Ed Schultz reports that insiders within the McCain camp consider Palin to be “clueless”:
The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”
They’re embarrassed by her, and if I wasn’t afraid for my country, I might succumb to a temptation to feel sorry for her. She is well on her way to becoming nothing more than a national joke, and some of the jokes are more than a little funny:
John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank.
I think Coates gets it right:
The Palin pick was the most crassest, most bigoted decision that I’ve seen in national electoral politics . . . . There can be no doubt that they picked Palin strictly as a stick to drum up the victimhood narrative–small town, hunters, big families and most importantly, women.
The Republicans don’t care about people; they use them. She’s in deep now, and there’s no easy way out of this. In Palin, as Coates observed, McCain saw “breasts, hair and a lovely smile.” She never understood what her new role would demand of her, and just as she didn’t understand the demands of her new role, she didn’t have the skills to assess her inherent limitations in light of the role. John McCain wanted to exploit a moment in history that afforded an opportunity to women, and because of a lack of judgment and caution, he has exposed this naif to national humiliation and the nation to the threat of her incapacity for the role she seeks.
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