Palin Pick Opens Questions About McCain's Marbles

Wasilla mooseburgers. Don't they make you want to get your gun? Below: Hunters who did just that. They're going to have some moose burgers. I think Palin lost the PETA vote.

Finally, we get something other than -- what a great thing a teenager is pregnant and she's keeping her baby!!!! 
I guess it took a day for people to gather their bearings. Is McCain trying to hoodwink us? Is he rolling the dice? Did he truly think Palin was a good pick? Did Palin hoodwink McCain? Maybe there's an ultimate plot, some sort of logic? Oil? 

RCP: Indeed, if you don't get hung up on her actual record, Palin simply is who she is. It's not her fault that she's a former Miss Wasilla with a campy "Northern Exposure" vibe, doctrinaire social-conservative views and no discernible qualifications for being vice president. It's undeniable that people in Alaska apparently like her well enough, though they seem to have been even more shocked than the rest of us when she was named to the Republican ticket. In any event, she's not the one who created this farcical situation.

We learned last week that John McCain is not who he is -- not, at least, who he claims to be. The steady, straight-talking, country-first statesman his campaign has been selling is a fictional character. The real McCain is either alarmingly cynical or dangerously reckless.

You will recall that McCain gave the same prime criterion for choosing a running mate that every presidential candidate gives: someone who is ready to step in as president if, heaven forbid, the need arises. Barack Obama echoed those words before picking Joe Biden, who is about as prepared as a vice presidential candidate could ever be.

You will also recall that McCain and his supporters have been lecturing us about the grave and urgent dangers our country faces -- Islamic fundamentalism, the resurgence of Russia and other geopolitical threats. In a menacing world, McCain says, he will keep America safe.

So, at 72 and with a history of cancer, how could McCain choose a vice presidential nominee who has, let's face it, zero experience in foreign affairs? Being the nominal commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard doesn't count, unless you think Vladimir Putin is about to order an invasion across the Bering Strait.

From Slate:

Each new fact we learn about Sarah Palin—her reversal on the bridge to nowhere, her disagreements with McCain on issues from windfall profits to global warming, emerging facts about troopergate—contribute to the feeling that this whole Palin thing is being made up as we go along. It may be fun to read about, and it sure is fun to cover, but it also supports the judgment of the Palin pick that I first heard from a Republican veteran shortly after the announcement: "Reckless."
Obama was supposed to be the risky candidate. That's certainly how Republicans have painted him. Judging from how he's run his campaign, though, he's very conservative. Nevertheless, polls have shown that voters think McCain is the less risky pick by as much as 20 percentage points. Now that McCain has made a high-profile decision essentially defined by its riskiness—observers have called it a "Hail Mary pass" so often, I'm starting to think it's a play for the Catholic vote—the question is whether McCain has squandered his advantage with voters on the question of risk.

The bridge to nowhere:

Boston Herald: The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere." They’re still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin’s subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects - and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.

"I think that’s when the campaign for national office began," said Ketchikan mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone - because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.

It’s a more complicated picture than the one drawn by McCain, a persistent critic of special-interest spending and congressional earmarks. He described Palin as "someone who’s stopped government from wasting taxpayers’ money on things they don’t want or need."

See this story on all the earmarks -- those nasty things McCain is always railing about -- that Palin raked in for Alaska. 

Sarah Palin McCain's Bridge to Nowhere

Now that's funny. Here's a blogger in Alaska, who was surprised by the choice.
Take a look at the photo of the town of Wasilla, where she was mayor.

Here's my theory on the Palin Pick: John McCain, Mr. Maverick, got so disgusted by being pushed, prodded and shaped by all the republicans, including lowly talk show hosts, that in a fit of rage that he's known for, he just threw up his hands, picked Palin and said - "Happy now."

Apparently, the bridge to nowhere that she fought against, is actually one she championed:

Perhaps the brain was still a little fuzzy from the shock of McCain’s new VP pick, Alaska’s own governor Sarah Palin. Perhaps it was still stuck in the endless loop of wondering - why? why? why? Whatever the reason, it took more than 24 hours for Palin’s first big untruth to register with me.

Today, while I watched her hop out of the “Straight Talk Express” bus, and give the second reading of her acceptance speech, one of my fellow viewers said, “You know, I don’t remember her opposing the Bridge.” And it hit me. I don’t remember that either. A quick double-check with the third member of our watch party confirmed our confusion. We all live here. We all watch the news, read the paper, and pay attention to the local political circus, but none of us connected Sarah with her claims of rebuffing the controversial earmark.

The backstory on the "bridge to nowhere" is juicy. Check out this factcheck.
Reaction from Alaskans.
Palin could come through.
Palin's foreign policy experience.
How the vice presidency could change under McCain.
Palin: The republican babe.
Wootengate -- Palin and small town politics, where everybody knows everybody.