Something stinks here... I am just not sure where the stench is coming from.

[LibraLiz1973]

The Obama/Biden ticket is ON FIRE. Obama choosing Biden as his running mate was a great choice. Our convention last week was amazing.
The speeches were fantastic, the tone of the entire 4 days was excellent... and we came out of it swinging. Hard.

Following Obama's historical convention and acceptance speech, John McLame came out the following day
and announced his running mate was SARAH PALIN?

Reaction from almost everywhere seemed to be WTF?

This was the worst possible choice for McCain. No matter how it is spun, Sarah IS the Harriet Mier's choice. She's Dan Quayle in a skirt.
No logical person would peruse the candidates that McCain had and come up with Sarah's name. There are too many strikes against her.
She's from BFE, she doesn't know what the VP does, her daughter is pregnant (not great considering Sarah advocates ABSTINENCE ONLY),
she has little to no experience (I swear to god, say the thing about the PTA and I will explode) and let's not forget Trooper-gate.

Something stinks here.

Did McCain choose her because he KNOWS he is going to lose anyway? Is he hoping she can be a scapegoat for the loss?

Was she chosen so that she would step aside at some point, thereby allowing him to choose Joe Lieberman?

Did he and his campaign people REALLY imagine that some tits and ovaries was going to sway all of the Hillary voters?

Did he choose her because she is dumber than he is? He clearly chose someone who is reverent of him... as opposed to what some of the others would have brought.


This choice is epic in it's catastrophic possibilities should he win. She is in no way qualified to travel THE WORLD and speak on behalf of this country.
What the hell? She's going to meet Putin and when he asks a question her response can be, "Yup yup". SERIOUSLY??????
McCain is old as balls. Sure, him moms still alive, but he does NOT look to be in good condition. I grant you that 72 is not as old as dirt,
but there is 72, and then there's SEVENTY-TWO. John is 72 going on 85. He doesn't look well to begin with, and now we have to worry
that if he gets elected and then dies, that moron is the next in charge? HE knows next to nothing about the economy... WTH do you think SHE knows?

WE came out of the Democratic Convention with a QUALIFIED TEAM. BOTH candidates are PHENOMENAL.
McCain's response to that was to choose someone who shouldn't even be near the Repub ticket, much less on it.
What the hell is she going to bring to a debate with Joe Biden????

Either he chose her as the scapegoat, or they are already planning to steal this thing (AGAIN) and wanted to make sure
that the other idiot on the ticket wouldn't say too much. She has her own closet full of little skeletons, so she would
be easy to push around.

I repeat, so meting stinks here. WHAT IS IT?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. I'm fine with her being a scapegoat. Whatever. As long as he LOSES.

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

6. Exactly, they can blame it on the Moose for all I care...As long as McDouchebagg goes down.

[Skink]

2. Big oil picked her.

[orestes]

3. I think what stinks

is McCain, in an effort to be a "Maverick", tried to shoot from the hip, shot himself in the foot, and gangrene has begun to set in.

[NYC Liberal]

4. No, I think they were just desperate.

They saw how successful the convention was. Their disunity meme was blown out of the water. 40+ million watched Obama's speech, and most of them thought it was great. 71% of the country said they watched the convention.

So McSame had to act quick to stomp on the bounce. In comes Palin. A woman. That's the only reason she was picked. She wasn't vetted, he had only met her once.

No, they're in a corner and now they're not thinking straight.

[judasdisney]

5. I'm glad you're asking questions. Not many others around here are.

It's remarkable how herd-like the posts on DU are, and how DUers circle the wagons against uncomfortable questioning.

I, too, have my own questions about hidden strategic maneuvers happening with Palin.

[Gabi Hayes]

11. the way I see it:

one....they are desperate, know their own internal polling data, and realize they HAVE to have as many trogs voting. Palin fits that bill better than anyone, baggage be damned

which leads to

two.....they're counting on the media to ignore all this roiling garbage they way they did for Bush in 2000 and 2004. evidence would lead them to think this has a very high probablity of occurring

three....as has been already said: they KNOW they're going to win, because they have a three pronged election strategy well in place

control of electronic machines

caging

on site voter suppression

..............


they may think they already have it in the bag

[Mike Nelson]

7. What stinks is their

ability to steal elections
(and Bush/Cheney are still in charge, remember)

[CJCRANE]

8. Maybe McCain is just lazy, incompetent, impulsive and out of touch. nt

[grasswire]

9. decoy

False target. Chum bait.

[OHdem10]

10. Peter Hart Dem Pollster WSJ warned Democrats not to be

dismissive of Palin. This would be a grave mistake.

[Crooked Moon]

12. there's method to the madness.

one thing we know is that, within 24 hours of obama's groundbreaking speech, the palin choice sucked every bit of oxygen out of the room. by friday afternoon, it was dominating the headlines. by choosing a woman of limited experience, the republicans engineered a situation wherein all of the questions about gender, sexism and obama's experience, all of which had been hallmarks of the primary season, were resurrected through the prism of palin.

it was choppy waters and waters that needed to be navigated with reason and cold hard facts, following the sober and reasonable example set by the obama campaign. pursuing that course, the distinctions could have been made, and logic and strategy would have led us to a big net positive.

instead, many on our side went off on a tangent of faked pregnancies and incest and attacks on a child.

ultimately now, palin will find cover in the basic decency of the american public, and the message of her limited experience, her scandals and mccain's poor judgment will be eclipsed by the idiocy of people who believe any means justify their ends.

[Faygo Kid]

13. Same feeling here, after the initial shock. What does Cheney/Rove have in store for us?

On its face, this pick is so ridiculous that something else must be behind it.

The neocons can't possibly support this woman, yet there is Kristol with a column lauding her, and Limbaugh loving it, too.

Something is afoot here. This doesn't pass the smell test.

If I were Sarah Palin, I would be very, very nervous about my personal safety. Cheney just does not do business this way.

[Sugarcoated]

14. I think Obama got into their head

and the numbers are troubling. They over-thought things, they made a boo boo. McFudd took a gamble, a big gamble, and it's not working out. I had this conversation with my father-in-law who hates the Repubs more than anyone I know. He can't figure out why, why in the world would they choose Gidget? He's looking for the angle. What if they just saw Obama Thursday night, panicked and did something stupid? Maybe that's all there is to it.

My theory about the pregnancy is, they hoped Obama would make a blunder when it finally came out. Bait. He was too smart to bite.

Maybe there's no "there" there. I'm sure they're working desperately on stealing it, but remember, Democrats run Ohio now, not a bunch of corrupt pigs like Blackwell.

[Oak2004]

15. You are underestimating the depth of GOP incompetence here

Let me give you a crude history of the Republican Party, from 1945-today.

1945-1973 (Watergate): The party is an uneasy coalition of Goldwater conservatives, Eisenhower moderates, Rockefeller liberals, and, for lack of a better description, Nixon reactionary paranoids (and the ex-Dixiecrats they recruited).

Watergate was a serious blow to the party. Some commentators speculated that the party would never recover.

However under the surface the party was very much alive. It was, in fact, healthier under the surface than the Democratic Party.

1973-approximately 1990: Nixon, and yes, even Watergate, inspired a new generation of Republicans. In the state I lived in, they were called "the young turks", in other places, "the new right". But whatever you called them, they took their inspiration from Goldwater, and their cynicism and tactics from Nixon. They were not without principles, of a sort, which they promoted far and wide, but at heart, the were cynical, practical, and ruthless. This is the political generation of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, of Gingrich and Delay.

Approximately 1990-present: Unlike the previous generation of Republicans, who at heart were ruthless realists, this next generation truly believed the political ideologies that had been promoted as Republicanism. In particular, many of them are true believer Christian fundamentalists. They have none of the intellectuality of previous generations. They don't even have the ruthlessness -- they have replaced the ruthless realism with angry intolerance.

When you start to believe your own propaganda, you cease to be effective.

The Republican Party is rotting from the inside. They are still potentially dangerous of course. But they are not the overwhelming, brilliant, insurmountable, errorless force many of you fear. They never were such a force -- their victories were as much the result of Democratic weakness (cough! DLC cough!) as they were of Republican strength -- but they really really really aren't that anymore.

Yes, they really can be this incompetent. The old ones are tired, and the young ones haven't a clue.

[chascarrillo]

16. Occam's Razor: You're talking about a man that left his first wife for a beauty queen.

I mean, McCain saying that Palin is his "soulmate"? Fiddling with his wedding ring during Palin's speech today?

Don't ascribe to abstract political jujitsu calculus that which cannot be explained by a guy thinking with his dick.