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Tuesday, September 9, 2008

The Manufactured Martyrdom of Sarah Palin

posted by on September 9 at 14:05 PM

First the McCain campaign alerts its vast media email list to this report in The Wall Street Journal:

Democrats understand Sarah Palin is a formidable political force who has upset the Obama victory plan. The latest Washington Post/ABC Poll shows John McCain taking a 12-point lead over Barack Obama among white women, a reversal of Mr. Obama’s eight-point lead last month.

It’s no surprise, then, that Democrats have airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage, the state capital Juneau and Mrs. Palin’s hometown of Wasilla to dig into her record and background. My sources report the first wave arrived in Anchorage less than 24 hours after John McCain selected her on August 29.

And then, 40 minutes later, we get this:

With today’s Wall Street Journal report that pro-Obama Democrats have “airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage” to dig for dirt on our vice presidential nominee, the McCain-Palin campaign today launched the Palin Truth Squad to counter recent attacks on Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her friends and her record of accomplishment. The Palin Truth Squad will set the record straight against Internet and liberal smears of Governor Palin.

Every member of the truth squad appears to be a woman. My guess is that what the Journal calls The Hunt for Sarah October will, in fact, lead to something the Democrats can use against Palin in October—or in the next few weeks—and that it will have very little to do with sexism.

But in the meantime, this email about the all-female Truth Squad, which seems quite similar to emails I used to get from the Hillary Clinton campaign, lists the following members of The Palin Truth Squad of Washington State:

· Peggy Oban Boze, McCain-Palin Chairwomen For King County

· Susan McCaw, Former Ambassador To Austria

· Della Newman, Former Ambassador To New Zealand

It’s notable, I think, that this is not exactly a sisterhood of the traveling rifle cases.

RSS icon Comments

1

Will they be allowed to remove their burqas for interviews?

Posted by Original Andrew | September 9, 2008 2:17 PM
2


And I know irony is dead, but the fact that out of the four candidates for president and vice president respectively, by far the worst candidate on women's issues is a woman just takes the campaign to a whole new level of Teh Crazy.

Posted by Original Andrew | September 9, 2008 2:21 PM
3

Palin and McCain for the CHINO Ticket 08!!

CHINO! CHINO! CHINO!

Posted by Shawn | September 9, 2008 2:23 PM
4

A likely narrative: she sold that jet plane and was shuttled around on big-oil's ticket. The Obama camp needs to do more to paint both McCain and Palin as pawns of big-oil. What do oil companies have to gain: big profits - reducing costs by shifting drilling to lower cost fields. What do consumers have to gain: very little becuase big oil profits show that price has very little to do with cost.

Posted by kinaidos | September 9, 2008 2:24 PM
5

Uh, of freakin' course the Democrats sent 30 people to Alaska to search for dirt on Palin. She is a train wreck. The safe bet is that they're going to find something delicious, and I can't wait.

And, of course it doesn't have anything to do with sexism. If there was a male VP who had barely been vetted and had so much potential for some sort of fuck-up in his past, the Democrats would damn well have sent a mini-army to wherever he was from as well.

Posted by Julie in Chicago | September 9, 2008 2:25 PM
6

Palin has been smeared - there is almost a daily dose of mis information - her pregancy, voting records, non existant book list, budgets, age of the slain moose, index of hubby's sexual vigor, and hers, and her daughters and her parents ... her voice, her dress, her hair, her pumps, who might fuck her, who has fucked her

America is entranced - only Liz has had it so bad when she took Eddie from Debbie

A lot of it sounds like recycled kicking Hillary shit

Posted by Ava Maria | September 9, 2008 2:25 PM
7

Ava Maria @ 6,

The sad thing is that the true shit about that wolf/reindeer/grammar murderer is even more appalling.

Posted by Original Andrew | September 9, 2008 2:29 PM
8

@7

Possibly. But the left has been crying wolf for over a week now. You know what happens to people who cry wolf don't you?

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | September 9, 2008 2:36 PM
9

We need some stained glass St. Sarah pictures out there.

Posted by Ziggity | September 9, 2008 2:36 PM
10

Susan McCaw! Local cellphone skeletor Craig McCaw's wife! She raised a quarter-mil for Bush and he made her ambassador to Austria. And Della Newman's the realtor wife of the dead developer of Northgate and Alderwood malls. A real brain trust.

Posted by tomasyalba | September 9, 2008 2:52 PM
11

I just heard about the tree-dwellers in Berkeley coming down today. Does anyone else realize there have been people living in trees longer than Sarah Palin has been a governor?

Posted by Ronan | September 9, 2008 3:02 PM
12

@8: Yeah, they find actual wolves, don't they?

Posted by I_Kid_You_Not | September 9, 2008 3:03 PM
13

@12

Yeah... And that wolf eats the sheep. No one believes a liar... even when he is telling the truth.

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | September 9, 2008 3:20 PM
14

Townsend version (The Shepherd's Boy and The Wolf)

"A shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, "Wolf! Wolf!" and when his neighbors came to help him, laughed at them for their pains. The Wolf, however, did truly come at last. The Shepherd-boy, now really alarmed, shouted in an agony of terror: "Pray, do come and help me; the Wolf is killing the sheep"; but no one paid any heed to his cries, nor rendered any assistance. The Wolf, having no cause of fear, at his leisure lacerated or destroyed the whole flock.

Moral

There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth."

Looks to me like the Republicans are about to lacerate and destroy the Democrats...

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | September 9, 2008 3:24 PM
15

@8:

Yeah, Palin starts salivating, calls in the chopper, and loads her 30-06...

Posted by COMTE | September 9, 2008 3:26 PM
16

@14:

If that were truly the case, nobody would have believed anything that came out of a Republican's mouth for, oh, the last 25 years or so...

Posted by COMTE | September 9, 2008 3:29 PM
17

Stop! Talking! About! Her! Now!

She is not running, McCain is. You are only feeding the martyrdom.

She doesn't have enough of a record to attack. Troopergate, Bridge to Nowhere, YAWN ... These are a waste of energy and will get you nowhere.

Attacking her is like feeding a troll. Don't do it.

Posted by Mahtli69 | September 9, 2008 3:57 PM
18

Everyone knows we should stop talking about Palin, since she isn't the candidate anyway, and it's only hurting Obama. But nobody can stop. Democrats simply cannot stop talking about her.

Posted by permafrost | September 9, 2008 4:00 PM
19

Um... I think Obama just called Palin a "pig"...

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/Obama_Lipstick_on_a_pig.html

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | September 9, 2008 4:07 PM
20

Sure, and an old fish.

Sarah "Fish Story" Palin

Posted by Greg | September 9, 2008 4:20 PM
21

The smells like old fish line should go miles with women voters. (Obama used to choose his words so carefully...)

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | September 9, 2008 4:31 PM
22

Seems sort of similar to emails you got from the Hillary Clinton campaign? Isn't that kind of lazy reporting?

Posted by Emma | September 9, 2008 5:13 PM
24

well i guess that the election is getting warmer now as the presidential candidates have their strongest VP candidates. this early i saw in pollclash that Joe Biden has now been officially introduced as Barack Obama's Vice Presidential selection.well you can see the video in http://pollclash.com/?id=166

Posted by Jacque Denise Yap | September 10, 2008 9:26 AM
25

Any person who comes to this country and was born in this country and reaps the reward for doing so better be ready to fight for the freedom that OUR FOREFATHERS Fought and died for, and moron who does not believe had better get a clue before it is too late, I hate war everyone hates war BUT it is a terrible fact of life and has always been so since the beginning of man.
i just saw their TV ads in pollclash and its getting warmer this time. well you can see the TV ads in http://pollclash.com

Posted by Jacque Denise Yap | September 10, 2008 9:29 AM

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