Palin's Church Now On The Radar

by Steve Soto

To my mild surprise, CNN has stumbled upon and is covering Sarah Palin's church. In an era where the GOP made Obama's church and pastor a relevant debate topic as an alleged indicator of his personal beliefs and character, Palin should be subjected to the same background review and analysis. Once one media outlet does this, others may follow, although you could expect that ABC/Disney will stay away from this one, and probably GE/NBC will stay away from it unless they are getting beaten soundly by their competitors. And it is likely that unless the story had been seeded with several media outlets ahead of time that the McCain camp will work through their corporate allies in the media to squash this story before too long, whereupon the debates will be the only opportunity to reignite them.

This is why Obama's edict to defund and neuter the 527's back in May was so shortsighted and foolish. Sure, message discipline is swell, but if the campaign had been smart they would have formed a solid Tier Two effort back in the spring, and worked out the ground rules so that these entities would have begun oppo research on all of McCain's possible Veep selections and had themes and stories ready to go. Instead, it is being left to bloggers and late-arriving reporters up north to cut through the McCain camp's efforts to whitewash her record and silence her critics, and develop stories that should already have been outlined.