Palin's Place

by Steve Soto

It seems that whenever I am away for awhile, all hell breaks loose.

Regardless of how the sordid and sad Palin saga turns out, several things are very troubling and call into question John McCain's fitness for office. The Palin pick seems to have been forced upon him by the evangelical leadership of the GOP last week, namely the Dobson/Perkins cabal. They've always distrusted McCain and apparently conditioned their support of his candidacy upon his acceptance of their annointed choice as his Veep. So McCain wanted to be president so bad that he sold his soul to get it.

Of course McCain's camp had been saying for a couple of weeks that he wanted someone he knew and was comfortable with as his Number Two, which led to the speculation that it came down to Tim Pawlenty or Tom Ridge. Stories are now out there that Pawlenty had already been told by the McCain camp that he was the choice, before the Council for National Policy meeting last week in Minnesota where McCain's choice was dictated to him. Yet incredibly, after only meeting her once and then again last week where he offered her the job, McCain still didn't have the guts to stand up to the evangelicals and pick his own Veep. Instead, he participated in the fiction that Palin was his first choice and a "soulmate", even though (as Paradox noted over the weekend) his staff didn't start the full vetting and background checking until after the pick was made. Making matters worse, the campaign insists that Palin was fully vetted and that McCain knew all about Bristol Palin's pregnancy and Sarah Palin's other troubles, and still decided that she was his soulmate over Pawlenty and Ridge, although he met her only once before.

Think I'm being a little too hard on Straight Talk for being a doddering imbecile led around by the nose? Both the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine show us exactly what kind of thorough vetting was done here, all to please the fundy nutjobs running the GOP:

On Monday, the McCain campaign dispatched lawyers to Alaska in a move described as an attempt to manage a growing crowd of journalists who have traveled there to inspect Palin's background. But the move raises the impression that the McCain campaign didn't know everything about his No. 2 and is now racing to learn what it can while trying to avoid tough questions about the Arizona senator's decision-making process.

"I really hope McCain did his homework," said David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush. "I cannot stifle a growing sense of unease that he didn't."

A former McCain advisor, Mike Murphy, said Monday that it remained an open question whether "the running mate in a good or bad way becomes a window into the skills of the nominee."

Most dangerous of all, McCain's team does not seem to know what new development, if any, might grab the public's attention.

One Republican strategist with close ties to the campaign described the candidate's closest supporters as "keeping their fingers crossed" in hopes that additional information does not force McCain to revisit the decision. According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.

For his part, Karl Rove insists that eventually the McCain camp would have told everyone about Bristol Palin's pregnancy by the time of the election because she'll be seven months pregnant by Election Day. Obviously, they just didn't want to tell everyone now because 1) they wanted to get as much positive spin out of her selection, appeal to soccer moms, and evangelical support as they could before the truth came out; and/or 2) they really didn't know about this at all.

So which is worse:

1. That the GOP nominee and his team bungled their most important personnel decision?

2. That the GOP nominee thinks Palin was his "soulmate" after only two face-to-face meetings and knowing her background?

3. Or, that McCain thinks she was his soulmate without knowing a thing about her because the background check hadn't been completed?

4. That McCain ditched selecting people he knew to please the evangelicals because he wants the presidency above personal principles?

5. That Sarah Palin allowed her daughter's life to be ruined out of self-interest?

No matter now you slice it, this sad episode demonstrates that in his overriding zeal to be president, John McCain does not possess the judgment, character, guts, and integrity to be president of the United States. Aside from his willingness to ditch better choices to please people who dislike him, this also demonstrates that Sarah Palin is a poor example of family values herself. There is nothing to commend in her decision to put her pursuit of the vice-presidency ahead of her daughter, and no GOP talking points about how much Sarah Palin and her husband put their family first can hide the fact that she was willing to hide this until later in the campaign and risk her daughter's privacy just so she could pursue the vice presidency for James Dobson and Tony Perkins.

But then, the GOP is supposed to be the moral and family values party, right?

(Hat tip to Anjha for the lead to the GOP talking points)