The Hidden Purpose of Sarah Palin
Too Many “Should Haves”
It should have been easy to check (and find out) that Bristol was pregnant. It should have also been easy to notice that Palin was in the midst of a controversy in her home state of Alaska, which has the potential to develop into a huge scandal.
Finally, the McCain campaign should been alarmed that although Palin delivered a rousing speech to the Republican base, it was one that was ridiculously easy to tear apart and fedd to moderates who would promptly flee from the party in its wake—at least, if Obama cared to do so.
In a campaign now run extremely professionally by veteran campaign staff, and characterized by meticulous planning, it was more or less impossible that the McCain campaign didn’t know about all of these problems beforehand. This is especially true, even for Palin’s speech at the Republican National Convention, given that Palin’s speech was almost completely pre-written, without excessive veering from the teleprompter.
Only one conclusion seems to make sense. She was meant to be attacked.
This may seem counterintuitive, but given the media’s sudden care in stepping around issues involving Palin, while tearing into Obama for being “sexist” this act of political judo seems to have worked.
Previously, Obama has steadfastly refused to descend very negative. Most of the “negativity” has been accused and inflated by the McCain camp. However, even then, McCain couldn’t get voters to think that Obama was altogether that slimy—at least not to those who weren’t already predisposed to doing so one way or another.
Enter Sarah Palin.
Double-Kill
Palin becomes a perfect case of a “forced” negative attack, drawn out by leaving open so many obviously juicy morsels. After all, if Obama’s campaign doesn’t pounce on the opportunity, then his gleeful unofficial surrogates will—and so far, McCain has successfully conflated the two when convenient. But it goes beyond this: it is a choice, now apparent, that targets the exact segment that seems most vulnerable in the Democratic camp: former Hillary Clinton voters.
Not only does McCain fire up his own base with the choice of Sarah Palin, he depresses Obama’s.
While Obama himself doesn’t attack Sarah Palin very vigorously, sticking for the most part to his promises, McCain’s campaign has seized every single tiny implication that Obama is attacking her, and has attributed attacks from Obama supporters to Obama himself. Meanwhile, the media is mostly ineffectual in this situation, since not only does the Republican base not trust the media anyway, the media is compelled to denounce Obama according to McCain’s script if it wishes to avoid charges of sexism.
It seems to be a perfect hole-in-one as a choice for Vice President, and could also be the choice that wins the war for McCain. After all, it’s hard to say how much effect that “discomfort” over a black President will discourage voters from actually casting ballots for Obama—as this sort of phenomenon has not exactly been common throughout recent (and all of) American history. We have absolutely no concrete data beyond opinion surveys on what sort of impact this will have, though preliminary surveys of opinions show that a large percentage will “consider” race (roughly around 20% from various surveys). Of course, very few mentioned to surveyors that they would outright refuse to vote for a black candidate, but few would say that to another person’s face. Instead, one can almost take “consideration” of race as, “We don’t want to say it, but we’re either not voting for Obama, because of race, or are waiting for him to prove somehow himself in spite of his race.”
In a situation like this, it’s not hard to see how a few more Republican base voters encouraged to sit in, while a few Democratic base voters encouraged to sit out could very swing the election in McCain’s favor.
The only potential problem would come if the ethics investigation in Alaska finishes before the election (which it is scheduled to do so now), and something amazingly incriminating about Palin reveals itself. However, given all of this careful strategizing so far, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if what comes out will be too little to late that close to the election date. After all, given the track record of McCain’s new staff so far, they probably already know for the most part what will come out and are either preparing distractions, counters, or have already dismissed various findings that will come out as acceptable losses already.
Given this and the landscape we’ve seen so far, it seems that McCain will almost certainly come out of this choice netting a good number of percentage points—and this from a pick that so many thought was a terrible idea when it was first declared. Most thought that Palin was to draw women to McCain, when in reality it was meant to drive them from Obama. Brilliant.
Well played, McCain. Very well played, indeed.
