Did Sarah Palin Destroy the Republican Party's Chances?

Comment LA Lady:

The strangest thing I think I've heard so far was Keith Olbermann defending Sarah Palin.

He was correct as well.  He told people repeating the smears on the former VP candidate to be careful.  As Mr. O noted the alleged dumb things Sarah Palin did was all based on an anonymous source to Fox News.

I am personally affronted by the slurs too, but then again why should I be?

This is the Republican party.

They hate women.  Women are only to be used as sex objects, or tools for control, and indeed it was found that Governor Palin's crowds were populated by men, and women at the crowds told a reporter they were only there with their guys.  Still, when Palin appeared with McCain she boosted his numbers substantially.  In fact, she multiplied his numbers.

I felt that the cost of Ms. Palin's wardrobe was significant because Republicans might want to know what they were paying for.  Also, since Republicans usually get so many puff pieces written about them and are treated so gently by the press, I didn't think it would be a big deal in the end.

I forgot.  Sarah Palin is a woman.  With the Republicans, that makes all the difference.

To begin with, I don't think Sarah Palin didn't know Africa is a continent. Another candidate running for the presidency had a problem with that 8 years ago.  The way to cover up a major gaffe from an important official is to pretend someone else with an equally big name gets tarred with the same brush. Then they get their trolls to remove the offending fact from Wikipedia after every time it gets put up on the first source and eventually the story about the primary fellow will fade, suplanted in people's memory by the broohaha about the second person's gaffe.  Africa as a country will be tagged in the future as a gaff from Sarah Palin not George Bush. 

Ms Palin asserts she did not have a problem identifying Africa as a continent or the member states of NAFTA as can be seen in an excerpt from an AP report at Yahoo News "Palin denounces anonymous critics as 'cowardly'" in which she strongly defends herself against the other charges, too.

You'd think that John McCain would stand up for her but there's nothing I can find as of this morning.   Maybe my news searching skills aren't that great, but LA Times Bloggers Top of the Ticket say in their post "A lone Republican leader defends Sarah Palin while McCain is mum" well, can you read the title.  They find support for Palin from one Republican, though seem to assert a lack of the same from the McCain camp.

In the afternoon, I found in the NY Times "Palin Calls Criticism by McCain Aides ‘Cruel and Mean-Spirited’ " that at least one top McCain aide has come to the governor's defence.

Excerpt:

Senior McCain aides had moved to quell the divisions earlier in the day. Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain campaign aide who worked with Ms. Palin, defended her Friday on NBC’s “Today.”

“She is perhaps the most un-diva politician I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Wallace said. “The only thing I’ve ever seen her ask for is a diet soda.”

Randy Scheunemann — a foreign policy adviser to the campaign who some factions claimed was fired in the final week, but others said had not been — said that some of the claims about her were false, and ultimately damaging to Mr. McCain.

“The people that are spreading these lies refuse to go on the record,” Mr. Scheunemann said. “They obviously have no loyalty to John McCain or to the person John McCain chose to be his vice president.”

It's still no john McCain himself, but it might be as close as she's going to get.

Sarah defends herself pretty well in the Times report.

Personally, since, as we have seen, Republicans and those who associate with them all seem to take on the pitbull persona, 'Ayn Rand'ian (look up the lady's name if you don't know her) economic agendas, and nearly insane foreign policy agendas, I see no reason that Governor Palin should be considered worse than the rest. 

Maybe that's the problem for the GOP.

tags: sarah palin  gop  randy sheunemann  john mccain  

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