Today's LA Times: Palin's Bait-and-switch act

[CaliforniaPeggy]

By Donald Craig Mitchell

October 9, 2011

After three years of tweeting, hinting and eyelash-batting, on Wednesday Sarah Palin announced that she was not running for president. Her Facebook friends are disappointed. But for Sarah-watchers in Alaska like me, the announcement was long expected, old news.

In 2008, John McCain dumbfounded the nation when he selected Palin as his running mate. She was so obviously unqualified that even Dick Cheney said McCain had made a "reckless" choice; a judgment Palin quickly validated when she famously told Charles Gibson that she was qualified to speak authoritatively about foreign policy because the Eskimos who live on Little Diomede Island in the Alaskan Arctic can see Russia out their front windows.

John McCain is as astute a politician as Dick Cheney is. So why did he select Palin as his running mate? Because as Alaskans knew and the nation soon would learn, Palin, who is as telegenic as Jennifer Aniston, has rock star charisma.

Today, people forget how close McCain's what-do-I-have-to-lose attempt to revive his flagging presidential campaign came to working. Putting Palin on the ticket instantaneously energized the God and gun base of the Republican Party that McCain had failed to rouse. We'll never know for sure, but if the economy had not imploded four weeks before the election, that might have been enough. Think about it. But for Lady Luck, quirky doxy that she is, Palin — who in a recent television appearance on Fox News seemingly confused Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain with long-dead San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen — might have been a septuagenarian's heartbeat away from the presidency.

The rest at the link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mitchell-palin-20111009,0,5458013.story

[one_voice]

1. KnR...

all the signs of not running were there. Guess her cult didn't want to believe it.

[FormerDittoHead]

2. Let's not lose the history. Palin wasn't any great strategic choice for McCain...

>Putting Palin on the ticket instantaneously energized the God and gun base of the Republican Party that McCain had failed to rouse.

Her being selected was *not* any part of a thought out strategy.

Let's remember how Palin was selected.

McCain went into the Republican convention wanting to nominate JOE LIEBERMAN for VP.

Due to some legal problems (not being a registered Republican disqualified him to run as such in several states) AT THE CONVENTION, a last minute search was made and Palin's name came up and with virtually no vetting and a couple of meetings, McCain "shot from the hip" and went with her.

I hope people consider this when thinking about how unsatisfying Obama's been when you think about what it *could* have been with a man as reckless as McCain.

[tularetom]

3. Very true, McCain would have been orders of magnitude worse than Obama

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that Obama has turned out to be all that great either.

[Lucky Luciano]

4. This speculation or fact?

"McCain went into the Republican convention wanting to nominate JOE LIEBERMAN for VP."

[physioex]

7. I havent fact checked....

But it wouldn't surprise me if it was....

[Lucky Luciano]

8. Wouldn't surprise me either, but to not have thought out a Plan B

and to have to shoot from the hip so haphazardly when such an unusual choice (of Lieberman) was his Plan A would have been incredibly poor planning. Clealry not presidential even if his policies were good.

[physioex]

6. On another topic....

It puzzles me that politicians on the right and left are fascinated by that prick LIEberman?

[malaise]

5. Clearly the author knows very little about Al Franken

The Grifter's fifteen minutes has finally come to an end

[CaliforniaPeggy]

9. And THAT is something we can all be glad about!

[Warpy]

10. Her act is more "bait and split."

The hillbilly music tour buss rolls into town, the crowds roar, she gives one of her 2008 campaign speeches, she signs a few autographs while the hat is passed (figuratively speaking), and then she whines about writers cramp, reboards, and takes off, leaving the crowd in a cloud of dust and wondering why there was no show to go along with the hooplah.

Eventually the awful truth is going to dawn on all her fans, that she's just another manufactured celebrity with no discernible talent and they've been taken for a ride. That should happen within the next few years as her looks fade.

Don't cry for Sarah, though. She'll still be trotted out for local Republican candidates out west to make those 2008 campaign speeches again, Republicans loving old favorites. The rest of the time, she'll be in her Arizona mansion, counting all the money she fleeced from gullible people all over the heartland.

[madokie]

16. Do you think she will move to Arizona?

I thought her daughter bought a place there to get away from her.
Quiter is the kind who will flame out badly, with a bottle of booze in one hand and a passel of pills in the other because the memory of her life will be too painful for her to face.

[malaise]

17. I expect to see her in financial trouble before long

That woman is batshit crazy to boot

[Warpy]

18. She's bought a place in Scottsdale through a dummy company

but whether or not she can hang onto it is anyone's guess. My own guess is that she's not investing any of her ill gotten cash, but squandering it as fast as she gets her hands on it.

The meteoric rise might be followed by a spectacular crash. The only question is whether or not a right wing sugar daddy will do enough for her to keep it out of the tabloids, "for the good of the Party."

[SoCalDem]

11. Palin was chosen because republican see ":wimminfolk" as interchangeable

and they got themselves a cuter/sexy version of Hillary.

Dems had a young-ish , attractive black man and a well-qualified woman running, and they had a creepy old guy (McCain), a Mormon, a preacher, and assorted "nuts & dolts".. They needed to spice it up, so they got themselves a "cute gal"..

[CaliforniaPeggy]

13. Absolutely right!

I believe they also wanted to try and peel away the disaffected Hillary voters who might be willing to vote for another woman.

Again, interchangeable parts, as you say.

:hi:

[physioex]

14. Yes....

Kinda like when you go to a gun show, gotta have some eye candy...

[Odin2005]

12. The Grifter.

[madokie]

15. In this whole scheme half term only seen it as a means of making money

She doesn't give a shit about any one except herself. I don't even think she cares about her family, evidenced by the way she dragged her supposedly youngest with her on the campaign trail.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

19. It does rather sound that way, doesn't it?

[Scuba]

20. Who? Oh yeah, I do remember her. Dancing with the Stars, right?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

21. Yeah, you got it!

Her.

:P

[Scuba]

22. She'll be remembered like Tom Eagleton, only really crazy. n/t