PrintOctober 19, 2008
Sarah Palin: GOP Fall Girl?
There have been plenty of Republicans — the latest being Peggy Noonan — who are saying that McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running-mate has been a bust. They say Palin doesn’t possess the tools for higher office, that she’s a follower instead of a leader, and that she doesn’t seem to “understand the implications of her own thoughts” (that’s elitist lingo for “stupid”).
Many of these pundits are the same people who, on any other given day, will tell you that a candidate’s choice for VP is of little consequence to a voter’s final decision to pull a lever for them. A veep candidate can do harm to a ticket, but it can’t put a ticket over the top. Palin certainly has done no harm — and as a matter of fact, she’s rallied conservatives who otherwise may have stayed home on Election Day.
Then it occurred to me: perhaps Palin’s being set up as the “fall girl.” Should McCain lose, who will be to blame? I mean, Obama was so incredibly beatable that an experienced Washington insider should have had no problem cleaning his clock, right?
But, an experienced Washington insider will also be welcoming some CYA due to the need to return to Washington with integrity — and most importantly power — intact, which is why Palin could be hung out to dry as a distraction from what will have been the real failure of the McCain campaign: John McCain.
Palin has been nothing but a positive to the McCain campaign. She was a fresh battery in an incredibly old flashlight and re-energized a base that was more turned off than Michael Moore at a salad bar by a business-as-usual inside-the-beltway senator who rarely met a regulation he didn’t like and whose campaign was leaking badly until Joe the plumber came along to apply a little temporary pipe putty.
The irony is that Sarah Palin will be responsible for reeling in many votes for John McCain that wouldn’t have otherwise been there, but in the end she may end up being used by some Republicans, apparently Peggy Noonan included, as the fall girl for a McCain loss — which will mean that the GOP will never learn their lesson and it’ll be time for true conservatives to find a new party.
