Friday, October 17, 2008

The Palin/McCain Ticket

I picked up this screen shot from Gil Smart's blog. It's funny to me that a McCain campaign ad is just a big picture of Sarah Palin.
Who is the Republican presidential nominee again? I guess it's a good idea to give your nominee as little media exposure as possible. Especially in your paid media.

It's even more telling that Palin has already been asked about her career plans for after this election. The implication there being that once McCain is defeated Palin is the natural choice for the GOP four years from now. A prospect I find puzzling considering the disaster she has been in this election. She has fired up the base a little more, but lost the conservative intelligentsia. From David Brooks to Kathleen Parker to Peggy Noonan, the elite of the conservative coalition are not going to be happy with her four years from now. I don't understand how she has not been officially dubbed "damaged goods."

I have occassionally found myself wondering how different this campaign would be if McCain had chosen Tim Pawlenty or Charlie Crist or even Joe Lieberman for VP. I don't think it's going too far to say that with Lieberman McCain would have lost the base but maybe won the election. A McCain/Lieberman ticket may have even created a braoder shift in the electorate, puching some out of the Republican tent, bringing others in and creating an entire new right wing movement outside of the GOP. It's fun to speculate.

1 comment:

grantwasgreat said...

I couldn't agree more. If he'd picked Ridge, PA would still be in play.

But...

What this misses is that there would have been a walk out at the Republican Convention if he'd picked Lieberman or someone else who was too moderate. This whole campaign highlights the danger of ideological purity. While people have made fun of the Democratic Party all the way back to Will "I belong to no organized party, I'm a Democrat" Rodgers, we tend to forget that being a coalition party is inherently messy, and while I have always been envious of the Republicans message discipline and organization, it comes at price.

And that price is Sarah Palin.

McCain had to pick her to get the base on his side, and the fact that doing so has cost him the election is proof that Republicans have failed to grasp that they AREN'T the majority any longer. This whole campaign would have worked just fine four years ago. You nominate a moderate to appeal to the indie's, you pick a fire-breather to please the base, then you call your opponent un-American until the public votes for you by default. Wait two years and repeat.

What I can't wait for is the Republican civil war between the Palinites and the people who can read that will follow an Obama victory.