How Palin was Picked

The Weekly Standard ^ | 09/06/08 | Stephen F. Hayes

[bigbob]

At 5:20 A.M. Friday, August 29th, Bill McAllister awoke to the ringing of his home phone. McAllister had turned his BlackBerry off before heading to bed. He usually leaves it on, but "It was a slow news day here," he says with a laugh.

McAllister, a former television news reporter in Anchorage, had become Alaska governor Sarah Palin's press secretary just two months earlier, in June, after covering her administration. At one point, he'd even done a story on her vice presidential prospects. "She really didn't think it was in the realm of likely," says McAllister.

[TomGuy]

According to that, we dodged a bullet.

It could have been Lieberman, and McCain would definitely have lost in November.

[SE Mom]

I LOVE this...discipline!!! ~snip~ "Many political observers are astonished the secret held. The McCain campaign is not. "The key to keeping secrets is not telling people," says Matt McDonald, a McCain adviser, who was one of only a handful to learn about the pick Thursday night." ~snip~

[TomGuy]

KKTV MS Player live stream of the Colorado Springs Rally

mms://a754.l1190445596.c11904.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/754/11904/v0001/reflector:45596

[kevkrom]

A raise? How tough is it to log onto FR and do a search for “McCain Lieberman”?

The difficult part wasn't knowing the facts, it was convincing McCain. Given McCain's general resistance to taking good advice, this was no small feat.

[Tallguy]

The difficult part wasn't knowing the facts, it was convincing McCain. Given McCain's general resistance to taking good advice, this was no small feat.

If McCain should get elected we should all brace ourselves for him to make some really bad decisions when it comes to the interests of the Republican Party. The same tightly controlled decision making process that gave us Sarah Palin (good) can give us equally bad cabinet members or supreme court nominees. McCain shows that he is pretty immune to outside influence.

2 years in we may be limited to consoling ourselves with the fact that Palin is on-deck.

[NonValueAdded]

Perfect! She IS the real deal:

In a telephone interview on August 22, one week before she was announced as McCain's running mate, I asked her about reports that she had "embraced" the Obama energy plan. She laughed and said:

I'm not embracing his plan. I said a couple of good things about it. But you know I find myself getting crucified once in a while for having dared say anything positive about a plan, or an aspect of a plan that comes from a Democrat. When you consider the gravity of the problems that we're dealing with right now--and that is dependence on foreign sources of energy to such a great extent that when someone sees the light, in this case Obama seeing the light, doing a little flip-flop there on offshore drilling, I'm going to say: "Yeah!" I'm going to say: "Good job, I'm glad you did that." So yeah I come out and I say something quasi-positive about it and yeah, you get in trouble for it.

The MSM will misconstrue everything she says but she's obviously able to explain herself and do it well. The Sunday morning talk shows should be happy she's giving them time to settle down and get their act together. They'll need to!

[Nateman]

I’m running firefox under Linux and the link worked for me.

[goldfinch]

bump for later

[tillacum]

I think back to the night of nobama’s acceptance speech and coronation. Sen McCain appeared and graciously praised him for a nice speech and gracious acceptance. Then he gave his chipmonk grin and said “Tomorrow’s another day”. And it was!