McCain's 4 stages of Palin: "furious, pissed, it wasn’t what he wanted, understanding resignation"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/does-mccain-blame-palin-his-swirling

To hear Brian Williams and Chuck Todd talk, as they did last night on Hardball, you'd think things were perhaps not so peachy these days over at Camp McCain, after they spent the afternoon interviewing John McCain and Sarah Palin together:

Well, Chris, and this something that I -- I wouldn't blame Brian for not wanting to say this, but -- there was a tenseness between -- first of all, between the two -- there's no chemistry. I couldn't see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. It was -- I felt as if we grabbed two people and said, 'Here, sit next to each other, we're going to conduct an interview.'

There wasn't -- they're not -- you know, they're not just ... comfortable with each other, uh, yet. The other thing about it is that you can tell they know that they're losing. They just have -- there's an intensity there, they're drained, the entire campaign staff is drained. The two candidates are guarded, they seem on edge. It's not as if they were rude or anything, it's not as if they weren't trying to be forthcoming, it's just, they seemed -- it's a negative intensity. I don't know how else to describe it.

But you'll see, when you see the two of them together, the chemistry's not all there. You do wonder, is John McCain starting to blame her for things, blaming himself? Is she blaming him? You just wonder what's going on inside their heads. Are they upset with how the other has treated them, and is that why her numbers are low? But whatever it is, it's a negative vibe that you get in that room.

This happens to echo the recent New Yorker piece (which Todd in fact cites a little later in the discussion), which described how much McCain wanted to name his favorite fellow Mavericky Senator, Holy Joe Lieberman himself, and as many of us suspected, strongly preferred Joe as his running mate:

By the spring, the McCain campaign had reportedly sent scouts to Alaska to start vetting Palin as a possible running mate. A week or so before McCain named her, however, sources close to the campaign say, McCain was intent on naming his fellow-senator Joe Lieberman, an independent, who left the Democratic Party in 2006. David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who is close to a number of McCain’s top aides, told me that “McCain and Lindsey Graham”—the South Carolina senator, who has been McCain’s closest campaign companion—“really wanted Joe.” But Keene believed that “McCain was scared off” in the final days, after warnings from his advisers that choosing Lieberman would ignite a contentious floor fight at the Convention, as social conservatives revolted against Lieberman for being, among other things, pro-choice.

“They took it away from him,” a longtime friend of McCain—who asked not to be identified, since the campaign has declined to discuss its selection process—said of the advisers. “He was furious. He was pissed. It wasn’t what he wanted.” Another friend disputed this, characterizing McCain’s mood as one of “understanding resignation.”

[WI_DEM]

1. The "maverick" didn't have enough guts to push who he really wanted on the ticket.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

4. His "Maverick Move" would have been Lieberman

That "dream ticket" has McCain's stink all over it. The whole "Maverick" pitch...and you can almost trace it, step by step by step. I know Tom Ridge and a couple of others came up in the post-Palin days, but I'm sure that Lieberman was "that one."

McCain was essentially yanked into a back room and told "This is how it's going to be." I remember reading stories within a week of the Palin announcement giving "credit" for the choice to James Dobson.



Whether it was Dobson's choice or it came about by committee, it certainly wasn't what McCain wanted.

[Window]

10. And we all know this to be the case.

[speedoo]

7. Or smarts to find a workable compromise,

Lieberman would have been a disaster too.

Pawlenty, the Ohio congressman Portman, even Mittens would have been much better.

McCain's a complete tool.

[JBoy]

8. The guy who couldn't stand up to his party picked someone "who stood up to her party".

Irony is beautiful.

[skooooo]

2. Can you imagine what a disaster it would be..

..for McCain to be President? He couldn't even pick the VP candidate he wanted. The fundies would be telling him what he was going to have for dinner everyday, and making every decision from there up.

[marylanddem]

3. Whatever McCain wanted, he settled for her. He insulted

& jeopardized our nation with that choice & he deserves all the scorn heaped on him

[No Elephants]

5. Lesson: Do not nominate a candidate that your base does not like. If you do, you have to spend the

campaign trying to win over your base, when the real game is in the indies. And what wins over your base is often what alienates the indies. Like seeing men walking alongise dinosaurs and shat like that.

[FSogol]

6. But, but...She got to go shopping!

McCain has probably never looked her in the eyes.
She's probably all creeped out or at least more creeped out than normal.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

9. One man, three hugs. I think Sarah is his "third favorite" out of three.

[Arugula Latte]

11. Raising Arizona: *cough* "Say, who wears the pants here, H.I.?" *cough*