This is the Presidential Campaign Thread.

Barack Obama Vs. John McCain.

Edited November 6, 200817 yr by Toups

I just met and talked to Kate Walsh (Dr. Addison) and Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy down at our local campaign HQ. I went down there to canvas again today and they were like, "Are you gonna be here around 4:00?" Me: Why? Them: Because Kate Walsh and Shonda Rhimes are stopping by today to give their support. LOL, it was funny seeing them walk into our little office here in Republican Country. Surreal.

I like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-T2iGkLJY...feature=channel

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...5005961,00.html

'Knives out' for Palin in McCain camp

BITTER infighting has broken out between aides to John McCain and Sarah Palin over management of the Alaska governor's role in the campaign, it was reported today.

The Politico.com website cited four Republicans close to Palin as saying she had grown frustrated by advice given to her by campaign handlers, whom supporters blame for a series of public relations gaffes.

The report said Ms Palin was now increasingly willing to disregard orders from advisers, suggesting the Republican running mate was in the initial stages of forging her own identity for a future tilt at the White House.

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican quoted by Politico, adding that Ms Palin had already begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements on the campaign trail.

The Alaska governor's supporters accused McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt and senior aide Nicole Wallace of already attempting to blame Ms Palin for the failure of the campaign.

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider was quote by Politico as saying.

When asked to comment on the Politico story, Ms Wallace said in an email: "I have no comment other than what's in the story, if people wish to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the graceful thing to do is to lie there."

Later, Politico quoted McCain advisers reacting angrily to the report, branding Ms Palin a "diva".

The McCain sources said Ms Palin had repeatedly gone "off-message" recently, suggesting she appeared to be looking out for herself.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," the McCain source said. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else."

News of tensions within the McCain camp comes after polls suggested Ms Palin - who electrified the party base when named as running mate in August - is now dragging down the Republican ticket 10 days from the November 5 election (Australian time).

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released through the week found that Americans were growing less convinced she is worthy to serve as the country's number two leader.

"Her numbers have plummeted in our poll ... what's more 55 per cent think she's unqualified to serve as president if the need arises, which is a troublesome number given McCain's age," said NBC political director Chuck Todd.

It confirmed the findings of an ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this month which found that six in 10 voters saw Ms Palin, 44, as lacking the experience to be an effective president. "A third are now less likely to vote for McCain because of her," the Post added.

After being found guilty of abusing her power as governor in the so-called "troopergate" scandal over the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, Ms Palin now faces a second probe over whether she violated ethics rules in the affair.

Ms Palin has also been in the headlines after it emerged $US150,000 ($220,000) had been spent on clothes for her since late August, potentially undermining her appeal as a down-to-earth working "hockey mum".

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14929.html

Palin allies report rising campaign tension

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

"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.

"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.

Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks.

"I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there."

But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for, for instance, not attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Palin has in fact performed fairly well in the moments thought to be key for a vice presidential nominee: She made a good impression in her surprise rollout in Ohio and her speech to the Republican National Convention went better than the campaign could have imagined. She turned in an adequate performance at a debate against the Democratic Party's foremost debater.

But other elements of her image-making went catastrophically awry. Her dodging of the press and her nervous reliance on tight scripts in her first interview, with ABC News, became a national joke — driven home to devastating effect by "Saturday Night Live" comic Tina Fey. The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was "water torture," as one internal ally put it.

Some McCain aides say they had little choice with a candidate who simply wasn't ready for the national stage, and that Palin didn't forcefully object. Moments that Palin's allies see as triumphs of instinct and authenticity — the Wright suggestion, her objection to the campaign's pulling out of Michigan — they dismiss as Palin's "slips and miscommunications," that is, her own incompetence and evidence of the need for tight scripting.

But Palin partisans say she chafed at the handling.

"The campaign as a whole bought completely into what the Washington media said — that she's completely inexperienced," said a close Palin ally outside the campaign who speaks regularly to the candidate.

"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.

When a McCain aide, speaking anonymously Friday to The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, suggested that Palin's charge that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" had "escaped HQ's vetting," it was Scheunemann who fired off an angry response that the speech was "fully vetted" and that to attack Palin for it was "bullshit."

Palin's "instincts," on display in recent days, have had her opening up to the media, including a round of interviews on talk radio, cable and broadcast outlets, as well as chats with her traveling press and local reporters.

Reporters really began to notice the change last Sunday, when Palin strolled over to a local television crew in Colorado Springs.

"Get Tracey," a staffer called out, according to The New York Times, summoning spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, who reportedly "tried several times to cut it off with a terse 'Thank you!' in between questions, to no avail." The moment may have caused ulcers in some precincts of the McCain campaign, but it was an account Palin's admirers in Washington cheered.

Palin had also sought to give meatier policy speeches, in particular on energy policy and on policy for children with disabilities; she finally gave the latter speech Friday, but had wanted to deliver it much earlier.

She's also begun to make her own ad hoc calls about the campaign's direction and the ticket's policy. McCain, for instance, has remained silent on Democrats' calls for a stimulus package of new spending, a move many conservatives oppose but that could be broadly popular. But in an interview with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck earlier this week, Palin went "off the reservation" to make the campaign policy, one aide said.

"I say, you know, when is enough enough of taxpayer dollars being thrown into this bill out there?" she asked. "This next one of the Democrats being proposed should be very, very concerning to all Americans because to me it sends a message that $700 billion bailout, maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, you know, we were told when we've got to be believing if we have enough elected officials who are going to be standing strong on fiscal conservative principles and free enterprise and we have to believe that there are enough of those elected officials to say, 'No, OK, that's enough.'"

(A McCain spokeswoman said Palin's statement was "a good sentiment.")

But few imagine that Palin will be able to repair her image — and bad poll numbers — in the eleven days before the campaign ends. And the final straw for Palin and her allies was the news that the campaign had reported spending $150,000 on her clothes, turning her, again, into the butt of late-night humor.

"She never even set foot in these stores," the senior Republican said, noting Palin hadn't realized the cost when the clothes were brought to her in her Minnesota hotel room.

"It's completely out-of-control operatives," said the close ally outside the campaign. "She has no responsibility for that. It's incredibly frustrating for us and for her."

Between Palin's internal detractors and her allies, there's a middle ground: Some aides say that she's a flawed candidate whose handling exaggerated her weak spots.

"She was completely mishandled in the beginning. No one took the time to look at what her personal strengths and weaknesses are and developed a plan that made sense based on who she is as a candidate," the aide said. "Any concerns she or those close to her have about that are totally valid."

But the aide said that Palin's inexperience led her to her own mistakes:

"How she was handled allowed her weaknesses to hang out in full display."

If McCain loses, Palin's allies say that the national Republican Party hasn't seen the last of her. Politicians are sometimes formed by a signal defeat — as Bill Clinton was when he was tossed out of the Arkansas governor's mansion after his first term — and Palin would return to a state that had made her America's most popular governor and where her image as a reformer who swept aside her own party's insiders rings true, if not in the cartoon version the McCain campaign presented.

"There are people in this campaign who feel a real sense of loyalty to her and are really pleased with her performance and think she did a great job," said the McCain insider. "She has a real future in this party."

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...190-663,00.html

How Obama or McCain in power impacts on Australia

Professor Geoffrey Garrett

October 26, 2008 12:00am

THE world is poised to celebrate Barack Hussein Obama, Africa's son with a Muslim middle name and squeaky clean anti-Iraq credentials, as the next US president.

But the champagne should stay on ice for a while and there will be more fizz than pop when the presidential election is finally uncorked.

With 10 days to go, Senator Obama's bid for the White House could still be derailed by a devastating gaffe, startling revelation or foreign policy crisis.

But the smart money says Senator Obama will get the presidential nod.

Even if he doesn't, his Democrats will likely win clear majorities in both houses of Congress, putting a big brake on what Senator McCain could do in office.

Either way, America's new leadership will inherit a country in disarray, angry at the Bush administration, anxious about the future and looking to the new team to solve their problems.

Digging out of the economic mess and figuring out how to get out of Iraq, win in Afghanistan and deal with Iran will be more than enough to occupy the next president.

Goals such as restoring America's world standing, leading the fight against climate change and reducing global poverty will have to wait.

THE BUSH LEGACY

Former Bush secretary of state Colin Powell was right to say last week an Obama victory would not only electrify the country, but electrify the world.

In contrast, Senator McCain's fundamental problem is that he can't put enough distance between himself and Bush, among America's most unpopular presidents at home and abroad.

Senator Obama would come to power with a reservoir of global goodwill. A McCain victory would confirm the world's worst worries about where the US is headed.

No matter what happens on November 5, there will be a pile of tough problems waiting in the Oval Office inbox.

History will judge whether we are witnessing the last days of US empire, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and knee-capped by the Wall St meltdown, or just another bump in the long road of America's global dominance.

But even if the US is in decline, no one should doubt its enduring impact on Australia.

Australians have been fighting in American-led wars for the past seven years. In the past month, the effect of America's financial crisis on the Australian economy has been stunning.

Australians may not think much of America's war on terrorism or the reckless excesses of Wall St.

But Australia's security alliance with the US means America's wars tend to be Australia's wars too.

And what's next for the Australian economy will depend on the depth of America's looming recession and how quickly it bounces back.

BEYOND IRAQ

Barack Obama says the US can get out of Iraq in 16 months. John McCain says it should be prepared to stay for 100 years.

But below the surface mudslinging, America's elite largely agrees on the way forward in Iraq.

The US should withdraw most of its 150,000 troops from Iraq gradually over the next couple of years.

But it should leave a residual force of up to 50,000 for the long-term to help keep the peace.

Less Iraq will mean more Afghanistan.

But don't expect America to throw itself into Afghanistan in 2009 the same way as in Iraq in 2003.

The costs in people and dollars only go up, Americans are sick and tired of wars with no clear exit and the US military is stretched to breaking point.

The mountain to climb in Afghanistan is made higher by its porous terrorist-trafficking border with unstable Pakistan.

All that means the US will come calling on its allies to do more in Afghanistan.

But Europe's pacifism runs deep. Canadians want out. When Tony Blair retired, Britain became less committed to America's wars.

That leaves Australia.

Kevin Rudd told the US he was pulling Australian troops out of Iraq to concentrate on Afghanistan. America's next president will want to cash in the ticket.

How to honour it will loom large for Mr Rudd.

Frustrated by Europe's softly, softly approach, America is set to take a more aggressive lead on Iran, with military conflict a real possibility.

The US won't tolerate Iran's growing power across the Middle East.

It is hard to imagine that the Rudd Government will do anything other than support the US over Iran.

But if the rockets start firing, Australia's loyalty will be sorely tested.

America's war on terrorism, rebadged the struggle against Islamic extremism, isn't going away and the end of the Howard-Bush era was not the end of the hard questions for Australia about it.

AFTER THE MELTDOWN

America is in its worst economic trouble in at least a generation.

But is it really on the edge of a 1930s style economic cliff, about to fall into depression?

Or is the 2008 financial crisis more like America's economic funk in the late 1980s, from which it recovered to enjoy perhaps its best decade in the 1990s?

It is too soon to write off American capitalism. But it is also unlikely that the 2010s will be as good for America, and the world, as the 1990s were.

There will be lots of talk about a new Bretton Woods system, creating a new global economic architecture for the 21st century.

Don't hold your breath.

America came out of World War II a stronger nation, ready to remake the world in its image.

Today's global economy is full of different views among the major players.

Expect America to focus on getting its house in order and unable to coordinate global action, with consequences that may hurt Australia more than they help.

What began as a Wall St crisis is quickly turning into a punch in the guts of Main Street America.

The body blow to Middle America could not come at a worse time. Inequality is at a high level. Job security is gone. Wages are stagnant.

Health care costs too much and no one thinks their government pensions are safe.

The next president will have to feel the electorate's pain.

US support for free trade, deeply unpopular among average Americans, will be a primary casualty.

America's free trade agreement with Australia won't be undone, but don't expect America to revive the Doha development round of global trade talks.

Closer to home, progress towards an APEC free trade area seems fanciful.

A protectionist turn in America can only be bad news for Australia, whose future is tightly tied to an open and dynamic Asia-Pacific economy.

The freefall of the Australian dollar is an unwelcome sign of what the future may bring.

The US slowdown means it will buy less from China, slowing the Chinese economy.

Slower Chinese growth means it won't need as many raw materials from Australia.

Less demand for our raw materials means slower growth in Australia and perhaps the end of the commodity boom.

Despite talk of decoupling the US from other engines of global growth, the old adage still seems to hold.

When America sneezes, Australia catches a cold.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Australia's plans to implement a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2010 assume that America, and the rest of the world, will not be far behind.

Otherwise the economic costs to Australia would be too high.

Both senators McCain and Obama are greener than George W. Bush.

But both understand it is energy independence, not climate change, that moves the US political needle.

Americans want to rid themselves of dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

Slowing global warming is at best a second-order issue in the US.

The worse things get for the American economy, the further climate change will be pushed on to the back burner.

Senator McCain's rallying cry has been drill, baby, drill, to pump out more American oil.

Senator Obama talks about big investments, $150 billion over 10 years, in alternative energy technology.

The candidates are playing to very different audiences, but both have the same goals. End the imported oil addiction and create jobs.

When it comes to caps on carbon emissions, the consensus in America is the US should not act unless and until China and India are prepared to act as well.

The problem is China and India don't want to clean up a mess created by 100 years of Western industrialism when they are still in the 19th century in terms of their economic development.

That line of thought lost Brendan Nelson the Coalition leadership. But it has many more supporters in the US.

This won't be enough to stop the Rudd Government delivering a 2010 ETS. But caution, not ambition, will be the order of the day.

PAYING THE PRICE

The next US president's to-do list will be long and challenging.

Even if he has the ideas, will and charisma to tackle it, will he have the money?

America is so broke it wouldn't be allowed into Europe's currency club, the euro.

The US budget deficit for the past year approached half a trillion US dollars. That doesn't include the $10 billion plus a month spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the $700 billion Wall St bailout.

Both presidential candidates are committed to adding to the red ink.

Senator Obama wants to give tax credits and cheaper health care to working Americans.

Senator McCain wants to cut taxes on businesses and capital gains.

The bill for both is over $100 billion a year.

Both now have their economic stimulus packages in the works, coming in at another $50 billion a year.

All up, the next US president is staring down the barrel of annual Budget deficits approaching a trillion dollars, with a vast public debt mountain.

All the leadership in the world can't wipe out that much red ink. For that reason alone, the next US president will find it almostimpossible to meet the expectations in Australia and around the world.

- Professor Geoffrey Garrett is chief executive of the US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

More: sydney.edu.au/us-studies/

Dressed Down

A THUMBS DOWN simply must go out to Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist (or so he was billed) who came up with an intriguing defense this week of Sarah Palin’s reported $150,000 makeover courtesy of the otherwise cash-strapped Republican National Committee. Appearing on MSNBC, Blakeman declared that the even greater outrage was the fact that Barack Obama was “taking a 767 (jet) campaign plane to go visit Grandma (in Hawaii).” This is the grandmother who helped raise Obama and is now gravely ill; Obama left the campaign trail Thursday to see her and plans to return Saturday. “Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane,” Blakeman said. “Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion.” That kind of inanity speaks for itself.

Okay, okay, let me get this straight........the Republicans are claiming that Barack Obama flying across the country to visit his very ill grandmother (who pratically raised him, I might add), should shock and outage the American people? When the Republicans spent $150,000 on clothes for Sarah Palin when the economy is in the toliet, and we're just supposed to say perfectly acceptable?

Plus, McCain talks about ending wasteful government spending and earmarks, but his own party blows that much money on clothing for the Vice Presidental nominee when they could use that money to help the less fortunate.

It's just another sign of how desperate the Republicans have become. And it's simply the latest in a long line of stupid comments and statements they have attempted to use to sway voters away from the real issues facing our country right now.

I am so sick of hearing about Bill Ayers, Acorn, Obama's middle name of Hussien, the crazy woman from Ohio that lied claiming a black man attacked her, Joe the Plumber, Colin Powell only endorsing Obama because they're both black, etc....

What I want to know is what the Republicans are going to do to help Americans. How they going to fix the economy, make higher education more affordable, reduce the deficet, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, repair the image of the U.S. overseas, improve health care, create jobs, etc...?

I've been listening, but so far I have yet to ear anything from them but static.

I can't wait to cast my ballot for Barack Obama on November 4th. Even though I live in a red city, county, and state...I have never been more proud to be a Democrat!

Lovin every minute of this.

Me too Jay, me too.

The Republican Party is imploding. They are backstabbing one another left and right these days.

Did anyone else not catch on the news channels Friday that shortly after McCain spoke at a rally about the failed Bush policies, that George W. Bush told reporters that he had just voted early for John McCain?

Talk about funny.

No, everyone.

THIS is imploding:

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Saturday.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

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

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She 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.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu news conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the unscheduled session.

"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently said, arguing that "it's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.

The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind; it brings out the worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.

This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.

Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.

John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry's strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.

Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.

Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.

With the presidential race in its final days and polls suggesting that McCain's chances of pulling out a win are growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.

"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. "And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally."

CNN's Ed Hornick contributed to this report.

Edited October 26, 200817 yr by Roman

Wow! Its so over LOL.

Thank god.

Oh I am loving all of this!! It sounds like Palin is already planning her run for presidency and does not want the McCain folks messing it up. Well that is what McCain gets for making a cynical choice for VP. :lol:

I just have to ask this.

Where are all these people who told meand others how damn stupid we all were to not realize how great this pick was?!

She has, as they say in wrestling "Went into business for herself".

This is EXACTLY what JM gets. He should have never picked her, and it makes him AND his campaign look like a cross between the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges.

Their campaign has turned into the movie "Duck Soup".

QUOTE (Roman @ Oct 24 2008, 10:38 AM)

Dressed Down

A THUMBS DOWN simply must go out to Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist (or so he was billed) who came up with an intriguing defense this week of Sarah Palin’s reported $150,000 makeover courtesy of the otherwise cash-strapped Republican National Committee. Appearing on MSNBC, Blakeman declared that the even greater outrage was the fact that Barack Obama was “taking a 767 (jet) campaign plane to go visit Grandma (in Hawaii).” This is the grandmother who helped raise Obama and is now gravely ill; Obama left the campaign trail Thursday to see her and plans to return Saturday. “Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane,” Blakeman said. “Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion.” That kind of inanity speaks for itself.

Okay, okay, let me get this straight........the Republicans are claiming that Barack Obama flying across the country to visit his very ill grandmother (who pratically raised him, I might add), should shock and outage the American people? When the Republicans spent $150,000 on clothes for Sarah Palin when the economy is in the toliet, and we're just supposed to say perfectly acceptable?

Plus, McCain talks about ending wasteful government spending and earmarks, but his own party blows that much money on clothing for the Vice Presidental nominee when they could use that money to help the less fortunate.

It's just another sign of how desperate the Republicans have become. And it's simply the latest in a long line of stupid comments and statements they have attempted to use to sway voters away from the real issues facing our country right now.

I am so sick of hearing about Bill Ayers, Acorn, Obama's middle name of Hussien, the crazy woman from Ohio that lied claiming a black man attacked her, Joe the Plumber, Colin Powell only endorsing Obama because they're both black, etc....

What I want to know is what the Republicans are going to do to help Americans. How they going to fix the economy, make higher education more affordable, reduce the deficet, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, repair the image of the U.S. overseas, improve health care, create jobs, etc...?

I've been listening, but so far I have yet to ear anything from them but static.

I can't wait to cast my ballot for Barack Obama on November 4th. Even though I live in a red city, county, and state...I have never been more proud to be a Democrat!

OMG that is just plain sick for them to say that.

Right now I wish that I was American if only just so I can go and vote for Obama.

Sarah Palin couldn't make it past a primary. Republicans like Mitt, and Mike Huckabee would eat her. Hell, even Rudy would wipe the floor with her and everyone knows how much of an idiot he is. I don't know why the media is entertaining the thought of her running and winning. She's an idiot.

Palin: Obama's Tax Plan Could Mean Nightmare Communist State

Sam Stein October 25, 2008

Sarah Palin had a few memorable moments during her campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday. But the most eye-opening of them all came, it would appear, when the Alaska Governor somehow drew a connection between Barack Obama's tax policy and an encroaching, nightmarish, communist government. The Illinois Democrat, she hysterically suggested, would, through his proposals, create a country "where the people are not free."

"See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you."

That yarn goes well beyond what Palin and McCain have, to this point, been comfortable asserting: mainly that Obama is proposing economic socialism. But there are a few things to keep in mind here: the McCain-Palin ticket does not oppose a progressive tax system. In fact, back in 2000, the Arizona Republican said rich people paid more in taxes because they could afford to do so.

"I think the first people who deserve a tax cut are working Americans with children that need to educate their children," he said, "and they're the ones that I would support tax cuts for first."

More importantly, Obama's tax plans are less progressive than those in place during the Clinton years. In fact, the rates that people making over $250,000 would have to pay would be the same as during the 1990s -- a time definitely not marked by the absence of freedoms.

You might actually want to hear this because it's incredible:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/p...o_n_137851.html

And the largest newspaper in Alaska opted to endorse Obama for President.....nothing against Palin--they just weren't getting what they needed from McCain

http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/567867.html

I rarely watch Sunday morning political shows now.....especially during football season but maybe I'll watch a few after the election. I do, however, read Jason Linkins' Sunday Talking Heads post on Huffington every Sunday for his take on the shows. He hasn't posted on MTP yet but here's his take on Face The Nation:

Economic concerns are going to be the thrust of today's FTN, which features Robert Rubin and Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Then a Battle of the Surrogates between Tim Pawlenty and Ed Rendell.But first, Rubin and Holtz-Eakin bring their otherworldly charisma to Sunday Morning. Schieffer wants to know why the financial world hasn't gotten all better since all the bailing out. Rubin, sliding back and forth in his chair, thinks that a lot has happened and that patience is needed, plus a stimulus package. Also, it's a perfect storm, we're in unchartered waters - nautical metaphors that indicate that William Ayers have prepared these remarks.

But is Rubin suggesting that it's time for a New New Deal? Rubin says: not exactly. But, "a very large program." Mainly focused on infrastructure. And tax rebates. Are we in a recession? How long will it last? Rubin doesn't know, but the "crisis of confidence" part of the meltdown can be "stemmed, within a reasonable period of time." And that reasonable period time is a "matter of months," just for the confidence part. But Rubin leaves himself a ton of wiggle room. Rubin says that Obama's "highly active" in developing public policy to help the economy. Schieffer asks if he thinks a bailout of the auto industry is necessary. Rubin's answer is basically a "YES" buried inside a whole lot of hemming and hawing.

DH-E says that it boils down to "where you place your faith...government or Wall Street," and that McCain is about placing his faith in the people! Which is why he...uhm...rubber stamped a bailout package...that...uhhh...joined the government to Wall Street. Uhm...

"Keeping people in jobs," DH-E is the Greatest Stimulus Of All, and that's it's happening to him. McCain will be a job-creation machine, with his spending freeze.

I'm really disappointed in DH-E! Come on, dude! Say "Joe The Plumber!" Don't you realize how much consumer confidence is tied to repeated mentions of his name? Everytime I hear about that guy, I swell with confidence. JOE THE PLUMBER is the BLUE-FINGERED IRAQI for the American Economy.

Now it's Rendell versus TPaw. Rendell is nervous about the lead Obama has in Pennsylvania and wants Obama back in his state. He's getting his wish: Obama's coming to Pittsburgh, Bill Clinton's coming to Philly. Palin is going to be riding around on a bus. McCain staffers will be slicing gang insignia into their cheeks, and blaming Ed Rendell.

Meanwhile, here's TPaw, the Guy Who Was Gonna Be Vice-President before everyone on the McCain team Plumb Lost Their Minds. Schieffer goes right there, and TPaw has to say a lot of pleasing things like "Palin transcends any one state" in "terms of her appeal." And yet, McCain could really use just one good state in his column right now, instead of a little uptick in national appeal. TPaw's a pretty good soldier - he doesn't actually believe anything he's saying about Palin.

Ed Rendell tries to "make it clear, once and for all" that Obama's tax plan is to cut/not increase taxes for 95% of Americans. Somehow, I don't think people on the other side are going to treat this as a settled matter!

Should the GOP give up on the White House and start to direct their money to the Senate? TPaw says, NO SILLY: John McCain is a COMEBACK KID who can't be COUNTED OUT and something about U-HAUL TRUCKS.

Emailer Daniel Smith writes: "Am I the only one who thinks Ed Rendell is THE THING?" And now coffee is blasting out my nose!

Schieffer finishes up today talking about all the DIRTY SEXY MONEY in the campaign, and suggests that Obama's haul "ends the hope of serious campaign finance reform." No offense, Bob, but to my mind it actually extends the HOPE of serious campaign finance reform, because the lion's share of that money is small donations from ordinary citizens who bought in and who are too great and too anonymous a mass for any one player to exert influence over policy. Had the GOP ran a candidate with similar appeal, they'd have opted out of "public" financing for ACTUAL public financing, too. And when they find one the market will support, they will. And I'll welcome that opportunity on both sides, because from where I sit, it just makes sense, and that this is the system that should be perfected.

Schieffer also says he wants to take a nap. Cheer up, old man! This will all be over in nine days!

Assuming McCain/Palin loses this election (which I hope they will) what do you think is next for both of them?

I'm actually scared that this woman has a future in the Republican Party. There are already whispers about her running in 2012....

MSNBC had several analysts talks about it and they to agree that the potential is there.