I disagree. It looks as if Ted Stevens has won re-election in Alaska, but as a convicted felon, he won’t be allowed to take his seat in the Senate. Alaska will hold a special election to fill that seat. One guess who I’m betting will run. And I wouldn’t bet against her.
I have to question this assertion. Recently, American evangelicals, especially the younger ones, have gotten less monolithically devoted to the Republican party and single-issue voting.
The results of Googling “evangelicals for Obama” seem to suggest that there actually are such.
Sam, can you give some examples of unfair attacks on Sarah Palin? If you think criticism of her was the worst you’ve ever seen, you must have completely missed the Clinton years. I don’t remember Palin accused of being a serial murderer or a drug smuggler or a rapist.
Barack Obama got ten times the savagery that Princess Snowflake got. From the undisguised race-baiting of the Jeremiah Wright loop, to the screams of “Marxist” and “Socialist,” to pouncing on nebulous associations, to attacks on his wife for saying she was proud of her country, to the completely fabricated “whitey” tape, to Obama Nation, to the truly absurdist intimations that Obama is literally the Antichrist to the bottom of the barrel, racially loaded attacks on Kenyan relatives he has never had any relationships with.
Palin got attacked for what? For looking bad in a couple of television interviews. That’s it. All of her wounds were self-inflicted. Nobody invented her ethics violations, or her extreme social views or her obvious lack of intelligence.
It’s also just a little hypocritical to complain about criticism of palin when Palin herself has specialized in sleazy knife-attacks on her opponents. I think it should be clearly noted that Barack Obama himself never once attacked Sarah Palin (even after the “pallin’ around with terrorists” garbage).
This Chris Crocker blubbering about Sarah Palin getting the same basic scrutiny that everybody else gets. She got nothing. NOTHING. You want to know a woman politician who’s actually been savaged in her career? Hillary Clinton. Palin got kid gloves.
Palin was clearly a net negative for McCain. Although she did help his fundraising and fired up the Hard Right base more than just about any other conceivable running mate (I thought McCain should’ve picked Huckabee, but he wouldn’t have been as big a help on the money side), she apparently turned off moderate Republicans and independents, and women voters still went heavily for Obama. Given the Electoral College blowout we now see, it seems likely that no particular running mate would’ve put John McCain in the White House. It just wasn’t the GOP’s year, for many reasons, and it says something about a candidate that his concession speech is the highlight of his campaign.
Spending as much time on a conservative leaning board as I do here, I don’t think McCain ever had a chance. The Republican base despises him because of McCain/Feingold and etc.
As one of the few senators to actually work across party lines, he’s angered everyone instead of placated them. Most of the country wouldn’t vote for him simply because he had an ® next to his name and a good part of the rest sees him as a RINO. I’m really surprised it was so close.
Palin made no difference, except at Saturday Night Live.
McCain couldn’t afford to go with a pro-choice VP. He couldn’t.
If he had gone with a standard white Republican male, he would have been buried.
If he had gone with Bobby Jindal he would have been buried.
If he had gone with Huckabee he would have been buried.
If he had gone with Romney he would have been buried.
He was trying to walk a tight rope that wasn’t actually tied to anything at the far end.
McCain’s campaign melted down in eight days starting September 22.
September 22 – “the fundamentals of our economy remain strong.”
September 24 – the crisis is so bad MCain suspends his campaign and flies to Washington to oversee a rescue plan for the fundamentals of the economy.
September 26 – a deal is reached just in time for McCain to participate in the debate.
September 29 – House Republicans vote against the deal.
Up to that point, he had at least a fighting chance. After that, no chance.
It was well concieved, but pooly exectuted. The Congressional Repubs knew that the deal was in serious trouble. McCain knew that and thought it was a great opportunity to come back and show leadership by brokering a deal. The Obama campaign realized the opportunity as well, and were figuring out how to execute it themselves.
Then Barney Frank, et all cut McCains legs out from under him*, by saying it was a done deal. People were so desperate for good news, they ran with it, and everybody thought it was imminent. That left McCain in the horrible position of running to the recuse of something A)no one though needed rescue and B) but in reality was now dead beyond rescue. He ended up looking both like a poser, and a hinderance to the process. It was a major blow againt his credibility as it was executed, but the conception of the plan could have worked out very well.
*I have no idea if Frank did it deliberatly as campaign tactic, or if it was actual misplaced optimism that there was a deal, but either way it screwed McCain big time.
Maybe a slim chance.
People like to point out how McCain was in the lead, but it was likely just the tail ends of his convention bounce–a bounce that was very normal in size and scope from past elections and that doesn’t reveal anything about Palin’s candidacy.
The only way McCain could have won was to go to the center while keeping the right. The choice of Palin was a loser because it symbolized his choice to go to the right instead. It would have been a mistake to have picked a competent far righter, but less damaging. McCain might have had a chance if he was able to convince people that in the crisis he and his VP had the experience needed - but he gave that up. How can you claim you’re qualified when you don’t bother to vet either your VP pick or Joe the Plumber?
I hope the Republicans follow Sam’s advice, since if they do they will be a small minority for years to come. I suspect Palin will run, and be laughed out of the race. The Far Right might love her, but to most of America she’s a joke.
Poking about amidst the election results this morning it appears that evangelicals making less than $100k were split in support of your contention.Well, he gambled and he lost.
I think they were watching the dems closely, if Obama had picked Richardson, or the Govenor of Kansas they would have gone with the more traditional old white guy, and probably gotten a better actual VP. That would have appealed to swing voters that found a truly radical Democratic ticket too scary. When Obama chose Joe Biden they went with Palin; Puma bait, shored up his maverick credentials and gave people who didn’t want to admit that they didn’t want to vote for a mixed race candidate an alternative they didn’t feel guilty about. A brilliant choice I thought might just work. Then Sarah opened her mouth.
I remember the Clinton administration as six long years of the Republicans trying every smear in the book, including an open-ended investigation that began with real estate deals, continued through Arkansas State Troopers and Clinton affairs, and finally ended with a blowjob in the White House. After six years and thousands of pages of testimony the only thing they actually found was perjury. So they launched an impeachment process anyway.
That is the worst I’ve ever seen anybody savaged in the press. That was digging up dirt for the sake of digging. That was abuse of power for the sake of digging.
Palin got a fair shake, by comparison: they didn’t dig too deeply, because they didn’t have to.
Right. McCain lost few votes (if any ) due to Palin, in fact may have gained some.
The Dems had this election in the bag, due to overwhelming hatred for Bush. The GOP threw McCain to the wolves, like they did with Goldwater.
I also believe that, bizarre though it may seem, Palin may be the reason that McCain did as well as he did.
I believe she was selected with very specific goals in mind. First, McCain needed someone to “solidify the base.” He had, by this time, spent years trying to build a reputation as a “maverick”, which meant that the reliable voters of the Religious Right weren’t real pleased with him. He needed a strong pro-life running mate, or many of the votes he was counting on would just stay home. And the field for “strong pro-life running mate” slimmed the field down quite a bit.
Second, perhaps I’m cynical in this, but I honestly believe that they hoped to attract former Hillary supporters who would vote for anything with a vagina. Sadly, in some areas this actually worked. The field of “pro-life women in high elected office” is extremely slim indeed. As a result, the McCain campaign traded long experience for staunch religious conservatism and went with Palin, apparently betting that they could play her lack of experience against Obama’s.
But, like I said, I believe that she actually did energize the far-right voters and probably resulted in McCain getting more votes than he would have otherwise. Still, by the time she was selected, about all she could do was keep the election from being a shut-out.
Hmmm some pundits do say she was polarizing:
*Talking to voters in Ohio and New Hampshire over the past two weeks, it was hard not to concluded that a race that for most of its duration was about Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton wound up, during its final leg, being to a great degree about Sarah Palin.
It is hard to overstate how much voters’ opinions of Palin have shaped their views on the presidential contest, pushing voters in both directions…Since the Palin pick, Frame and his wife have been volunteering as much as they can for Obama, even as they still plan to vote for their Republican congressman. Polls taken in the past few weeks suggest their reaction to Palin is not unrepresentative, as her standing has dropped sharply among independent voters.
But here’s the thing. While the Palin pick appears to have hurt McCain with swing voters, in Ohio it was also unclear just who would have been working for his campaign if he had picked one of the more moderate Republicans he was also considering.
Go into a McCain campaign office in southern or western Ohio and you are likely to find far more effusive praise for Palin than McCain from volunteers. Many of the Palin backers are evangelical Christians and antiabortion activists, and they make clear that they might not have been as devoted to campaign work – or even done any at all – were Palin not on the ticket.
Are your wife and mine separated-at-birth twins? 
Sampiro pretty much has it right, IMHO. The right-wing base of the GOP was not going to vote for Obama, no way, nohow. Granted, McCain probably would have lost anyway due mostly to the economy tanking as badly as it did, but I think a more moderate choice would have made it a closer election.
Many of the previous posts refer to “McCain’s choice”, “McCain’s gamble”, etc. Let us not forget that Palin wasn’t McCain’s choice; it was the choice of the RNC honchos. McCain wanted Lieberman or Ridge, and either one would have probably been a better choice–especially Ridge. Think about it–the economy was the #1 concern of the American public even before the free-fall. McCain needed to try to draw people’s attention away from that, and the best way would have been to play the “national security” card. Ridge, as the former head of Homeland Security, had the credentials to make that work and give the GOP at least a fighting chance. In hindsight, it would have worked better than “My state borders two foreign countries.” And by choosing the one they wanted over the one he wanted, he pretty much squandered any “maverick” capital he had left.
I think it was entirely possible that the Dobsons of the world would have tried to take down McCain, thereby demonstrating the repercussions of defying them, if he had chosen a Ridge or Lieberman.
There is a power struggle going on in the Republican party. The right wing Christians lose power if a Republican succeeds without sucking up to them. McCain sucked up, so he got their support. It wasn’t enough to win but it was enough to show their power again.
Exactly. Lest anyone forget, seizing the center was supposed to have been McCain’s job — he was the maverick. Palin was meant to secure the right (and she did).
Trouble is, McCain didn’t remember his function and kept trying to get to the right of Palin.
And by acknowledging that they actually still had that power, the GOP doomed its candidate to a right ass-kicking.
Hoist by their own petard–how deliciously ironic!