October 23, 2008

Palin and McCain

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PALIN AND McCAIN….Sarah Palin told James Dobson today that John McCain is 100% committed to the Republican Party platform on abortion. Marc Ambinder comments:

If McCain is going to implement it — something of which Palin is convinced from the bottom of her heart — then that means that McCain will support a constitutional amendment to ban all abortion (including those cases where the mother was raped or was the victim of incest), a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and he will oppose government-sponsored embryonic stem cell research.

Either Palin trying to mislead Dobson, equivocate, or perhaps [she] doesn’t know what her running mate believes. McCain opposes a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage…. He supports embryonic stem cell research…he opposes a constitutional amendment banning all abortion.

Hmmm. Here is NBC political analyst Chuck Todd’s impression of a joint McCain-Palin interview conducted today by Brian Williams:

There was a tenseness….I couldn’t see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. I felt as if we grabbed two people and said “here, sit next to each other, we are going to conduct an interview.” They are not comfortable with each other yet.

Let’s summarize. Palin doesn’t know McCain’s own positions. Earlier this week she criticized his robocalling messages. The conservative base is practically bursting at the seams waiting to dump McCain after November 4th and embrace Palin as the future of the party. And to top it all off, it has to be hellishly embarrassing to sit beside her during an interview and be forced to pretend that she’s talking like an actual adult while she’s spouting her usual stream of index card nonsense.

So, yeah, he’s probably not comfortable with her yet. I suspect McCain knows perfectly well what’s in store from the Palin camp after they lose the election. Loyalty to her mentors, after all, is not exactly her strong suit.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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