In retrospect, do you think McCain picked Palin on his own, or was his arm twisted to do so?

[mtnsnake]

And if you think his arm was twisted to pick her, then who did the twisting? The NRA? The religious Right? Who?

Personally, I think his arm was twisted, and I'd guess by the NRA, but what do I know.

[babylonsister]

1. McWishyWashy didn't have a say in it; other people did. Names

I've heard were Dobson, Schmidt, even Kristol. With friends like these...

[Auggie]

9. They outsmarted themselves...

Or outdumbed (if I may coin a new word)

[Rosa Luxemburg]

32. don't forget Bolton

and the other old Neo Nazis

[riqster]

2. Other: McCain used NO judgement

...he shot from the hip and hit his own stinky foot.

[FormerDittoHead]

13. Yes. It was his own, typically bad, judgment.

I'm sure there were plenty of people who were against it, others on the bubble. Going in, she had ZERO name recognition, and she COULD HAVE bombed at her convention debut (although expectations were pretty low at that point).

He went with his gut, shot from the hip, went against better advice, and made nothing short of a terrible call. Typical McCain.

[Cosmocat]

15. We have a winner !!! People completely forget Pawlenty ...

Look, for all of McCains never ending failings, he IS his own man. No one tells him anything, and he will do the opposite of what people tell him if he feels pressured, and THAT was what the Palin pick was about.

The only thing that he got told was that he could not take Lieberman. He didn't take Romney, who the Bushies wanted, heck, at the last minute he could not even tolerate taking the "compromise" pick in Pawlenty.

He went completely off reservation with Palin, and I will repeat, that she was nice and MILFY had as much to do with it as anything else.

People want to believe Rove pushed her on him, again, Romney was the Bushco pick and Pawlenty was the compromise pick. Rove ain't the uber genius people want to think he is, but he isn't an idiot either, he saw the Palin train wreck before it was on the tracks.

[supernova]

3. I think he honestly didn't want a running mate

He waited so long to pick one, and when he did it was too late and his faves weren't interested. No wonder, the GOP chose her for him.

[sufrommich]

5. He wanted Lieberman and his masters said

"Wha???"

[JI7]

4. he wanted to pick Tom Ridge or Lieberman

[hlthe2b]

6. I think he was persuaded after his first two choices (Lieberman &

Ridge) were met with harsh resistance. But, I think he was readily open to being persuaded, having been convinced she would 1. be deferential, 2. had "maverick tendencies" (yes, I think he really believes this whole schtick), and 3. would bring the RW enthusiasm that he'd been unable to stir.

Deal with the devil, I'd say, but one done willingly--mutually exploitative.

[blondeatlast]

7. Some maverick--definite arm twisting by the gunners, the RRR,

and the anti-feminists.

Mccain hasn't got a "leadership" bone in his sorry-ass body; I've been a constituent for 25 years and don't I know it.

[Vanje]

17. "Mccain hasn't got a "leadership" bone ..."

...and now everyone knows it.

Its weird. I feel sort of sorry for John McCain.
If it all took place centuries earlier, Shakespeare might have written a real good play about John McCains' run.

[mitchum]

29. McCain lost "his war" and his election...

if he weren't such a corrupt little toad, his story would be tragic

[Blue_In_AK]

8. Whoever did the twisting was an idiot. n/t

[LittleApple81]

10. Right now, I don't care. nt

[Alter Ego]

11. He wanted Lieberman or Ridge.

His masters and mistresses wanted Pawlenty, the business wing wanted Romney.

Consensus second choice was Governor Useless of Cariboutown.

[ecstatic]

12. He's still defending that pick

So it doesn't matter who picked her--the fact that he went along with it shows he does not even deserve to be a senator, much less president.

[BlooInBloo]

14. Um, it was established months ago that Blithering Idiot was Dobson and Kristol's baby.

[BootinUp]

16. Someone sold him the idea.

and it doesn't speak well for McCains ability to spot the holes in a sales pitch.

[Skidmore]

19. Someone sold him and he thought he'd play

high-stake craps. He lost his big gamble.

[Arkansas Granny]

18. Other. I don't know and I don't care. She was an abysmal choice and

it backfired on them.

[Milo_Bloom]

20. Palin was the choice that they gave him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_rOCDG_btk

[Citizen_Penn]

21. You left out...

Don't give a rat's ass.

Moved on - long ago.

Doesn't matter.

Bored with the whole freaking topic.

Can we just bury the whole damn thing, please!

[mtnsnake]

23. Maybe next time I'll add an option just for apathetic posters like yourself

but that's only if I'm in a charitable mood.

[JVS]

22. I think that he thought he could pander to a good number of discontent women of a certain age...

whom some activists had been painting as likely to fly the democratic coop.

He shouldn't have listened to those activists, they were blowhards.

[yurbud]

24. not arm-twisted. He was given an order and he obeyed his masters

[AlCzervik]

25. If HRC won imo Palin would not have been picked.

I don't think McCain was calling many of the shots in his own campaign so i'm going to guess it was Rick Davis that decided on Palin, she's a woman and she's a fundie.

[Kahuna]

26. Don't know. But on the day he named her I said it was a gift for us.

:)

[demokatgurrl]

27. Good article on the subject in the New Yorker

It's available on their site. William Kristol was a big Palin promoter.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

31. Bingo! Great article

The Powers that Be in the GOP refused to let him have Moldy Joe or Ridge. Kristol and a bunch of National Review fanboys basically shoved Mooselini down Grampy's throat at that point, mainly because of their schoolboy crushes on her.

[quakerboy]

28. Gamblin man made a stupid.

He got his arm twisted NOT to pick certain others he might have preferred. But it was his own judgment went into then picking Palin out of the few million remaining theoretically eligible Americans.

[PassingFair]

30. He could have won if he had chosen Chuck Hagel.

I think Palin was the NeoCon pick and that
Kristol had been pimping her in articles
for a long time.

That said, I hope they realize what a
mistake she was, that she was brought
out too soon, and that her political
future has been ruined.

Stupid jerks.

[Utnapishtim]

33. The idea behind Palin's pick wasn't to appeal to the mythical PUMAs.

That that's the conventional wisdom this late after the election proves what blithering fools nine-tenths of the political commentatorship really are. The Republicans knew, as every astute observer did, that the conservative Democrats who weren't racists were going to go with Obama anyway, just as the liberals held their noses and voted for Clinton during the 90's. I doubt if she helped him pick up five thousand ex-Clintonites across the country.

Palin was meant to target a very different group: those libertarian-minded whites out in Colorado and Nevada whose right-wing politics are not based on any racial resentments (unlike Southeastern conservatives who were drawn in by the Southern Strategy), but instead by issues such as gun rights and general 'outdoorsmanship' - this is why, for instance, she's featured in this month's issue of Field & Stream. McCain knew, rightly, that the Western states have been trending Democratic recently for the first time since Bryan, and that they make up a component of the Republican Right which has basically been ignored since the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1980's. These people adored Ronald Reagan, and tended to view Herbert Walker in a better light than most national Republicans, but in the past half-decade or so have drifted away from the G.O.P. as the Party began to rely more heavily on evangelicals in the South and Mormons in Utah.

Some people seem to think she was meat for the evangelical base; I tend to disagree. The evangelicals like her, but they prefer Huckabee, whereas the Huckster got absolutely no play in the mountain west and may very well have cost the Republican ticket some votes in that area.

[DutchLiberal]

34. I believe Naomi Wolf: it was KKKarl Rove's choice.

The people who stood behind Bush were standing behind McCain and they just thought of him as an obstacle which would be out of the way within a year or two (due to his health problems). And they wanted a puppet they could mold the way they wanted, like they did with George Bush. Enter Sarah Palin.