Posted on 07/03/2009 5:30:29 AM PDT by DB9
PALIN EXPOSED Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:27 AM
Another day, another leak from the wreckage of the McCain campaign. First Todd Purdum publishes a harsh piece in Vanity Fair on the Palin nomination, filled with harsh quotations from anonymous senior campaign sources. Politico follows with an even more revealing exchange of charges and counter-charges. Now at NRO, Mark Hemingway reproduces a series of leaked internal emails. The issue in all cases: Who was revealing to the world these damaging insider descriptions of Gov. Palin?
I'm as fascinated as the next person by the insider details. But let's pause for a sobriety check. The 2008 campaign is over. The 2012 campaign has begun. Gov. Palin is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination. As much as everybody enjoys code-breaking the mystery of who blabbed, isn't the more urgent and important question: Is it true?
Palin evokes a devoted response from a large following. In the mysterious soup of motives that sustains her supporters, enthusiasm for effective governance does not seem a very major ingredient. But you'd think they would at least care whether she could campaign competently. Purdum argues intensely that she cannot - that a Palin candidacy would be the greatest self-inflicted disaster since George McGovern or Barry Goldwater. Here are some of the highlights from Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece:
ITEM: The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”
ITEM: At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small.
ITEM: By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman.
ITEM: In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.
ITEM: More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.
ITEM: A year ago, 80 percent of Alaskans viewed Palin very favorably or somewhat favorably; by this spring, just 55 percent had a positive opinion.
The McCain campaign is over. The duty of confidentiality has expired. The next campaign has begun. If conservatives are to avoid catastrophe, they need to hear from those inside what exactly happened. If true, the leaks constitute an urgent warning and public service. I believe they are true. For sure they confirm what I have heard during the campaign and after. Instead of complaining about these leaks, conservatives should heed them - and fast.
Pailin = Palin
David Frum is an asshat.
Frum = Turd
I have never seen anything like the way Lib react to Sarah Palin. She taps into a psychological component of their brain that drives them over the edge. I think, anytime we want to know who is a Lib, we should walk Sarah into the room. We will know real quick.
Am all too sick of Repubs who by their MO; mirror Libs. Nothing more pathetic to behold.
>>>>> Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders <<<<<<
Yeah, gay boy. Sure.
People just casually grab their desktop copy of the DSM-III and flip to “NPD” when they think of Palin (or any pol).
That is the signature statement that IMO indicates David Frum to be possessed by PDS, which definition isn’t yet but ought to be in the next edition of the DSM.
Can we assume David Frum was one of the sources for the story?
I feel there are still guys like these out there who are trying to tear Palin down who cannot accept a woman having more power than men. I guess their mothers didn’t do a good job raising them properly.
Why do people keep posting this stuff about Palin here?
This is certainly what the Left wants to crucify her. Just falls right into their POS scummy hands.
Only David Frum would think the GOP should take campaign advice from Mr. Dee Dee Myers.
If Biden got half the press attention that Palin receives Obama would have to find a new Vice-President.
Although I think it is unnecessary to keep up these attacks on her, if she’s our ONLY front runner, we ought to hang it up now. I’m not that into her. She’d make a fine vp, but certainly not a good president.
Frum’s point on catastrophic coverage is really ridiculous, but then so is the whole piece.
I’m not a huge Palin enthusiast (she’s OK but I have reservations).
But the crapola that is being posted about her is already probably worse than the Bush Derangement Syndrome hysteria and slobbering malevolence of the previous 8 years.
She is truly hated by the left.
Remembering the ENTIRE McCain campaign- esp McCain HIMSELF - these sly second/third/etc-hand hits are meaningless. McCain and those advising him were destined or even intended to fail....and it/they did. What a pity that Sarah never had an opportunity to participate in and learn from a well-run and well-intended national campaign.
I don’t think McCain or those staff advising him intended to win, or to even further advance a single cause that is dear to a conservative base. For all intents and purposes, McCain and his handlers elected obama.
I correct my above statement. I should include fathers too. They also shape the way their sons view women.
Well, it didn't take him long. Frum's very first sentence "forces" the reader's attention toward the mythical, anonymous, McCain camp "sources" and away from the true perpetrators of this vile hoax.
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