Palin's Instant Bush-World Foreign Policy Brain Trust

[Joanne98]

Republican presumptive vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is being prepped for her Republican convention debut tonight or tomorrow, and a team of policy advisors has descended on the govenor to educate her on John McCain's national security positions, including on Iraq. Among her new advisory brain trust, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff notes, Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign's top national security advisor and Steve Beigun, a former Jesse Helms and Condi Rice aide, as well as a striking number of Bushies:

Matt Scully, a former Bush White House speechwriter who helped draft some of the major foreign-policy addresses during the president’s first term, is working on Palin’s acceptance speech to the convention Wednesday night.
Mark Wallace, a former lawyer for the Bush 2000 campaign who served in a variety of administration jobs including chief counsel at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and deputy ambassador to the United Nations, has been put in charge of “prep” for the debate against Biden.
Wallace’s wife, Nicolle Wallace, the former White House communications director, has taken over the same job for Palin.
Tucker Eskew, another senior Bush White House communications aide, is serving as senior counselor to Palin’s operation.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers who has been serving as top economics guru for the McCain campaign, has moved over to serve as Palin’s chief domestic-policy adviser.
As Iiskoff notes, "The proliferation of former Bush White House aides in the Palin team may strike some as ironic—and could even provide some fodder for the Democrats—given the McCain camp’s efforts to distance itself from the unpopular president."

With Palin sucking so much oxygen out of the Republican convention, and so many of her positions and flip-flops (earmarks) generating media coverage and controversy, I asked a pro-McCain Republican natoinal security think tank expert if his circles were having buyers' remorse about Palin, who was something of a tabula rasa, it seemed, on the national security issues they care about. Yesterday, anyhow, he insisted they were not, and that Palin would possibly win McCain not just the enthusiastic support of evangelicals and pro-gun advocates, but possibly Reagan Democrats and more blue-collar and rural suport.

"Nobody can say this is Bush, that this is third term Bush," the Republican think tank hand said. "Sarah Palin is not the Bushies."

Palin's instant new foreign policy brain trust would suggest it is starting to look more like Bush-world every hour.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9561_palins_instant.html

[orwell]

1. But she broke up...

...the "good old boy network." She's a "maverick," a "reformer!"

The TeeVee told me so!

[Supersedeas]

2. so says Mika -- Joe Skankborough's sidekick