McCain/Palin: Dream Ticket

My God, this Palin for VP thing is like those mint M&Ms at Christmas:  I just cannot stay away.  And the more I think about it, the happier I am.  There is no upside for McCain in this.  Here's why:

• First, McCain's VP pick was going to dominate yesterday's news no matter who got it, so all the grudging praise being heaped on McCain for managing to upstage Obama's speech is misguided.  Upstaging Obama's acceptance speech was the only reason for making the announcement the next day in the first place. 

• Several others have noticed this, notably Auguste at Pandagon, but choosing Palin proves, again, that Republicans have no clue about any type of diversity other than tokenism.  As Auguste wrote, Republicans think Dems’ vision of affirmative action is “promoting unqualified minorities and women” because to them, all women and minorities are inherently unqualified.  Further, as Mnemosyne wrote in that post's first comment, they think that all minorities and women are the same, so qualifications don’t matter.  They’re fungible.  Alan Keyes = Barack Obama, so of course people will vote for Keyes.  They’re all the same, right? Obama has already started criticizing McCain for being out of touch; a better object lesson simply couldn't be imagined.

• High-level Republicans feel insulted, used and snubbed.  This pick was such a surprise that not even people McCain is relying upon to rally to his cause were told about it in advance. 

• This will actually hurt the GOP's finances.  When the pick was announced, the GOP's conservative base was so excited they rushed McCain's website to donate money. Which is great, except that McCain is using public financing for the general election, which starts, for him, next Friday.  So what that really means is that's $7 million which can't be effectively used before the deadline because the focus will be on the GOP convention next week, and it's $7 million that the RNC won't be getting.  Which really sucks for McCain, because his whole money strategy was to make up for his anemic fundraising by forcing the RNC to spend all its money campaigning for him.  It's the 2008 Stupid Olympics, and the gold medals are flying.

• Most importantly, McCain picked a nobody who lives a long way from Washington, DC, in a state more unfamiliar to most of America's elite pundits than several foreign countries.  Obama's relatively tight-lipped selection process was, for the Village Press, exciting and fun.  They had a bunch of people to talk about, lots of speculative scenarios they could spin into elaborate stories.  Until Friday, they were having the same kind of fun with McCain's process.  But choosing Palin left them with nothing to talk about, which is the greatest crime you could ever commit against TV's talking heads.  McCain insulted his base in order to pander to the Republican base.  He chose someone who comes from an unknown family, who has never even been to a DC cocktail party, let alone proven how she is an entertaining guest.  In DC's clubby world, not only will Pawlenty and Romney take this personally, other people, especially members of the Village Press, will take it personally on their behalf. 

• Speaking of the press, Palin isn't well-liked by the Alaska's journalists, or its legislators.  One columnist has bluntly stated that Palin was elected because her name wasn't Murkowski.  Another, writing in an online chat with WaPo readers, said that her approval rating - which has fallen 30% in just a few months - is largely due to most Alaskans not knowing much about her, that those who have to actually work with her (legislators) or pay close attention (reporters) have an overwhelmingly negative opinion of her.  And the Republican President of Alaska's Senate, who is from Palin's own hometown of Wasilla, had this response:  "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?. . . .Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

• It's been slightly over 24 hours since the announcement was made, and the foregoing is already out there.  Even worse for McCain, this is what's driving the narrative. The vaunted GOP media machine is in this case powerless to control the story, because the juicy details on Palin are just too good to pass up, ignore, or spin away.  For the first time in a long time, GOP flacks are actually being challenged by reporters and pundits, and they simply don't know how to handle it.  So as Ezra points out, they're "melting down" on live television. They're on the defensive, and have absolutely zero chance to regain their footing.  The entire general election campaign will now be spent defending Palin's qualifications - if they find any - and defending McCain's judgment for picking her.

There's more, so much more.  New information keeps coming out about Palin and McCain's (lack of a) process for picking her.  None of it is good.  I doubt Obama will win with 538 electoral votes, but I feel a lot better about his chances for getting 270 of those votes than I ever have. 

Comments

[riffle]

Lots of good points, Stephen. The Alan Keyes = Barack Obama point is particularly apt.

I also feel this won't wear well. I figure most of the good big picture stuff there is to know about Palin is already out there with the announcment--there won't be too many "Great things you didn't know about Sarah Palin" stories, other than some human interest fluff, in weeks to come.

From here on in, I'd say it'll be largely drip drip drip of bad , odd, and downright baffling things about her, and lots of avenues to pursue that will get pursued.

While I sometimes fear that they will build her up with well-paid PR work (she's probably a quick learner as far as TV skills go, for instance), I really think once the serious press conferences start it won't be pretty.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

Great point on the fundraising.

And I wonder how many hometown punches we're gonna see from Miss Lyda.

[Stephen]

Hey, good morning, Neil!

I wonder if anyone from the Obama campaign has contacted Lyda for an endorsement.

[Corvus9]

Stephen, spinning off from your third point, this was a comment I thought about making in an earlier post post canned it, since I decided it was too unlikely and just bullshit thinking: I kinda don't think that McCain made this decision in advance. As everyone says, it stinks of desperation, and the only real source of that desperation would be Obama's speech. It seems like McCain watched the response to the speech, saw Pat Buchanan—Pat fucking Buchanan—excitedly eating up airtime reading his favorite passages, saw a republican strategist suggest whoever wasn't selected as his running mate was lucky, and just went "Grrr! Arrrgh! The fucking young punk won't upstage me! POW! I'll show him! Fuck it, Palin! We're going with Palin1 Let's see them put that one in their pipe and smoke it, my friends! [Ghastly Rictus Grin]" The stories of Pawlenty and Romney being bitter after working their asses off for McCain would seem to corroborate it too. Maybe it seemed to come from nowhere because it really came from nowhere.

Plus, the obvious lack of vetting? I mean, does this seem like a decision that was made sometime last week?

[John]

I mean, does this seem like a decision that was made sometime last week?

They explicitly told ABC News it was a decision made since last Sunday, and not finalized until Thursday.

[Stephen]

It's hard to decide between your scenario, Corvus, and one where McCain and his campaign staff, with Rove on speakerphone, stay up every night last week, wondering just what the FUCK they're going to do, deciding on Palin at the last minute for reasons even they can't remember now.

But yeah, the decision was obviously made late - unlike Obama's, which was clearly made a while ago.

They don't know what they're doing, they really don't.

[Jabari Wooods]

Great analysis.

I'm sure you guys are up on this....but a simple Google search reveals that as mayor of Wasilla, Palin raised sales taxes to build a hockey arena on property that the city did not own. After the construction she attempted to claim the land by declaring "eminent domain." She lost that claim in court, and the city was stuck paying $1.7 million dollars for a $125,000 piece of property. All totaled she left the city of 6000-to-9000 residents with $20 million in long term debt.

She raised taxes, usurped property rights, and ran up the deficit....and they are calling a reform minded fiscal conservative.

Was she vetted by the same people who vetted Bernie Kerik for Rudy Giuliani?

I pray they do not get away with this.

[Toast]

My God, this Palin for VP thing is like those mint M&Ms at Christmas: I just cannot stay away.

Thank you for a Sunday-morning laugh-out-loud moment.

[oddjob]

Early polling indicates that while the GOP is jonesing on the selection of Palin everyone else has been left cold. The undecided vote by a healthy majority, and by an enormous margin, thinks she is not ready for prime time.

[oddjob]

Was she vetted by the same people who vetted Bernie Kerik for Rudy Giuliani?

Apparently she wasn't vetted.

To me this is all of a piece. Do any of you remember when McTantrum chose Hagee & Parsley as "spiritual advisors" (or whatever term he used)? I bet a more thorough search into his life will show that this is the way he usually makes decisions - from the hip with little consideration for the consequences. (I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that's why he got shot down over Vietnam in the first place.)