It looks, now, as if it this brouhaha amounts to a cat fight with Nicole Wallace, the sometime George Bush staffer who was put in charge of Palin for the McCain campaign. Wallace has a history of being a vicious political infighter, and it appears certain Palin was ill-served by McCain's decision to install Wallace as Palin's de facto campaign chief of staff - and not merely b/c Wallace is a vicious political knife-fighter, but mostly b/c Wallace failed, spectacularly, to help Palin - and thus Wallace also failed to help McCain.
Nicole Wallace prevented Palin from doing interviews for weeks - including easier interviews with local media, conservative radio, Sean Hannity - thus building up incredible anticipation for Palin's first public interviews even as Palin failed to get her feet under her by doing a type of Baseball Spring Training of easier interviews. Then Wallace sent Palin in, cold, to interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, and crucially allowed Gibson and Couric to edit(!!!) the interviews, which both did in misleading ways designed to make Gibson and Couric look brilliant and Palin look stupid. As a contrast, both Bill O'Reilly and Chris Wallace offered Palin 1/2 hour interviews which would be unedited. Neither O'Reilly nor Wallace ever got interviews with Palin - which shows how out of touch the McCain staff was. O'Reilly did speak with Palin on the phone; she assured him she wanted to do his show; McCain staff later refused to allow her to do O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly gets more viewers every night than all other cable news shows combined. Nicole Wallace used to work for CBS News. Cue conspiracy music.
The wardrobe debacle was Nicole Wallace's responsibility. A loyal staffer would've taken the public hit. Nicole Wallace did not. Nicole Wallace's priority was her own political future - not Sarah Palin's and John McCain's political futures. Disgusting.
And now come the publicly unsourced catfight knife fight potentially lethal bull@#$% accusations against Palin, which basically are designed as 1) vindictive retribution and 2) rehabilitation of Nicole Wallace's reputation and political career. Doubly disgusting. I spit in Nicole Wallace's general direction. And I can't believe Carl Cameron credulously reported this @#$%. And I can't believe McCain assigned the crucial position of Palin's top aide to a person who would turn on the candidate in such fashion. That, MY FRIENDS, is some suck-ass bad judgment.
Sarah Palin had every incentive and reason to rebel against the way she was mishandled by McCain Staff. If anything, Palin should've rebelled more forcefully.
And, btw, Nicole Wallace has no apparent connection to either Romney or Huckabee. Those gentlemen have clean hands, and my respect.
McCain, however, is losing my respect by failing to defend Sarah Palin. McCain could, with a couple of sentences, put this potentially lethal brouhaha to rest and ensure that Palin gets a chance at a future national career. McCain apparently cannot be bothered. And every day he delays makes any eventual defense of Palin weaker and less effective. Hey, McBozo: she's only been vigorously defending you for two freaking months, regularly drawing crowds of 10,000, and increasing RNC contributions by many millions of $. Pull your head out. YOU lost the election. SHE did everything possible to save your booty, and frankly prevented you from being blown out by 15 points nationally. If you've a brain in your noggin, you will see that a little gratitude for her forthright effort would be nice.
Treacher agrees.
Ace:
Just had a tip from a max McCain donor who called their office to find out if McCain would defend Palin.Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas:
[...]
"Look," the [McCain aide] says, becoming irritated on top of being arrogant, "Senator McCain cannot step out and defend Palin every single time someone says something bad about her."
"Can he do it once?"
The larger story is how badly run and unmanageable the McCain Campaign was. McCain has never belonged to an organization - from the Navy to the U.S. Senate - which he did not try to subvert. He's not an organization guy, and that doesn't lend itself to effectively managing an organization.