Palin Ramrodded Through Abbreviated Vetting Process

by Steve Soto

Despite hammering the media for reporting that Sarah Palin wasn’t as fully vetted as other VP candidates were, the campaign admitted to the Washington Post late Tuesday that it was true: Palin didn’t have a face-to-face interview with the campaign until the day before McCain offered her the job. The choice came down to her and Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who McCain had known for years. Moreover, even though she finally told the McCain camp about Bristol’s pregnancy a day before, McCain offered her the job on Thursday while his team was still vetting Pawlenty. And yet Team McCain still missed a lot.

All other candidates went through months of background checking except Palin, and yet McCain went with the least experienced of all of them, with baggage in abundance. Yet we are supposed to trust his judgment, and are expected by the GOP to honor Palin’s motherhood after she and McCain subjected Bristol to this.

"We made a political determination that the American people would not object to a female candidate with a 17-year-old daughter who was pregnant," Schmidt said Tuesday. "We believed that parents all over America would understand that life happens. The team made a recommendation to the senator that these issues were not disqualifying."

So if the choice came down to Palin doing this to her daughter or Pawlenty, just what did they turn up on Pawlenty?