Posted by
Cynewulf on Thursday, November 06, 2008 11:06:46 PM
The battle for 2012 has already started. We as conservatives cannot wait a few years to join the battle; to do so is to allow the enemy to choose the battle ground and entrench themselves. This brings me to Sarah Palin. Whether you think she's going to end up being the best choice or not in 2012 is besides the point. Let's take a look at a few things being said about her:
This was apparently said on Oct. 25th:
"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.
Here's a great column from whence the previous quote originates:
"Her strategy was to be trustworthy and a team player during the convention and thereafter, but she felt completely mismanaged and mishandled and ill advised," the person said. "Recently, she's gone from relying on McCain advisers who were assigned to her to relying on her own instincts." Palin's loyalists say she's grown particularly disenchanted with the veterans of the Bush reelection campaign, including Schmidt and Wallace, and that despite her anti-intellectual rhetoric, her closest ally among her new traveling aides is a policy adviser, former National Security Council official Steve Biegun. She's also said to be close with McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who prepared her for the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate."
Hmm. Doesn't like the veterans of the Bush campaign. Interesting. More interesting is that John "I Am Not Bush" McCain has Bush people working for him.
Some have said that this McCain insider (Scheunemann who warned of the coming mudslinging) has been fired, but even that is up in the air:
"As a result, two senior members of the McCain campaign said on Wednesday that Mr. Scheunemann had been fired from the campaign in its final days. But Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, and Mr. Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, said Wednesday that Mr. Scheunemann had in fact not been dismissed. Mr. Scheunemann, who picked up the phone in his office at McCain campaign headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, responded that “anybody who says I was fired is either lying or delusional or a whack job.”
The Ace of Spades notes in regard to her "going rogue": "She cannot be a perfect parrot for McCain -- especially since McCain's thinking itself is often muddled. Every once in a while she's going to be pitched a question, and, not having memorized McCain's inconsistent answers fully, she's going to have to (gasp) offer her own opinion."
There's been alot of talk lately about the prank call, but what's interesting is that this call had been scheduled for days, and it was a member of her staff who had been fooled:
"As a senior adviser in the Palin campaign tells the story, the charge is absurd. The call had been on Ms. Palin’s schedule for three days and she should not have been faulted if the McCain campaign was too clueless to notice."
Speaking of calls, this is a classic:
"Just had a tip from a max McCain donor who called their office to find out if McCain would defend Palin. He gave his name and explained he had donated the max, establishing he deserved some amount of customer service." Read the whole thing on the link; pretty funny stuff.
Oh, and while we're on calls - Sarah schedules herself to appear on the Glen Beck show (McCain staffers to busy apparently):
Now, most of this is hearsay at this point, but it does show me that there's an attempt to needlessly defame Palin. What should we do when "moderate" Republicans try to backstab conservatives? Red State has an idea. Now is the time to hit back. To hobble the opposition. Otherwise, we let these snakes in the grass slither away to bite us again another day. If we do that, we'll only have ourselves to blame. Check out Operation Leper:
By the way, here's Palin's reaction to the whole thing:
"Palin arrives in Anchorage after a long trip home from Alaska. She holds a press conference. Refuses to comment on gossip spread by unnamed sources and “small, bitter” people saying “foolish things”…on relationship with McCain: No tension. “I love him…I honor him.” Responding to a question on whether she has any “hurt feelings,” Palin laughs cheerfully. “This is politics! Of course not. It’s rough and tumble and you’ve got to have a thick skin just like I’ve got.”
UPDATE:
More from Scheunemann:
"Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, called the idea of a split between the two campaigns 'laughable.' 'It's hard to believe these people worked for John McCain. They obviously have no loyalty to John McCain and no loyalty to his running mate,' said Scheunemann, who prepared Palin for the vice presidential debate. 'I've worked in Washington for over 20 years. I have seen literally dozens of politicians, and Sarah Palin is as smart, tough and focused as any politician I've ever seen. I'm proud of the time I was able to spend with her,' he said."
UPDATE 2:
Here's the Wallace woman on conservatives:
"SMITH: Nicolle, let's talk about the Republicans, because McCain, he said himself a week ago, now I'm the frontrunner. This lingering Huckabee thing. Huckabee got a lot of votes in Virginia. These conservatives they're -- they're still -- they're not happy. They're not happy about this guy.
NICOLLE WALLACE: And, you know what, Republicans are beginning to say that's okay.
SMITH: Oh, okay.
WALLACE: The more that we see kind of the crazies like Ann Coulter out attacking John McCain, the better Republicans feel about their chances in the general election."
Update 3:
Nicolle Wallace is either innocent of backstabbing Palin or is doing some serious cover-up. Either way, I think she's figured out that that's in her best interest at the moment. Point being, no defense from Wallace until conservative bloggers started flexing their muscles. Could be coincidence. Anyway, check it out, watch the vid, and see what you think:
Also, Palin responds here:
UPDATE 4:
Interested in signing a petition to defend Sarah Palin? Join Operation Leper: