Thursday night in a nut-shell:
Moderator: Governor Palin, how would you handle the Iraq war?
Palin: Well, it?s important for the United States of the America to be, well to lead, when the Middle of East has terrorists. And we are in a War on Terror, so when Democracy and freedom, which is important for health care and job creation, which, I mean John McCain is for jobs. And Al Qaida of course ? um ? Pakistan and Afghanistan and ? um ? Putin ? uh ? We must win in Iraq.
Moderator: Uuuuuuuh ?. Okay. Thank you, Governor. Senator Biden, how you handle the Iraq war?
Biden: Well it?s clear, just as General Patton led the Union Army against the Boers in the War of 1812, that complete victory must be achieved, otherwise Islamabad, the Capital of Hamas, obviously will never be safe. I quote Admiral Eisenhower, who said, ?Give me Democracy or give me the Bay of Pigs.?
Moderator: I quit.
If she clearly stammers and is the ill-informed idiot that many of us have her pegged for them McCain is no more screwed than he already is. Those who like her politics will likely still vote for her and blame the media.. somehow. Some in the middle are already flowing Obama-ward; maybe that process would be accelerated some, but not much. Election Day 40 to 45% would vote GOP no matter what.
The whole Palin bounce derived from her freshness on the scene - meaning that almost anyone else McCain would have chosen would have been more of a known quantity -someone with a real record of governance, someone with a real history of positions on national issues, someone who had been interviewed on national TV a couple of times over the last few decades.
With Palin, we got none of this, and GOPers were spewing jism down their legs at how exciting she was. The downside of that, aside from the mess of cleaning your pants off, was that she had to - absolutely HAD TO - cram in twenty or thirty nationwide media interviews, give major policy speeches, debate a seasoned politician, all in the next 60-odd days. At first, you Pubbies were all "Piece of cake, she's going to do fine, you guys are cooked moose!"
But she's letting you down big-time. She can't handle even a pool reporter's indepth questioning on how it felt to say howdy to some turbaned dude who can't hardly speak English, and she's toast under the scrutiny of a major Eastern elite news-hawk like Katie Couric, queen of puffery.
Who created this problem? That would be John McCain, so please don't blame anyone else that she is being forced to undergo this intense scrutiny, or else face ridicule for running away from it. He knew this when he oh-so-carefully vetted her, and all he can do now (with your help) is blame this major fuckup on the media, the Democrats, the boogey-man, the leprechauns, etc..