It's a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Now it turns out Kalin's underage daughter is pregnant. This has been circulating all week now in the liberal blogosphere but tomorrow the H-Bomb drops in the New York Times. It erases any notion of McCain being this independent "Maverick" who played this one on his own "gut".

The comedy of errors that is John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin continues. Except, when the issue is picking a potential leader of our nation in a time of war, it shouldn't be a comedy and it shouldn't be filled with errors.

Read this blockbuster article in tomorrow's New York Times. There is so much in it. The article reveals that John McCain didn't get the vice president he wanted (Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge) because the religious right, which controls the GOP (and now controls John McCain), went ballistic on McCain last week because both Lieberman and Ridge are pro-choice. So McCain caved. Because of McCain's kowtowing to the theocrats, he hurriedly dumped Lieberman and Ridge and instead picked the very anti-abortion, but not much else, Palin without even fully vetting her.

Now, sure, the McCain campaign is claiming that Palin was "thoroughly vetted." But, that is clearly not true - the Times talked to all the key players in Alaska, and none of them were approached by the McCain campaign. In fact, McCain's vetter only just arrived in Alaska on Thursday, the day before McCain announced Palin as his VP choice.

This failure is actually quite stunning on many levels. It's just so fundamental to the process, the vetting of a vice presidential choice, that failing to do it properly is pretty much campaign malpractice. Clearly, Sarah Palin was not seriously vetted. An excerpt from the Times:

 Quote:
In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

Mr. French, a former prosecutor, said that he was knowledgeable about background checks and that, he, too, was surprised that the campaign had not reached out to state legislative leaders.


The liberal blogosphere has been (correctly) saying for the past couple of days that this pick says more about John McCain than Sarah Palin. It really does. John McCain caved to the anti-abortion theocrats running the Republican party, made a hasty pick for his v.p., and is now suffering the consequences.