Remember, Obama refused to cow-tow to left who were demanding a Hillary pick. That paid off. McCain should have been taking notes.

I’d be far more persuaded by Simon’s rationalizations if I had not seen Palin’s utter unreadiness with my own eyes. That said, I thoroughly agree that McCain and Palin got swamped by economic events. Were we still simply muddling along with a little economic weakness, the race would be closer.

However, even if there was, as Alan suggests, no big long-term gain VP pick, I think that McCain would be in better shape right now under current circumstances if he had a different ticketmate. The GOP base would not have had a delightful refreshment to coo over, but they’d have shown up to vote against the socialist redistributionist and for Joe and Tito. And base nose-holders would then have more ample company in the form of fiscally concerned and skeptical centrists.

I know that I am in a minority overall when it comes to having a VP debate reaction of “are you F**KING kidding me” to Palin. Most folks said she did fine, But I also know that among skeptical moderates I’ve got LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of company.

Bottom line, right now Palin makes for a smaller GOP tent. More of the folks than usual who are inside are delighted. But it’s definitely a smaller tent in part because of Palin. You betcha!

@ Alan — Nastiness? No. Scorn? Yes. Nothing about the campaign she has waged has changed my mind about her. What we saw in the RNC speech is what we’re left with weeks later: a canny, polished, snarky, inflammatory speechmaker with no discernible policy prowess regarding federal-level issues. Compare to Obama, who’s taken his natural gifts (high intelligence, thoughtfulness, a lawyerly insistence on seeing all sides of a question) and augmented them with the necessary shifts in persona and articulation to craft a successful public persona. Faced with teaching a thinker how to campaign or teaching a campaigner how to think, I choose the former for what I think are obvious reasons.

I consider her treatment at the hands of McCain’s advisers to be the logical fall-out of a crappy campaign. But blame McCain? No one held a gun to her head, and it says everything that she leapt at this opportunity. She lost me at *I never blinked*. How soon we forget…

Obviously you believe there was no long term gain option, which is a fair enough reading. I think he may have been able to keep this thing closer and play small ball with a different pick. But it’s not like I can back that up with anything but my own opinions. We can’t replay history.

But I think we’re in agreement that Palin was by no means an automatic loser.

There was a discussion a week or so ago on Winds of Change about conservative pundits gleefully throwing Sarah Palin under the bus. I will reiterate here what I said there: Where were they in early September when she and McCain looked poised to blow the doors off of Obama and Biden?

There were several, actually, including David Frum who was writing critical pieces about her during the GOP Convention. And, Peggy Noonan who was caught making an off-mic comment about what a bad pick she was after an MSNBC appearance during the convention.

I agree, though, with your point that it was the economy that killed McCain.

My point in writing the post, though, was simply this — if McCain’s defenders are going to spend the post-Election period blaming Palin for the loss, then someone needs to call them on the fact that it was McCain who put her on the ticket to begin with. If they really think that she sunk the ticket, then what they’re actually saying is that John McCain destroyed his chance to win the White House all by himself.

I’ll grant that this was a very difficult year for the GOP and McCain might have found himself behind in the polls regardless of his choice. But I don’t think Palin was the ONLY chance McCain had at winning this thing. She shouldn’t be scapegoated and she hasn’t deserved the scorn and nastiness directed at her, but despite the energy she’s brought, her negatives are not insignificant.

It’s not like Palin suddenly lost her marbles, or her folksy charm that drew people to her in the first place, between now and then. It was, well, the economy, stupid. The financial turmoil starting in mid-September made everything in the campaign that came before it ancient history, including Palin’s novelty value to the GOP ticket. Palin was simply swamped by the same tsunami of misfortune that washed over McCain himself, and she went from an asset to an irrelevancy almost overnight. The thing is though, I don’t see why the same fate wouldn’t have befallen anyone else McCain might have chosen as a running mate instead of Palin. If a bad economy is indeed the kiss of death for McCain because he’s a Republican, simply having someone else as his VP wouldn’t have changed that.

All this is to say that you can count me out of the Palin-bashing. The sad truth is that we will never know how strong or weak a candidate Palin really was, because she was nominated for an altogether different campaign from the one we’ve had ever since events on Wall Street began to intervene.

You do know how this stuff works, right? I mean, there’s a reason these are unnamed sources. Because otherwise they wouldn’t talk to the reporters. Why? For fear of getting eviscerated by McCain.

And this has happened over and over and over and over and over again. Remember the Clinton campaign?

Get with the program!

Even if Sarah Palin had turned out to be a better candidate, the way in which she was chosen still says some very important things about John McCain, and his style of decision making.

The McCain campaign has no one to blame but themselves.

… unlike 2000, and 2004, This Time, it was the Republicans who have clearly been over matched when it comes to prosecuting a successful Presidential campaign.

Just my opinion,
Todd

I’ve been told by an unamed source inside the Obama campaign that he is going to withdrawal from the race to day 13 o’clock and eat Biden’s balding head with a dull rusty spoon.

Meanwhile, liberals like Andrew Greeley at the Chicago Sun Times are saying there is no way Obama can win.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/1247262,CST-EDT-greel29.article