Burning the Bridge to Nowhere

It could just be that no one has more at stake in the November 4th presidential election that Sarah Palin. If Obama wins, it’s very much a lose-lose proposition for Ms. Palin, both in Washington and back home in Juneau.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that Palin’s campaign blunders and excesses haven’t gone down well at home and she faces a much different reality if she has to go back to the governor’s mansion:

Palin has always attracted controversy, but she is now a far more polarizing figure, both in Alaska as well as nationally, than before her nomination. If she returns, the Republican governor will face former Democratic allies furious at her campaign attacks.

She will also face lawmakers from both parties ticked off at her handling of the so-called ‘troopergate’ investigation and her recent false assertions that the investigator’s report cleared her, according to interviews with a number of lawmakers and others who watch Alaska politics.

“We’ve seen her do and say things that are shocking to us, so it’s going to be different, to put it mildly,” said Juneau Democratic Rep. Beth Kerttula, the House minority leader. “We have a whole different way of looking at her.”

 

Who’s Really Un-American, Sarah?

Sarah Palin loves to incite the mob with sleazy “guilt by association” tactics, no matter how flimsy. Turns out, as this clip from the Jed Report shows, that Sarah has a few troubling associations herself and they’re far from flimsy.

There’s actually a longer clip than this that reveals Palin and her wife, Todd, to have had quite an extensive involvement with Alaskan separatists for years. It really is worth a look. Find it here:

www.236.com

 

Gwen Ifill- "Palin Blew Me Off"

 

Fareed Zakaria – Sarah, Just Go!

The esteemed editor of NewsWeek International has joined the chorus of voices – left, right and in-between – urging John McCain’s living, breathing, senior’s moment – Sarah Palin – to pack up her moose hides and go home.

“Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, “to spend more time with her family”? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS’s Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn’t help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

“‘It’s very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where–where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to–to our state.’

“There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. “It is from Alaska that we send out those …” What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. (“We mustn’t blink.”) But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.”

Zakaria focuses on this Palin answer in response to a Couric question, “designed to see if Palin understood that the problem in this crisis is that credit and liquidity in the financial system has dried up.”

PALIN: “That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the–it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

Nothing could make it plainer that Sarah Palin has no business standing as a potential “next in line” to the presidency of the United States. She is vacuous – an empty vessel from the neck up. She is Dan Quayle minus the intellect. The McCain people have been trying to groom her for weeks and yet she still has no grasp of even the most major issues of the day.

Okay, fairness demands that I acknowledge Fareed Zakaria is an elitist. Yes, he is well educated. Yes, he is highly experienced and very knowledgeable. Yes these are the qualities that fuel the righteous indignation of you fundamentalist nutjobs. There you go. Now, bite me.

 

Will McCain "Disappear" Palin?

Maybe it’s just one of those giddy ideas that gets a bit of traction yet some pundits are talking about whether the McCain organization has decided the only safe thing to do is ditch Sarah Palin.

Where was she after last night’s debate when her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, was making the rounds of the TV networks? It turns out the McCain people wouldn’t make her available for interviews – no live TV appearances for Sarah Palin.

The Huffington Post has this from radio talk show host Ed Schultz:

“Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is ‘clueless.'”

Now, in fairness, Schultz is a progressive and he’s said some pretty scathing things about Palin before. But what about the uber-uber-right, National Review? HoffPo links to this opinion piece by the NR’s very conservative commentator, Kathleen Parker, who claims Palin should take a powder:

As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there.

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.

What to do?

…Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZiMDhjYTU1NmI5Y2MwZjg2MWNiMWMyYTUxZDkwNTE=

As if the McCainsters don’t have enough problems without lugging about this anchor, Biden made it clear last night that Palin has no reason to expect any kid glove treatment from him when they square off in the vice-presidential debate. Conservative Kathleen Parker is right. Palin does exhaust your cringe reflex.

Poor old Johnny McSame. He hired her for the bump and now he’s stuck with the grind.

h/t Unrepentent Old Hippie

 

McCain’s Veep’s Scandal

Sarah Palin, McCain’s choice for veep and 2-year governor of Alaska, may be very grateful indeed that she was picked. Sarah may welcome the chance to put some serious distance between herself and the Alaska legislature.

Palin is caught up in a nasty scandal. She’s alleged to have pressured the commissioner of Alaska’s Public Safety Department to fire a cop, trooper Mike Wooten. Why? Hard to say but it could have had something to do with the ugly custody battle Wooten was then engaged in with Palin’s sister.

For a while Governor Sarah denied there was anything to the story. Then the Alaska legislature unanimously approved the hiring of an investigator. Suddenly Governor Sarah had an epiphany – why yes, someone in her office did press the Public Safety Department to fire trooper Wooten – but, of course, it has nothing to do with her. She knew nothing about the whole nasty business.

From McClatchey Newspapers:

Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday [August 13th] revealed an audio recording that shows an aide pressuring the Public Safety Department to fire a state trooper embroiled in a custody battle with her sister.

Palin, who has previously said her administration didn’t exert pressure to get rid of trooper Mike Wooten, also disclosed that members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper.

“I do now have to tell Alaskans that such pressure could have been perceived to exist although I have only now become aware of it,” Palin said.

The majority of the calls came from Palin’s chief of staff at the time, Mike Tibbles, according to an information gathered by the state attorney general’s office. Attorney General Talis Colberg and Palin’s husband, Todd, also contacted Monegan about the trooper.

Palin said she’d only known about some of the contacts and never asked anyone on her staff to get in touch with state public safety officials about Wooten.

“Many of these inquiries were completely appropriate. However, the serial nature of the contacts could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at my direction,” she said.

Governor Sarah apparently overlooked something back when she was denying the whole thing – the Public Safety Department tapes all these calls.

Yes, Governor Sarah, two dozen calls from your aides and your husband to the Public Safety Department demanding trooper Mike Wooten’s badge, “could be perceived as some kind of pressure, presumably at [your] direction.” If you would like people to perceive it otherwise, kindly come up with some explanation of why you wanted Wooten sacked other than the custody battle with your sister.

And I thought Cheney was the grand dissembler. That Dick has nothing on Sarah.

h/t Scott Tribe