September 2nd 2008
Dem’s Gleeful Palin Misrepresentation
MULTIPLE UPDATES
T
he Nation appears to be the hungriest dog in the mangy bunch of mutts that’s attacking Sarah Palin, and through Palin, the McCain campaign.
Let’s say at the outset that all this could have been avoided if McCain, like Obama, had picked a tired old hack who’s run for the presidency in the “also ran” column I can’t remember how many times.
Here’s what The Nation, with all its Lefty investigative prowess has come up with thus far:
- “Palin once backed the Bridge to Nowhere.”
More important, though, is that she ultimately participated in its demise, and the fall of Ted Stevens. This one is, though, the most troubling of all the allegations, especially given the strong hand she dealt on it in her acceptance speech. I imagine that as time goes by, it all will be fully explained.
UPDATE: Writing at Hot Air, Allahpundit has a nitty-gritty piece on the bridge earmark that shows that Palin was not, in fact, squeaky clean on this one, nor was she as dirty as the Left would have you believe. The piece effectively counterbalances this single example with more important reflections on her character:
One of Palin’s first acts as governor was to sell the governor’s jet on eBay. She thought it was wasteful and, besides, couldn’t even land on many of the state’s short, gravel airstrips. (”It was for out-of-state trips,” she said, disapprovingly.) She keeps a float plane, along with some snowmobiles, in her backyard in Wasilla. At the governor’s mansion in Juneau, she got rid of the chef. The NEWSWEEK reporter asked her what working mother in her right mind would dismiss someone whose sole job was to cook for her family. She replied, “I don’t want them thinking when I’m done being governor that it’s normal to have a chef. It’s OK for them to have macaroni and cheese.”
- “It emerged that Palin has links to the bizarro Alaska Independence Party, which harbors the goal of seceding from the union that McCain and Palin seek to lead.”
That was in the 1990s, and was a brief registration. ABC quotes AIP officials saying Palin “was once so independent, she was once a member of their party.” That actually plays pretty well with her whole persona.
UPDATE: The McCain has rebutted this ungrounded rumor – which the NY Times ran as fact – by distributing copies of her voter registration card. Read more here.
- “The news broke that as governor, Palin relied on an earmark system she now opposes. Taken along with the Bridge to Nowhere stuff, this threatens to undercut her reformist image, something that was key to her selection as McCain’s Veep candidate.”
A governor relying on federal earmarks put forward by others means basically getting the goodies, not compromising, deal-making and backroom maneuvering for the earmarks. It’s a little difficult to imagine how a governor would (1) know what’s going on in the DC earmarking game or (2) be able to decline a federally approved allocation if it came the state’s way. She remains with a credible story on spending.
- “The news broke that Palin’s 17-year-old daughter became pregnant out of wedlock at a time when the conservative base had finally started rallying behind McCain’s candidacy. Barely moments after McCain advisers put out word that McCain had known of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, the Anchorage Daily News revealed that Palin’s own spokesperson hadn’t known about it only two days ago.”
AP reports that Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr., who led the McCain VP vetting team, was told by Palin about her daughter’s pregnancy in the first few minutes of their first interview. The McCain team correctly concluded that it was irrelevant to national leadership issues – something the Left seems unable to get through its head. Disclosure of Bristol’s pregnancy would become the task of the McCain team, not Palin’s spokesperson, so there’s no reason why he/she would be in the loop early – and “only two days ago” is about right.
What’s wrong with this part of the story isn’t Palin or Bristol, it’s how McCain’s team handled the story, holding it back instead of arranging to have the news released prior to the announcement of the Palin pick. How come I get this stuff and the bigtime PR pros with the campaigns are so clueless? (Of course what’s even more wrong is the Left’s reaction.)
- “A senior McCain adviser at the Republican convention was forced into the rather embarrassing position of arguing that McCain had known about the pregnancy “last week” — without saying what day last week he knew about it.”
That’s embarrassing? No, I’d say it’s media over-reaching.
- “It came out that Republican lawyers are up in Alaska vetting Palin — now, more than 72 hours after it was announced that she’d been picked.”
Actually, it came out that The Nation, typical of Lefty-journalism, is giving GOP news the worst possible spin. Here’s the campaign’s explanation (from the same AP story on Culvahouse), which sounds more reasonable than The Nation’s take, which assumes all GOP operatives are idiots:
Shortly after Palin was named to the ticket, McCain’s campaign dispatched a team of a dozen communications operatives and lawyers to Alaska. That fueled speculation that a comprehensive examination of Palin’s record and past was incomplete and being done only after she was placed on the ticket.
Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser, said no matter who the nominee was, the campaign was ready to send a “jump team” to the No. 2′s home state to work with the nominee’s staff, work with the local media and help handle requests from the national media for information, and answer questions about documents that were part of the review.
- Palin lawyered up in relation to the trooper-gate probe in Alaska — a move that ensures far more serious attention to the story from the major news orgs.
Really? The media’s going to be all over this story? Knock me over with a feather. Palin’s “lawyering up” – about as shoddy a way to break this news as possible- is nothing more than the state appointing a lawyer, as is SOP in defending a state employees. Worse, The Nation assumes Palin’s trooper woes were post-appointment news to the McCain camp. Not so, says the AP story:
Early on, the public search unearthed details of the investigation by the Republican-controlled legislature into the possibility that Palin ordered the dismissal of Alaska‘s public safety commissioner because he would not fire her former brother-in-law as a state trooper.
Culvahouse said that he asked follow-up questions during the interview, and “spent a lot of time with her lawyer” on the matter.
“We came out of it knowing all that we could know at the time,” he said.
In other words, it’s the dregs of a personnel action in which the guy who was fired for good cause brings actions of no cause. The GOP take: Lots to embarrass the trooper here, nothing much to embarrass their nominee.
Thin ice is something well known to Alaskans, but not, apparently, to The Nation, because they soldier on:
In the six months McCain had to make a vice presidential pick, couldn’t he of sent a few more lawyers to Alaska? They seem to be vetting their candidate ex post facto. McCain wanted to select Joe Lieberman but was told such a move would destroy the Republican Party. So he went in the other direction, picking a completely unknown hardcore conservative with virtually no relevant political qualifications. And we wonder why controversy ensued.
From Sun Tsu on, generals have warned strategists not to assume the worst of their enemies. The Nation not only doesn’t follow the advice, it seems to leave “assumption” out of the equation, presenting its false assumptions as facts. This sort of viciousness, not McCain’s selection or his vetting process, leads to controversy.
Had Obama been so bold, they’d still be writing about how brilliant he is, aggressively explaining away any smirch that might come up.
Posted in 2008, McCain, Media bias, Palin | 2 Comments » | |
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September 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 am
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:01 am
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