Posted on 07/02/2009 1:25:38 PM PDT by yongin
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.
Ho-hum.
If the old saying, “you are over the target if you are taking flack” is accurate and Palin was a bomber formation, the Nazis just lost the biggest ball bearing plant this week...
I’m supposed to care what that twit David Frum thinks?
Therefore, the Romney bootlickers who are behind these anonymous attacks should be man enough to reveal themselves and their sponsor.
Kiss my butt Frum.
Man I thought that this was a PICS thread ;-(!
WTF?
Palin ain't running deficits and she is increasing the US natural gas supply by 8% while creating real jobs in the process.
Same with Obama
The have to keep Palin down so Mitt has a shot. They are still at work...
I don’t hate David Frum because of his ideas, which suck, but which he is entitled to— I hate him because he’s a jerk. Honestly he is second only to Andrew Sullivan in bashing Sarah Palin every single chance he gets. This moron thinks he can build his “New Majority” by attacking Rush and Sarah Palin? He speaks of “moderation” and “modernity” and but uses HuffPo ad-hominem tactics.
Who stands to gain from the continued onslaught of Sarah Palin? None other that Mitt Romney and Mark Huckabee.
Everyone has faults, but McCain is the co-author of American disaster -- along with his other neocon buddy Bush.
Sarah Palin's real problem is that she looks to the neos like someone they can't control - and that terrifies them.
Or Mike Huckabee? Whatever his name is.
Me too. /duck
I’m not onboard the Palin for 2012 campaign, but I’m absolutely against Frum, McCain, or Romney.
If any of this is true, why not put their name on it??? Most of it is just opinionated Bull Shit.
We need to make sure Steve Schmidt NEVER works for a national republican campaign again.
WHATEVER! Palin is heads and tails above any of republocant. All these whiners can go suck an egg.
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