A couple of weeks ago I admitted making a wrong call on McCain's selection of a running mate, mainly because she's proven to be political dead weight outside of the hard core GOP base. Now it looks like it's even worse than that, as today's New York Times explains:
Mr. McCain may still win the election. Still, anticipating that he will fall short, the pre-postmortems have already begun, both inside and outside his campaign headquarters. And without question, the biggest one is whether he would have been in a better position today had he not chosen Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running-mate.Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge all but said that if he had been McCain's running mate the GOP candidate would be ahead in that crucial battleground state.
The answer, in the view of many Republicans and Democrats, is almost certainly yes.
Anecdotally, on my way to band practice last night I saw a "McCain / Romney" bumper sticker on the highway. Underneath it said "the right choice." I don't know if that was from a batch printed up before Palin was picked, or if it's cropped up since McCain's campaign has started to crater. So it's either stinging commentary or very prescient - you choose.
2 comments:
This is going to be a pivotal time for the Republican party. It seems that battle lines are being drawn between those who support Palin and those who think it's her fault McCain is failing. The former is made up of hard-line, evangelical right-wingers, but the latter is made up of more moderate Repubs who acknowledge that Palin alienates all but the far right fringe. It will be interesting to see which side wins.
I'll be interested to see if the exodus of the intellectual lights of the GOP actually go away or if they slink back to the fold after the election. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the GOP could split into two parties. I don't expect that.
Assuming the GOP remains intact, the interesting question is whether 2008 will replay itself in 2012, with multiple fundy-friendly candidates splitting the religious vote, thus allowing a more moderate candidate to grab the nomination.
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