When Will All You Libruls Stop Pickin' On Sarah?

Out of date-- Now 59% say she's not qualified

I was reading some right wing loon blabbling on and on today about what a shrewd move picking Sarah Palin was for McCain. That isn't what most observers (or, more important, pollsters say) but I guess we'll find out on Tuesday. Most conservative newspapers that have endorsed Obama and most Republicans who have endorsed Obama have pointed to Palin or-- worse-- McCain's judgment in picking Palin, as a primary component in their decision-making process for not picking McCain. But if you insist on insisting that only liberals don't recognize the real Sarah, please consider that even some of McCain's closest allies, from Lieberman to Kyl, have admitted that she is not prepared for prime time. And then yesterday... John Ensign (R-NV), head of the NRSC, made it perfectly clear that Palin was a terrible choice.

Granted, Ensign is desperately seeking a scapegoat for the meat-grinder the Republican Senate caucus is walking into Tuesday. But still... I mean he said "certainly Joe Biden is much more qualified than Sarah Palin is." AP:

Republican Sen. John Ensign says Sarah Palin is not experienced enough to be president and John McCain's presidential campaign "completely mishandled" her early days on the ticket.

For once, most everybody would agree with Ensign. But not actually everybody. Even as McCain drastically curtails his GOTV operation-- the key to winning elections for Republicans in the last few decades-- the argument over whether it was McCain or Palin who actually sunk the ticket has commenced. Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online speaks for more than a few conservative die-hards when she insists that "Palin’s off-message remarks are better than a lot of things I’ve heard coming out of a campaign that could have used some messaging help more than once, an operation that hasn’t always been worthy of the seasoned public servant at its helm, John McCain... Without her, all may have been lost for the Republicans weeks ago. She has, by McCain’s own admission, energized the campaign." And McCain's hometown newspaper, the far right Arizona Republic, opines that when all is said and done, Sarah Palin was the right VP pick and that, in fact, "Palin is exactly what America needs." On the other hand, if that last statement has sunk in a little, you might want to watch this entertaining little clip a few times:




MAYBE WE WON'T HAVE PRINCESS SARAH
TO KICK AROUND ALL THAT MUCH LONGER

by Ken

Yesterday we were talking about Eugene Robinson's upgraded estimation of Princess Sarah's political skills, which led him to predict ruefully that, provided she can manage to absorb enough campaign smarts and poise to harness her electoral va-va-voom (not his phrase), "We'll have Sarah Palin to kick around for a long, long time."

Last night Rachel Maddow put the question to MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., who took a strenuously opposite view. Assuming the McCranky-Princess ticket goes down the toilet Tuesday, he sees no national political future for our Sarah. The precedents are overwhelmingly against her, he argued. Losing VP candidates just don't go on to mount successful presidential candidacies -- ask Dan Quayle, John Edwards, and Joe Lieberman.

It's not even because the princess may be shouldering the blame for the party's 2008 defeat, McDonnell said -- though he did think those staggeringly high negatives Howie reports above add to her problem. Mostly, though, that problem is simply having lost this year. In support of this, he argued that Edwards and Holy Joe performed OK -- his word! -- in their VP-candidate role. (I'm not so sure about that. I don't think either did much of anything for his ticket. I'll concede, though, that neither could be blamed for his ticket's defeat.)

O'Donnell insisted, however, that losing is one sin our electoral system just doesn't forgive.

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