Dowd: McCain “put the country at risk” with Palin pick
Matthew Dowd, Bush's 2004 chief campaign strategist, sums up the way many GOPers feel about Palin:
Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."
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I will never ever understand why anyone with a brain larger than a pea doesn't realize how dangerous the Palin pick was. She could be president! Can anyone imagine a worse nightmare?
This should be a huge reason NOT to vote for him.
Thank you Matthew Dowd for adding your name to the growing list. This hopefully will become a movement to prevent another tragedy from occuring.
October 14, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
As many know who have followed TPM for awhile, I was not an early Obama supporter. I STILL have what I believe to be entirely reasonable concerns as to whether or not he can be as effective in running something, as he has been so far in running FOR something.
There was a point in time where it was possible (if never perhaps likely) that I would vote for McCain. That possibility ended for me when he picked Gov. Palin for VP. Unlike most of the usual artifice and atmospherics of campaigns (ie, argumentative theoreticals that you read one way if you're 'for' the guy, and are entitled to a very different interpretation if you're 'against'), this one actual decision spoke irrefutable volumes. It is nearly a new low in silliness and cynicism.
It is simply impossible to defend Gov. Palin as a legitimate Presidential prospect, in the sense that she could appear on ANYONE's even MEDIUM list of highly-qualified people. She has never been anything more than a transparent campaign gimmick from day one.
The ridicule she has endured is honestly not her fault: She is who she is, and she has many attractive qualities. It just so happens that being prepared to be President of the United States at this point in her life, is not one of them. It's Sen. McCain who must accept the responsibility for this travesty.
She would have been a difficult hurdle for even the more outwardly cartoonish inhabitants of the right edge of the GOP universe. She is an IMPOSSIBLE hurdle for a man like McCain, who has marketed himself all along as a man of deep seriousness and conviction. With this one inexplicable lapse, he has forfeited most of that reputation.
October 15, 2008 8:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think you're alone. I've spoken to so-called moderates who had once considered McCain, because they believed in the "maverick" myth and thought he was a better leader. Palin killed it for them, too, and if she hadn't, I suspect McCain's behavior over the past couple of months would have done the job anyhow.
October 15, 2008 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink