<p>Sarah Palin is going to use up all of John McCain's "political oxygen" for the foreseeable future with all her vulnerabilities:</p>
<p>a) Bristol and her baby daddy f***in' redneck [sic]
b) Troopergate
c) Book burning tendencies
d) Opposite of her reputed anti-pork tendencies
e) Alaska First Independence Party (AIP) membership</p>
<p>How soon before she "decides that the pressure will be too great for her family" and that she won't be the VP candidate after all (or some such excuse)?</p>
<p>1) Before she is officially nominated at the convention</p>
<p>2) Within a day of her official convention nomination</p>
<p>3) Within two days " " "</p>
<p>4) Within a week</p>
<p>5) Within two weeks</p>
<p>6) Within a month</p>
<p>7) No way she's dropping out -- McCain is too stubborn for that and now has too much on the line. Anyway, she'll rally the radical right-wing Christian base.</p>
<p>I actually think it's probably going to be number 7 (or it will be number 1), but I think the pressure on McCain and her for her to drop out will be incredible.</p>
<p>I am so, so very close to agreeing with you Hindoo. I think this thing gets worse and worse for McCain. I think it becomes a question of his judgement that overshadows the entire convention. And then in a week when rolling poll numbers show him with no bounce or even dropping, everybody starts to panic and put pressure on McCain. </p>
<p>The question: will he break?</p>
<p>I am going to stick with my answer, though, because you get one shot on goal in this situation, as any good Hockey mom would know…</p>
<p>Well, firstly, I am not so sure about that; I don’t follow it enough to know anything but that it’s being disputed but has apparently not been disproven and she has not disclaimed it. Anyway: fill in the blank. How about the fact that she was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it?</p>
<p>Oh, really? It may have not been denied by her, but…From CNN:</p>
<p>"The McCain campaign sent reporters a document which they said showed Palin had been a Republican since registering to vote in 1982, and had not been a member of the Alaska Independence Party.</p>
<p>They also responded to reports that Palin had attended a convention of the AIP in her hometown of Wasilla in 2000. “This would seem to be the only decent thing to do, given her responsibilities as Mayor of Wasilla,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds."</p>
<p>The way in which you said it strongly implied that she was in fact a member (especially because all the others happened, and “Troopergate” doesn’t imply her guilt, but the scandal in general).</p>
<p>Troopergate, how silly, she “fired” the public safety boss (actually offered him a different job) when she had every right to remove him for any reason… even a political one.
Contrast that with the real Troopergate: Bill Clinton using Arkansas state troopers to procure women for him, bringing them to the governor’s mansion, etc. and he got elected President.
Most of the other things listed are guilt by association. So let us blame Obama for his reverend, his clients, his half-brothers, his father, his wife’s… Let’s attack Biden for his son, etc. President Carter had a redneck brother, Nixon had Donald, Hillary had her brothers, etc. There are always siblings and off spring and other relatives and business associates.</p>
<p>d) Pork is basically anything isn’t particularly relevant to a bill at hand. Biden, Obama both are eager earmarkers, which doesn’t make Palin any less innocent for intially supporting those projects…</p>
<p>So she lobbied around to get some parks and whatever built.</p>
So does that mean that Mayor Rybak will be attending the GOP convention this weekend? Good thing for Palin that the Communist Party didn’t decide to hold its convention in Wasilla.</p>
<p>I agree with you Bedhead – #1 or #7. The problem is that things get a lot tougher after the convention – hard to replace someone on the ticket.</p>
<p>On the other hand… its possible that if Sarah Palin finds a graceful way to drop out after the convention, McCain could just go right ahead and pick one of his real choices (Ridge or Lieberman) -without having to face the messy prospect of protesting delegates at a convention. I expect it would have to be ratified by some sort of closed-door process.</p>
<p>There are also some issues about getting names printed on ballots – too much delay and you could have a situation where the names on the ballots for the candidates don’t match the actual slate.</p>
<p>Technically you are right – I just investigated it and the most thorough accounting seems to be here. She seems to heavily flirt with the AIP, but there is no evidence apparently she was a member:</p>
<p>Uh, last time I checked Bill Clinton isn’t on the ballot this year. Anyway, this goes to govt. ethics. She was getting the public safety boss fired supposedly because he wouldn’t fire her brother-in-law. You have a very loose sense of governmental ethics if you think that’s okay, but if you’re Republican, these days by definition you really do and I shouldn’t have expected different. ;)</p>
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<p>Well, when she’s gone around marketing herself and being marketed as an anti-pork barrel candidate who fought against the Bridge to Nowhere but then a little investigating reveals she was very much for it at first, her marketing falls apart.</p>
<p>Look, however the chips fall with several of these scandals, the fact is they are taking up a lot of time and energy. McCain’s campaign doesn’t need these distractions right now… Something’s gotta give – and it’s going to be her candidacy, his poll numbers, or likely actually both.</p>
<p>I think that if she doesn’t drop in the next few days (2 or 3, max) that she will stay in for the long haul. </p>
<p>What happened to doing background checks on your VP? Isn’t this the kind of thing that you’re supposed to avoid? The little “surprises”? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I was thinking the same thing last night when all her skeletons started charging out of her many closets. Pallin should step down, if the Republicans want to win this election, which they can.</p>
<p>Picking Pallin was just a silly strategy by the republicans to boost their image as a promoter of “diversity.” Diversity for diversity’s sake is rediculous. I am suprised Mccain didn’t pick a fellow republican nominee for president like Obama, who picked a fellow democratic nominee. Why not Romney, Guilliani, or even Huckabee? Why pick some whacko newbie from Alaska? </p>
<p>I thought Mccain was promoting experience, stability, and leadership you can rely on.</p>
<p>Mccain picking Joe Lieberman for VP would be an instant death suicide. He already betrayed the Democratic party, he is an elected official basically representing the interests of a foreign country (Israel) in an extremely blatant manner, he supports unregulated free trade, etc. He is a market liberal, just like George W. Bush. I really don’t understand why Connecticut keeps reeleecting him.</p>
<p>“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA “devastating” and “a big mistake,” despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.</p>
<p>Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? “Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don’t exempt myself,” he answered.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the argument. Obama and Biden have bamboozled hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money, partly for Obama’s wife, Biden’s son, etc while Sarah was trying to have the federal government chip in for its own city.</p>
<p>Okay, I will own my original vote and admit I’m wrong if she drops out before her nomination. But I am going on record, as a result of seeing this, that I think she’s toast and she’ll pull out quite soon. I think the calculation in the McCain camp will be it would be easier to recover without her than with her…and then they’ll try to turn the focus back on Barack.</p>
<p>I go for #1 given the huddling going on tonight in St. Paul and her speech cancellation. So if they drop her, who do they replace her with? I say they go with Pawlenty (governor of my fair state). This is my guess because the co-chair of the RNC called her “Sarah Pawlenty” tonight by accident, figure that means he is on their minds. :-)</p>