In light of Governor Palin breaking away from her McCain handlers and speaking to reporters and her doing more “off the cuff” interviews does this indicate that she is attempting some separation from the top name on the Republican ticket? In addition does this mean she is looking four years down the road instead of a handful of days?
I think it’s more likely she’s working getting her TV career going. I can’t see her given the choice of POTUS or unlimited opportunity to make money and bask in the adulation of the ignorant taking the hard road.
My gut feeling (based pretty much on nothing) was that McCain was never too thrilled at having her as a running mate to begin with. It seems as if she was forced on him by the Republican party with whom he was never too chummy to begin with.
He never really seemed all that comfortable defending her or promoting her. Even when pressed by Dave Letterman on the topic all McCain could come up with was “She inspires people.”
I think she’s more representative of what the Republican party wants to be (staunch conservative) while McCain saw himself as a uniter/moderate who wanted to cross the aisle.
Main Entry: mav·er·ick
Pronunciation: \ˈmav-rik, ˈma-və-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick †1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves
Date: 1867
1: an unbranded range animal ; especially : a motherless calf
2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party
Guess the honeymoon’s over.
That isn’t how presidential campaigns work. She may not have been his dream choice - his campaign staff apparently didn’t like the other options - but he did choose her himself. The New York Times has a long story detailing that, along with everything else his campaign has done.
I think McCain had the same notion as the rest of us – that someone who manages to get elected Governor of a state is most likely an intelligent, capable individual. That was his first mistake. The second mistake was to think she’d be flattered and grateful to be chosen for the ticket, and that she’d be easy to control.
Part of me thinks “Good for her”, but I wish she’d done this earlier. Now it just looks like she’s jumping ship.
Everytime I watch the news, turn on the radio, or look at a newspaper something else is falling off the republican ticket. Today, reading this, it looks like the only thing NOT falling is Palin’s Ego.
As Palin is growing more comfortable on the campaign trail she is getting looser and better acquainted with what McCain wants her role to be. Her media handlers don’t want her to talk to the press without them, because if she does they are not needed. Also a candidate always wants to leave the impression when they are talking to someone that they want to talk more but that they are being forced to stop talking because of a busy schedule and impatient aides. Palin has seemed very disciplined in this campaign and she is unlikely to stop now that the race is tightening up and almost over.
What color is the wallpaper in your fantasy-land room?
“Tightening up?” “Very disciplined?”
The mind boggles.
Ok. What polls–and more importantly which reputable poll analysts–are showing a “tightening” race? None that I see. All I see is a increasingly solid Obama lead.
As for “very disciplined,” are you kidding me? You have noticed, I hope, that Palin has publicly disagreed with McCain’s policy positions and election strategy recently? From my viewpoint, it almost looks like they’re running two separate campaigns for two different offices, if you look at how divergent their apparent tactics are. I can’t tell that she pays any attention to McCain at all anymore, other than she has to occasionally mention that he’s the actual nominee for president.
Am I the only one who thinks she has improved a great deal in the past couple of weeks? I mean I hate almost everything about her and her lies and distortions infuriate me, but she seems to much better spoken and in some cases back up her arguments with, well I won’t call them facts, but what she presents as facts. Things that could pass as a legit argument to the average voter. Maybe I’m overestimating it because anything would have been an improvement over not being able to name a newspaper.
My point is that a few weeks ago there were a lot of jokes about her going back to Alaska after this was over and that she had no political future, but I could actually see her as a potential candidate in four years, if she moves a little more towards the center. Not too far, just enought so that moderates don’t think of her as a dangerous extremist. What if she does this, and, in six months or so makes some sort of a statement that she regrets some of the language in the campaign, like calling Obama a socialist. And the reason I say that she needs to do that is because of how turned off most voters have been by the negative campaiging, which may not work in the future as well as it has in the past.
Could she get the nomination next time?
Who knows? She might finally find her groove in, say, mid-December!
No no no. last night on Jay Leno I heard her speak of the “Palin- McCain” ticket.
I really doubt it. It’s too obvious that she embodies everything that is really, really wrong with the Republican Party right now. Only hardcore Republicans approve of her or see her as a credible candidate now.
How many more republicansneed to jump ship before people see who the more qualified and Trusted candidate is?
are we seeing a break…
oh, ya, you betcha!
To quote an anonymous source close to the situation, “Youbetcha!”
Your logic does not resemble our earth logic. If McCain and Palin were saying the same things, she would be redundant. He uses her to attack Obama without having to dirty his own image. She can rally the base without him appearing to pander. This is standard political strategy, it is like every four years people forget that there has ever been an election before.
I suspect that it’s the natural reaction to accusations that she speaks from a script and is told exactly what to say by handlers, and has a poor knowledge base of her own. By doing things like this, it aims to show she’s intelligent in her own right without previous running through of talking points.
Or perhaps she herself is annoyed by such accusations, and is trying to deal with it personally without involving her staff. Either way, I think it’s more of a reaction that an indication that all hope has been lost on the McCain team.
I don’t think we will see much of her after the election is over. I think she may get bogged down in Alaska with Troopergate and her falling approval ratings.
Perhaps the RNC will try to groom her for later. She is ambitious, and not all that bright, but she is a loose cannon. There is too much a risk they would likely find themselves sorry later.
"Palin also proposed expanding funding of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which was signed into law in 1975 but has never been fully funded. The McCain campaign estimates that fully funding the program would cost an additional $45 billion over five years, money that Palin said could be found by cutting federal pork barrel spending.
“We’ve got a $3 trillion budget in this country,” she said. "And Congress spends some $18 billion on earmarks for their political pet projects, and that right there is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA."Palin also proposed expanding funding of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which was signed into law in 1975 but has never been fully funded. The McCain campaign estimates that fully funding the program would cost an additional $45 billion over five years, money that Palin said could be found by cutting federal pork barrel spending.
“We’ve got a $3 trillion budget in this country,” she said. “And Congress spends some $18 billion on earmarks for their political pet projects, and that right there is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA.”
You left out the part where she says Obama will hurt special needs children.
*Though she has previously declared that this issue should be nonpartisan, Palin said that Barack Obama’s tax plan would hurt families who establish financial trusts to care for their special needs kids.
“Understandably then, many families with special needs children or dependent adults, they’re concerned about in this race our opponent in this election who plans to raise taxes on precisely these kinds of financial arrangements,” she said. *
Back in September, they said this-
“Barack Obama’s running mate sunk to a new low today, launching an offensive debate over who cares more about special needs children,” McCain-Palin spokesman Ben Porritt said. "Playing politics with this issue is disturbing and indicative of a desperate campaign.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10...y4542941.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/...eds/index.html