Friday, September 26, 2008

Palin Latest: New GOP Worries About VP Candidate's Ability

John McCain plucked her from the obscurity of Alaska, but Sarah Palin is not faring so well down in the Lower 48.

Without a script, Plain's performance in recent interviews has been, well, underwhelming. It's what happens when you take an inexperienced and inadequately prepared local politician and put her on the national stage.

And it's not just the Democrats who think so. Here's a new Palin story from the folks at Politico, and it's not what the Republicans need just now.
A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven — and sometimes downright awkward — performances in her limited media appearances.

Conservative columnists Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing on the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.”

Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.”

“I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s—t,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She isn't faring too well in Alaska these days, either.

I HAVE come away from the Palin interviews thinking she doesn’t know s—t, unlike Chris Lacivita, GOP strategist.

My feeling watching McCain in the debate this evening was one of relief that at least he held up pretty well. But then again, he's the guy who gave us Palin as his backup.

Anonymous said...

The media has ignored the fact that Joe Biden didn't even know that FDR wasn't the President during the stock market crash or that there was no television in 1929.
The botton line is Palin is just as qualified to be Vice President as Bill Clinton was to be President.

Anonymous said...

That's quite a false equivalence you've drawn there, anonymous. So if you can find a gaffe by someone, for example, McCain saying that Pakistan was a failed state pre-Musharraf, then that person is auotmatically no more qualified than Palin?

Few would be left standing by that criterion, yet it is still true that there are qualified people (yes, including McCain,) and that Palin is absurdly uninformed and unqualified.

Biden: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'”

It is true that Hoover (a Republican) was President at the time of the stock market crash, however, FDR was the one who tackled the massive clean-up of the ensuing mess. The TV reference was a mistake, but pretty obviously a slip of the tongue. Do you really suppose that Biden is unaware that FDR's famous "nothing to fear but fear itself" speech was a radio address?

Palin had little to offer beyond doubletalk and evasion for Couric and Gibson, and I am looking forward to the debate on Thursday.