that prompted the Illinois Republican Party to run Alan Keyes against Obama in 2006. Keyes took only 28% of the vote.

I think you're right. John McCain relied on the same seat-of-the-pants that caused him to wreck five Navy jets. Don't let him crash the White House too!

When you manipulate people you can't be obvious about it or they'll spite you. When McCain ran those ads featuring Hillary talking bad about Obama, and then picked Palin and then his campaign specifically pointed her out as a viable choice for disgruntled Hillary supporters he was basically letting them know he was trying to capitalize on their anger. Big mistake. While it will work on some, more are bound to think, 'hey, if my anger is benefiting McCain, I'd better check myself.'

I think McSame did this all himself, (he's a "Maverick" you know).

What I would like to know is when Rove heard about McSame's choice for VP, did he laugh or cry?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/todd_palin_was_registered_memb.php

This is getting ugly.

Another thing McCain unwittingly did was energize the base...Obama's base that is!

Honestly, have you ever seen the blogosphere as fired up as it is right now??

It's beautiful to behold, just beautiful

cheers!

But because Karl and Rush were so pissed he did Palin to spite himself. Oopsie.

Nothing about this hypothesis seems logically out of wack or even improbable. In fact, I sort of *hope* that this theory is true; there's an appealing poetic justice behind it. But are we really to believe that these political types base big strategic decisions on what the TV is telling them? Folks like McCain are the first ones who ought to know that the mainstream media is--shall we say--less than 100% reliable. They are, after all, often the ones trying to manipulate the media to their own ends. Isn't it safer to assume that McCain made this ridiculous VP pick for...I dunno...some other reason, somehow?

Hmm. Now that I really think about it, I can't come up with any real reason he would have gone for Palin other than to sucker Hillary supporters into voting against their own interests. So maybe he *did* buy the pundits' bs. Who knows...

And he got money from them for nomiating this far far far right woman. You wanna bet she can't find Iraq on a map?

Rove would probably vote for Obama too.

So far today, it appears the Republicans will keep Sarah Palin as their VP nominee. Many self-identifying Social Conservatives (Democrats probably would call them Right-Wing Fundamentalists) still like Sarah.

Maybe these vocal Good Parenting advocates can identify and sympathize with a parent who has a dopey kid. And... is "Dopey Kid" maybe an oxymoron? 21st-century American parents with good kids, even sorta-good kids, mostly feel lucky, rather than giving themselves parenting credit, once the kids make it through their teens.

McCain MIGHT have known this would happen. That would make him semi-brilliant. AND, it really was a smart thing to pick a woman, and steal all the Democrats' credit.

All this said, Juno Palin is a TERRIBLE example for girls and young women.

any thinking person knows that the PUMAs, et al are/were never up for grabs by just anyone and certainly not by Hillary Clinton's political opposite. They may be short-sighted, but by and large they are not stupid.

Clearly, McCain is even more idiotic than we could ever have imagined.

Or Chocolate or Cuban Cigars or Johnny Walker Blue or what ever his vice dejour is for informing McCain routinely and regularly that any attempt at moderation of his ticket would result in open rebellion and the loss of his campaign.

Which resulted in his picking someone to the right of himself, and as any passing viewer of politics could have told you, would have a boat load of problems.

Political ideologues never pan out, their own standards of perfection are too high.

So now McCain is (hopefully) stuck with albatross around his neck.

You know much like the Mariner who was congratulated for killing the Albatross early in the poem, McCain received much praise for showing his base that he wasn't going to mess around. But when the mist cleared, and the wind stopped and every one realized he had brought a curse upon all their heads. That's when things really went south for both McCain and the Mariner.

I can just imagine McCain, even more grizzeled and half mad years from now, on some political talk show holding the host with his glimmering eye, "there was an election" quoth he.

"Have you ever seen the blogosphere as fired up as it is right now"? I hope you're being sarcastic, debaser. Because if there's a bigger tactical error the dems can make right now than mistaking our own cackles for broader public opinion, I don't know what it is.

The GOP base and most of the swing vote does not care about any of Palin's idiocies. The minute we heard about the pick my wife and I turned to one another and said, in unison, "The Republicans just won the election."

The pregnant daughter will just shore up the anti-abortion credentials, and the unwed mother issue will no more scandalize the church ladies out there than Cheney's lesbian daughter bothered the homophobes. These people do not shy from hypocrisy. It's their bread and butter.

Even if the other child ends up being a grandchild, as rumored, it plays the same way. I've already heard relatives explain how this makes her seem like a normal, working class person w/ problems they can identify with.

And the AIP? Please. Remember these people are running on a "We Hate Washington (even though we run it)" platform. How much farther outside Washington can you get than wanting to secede from it?!

And the T.P. DUI? Remember how everyone thought that revelations about W's DUI right before the 2000 election were going to doom him? That worked real well, didn't it?

I'll admit this is a more dangerous path than I expected Rove/Schmidt to take, but so far I think they're winning it, and will continue to do so as long as we mistake our own "oh my god they can't be serious?" outrage for anything more than what it is: the justifiable outrage of thinking, well-informed liberals. That's not the target electorate. Anyone remember Dan Quayle?