I have to say I’m saddened and kind of surprised to read about the sniping at Sarah Palin within the McCain campaign. Whichever aides are badmouthing their boss’s running mate are betraying him as much as they’re betraying her. He picked her. He stands by her.
It’s clear he really likes her, respects her, is energized by her. When I see John McCain together with Sarah Palin, I’m reminded of how I feel when I’m around one of my older nieces, those smart girls whose age and intelligence allows you to communicate about more than dolls and stuffed animals and whose bright future you can visualize.
Of course Sarah Palin has at least three decades on my eldest niece, including sixteen years of public service. But, you can see the same dynamic between him and her as you would see observing a proud uncle grooming his precocious niece to help run the family business. Not only does the elder man see his relative’s potential, but he has great affection for her as well. She’s more than just an up-and-coming co-worker.
Having learned of her record in Alaska where she, according to Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics, “won election to the governorship as a maverick reformer at arm’s length from her party,”* John McCain surely saw a younger version of himself, trying to do the right thing, even if it meant defying party leadership.
There’s a real chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. Media stories of the sniping within campaign cannot obscure what we observe when we watch them together on TV. Or when we see them in person.
And isn’t that as much of a story as gossip about a campaign’s internecine squabbles?
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*Emphasis added
UPDATE: How’s this for serendipity: one of my nieces is dressing up as Sarah Palin for Hallowe’en. That’s sure to scare some angry Democrats.
Gossip is what it is, GPW — gossip concocted by desperate liberals who are looking for any sort of mud and smear to keep GOP voters from going to the polls.
The hate liberals and the Obama campaign have for Sarah Palin is shown by the fact that Obama liberals are hanging effigies of her. They will do or say anything to get rid of her, and in doing so, they demonstrate the utter hate and rot that is at the very core of Barack Obama and his racist beliefs and politics.
I hate the continuous misuse of the word Liberal.
The people we are dealing with today are anything but Liberal. They are wanna be despotic Leftists.
I agree with V, as usual.
I think one of the most valuable things the righty-blogosphere could do between now and election day is talk LOTS more about the MSM/Democrat efforts to suppress the Republican vote.
Pundits declaring “ITS OVER”, stories about Irish Bookies calling it a McCain win, this story, and anything and everything else they can do to convince Republicans not to bother.
Cus there’s gonna be tons of Republican voters falling for it.
Man, they sure learned their lesson with the Florida panhandle in 2000, didn’t they!
ooops! I thought VtheK made the first comment. make that NDT! my mistake.
GPW, please check your first link – it’s not working for me.
This election — with a McCain defeat — would have been over weeks ago if it were not for our Sarah.
McCain’s so-called campaign aides are a bunch of effin’ idiots.
They’re as clueless as any Democ-rat — insular, out-of-touch, elitist SOB’s to a person.
ILC, fixed.
This election is shaping up as another 1976. People are intrigued by the seeming outsider – this time, a visual / racial outsider – and supporting him on blind emotions of hope, despite his total lack of accomplishment at anything except boosting his own career. As the day approaches, reason sets in with some people, and the race tightens. Will it tighten enough? We’ll know in a week. If it doesn’t, i.e., if Obama wins, then the country will be ruled by a socialist for four years and the American people, we shall have to hope, will re-discover why they had better go with a pro-capitalism and pro-America candidate, the next time.
P.S. And hopefully, along the way, people will re-discover what Capitalism is. The profligate, Treasury-looting policies of Barney Frank and the Bush Administration, it isn’t.
If it really is a baser competitiveness (i.e., sexism, or something close to it) in the McCain camp, it’s only “growing pains” – both for Palin and the party.
Quite frankly, I doubt the whole story about dissension within the campaign. Everything I see happing in this GE campaign was used against Clinton in the primary. There were numerous made up stories about dissension from Clinton aids that later were disproved. And yet they came out everytime a primary was coming up that Clinton was favored to win. They are playing you, folks. This is part of the Obama/MSM campaign tactics they’ve been using for almost 2 years now. They are trying to suppress voter turnout because privately they know the polls are crap. A lot of us dems are working our hearts out for John McCain and we are well aware of what is going on. Don’t fall for it.
I’m not sure that this isn’t just old-fashioned jealousy of Palin. When respected conservative female columnists (I’m thinking K.P., for one) turn and begin sniping at a woman who has such an admirable track record, you know she is hitting a nerve. Women can be so “pissy” with each other. Of course, the MSM illuminati are loving this little side how. Or maybe they invented it.
If SP goes off script too often, all I can say is “Heck yeah!” While I think John McCain himself is the sort of person who can encourage Sarah Palin to be herself, I’m sure many within the campaign are the cautious, conformist sort who think Sarah Palin could be a great political talent if only she would allow herself to be molded. If what we’re seeing is in fact Sarah Palin resisting not only liberalism but also Republican conformity, then that only makes me love her more. If I were more of a cynic, I’d think the Sarah-Palin-isn’t-behaving script is a ploy by the McCain campaign to boost her popularity. It certainly makes her more popular with me.