Palin’s ‘going rogue,’ McCain aide says

“[Palin] is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

Here I thought the upcoming final week of campaigning would be all thunder and fury (and I suppose it still could be), but instead it appears we will be treated to the spectacle of the Republican candidates attacking each other instead.

Let’s Get Out the Vote in massive numbers and make sure the neocon agenda lies dead and buried on Nov. 4.

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The latest Pew Research poll shows Obama with his widest margin ever over McCain, 53% to 39%.

Failin’ Palin must have been sleeping during 8th grade civics class because yesterday she said the vice president is “in charge of the United States Senate.”

What a freaking moron.

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From Margaret and Helen. Margaret does most of the blogging, she’s 82.

Joe the Plumber? Joe Six Pack?  The new McCain strategy seems to be banking on a lot of guys named Joe with a beer in one hand and a pipe wrench in the other. Is this a political campaign or a dating service for the Palin women?

And while I am talking about Governor Good Hair from the North I just want to say good for Sarah Palin that she has an interest in helping special needs children. They need all of our help and every child should come into this world being wanted and loved. Sarah you have my full support on this matter. It’s just too bad you also have to worry about a special needs Senator for a running mate.

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Palin is controversial even in Alaska, her popularity is sinking there as her unfavorable rating soars nationwide. One reason: Her extremist ties.

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As with the first presidential debate, the Democrats appear to have won among the swing voters.

And that’s really all that matters. The hard core on either side aren’t going to change and their votes aren’t in play. It’s the undecideds that both sides want.

BTW, McCain gave up on Michigan today, pulling resources out. That used to be a battleground state too.

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Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing twitters BB comments on Palin

BB commenter describes the would-be VP’s “dinosaurs and men once coexisted” fundamentalist beliefs as “Palintology”

“Don’t be silly. Their candidacy is crystalline evidence that a dinosaur and a primitive human can coexist.”

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Pelosi: “We have to be able to do a couple of things at once. That’s what leadership requires.”

Barney Frank: “It’s the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of either football or Marys.”

Sen. Schumer: “Just weird…”

Harry Reid: Stay away. “We need leadership; not a campaign photo op.”

David Letterman: “You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves. I think someone’s putting something in his Metamucil.”

The McCain campaign is also using this as an excuse to cancel the vice presidential debates. That Palin isn’t ready for prime time has become apparent to all. She still hasn’t had a real press conference, they tossed out the press yesterday at one event, and a new NBC/WSJ poll says 49% think she’s unqualified to be president.

The McCain campaign may end up being the most inept ever, even worse than John Kerry’s. We could be witnessing the self-destruction of a presidential campaign.

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The reason why can be summed up in one word: Palin.

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Socialist Unity

Just because she is religious and right-wing doesn’t mean she is stupid, or incompetent. She is a hard-boiled professional politician, with a high domestic approval rating. When she eventually starts giving media interviews she will do well, and she will talk directly to the anxieties of middle class Americans in small towns.

America stands as a land divided. The liberal condescension towards the deeply held religious and moral choices of large numbers of their fellow countrymen plays directly into the hands of the Republican right. The only way this divide can be healed is by progressive America finding common ground with the economic problems that unite working Americans: the lack of universal health care, the poverty wages of the working poor, the jobs being exported and the high levels of personal debt.

The social issues like gun ownership, separation of church and state and abortion are of course important. But there cannot be meaningful dialogue until people start listening to each other..

More and more I’m seeing precisely that as the problem. The Left and the Right don’t listen to each other. Nor do they want to. Both sides, too often, are convinced that their views are correct, while the center is vanishing or ignored.

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Joe Bageant

We [rednecks] all understand that there is a political class which dominates in America, and that Sarah Palin for damned sure is not one of them. And the more she is attacked by liberal Democratic elements (translation: elite highly-educated big city people) the more America’s working mooks will come to her defence.

Liberals really need to end their nasty, insulting, class-based attacks on Palin. Now. Attack her for her extremism but not because she’s a redneck. So says Leftie redneck Joe Bageant.

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In an age when politics is choreographed, voters watch out for the moments when the public-relations facade breaks down and venom pours through the cracks. Their judgment is rarely favourable when it does. Barack Obama knows it. All last week, he was warning American liberals to stay away from the Palin family. He understands better than his supporters that it is not a politician’s enemies who lose elections, but his friends.

But the berserkers seemingly must attack Palin, even when it clearly is not helping.

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There are so many posts now from left blogs trying to bash Palin. I don’t get it. McCain needs be the main target, plus given his age and lack of ideas, he’s way more vulnerable. So why the obsession with Palin?

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Look, any small town mayor who wins a governorship unexpectedly has got serious political chops. The liberal blogosphere needs to realize this. And to stop bashing her because she hunts and shoots. Can’t think of a better way to piss off voters in the West and South, where hunting and shooting is a way of life. (The implied subtext of such an attack, of course, is that she’s redneck and thus of a lower class, a swell way to have the Right slime her attackers with charges of elitism. Like there’s something wrong with being redneck or that rednecks are always right wing.)

Hit her on the issues and on her extremism. Forget the other stuff, and understand that she is a highly capable politician.

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Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire

The Detroit Free Press put together a panel of voters to listen to last night’s Republican convention speeches and, much as I predicted last night, the independents were universally negative on Palin. In fact, they were more negative than the Democratic voters. The speech was clearly designed to help close the “enthusiasm gap” that has dogged the McCain campaign all summer.

Democrats should focus on Palin’s extremism, forget the personal stuff, and let women lead the attacks. From what I’ve read, Hillary Clinton has already stepped up to the plate.

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The McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin’s potential pitfalls.

McCain campaign cancels Palin appearance, Phyllis Schafly not happy.

“I think this is clearly somebody in the McCain campaign who doesn’t understand where the votes are coming from,” Schlafly told ABC News. “They only told me this at 10 o’clock last night, and it was a call from somebody down-the-line in the McCain campaign.

Is Palin not ready for prime time? Something else? The excuse given was she was busy on her VP acceptance speech, but hey, she could bungee in for an hour then leave, politicians do that all the time. Schafly is a serious player on the Republican Right and not to be trifled with. Is this yet another last-minute ill-thought-out decision by Maverick McCain (who by now is starting to resemble a stray calf walking around in circles)?

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