Wrong. Without Palin, McLoser gets crushed. He got 55 million votes (?). Ten million of those people wouldn’t have crossed the street to shake his hand.
You are dead wrong. Even McCain admitted that palin kept the Republican losses from being far far worse. It would have been DOUBLE digit margins vs what we had.
Palin was a HUGE asset in terms of money and in terms of turnout. The drag on the ticket was McCain and his beltway minion staffers.
Sarah was not much of a factor.
I disagree. Sarah is the reason why I campaigned for McCain at all. Sarah got people fired up in my community. McCain did nothing for us, people were talking about sitting out the election. Sarah brought them back.
As to the people Sarah turned off, I don’t want them in the party anyway.
The ONLY reason she turned people off is because she allowed the campaign to manipulate her into playing the media’s game. The things they did - the rumors, the attacks on her children, the rumors about the clothing... all the while lavishing largesse on “that man” like he was the next caesar. It was despicable.
Sarah is not perfect. Her family is not perfect. If she has to get the media’s approval to run, she will never make it. We have to remember Reagan - he turned the media’s attacks on him on their heads. He wouldn’t play their game.
He said “I PAID FOR THAT MICROPHONE.” I didn’t understand that at the time, I still don’t totally, but I think it represented a refusal to play by rules set by people who have no right to make the rules.
And one more thing — I believe the Office goes to the individuals with the brass ones to step up and take it.
The polls did show that most independents were not positive on Palin. That was not surprising due to Fey's characterization of Palin which had a significant negative impact. However, most of those independents were going to vote against McInsane anyway.
It would have been theoretically interesting if McInsane had selected Lieberman on the ticket, but I suspect the results would have been the same except for losing some conservatives and gaining some independents.
The main reasons the GOP lost were 1. McInsane and 2. Bush.
“Sarah was not much of a factor.”
I beg to differ. Everyone forgets that McCain had to actually chose someone as his running mate. Do you honestly think that if he had chosen Lieberman, Ridge, or Pawlenty, the 3 most talked about possible VP pickes, that he would have done nearly as well as he did? Within 3 days of naming her as his running mate, $10 million in donations was received. Thousands and even tens of thousands of people stood in line and waited for hours to see her. Before picking Palin McCain had very few volunteers out working for him, afterwards, most offices had more than enough volunteers manning phones, and doing other get out the vote efforts. I doubt any of his other VP choices would have had the effect that Palin did. From everyone I know who voted for McCain, about 15 percent of them said they did so because of the energy that Palin brought to the ticket.
You had GOP establishment types like Bill Kristol urging McCain to pick Sarah, arguing that her presence would bolster support for the GOP among conservatives, who had not taken to strongly supporting him. I wouldn't say “Sarah was not much of a factor,” but I would suggest that her positives outweighed her negatives.
Sarah was a factor in McCain losing by single digits. Sarah revitalized and energized the GOP - note that her rallies were often bigger than McCain's. McCain's rallies went from crowds of 400 people to thousands after she joined the ticket. Why would the media be so antagonistic to someone who wasn't much of a factor, anyway?
Sarah was not much of a factor.
Respectfully disagree......Palin was the reason Mccain was not looking up to see George Mcgovern like numbers