Sarah Palin campaign was a 'train wreck', insiders say (RINO Charges BARF Alert)

timesonline.co.uk ^ | 2010-01-12 | Jenny Booth

[rabscuttle385]

Fresh details emerged today of the backroom dramas as Sarah Palin alarmed her campaign managers with a string of gaffes during her run for vice-president in 2008.

Race of a Lifetime, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin which is serialised in The Times this week, reveals that advisers to John McCain were taken aback by how little Mrs Palin knew about politics and history when she was confirmed as Mr McCain's Republican running mate after a cursory, 12-hour selection process.

"You guys have a lot of work to do," Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's campaign chief, is said to have told the experts he had recruited to tutor her. "She doesn't know anything."

Heilemann and Halperin write: "Palin couldn't explain why North Korea and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed [the Federal Reserve] did. Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank. Later, on the plane, Palin said to her team: 'I wish I'd paid more attention to this stuff'."

[Plutarch]

Skinhead Schmidt is working with a PR/political outfit in Sacramento so he can help Romney.

Who says Schmidt is working with Mercury Public Affairs in California to help Romney? You do, based on nothing. Since when does Romney need help in Sacramento? Schmidt used to work in Sacramento with RINO Schwarzenegger, another example of a RINO who continually provides material proving he is a RINO.

If the case is so strong against Romney, why do you have to keep inventing stuff?

[BigSkyFreeper]

No, not good enough for me. Neither is your admission you were a Romney supporter. What is factual is both you and Steve Schmuck are doing is violating Reagan’s 11th Commandment.

[jla]

For Schmidt & Co. to be right about Sarah Palin it would necessitate that Thomas Sowell and Fred Malek are wrong about her. One side is lying thru their teeth about her while the other is not.
Which side has more credibility? Who is telling the truth about Sarah Palin?

"Not One of Us"
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, February 25, 2009

If Barack Obama has been the most remarkable phenomenon of the recent political scene, Sarah Palin must be second. The emotional responses to each-- especially by the media and the intelligentsia -- go beyond anything that can be explained by the usual political differences of opinion on issues of the day.

That liberals would be thrilled by another liberal is not surprising. But there are conservative Republicans who voted for Barack Obama, and other conservatives who may not have voted for him, but who are quick to see in various pragmatic moves of his since taking office an indication that he is not an extremist.

Anyone familiar with history knows that Hitler and Stalin were pragmatic. After years of denouncing each other, they signed the Nazi-Soviet pact under which they became allies for a couple of years before going to war against one another. Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama's pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.

With Governor Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.

Governor Palin's "inexperience" is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has. Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.

Governor Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."

The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.

The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.

Before the first trial of Alger Hiss began, reporters who gathered at the courthouse informally sounded each other out as to which of them they believed, before any evidence had been presented. Most believed that Hiss was telling the truth and that it was Chambers who was lying.

More important, those reporters who believed that Chambers was telling the truth were immediately ostracized. None of this could have been based on the evidence for either side, for that evidence had not yet been presented in court.

For decades after Hiss was convicted and sent to federal prison, much of the media and the intelligentsia defended him. To this day, there is an Alger Hiss chair at Bard College.

Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.

Governor Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life-- an overdue challenge, much as Chambers' challenge was overdue. Whether Governor Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need some candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor-- worse yet-- the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.

Nobody Boos a Nobody
Fred Malek
July 2nd, 2009

To summarize baseball legend Reggie Jackson: nobody boos a nobody. That is definitely true in the case of Governor Sarah Palin. I don't think I am going out on a limb here when I speculate that individuals who repeatedly attack her anonymously view her as a threat. And that includes members of the media hell-bent tearing down young Republican up-and-comers as well as some in Governor Palin's own party - a party desperately in need of redefining - who are motivated, for whatever reason, to try and crush their rivals.

The most recent and grossly unfair attack came from Vanity Fair magazine. The writer clearly had an unshakable point of view from the start and talked only to those who would criticize. For example, he personally asked me at event preceding the White House Correspondents Dinner if I would talk to him about Governor Palin. I agreed. He didn't call. He didn't email. He never once tried to get my take. I also know he never contacted campaign manager Rick Davis, or John McCain.

I have known many political leaders over four decades including all Republican presidents and VPs. I have come to know Sarah Palin over the past year and can state unequivocally that she is smart, curious, hard working, charming, and effective. She also has something her detractors clearly lack - a sense of honor and loyalty.

I know this is petty, but it reminds me of the 2004 presidential election where it was commonplace and accepted in much of the mainstream media to call President Bush stupid and Senator Kerry smart and insightful. At the end of the day, when Senator Kerry finally released his college transcripts, wouldn't you know: he did quite a bit worse than President Bush.

I have seen Sarah up close with leading heavyweights, and have seen her hold her own and then some. At the dinner at my home referenced in the article, she engaged comfortably and deeply with people ranging from Alan Greenspan to Madeleine Albright to Mitch McConnell. She asked for a foreign policy discussion on her June 7 trip to Washington, and I saw her engage in an informed and spirited manner with Frank Carlucci.

Governor Palin has many admirers and defenders out there who will not allow her to be branded by jealous rivals with their own agenda and the elitists in the national media. I am not sure who the unnamed Vanity Fair sources are, but without question they lack chivalry and have acted in a craven manner. They also lack the facts. I am ashamed of my former campaign colleagues, whoever they are.

Sarah Palin:
Smarter than Schmidt
and infinitely more honest

SARAH 2012!

[BigSkyFreeper]

I have a hard time believing he kept himself that busy in the Bush 43 White House.

[Mariner]

"Heilemann and Halperin write: "Palin couldn't explain why North Korea and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed [the Federal Reserve] did. Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank. Later, on the plane, Palin said to her team: 'I wish I'd paid more attention to this stuff'."

IF TRUE (please note, IF TRUE), then she is not qualified for the Presidency.

[9YearLurker]

Reagan fought the good fight to take back the party against the Romneys of his day. Don’t know what’s up with the Freeper snarkiness today, now I take it accusing me of misreporting my personal history unless I give up my anonymity.

No thank you, and I’m done with responding to you as well. I take it that because the founder of this site has made his fervent lack of support for Romney known that Mittbots are taking to ad hominem attacks on individual posters instead.

[nutmeg]

Race of a Lifetime, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

I thought their new book is called "Game Change"??

[molybdenum]

Not inventing anything. I just found the thread, all info is there: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2425473/posts

[BigSkyFreeper]

I never supported Romney, I was a Fred Head.

[muawiyah]

Steele is probably the only candidate for RNC chairman who hasn’t slept with Schmidt ~ or whatever he calls it.

[newfreep]

That “quote” is so outrageous that it fails the common sense test. Just another attack on Sarah....

[molybdenum]

Sorry, long thread—the post w/link is #176 by Jimbo l76

[mjp]

dumBO and libtards don’t know how to create and maintain a free/rational society and a just/limited government

[BigSkyFreeper]

...Mittbots are taking to ad hominem attacks on individual posters instead.

That part you said makes no sense, since it was you who attacked Mitt, not me, and I never supported Mitt in the first place but you did. 

[Drawsing]

I took a college course in economics once where the teacher tried to explain how the “Fed” worked. I think it is supposed to have some kind of regulatory effect on the flow of money...or something like that.

[molybdenum]

we can fight ‘em. Anyone who sends money to Sarah is providing support for Mitt (Sch$itt), McJuan, Hatch, Murkowski, & any other of the cabal.

[dread78645]

So I guess I must assume it’s the same book, different title? Weird.

Full title -
'Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime,' by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

[9YearLurker]

;-)

[Only1choice____Freedom]

Thanks to the Chicago crowd today’s key word is “ig’nant”.

Only when he wants to it to be.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Yeah, Fred Malek is THE man when it comes to making and breaking National Republican candidates., My guess is that he is the one who is really scaring McCain’s former staffers by openly supporting Sarah.