PALIN EXPOSED

New Majority ^ | July 3, 2009 | David Frum

[DB9]

PALIN EXPOSED Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:27 AM

Another day, another leak from the wreckage of the McCain campaign. First Todd Purdum publishes a harsh piece in Vanity Fair on the Palin nomination, filled with harsh quotations from anonymous senior campaign sources. Politico follows with an even more revealing exchange of charges and counter-charges. Now at NRO, Mark Hemingway reproduces a series of leaked internal emails. The issue in all cases: Who was revealing to the world these damaging insider descriptions of Gov. Palin?

I'm as fascinated as the next person by the insider details. But let's pause for a sobriety check. The 2008 campaign is over. The 2012 campaign has begun. Gov. Palin is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination. As much as everybody enjoys code-breaking the mystery of who blabbed, isn't the more urgent and important question: Is it true?

Palin evokes a devoted response from a large following. In the mysterious soup of motives that sustains her supporters, enthusiasm for effective governance does not seem a very major ingredient. But you'd think they would at least care whether she could campaign competently. Purdum argues intensely that she cannot - that a Palin candidacy would be the greatest self-inflicted disaster since George McGovern or Barry Goldwater. Here are some of the highlights from Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece:

ITEM: The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”

ITEM: At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small.

ITEM: By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman.

ITEM: In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

ITEM: More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly.

ITEM: A year ago, 80 percent of Alaskans viewed Palin very favorably or somewhat favorably; by this spring, just 55 percent had a positive opinion.

The McCain campaign is over. The duty of confidentiality has expired. The next campaign has begun. If conservatives are to avoid catastrophe, they need to hear from those inside what exactly happened. If true, the leaks constitute an urgent warning and public service. I believe they are true. For sure they confirm what I have heard during the campaign and after. Instead of complaining about these leaks, conservatives should heed them - and fast.

[DB9]

Pailin = Palin

[Perdogg]

David Frum is an asshat.

[Vaquero]

This hit piece required a Barf Alert

[Don'tMessWithTexas]

Frum = Turd

[devane617]

I have never seen anything like the way Lib react to Sarah Palin. She taps into a psychological component of their brain that drives them over the edge. I think, anytime we want to know who is a Lib, we should walk Sarah into the room. We will know real quick.

[cricket]

Am all too sick of Repubs who by their MO; mirror Libs. Nothing more pathetic to behold.

[angkor]

>>>>> Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders <<<<<<

Yeah, gay boy. Sure.

People just casually grab their desktop copy of the DSM-III and flip to “NPD” when they think of Palin (or any pol).

That is the signature statement that IMO indicates David Frum to be possessed by PDS, which definition isn’t yet but ought to be in the next edition of the DSM.

[MediaMole]

Can we assume David Frum was one of the sources for the story?

[growingpains]

I feel there are still guys like these out there who are trying to tear Palin down who cannot accept a woman having more power than men. I guess their mothers didn’t do a good job raising them properly.

[freekitty]

Why do people keep posting this stuff about Palin here?

This is certainly what the Left wants to crucify her. Just falls right into their POS scummy hands.

[kittymyrib]

Only David Frum would think the GOP should take campaign advice from Mr. Dee Dee Myers.

[AD from SpringBay]

If Biden got half the press attention that Palin receives Obama would have to find a new Vice-President.

[LibertyThug]

Although I think it is unnecessary to keep up these attacks on her, if she’s our ONLY front runner, we ought to hang it up now. I’m not that into her. She’d make a fine vp, but certainly not a good president.

[Clara Lou]

Frum’s point on catastrophic coverage is really ridiculous, but then so is the whole piece.

[Ticonderoga34]

By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare.

This claim is false. I remember Governor Palin taking a couple of days off from campaigning to prepare for the VP debate with Biden.

[angkor]

I’m not a huge Palin enthusiast (she’s OK but I have reservations).

But the crapola that is being posted about her is already probably worse than the Bush Derangement Syndrome hysteria and slobbering malevolence of the previous 8 years.

She is truly hated by the left.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

Remembering the ENTIRE McCain campaign- esp McCain HIMSELF - these sly second/third/etc-hand hits are meaningless. McCain and those advising him were destined or even intended to fail....and it/they did. What a pity that Sarah never had an opportunity to participate in and learn from a well-run and well-intended national campaign.

I don’t think McCain or those staff advising him intended to win, or to even further advance a single cause that is dear to a conservative base. For all intents and purposes, McCain and his handlers elected obama.

[growingpains]

I correct my above statement. I should include fathers too. They also shape the way their sons view women.

[Cedric]

Another day, another leak from the wreckage of the McCain campaign.

Well, it didn't take him long. Frum's very first sentence "forces" the reader's attention toward the mythical, anonymous, McCain camp "sources" and away from the true perpetrators of this vile hoax.

[devane617]

...And the question is: why? What is it, do you think, that drives Libs over the edge? It’s like showing a cross to a vampire. There seems to be an internal, visceral hatred that is sparked by her and I have yet to understand it.

[gusopol3]

Here are some of the highlights from Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair piece:

What a worthless piece, then, if these are the "highlights."

[TomGuy]

...a harsh piece ... filled with harsh quotations from anonymous senior campaign sources

...a series of leaked internal emails.

Just wait until the newsies start getting fax reports on Palin via Dan Rather's Kinko's fax machine in central Texas.

==

The Dems (and many of the bloomberg/mccain/arnold/romney type Republicans) sure are trying to destroy Palin early on.

Her still being able to attract crowds of tens-of-thousands (re: NY state museum event last month) causes the opposition (in both political parties) great concern (aka, being scared sh'tless).

[gov_bean_ counter]

Am all too sick of Repubs who by their MO; mirror Libs. Nothing more pathetic to behold.

Pay no attention to the Morman behind the curtain...

[Vinnie]

McCain picked her. If there is a beef, go to McCain.

This repub self-destructing has got to stop if they want a chance at dethroning The ZerO.

Until someone better comes along, and I don’t see one, she has my full support.

[popdonnelly]

Interesting that we have all this analysis of Palin in advance of 2012, but we had no analysis of Obama throughout the 2008 campaign. Curious culture we have here.

[Hugin]

Ah, those “anonymous senior campaign sources” again. They certainly do get around.
*****************************************************

McCain staffers with names stand up for Sarah Palin

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2284175/posts

“She’s a fine person, with unique and unteachable political skills,” said Mark Salter, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (Ariz.) presidential bid who was deeply involved with the Palin pick. “I’m sure she has a future if she wants one.”

Also speaking up to defend the governor was Jason Recher, who served as senior adviser and trip director for Palin during the general election. Recher told the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza that in the two and a half months he spent traveling with Palin, he:

“grew to like and respect her even more as did many of the folks on the plane.” Reche added that the people attacking Palin should “stand up and prove them on the record or move on with their lives like Sarah Palin has.

Like Recher, former McCain national finance committee chair Fred Malek has been consistently supportive of Sarah Palin:
“She has been vastly underestimated as a result of one or two interviews,” said Malek of Palin. “I have spent a lot of time around her and can state unequivocally she is smart, perceptive, curious, and absolutely on top of issues like energy which are pivotal to her role as Alaska’s Governor.”

[newfreep]

The more attacks on sarah, the more it demonstrates the liberal communists & liberal RINOs fear her and her core beliefs...and for good reason! Sarah 2012!

[freeangel]

Hey frumm, and if they are not true? Can she sue the mysterious leakers and you for continuing this trashy warfare on someone who scares the crap out of you?

[denydenydeny]

Fred Macek (campaign chair of the McCain campaign) completely tore apart the Purdum article yesterday.

Frum is an Obama-loving disgrace.

[heye2monn]

Mr. Frum is the political genius who joined the Guiliani campaign last year because he thought Republicans should move to the middle. He also supported the bank bailouts, plus that of the auto industry, because he thought Republicans should move to the middle.

How did all that work out, Mr. Frum?

[angkor]

She’s not urbane and sophisticated and cool like Zer0.

For all their false pretensions to being intellectuals who discern nuance and are “reality based”, liberals are at core really emotional morons and are actually mentally ill.

[Tribune7]

You would think this damming until you look a the author. Frum dislikes the value conservatives as much as Schmidt.

[Liberty Valance]

You make a good point.

[Cedric]

Heck, the cast members of Saturday Night Live voiced favorable reactions to working with Governor Palin for cryin’ outside!

And, yet, we're supposed to believe the alleged, uniformly negative, assessments of some anonymous, ALWAYS ANOYMOUS, McCain campaign staffers?

I don't think so.

[Tench_Coxe]

Welcome to Free Republic.

[TribalPrincess2U]

Interesting that we have all this analysis of Palin in advance of 2012, but we had no analysis of Obama throughout the 2008 campaign. Curious culture we have here.

We still don't. Even the most innocent logical question, "produce the REAL birth certificate", was met with fierce opposition, cost thousands of dollars, and threats were made.

So who is most transparent here.

[2nd amendment mama]

Search is your friend....

Palin Exposed - earlier thread

[silverleaf]

substitute the term “obama” for “Palin” in almost every example Frum tries to make- most time it works perfectly.

Frum and the RINO establishment keep digging frantically in that pile of manure mostly spread by the DNC...hoping they will say “AHA” and pull out a pony.

[Old North State]

More assertions based on innuendo. Proof? Citations? None. We get it that you don't like her, but using a slime ball ball like Perdum to advance your agenda is beneath contempt.

[silverleaf]

PDS sure exposes the inner lib in our RINO establishment, doesn’t it?

[Cedric]

Good catch, Tench.

“Newcomers” are sent, repeatedly, by Obama/Soros to rile-up and dispirit the Right with this lame, thread bare, scam.

They will continue to do so, as long as it works.

[devane617]

Yes it does. We can use it to our advantage to weed out those that are not on-board.

[Diogenesis]

THIS THREAD NEEDS A WARNING LABEL

David Frum: "Two of our most plausible candidates for president in 2012 are leading Mormons: Mitt Romney and Utah governor Jon Huntsman."

---

David Frum: "I have a lot of regard for Mitt Romney as a man and politician.
Let me say for the record: If Romney emerges as the Republican nominee, I will support him without qualm."

---

Scumbag 5th-columnist who attacked Gov.Palin, in the 6 weeks before the election,
throwing Election2008 with the rest of TeamRomney.

David Frum: "Frum was indeed a critic of Palin, calling her nomination a "huge mistake" during an October 13 Early Show appearance."

---

Late in October, The American Spectator's The Prowler revealed:
"Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House,
have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election.
'Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012,'
says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin.
'The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney.
He's in charge on November 5th.'"
The Prowler added: "Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a 'diva' and was going off message intentionally."
The Romney supporters in the McCain campaign had access to internal polling which indicated well in advance of the November 4 election that McCain had no chance to win.
So they began working to position their man Mitt for a run in 2012. Just two days after the election,The Palmetto Scoop reported:
"One of the first stories to hit the national airwaves was the claim of a major internal strife between close McCain aides and the folks handling his running mate Sarah Palin."
"I’m told by very good sources that this was indeed the case and that a rift had developed, but it was between Palin’s people and the staffers brought on from the failed presidential campaign of former Gov. Mitt Romney, not McCain aides."
"The sources said nearly 80 percent of Romney’s former staff was absorbed by McCain and these individuals were responsible for what amounts to a premeditated, last-minute sabotage of Palin."
These aides loyal to Romney inside the McCain campaign, said The Scoop, reportedly saw that Palin would be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2012 or 2016, which made her a threat to another presidential quest by Romney.
Erick Erickson, who organized Operation Leper, said:
"Here’s what I think: I think there are some staffers on the McCain campaign who seriously screwed up the roll out of Sarah Palin, to which Governor Palin herself objected.
These staffers are now out trying to finish her off thinking, as typical D.C. types do, that if they don’t do it to her, she’ll do it to them. They just never understood who Palin is or what she is about."
"Likewise, I do think there are some staffers and others who expect Mitt Romney to run again in 2012,
they decided McCain could not win, and decided to undermine Sarah Palin and her chances hoping it would ingratiate themselves with Mitt Romney."

---

"Who's the Palin Leaker from the McCain Campaign? (Mark Wallace, Romney pimp)
National Review Online The publication of a Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin
appears to have opened old wounds in the McCain campaign.
... the source of the “Diva” leak was Nicolle Wallace’s husband."

---

Who benefits most from Sanford meltdown? Californian (that's right) Mitt Romney

---

"Peeking Out From the McCain Wreckage: Mitt Romney"

"Someone's got to say it: IS MITT ROMNEY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBAMA'S VICTORY?"

"Vanity: Team Romney Sabotaged Palin and Continuing to Do So?"

"Romney Supporters Trashing Palin"

"Romney advisors sniping at Palin?"

---

Poor sport spoiler Romney doing what he does best:

Novak: "Fred Thompson drop-out rumors traced to Romney campaign"

Said Novak: "The rumors were traced in part to Mitt Romney's campaign,
trying to stir up strife between McCain and Thompson."

"Despite outspending his rivals by huge margins throughout the primaries,
(Mitt Romney, Carpetbagger UT,CA,MA,NH,Mexico) lost Iowa, South Carolina, Florida and California.
The only primaries he won were in Michigan, where Dad was governor; LDS states;
and a few states on Super Tuesday in which his California-obsessed rivals
couldn't spare the cash to advertise.
Only John Connolly in 1968 had a worse cash-to-delegates ratio.
And John McCain rightly did not like Romney's tactics during the primaries.
(W)hen (Romney's early leads) started slipping away, he resorted to unfair,
distorted, scorched-earth negative ads, betting that his opponents couldn't
afford to spend enough for the truth to catch up to his charges."
[Romney: A Mistake for McCain, 7/23/2008, Dick Morris]

[2nd Amendment]

Republicans and conservatives have got to get their head out of the sand. We are losing the vestiges of our great country as we speak. We have forgotten the legacy of the Declaration of Independence. We, as a country , have sold our souls to big socialist gov’t. As I examine the political landscape, I can see no other heir to the Reagan legacy than Sarah Palin. In my opinion she has not made and significant missteps and is truly a gift to freedom-loving Americans (the few of us that are left) We may not win. . but we have a moral obligation to fight the tyranny that is spreading out of the Politburo on the Potomac. Our wsovaereignty is lost at the border, globalism and greed haave destroyed our economy. The efforts of common every day working people are scoffed at by international financiers and leveraged bankers. We have shipped our vital manufacturing jobs to to the uttermost parts of the earth. We are a chosen people who have squandered our legacy by throwing it at the feet of the immoral and indecent. We have such a long road to get back to the decency that once described America. Sorry for the rant. Go Sarah , Go!

[Ditter]

Hey newbie, what does “DB” stand for? Dead Beat?

We understand, you are scared of Palin and this is how the left operates, attack the ones you fear the most. Coward! Go away!

[bray]

So David, does this mean the Brie and Chablis Rhinos don’t like her?? Thats good enough for me. Schmidt should never work another campaign.

Pray for America and Gov Palin

[Cedric]

Sadly, the rabid hatred for McCain among many FReepers causes them to swallow this bilge without first asking critical questions, as they would regarding virtually any other set of assertions.

[FrankR]

"ITEM: The top McCain aides who had tried hard to work with Palin—Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist; Nicolle Wallace, the communications ace; and Tucker Eskew, her traveling counselor—were barely on speaking terms with her, and news organizations were reporting that anonymous McCain aides saw Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.” "

In other words, Palin wouldn't succumb to being a 'McCain Robot', and had a mind of her own. Those "aides" were the actual "whack jobs" (judging from their RINO boss) and they just couldn't control Sarah. Conclusion: who wants a "robot" president that cow-tows to the democrats and the media, like McCain't?

" ITEM: At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn’t really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small. "

Talk about splitting hairs, this is a non-argument, worded to do nothing more than cast aspersions on Palin...in other words, it's bull$hi+.

" ITEM: By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman. "

Palin still lived in, and was Governor of, Alaska...to ignore her "hometown newspaper" would have been a slap at her constituents, and it is quite "elitist" of the MSM to insult the "hometown newspaper" in such a way. A person who has the honor and integrity shouldn't have to "prepare" for an interview with Miss colon-camera or anyone else, as their integrity, beliefs, and policies are solid. Charlie Gibson's questions regarding the "Bush doctrine" were totally and ambush job and Sarah was forbidden to go too far afield by the McCain gang.

" ITEM: In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived. "

"Disagreements" in the world of liberals means "personal insults"...and with the intensity and fervor they were attacking her family, I would have taken them personally too. In fact, I would have been disappointed in both Sarah and Todd if they had NOT defended their family. Now let's turn tot he "insular coterie" of "trusted friends" and use that on the commiebama bunch...he is so "insulated" by "friends" he has to hire "czars" to do his governing for him. And, didn't commiebama just "discard" an inspector general who was bringing heat on an obama "trusted friend" who was ripping off Americorps? That was not "perceived", it was "real".

" ITEM: More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin’s extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of “narcissistic personality disorder” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy”—and thought it fit her perfectly. "

" This guy calls himself a "journalist" and has overlooked commiebama - the poster boy for narcissicism? The "pervasive pattern of grandiosity" is displayed in any one of commiebama 10 weekly news conferences and prime time town halls. With the favorite words of "I" and "me", commiebama graces the pages of every magazine published in the free world on a weeklly basis, and pines for more and more attention with every utterance.

" ITEM: A year ago, 80 percent of Alaskans viewed Palin very favorably or somewhat favorably; by this spring, just 55 percent had a positive opinion. "

A year ago, 80% of Americans viewed commiebama very favorably, but by this spring, it's down to 30% had "positive opinions" (except the racists who support him only because of his color), and the numbers continue to fall...daily...while Palins numbers are on the rise among the people who could vote her into office.

The MSM and the liberals are scared out of their wits with Sarah Palin...she's a big, big threat to them and their current "king", and they know it. "

[Cedric]

Schmidt should never work another (GOP) campaign.

Correct.

But not for the reason you imply.