/or falsify all medical records up to that point and lateral the baby to Sarah Palin so the baby's medical expenses will be covered on the mother's health insurance.

I'm still stumped where the extra pregnancy comes in, but the moral is clear: If we had universal medical coverage, none of this would have had to happen.

And, having previously done the sports on an Alaska TV station, I'm sure Sarah Palin knows all about Bill Stern (even Ronald Reagan knew the Bill Stern trick), but she might not know about Clem McCarthy.
 
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  • #284
ivan seeking said:
palin's daughter should be kept out of this. I can only imagine what it must be like for a seventeen year old girl to have her pregnancy made national news! I feel so bad for her.

But, as for the mccain's choice, i haven't quit laughing since i read palin's bio. This alone will probably kill any chance of winning that he had.

I missed part of the mclaughlin group this week, but apparently eleanor clift stated that the entire newsroom broke out in laughter when the palin annnouncement was made.

This will slowlly speak volumes to mccain's lack of judgement. This choice seems almost pedestrian. The moose stew bit even reminds me a bit of the local would-be politician whose campaign slogan was: "i am as common as dirt".

And then, to compare palin to obama! What a riot! He was president of the harvard law review, and she played basketball. He was a professor of constitutional law, and she has a bs in journalism. Alaska has a population of about 660,000 - there are congressional districts about that large in chicago!

aahahahahaha, Ms. Palin BYE BYE
 
  • #285
Math Is Hard said:
And I have this annoying image in my head of McCain marketing people doing focus groups, showing the same picture with different possible VPs pasted in.
I just assumed this was how VPs were chosen!

Though I don't think his particular choice was the right one, picking a young[er], white woman was the right choice, just like picking an old white man was the right choice for Obama. Both provide an image that their running mate needs along side them. Demographically, both picks were pretty obvious.
 
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  • #286
The McCain people knew about the pregnant teen aged daughter before Sarah Palin was picked as the VP candidate.

It would be illogical to assume that the pregnancy would not come up in the news media.

The person chosen as a running mate is carefully screened and both public relations people and psychologists are involved in the selection process.

So what is their scheme? Are they using a 17 year old girl to make the point that Christian conservatives don't have abortions??

Would they throw a young girl to the wolves just to attempt to prove that McCain is a kind and caring person??

Is it to prove that McCain is truly a maverick?

There is always a gimmick, always a catch, what is it with this situation??

Why would a loving mother subject her daughter to this kind of nationwide scrutiny?

I would really like to see the balance sheet used to made this decision, because I see more questions than answers.
 
  • #287
Edward, probably for the same reason why she would have a down syndrome baby and leave it behind while going on tour.
 
  • #288
edward said:
The person chosen as a running mate is carefully screened and both public relations people and psychologists are involved in the selection process.
Seems not to have been the case. Never attribute to ... you know.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice.
...
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 name as his running mate 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.
...
With time running out ...he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later.
...
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.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26501863/page/1
 
  • #289
With time running out ...he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later.
That seems an example of rather poor judgement. He didn't have a definite candidate when his campaign announced that he would name a VP nominee before the RNC, so he was forced into making a decision. If one mucks up a simple process like this, what's going to happen if the guy is president. The country needs someone who is thoughtful and deliberative, not someone who makes a bad decision.

Seems he would have preferred Lieberman or Ridge.

And four days later, they still haven't done their homework.
 
  • #290
edward said:
Why would a loving mother subject her daughter to this kind of nationwide scrutiny?

That's exactly what I was wondering. I'm the mom of a 16-year-old girl and I can't fathom putting my daughter through something like what Bristol is going through now. Is her mom trying to embarrass and shame her? How terrible for that girl!
 
  • #292
Gokul43201 said:
There's only three ways in which this can be dangerous:
1. What effect does this have on the moderate/independent segment of the population that were leaning McCain?
2. How will the VP debate go?
3. What happens to the undecided Hillary gang?
There's one more point that I missed. More risky than the debate (which can be coached, scripted and rehearsed) will be her responses to press questions. The campaign will have to get her a script real fast and make sure she doesn't say anything not in the talking points (sort of like they've done with McCain, but for a different reason). And they will also need to keep any interaction with the press to a minimum.
 
  • #293
Gokul43201 said:
There's one more point that I missed. More risky than the debate (which can be coached, scripted and rehearsed) will be her responses to press questions. The campaign will have to get her a script real fast and make sure she doesn't say anything not in the talking points (sort of like they've done with McCain, but for a different reason). And they will also need to keep any interaction with the press to a minimum.
Her "public" appearances will probably consist of town-hall talks with pre-screened participants and planted questions, at least for the next few weeks. There is just not enough time to bring her up to speed on all the GOP talking points and point out all the messy spots that she has got to avoid in public.
 
  • #294
turbo-1 said:
Her "public" appearances will probably consist of town-hall talks with pre-screened participants and planted questions, at least for the next few weeks. There is just not enough time to bring her up to speed on all the GOP talking points and point out all the messy spots that she has got to avoid in public.

That will be a challenge, because apparently the field of landmines looks pretty broad and she apparently likes to talk - a recipe for a Phil Graham moment.
 
  • #295
How soon until the new campaign buttons come out?

Geezer and Gidget '08

:rofl:
 
  • #296
LowlyPion said:
...she apparently likes to talk...

Unlike, say, Senator Biden. :wink:
 
  • #297
Vanadium 50 said:
Unlike, say, Senator Biden. :wink:
Yep! that boy was vaccinated with a phonograph needle.
 
  • #298
Vanadium 50 said:
Unlike, say, Senator Biden. :wink:

He is a blabbermouth to be sure. And at times his motorboat mouth doesn't seem to let his brain in on what it's about to say either.

I think the difference though is that Obama is the star doing the heavy lifting for their campaign, and at this point Palin is the one looking like the star more than McCain.

How many autographs have you seen McCain sign?
 
  • #299
Gokul43201 said:
I don't see how you can say that. From what little I've gathered so far, the Evangelicals are totally fired up. And the daughter's pregnancy only rallies them closer. The person I feel terrible for is Bristol herself - no matter what she may have wanted before, she has absolutely no choice now.

I was speaking as an independent. Sure, she appeals to the far right, but not moderates, which is who McCain needs. Under the right circumstances I could vote for McCain, but this decision would really set me back under any circumstances. As for Hillary, I think most female Hillary supporters will see McCain's choice as condescending and superficial.

But most of all, how can anyone trust his judgement after this? Palin is not even in the same league as Obama or Biden, and I think this will be painfully clear soon enough.
 
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  • #300
I get such a kick out of listening to Rep pundits answer the following: Is Palin the most qualified person that McCain could have picked?

The only reason for her selection that one can imagine is the fact that she's a woman. It is sooooo transparent! In my mind, McCain just got a foot shorter.
 
  • #301
Ivan Seeking said:
But most of all, how can anyone trust his judgement after this? Palin is not even in the same league as Obama or Biden, and I think this will be painfully clear soon enough.

He was behind on the scoreboard and he went for a Hail Sarah shot deep down field.
 
  • #302
Will Palin be kicked off the ticket? (Er, withdraw for personal reasons...) She's being investigated for firing Alaska's Public Safety Director, because, it is said, he refused to fire her ex brother-in-law (a state trooper). It has come out that when she was mayor of her little fiefdom she insisted that each of the town's managers submit their resignations. The head librarian refused, but eventually relented. The police chief refused, so she fired him.

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3767/palin-involved-in-ousting-scandals-from-the-start

How much more stuff needs to dribble out before Palin regretfully withdraws from the rigors of a national campaign to spend more time with her special-needs infant? Will she need to spend time with her pregnant daughter, who will certainly need some guidance and hand-holding if she is going to weather the heavy scrutiny she's been subjected to, and start a new life as a mother and wife?

McCain's choice of Palin has buried the issues that the GOP needs to define to differentiate McCain from Bush. Her constant presence in the national news (even over a holiday weekend dominated by a hurricane) does not seem like such a good thing for the McCain campaign. Is she on the way out?
 
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  • #303
  • #304
We got Comedy Central running here, don't we?

There must be at least a half a dozen other independent stories like that all over the radio/TV. I just watched an interview with another reporter that said essentially the same thing about the vetting process.
 
  • #306
Why is it that Republicans constantly try to do nothing but slime slime slime with nothing to back their claims and at the same time are hypocrites of what they complain about.
 
  • #307
This was the http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080902/pl_politico/13084;_ylt=Agjy93i5JZFhbESJLxAB7SMb.3QA in preparation for the 2006 Gubernatorial election.

‘We want to see Ivana,’ said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ‘because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.’

I think that last item of information pretty much had the Democratic candidate shaking in his mukluks. Personally, I preferred the aroma of DEET over salmon, but each to their own.
 
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  • #308
All in all, the Palin coverage has reached bizarre levels.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080902/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_politics;_ylt=Au6EoVz2_blHXbBXCEgDjZqyFz4D
The Miami Herald this week quoted an e-mail from Obama Florida spokesman Mark Bubriski that stated: "Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/republican_race/2008/09/01/2008-09-01_bristol_palins_pregnancy_was_an_open_sec.html (with photos of Levi Johnston :rofl:)

Johnston, broad-chested and wearing a No. 15 jersey, can be seen in photographs hitting the boards as a Warrior in action. A closeup shot shows the handsome teen with a light dusting of whiskers on his chin - his dark brown hair curly and wet.
 
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  • #309
BobG said:
Johnston, broad-chested and wearing a No. 15 jersey, can be seen in photographs hitting the boards as a Warrior in action. A closeup shot shows the handsome teen with a light dusting of whiskers on his chin - his dark brown hair curly and wet.

Nothing beats some slightly erotic political coverage!
 
  • #310
It is amusing how the liberal crowd, the crowd that promotes liberalism in morals and government, the crowd that promotes abortion to lesson the results of promiscuity and pre-marital sex, the crowd that loves the short marriages forged by the liberal Hollywood sleaze, the crowd that forgives the live-togethers as long as they are famous people...how this crowd can be so hypocritical as to condemn a seventeen year old to shame for becoming pregnant or her parents for supporting her.

I think the true seed of disgust to the liberals in this overblown drama is that she decided to keep the child instead of killing it for convenience.
 
  • #311
BobG said:
All in all, the Palin coverage has reached bizarre levels.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080902/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_politics;_ylt=Au6EoVz2_blHXbBXCEgDjZqyFz4D


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/republican_race/2008/09/01/2008-09-01_bristol_palins_pregnancy_was_an_open_sec.html (with photos of Levi Johnston :rofl:)

Whoa whao whoa, you're missing the good stuff...

Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.

And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780.

An OPEN secret? Does that even make sense...

As a voter, I demand this tramp go to Maury Pavitch and we find out whose the babies daddy.
 
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  • #312
BobG said:
All in all, the Palin coverage has reached bizarre levels.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080902/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_politics;_ylt=Au6EoVz2_blHXbBXCEgDjZqyFz4D
I can see people - especially Jews, as they are most sensitive to the subject - figuring Buchanan for a Nazi sympathizer after reading his book very quickly. If I recall correctly, Buchanan asserts that millions of Jews would not have been killed had the US (or England?) not entered the war and provoked Hitler... or something similar.

Anyway, going with the Nazi sympathizer route is stupid, when there's the much clearer women's rights stands that Buchanan has taken. Not as effective in FL, maybe, but more firmly rooted in fact.
 
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  • #313
Cyrus said:
Whoa whao whoa, you're missing the good stuff...



An OPEN secret? Does that even make sense...

As a voter, I demand this tramp go to Maury Pavitch and we find out whose the babies daddy.
See what I mean? This is both amusing and revealing.

BTW, " ...find out whose the babies daddy" makes no sense at all. I'm sure we all got the message but who's the baby's daddy has already been revealed. I'm betting that both the baby's mother and father have better command of the English language than do you.
 
  • #314
isly ilwott said:
It is amusing how the liberal crowd, the crowd that promotes liberalism in morals and government, the crowd that promotes abortion to lesson the results of promiscuity and pre-marital sex, the crowd that loves the short marriages forged by the liberal Hollywood sleaze, the crowd that forgives the live-togethers as long as they are famous people...how this crowd can be so hypocritical as to condemn a seventeen year old to shame for becoming pregnant or her parents for supporting her.

I think the true seed of disgust to the liberals in this overblown drama is that she decided to keep the child instead of killing it for convenience.

Specifically: Who did this? I haven't heard anyone criticize her for keeping the baby.

I do criticize her mother for [allegely] opposing sex education in schools. If true, that is like a throw back to the dark ages. In fact, that is a good way to end up with a pregnant, seventeen year old daughter!
 
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  • #315
isly ilwott said:
See what I mean? This is both amusing and revealing.

BTW, " ...find out whose the babies daddy" makes no sense at all. I'm sure we all got the message but who's the baby's daddy has already been revealed. I'm betting that both the baby's mother and father have better command of the English language than do you.

Oh brother... it's called a joke. You are totally clueless, man.


Look at you...I think you got something brown on your nose from the Palin family. Why are you so defensive of them? There not your family.
 

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