Frankly I’ve become convinced over the last four years that he had a small stroke.
Possibly, or the promise of one.
See.... Once Palin's popularity started taking off, the men behind the curtain knew that McCain might win. That was not in their plans. They had to dump Hillary because Palin made the 'sex' card useless, so they played the 'race' card. But even the race card wasn't enough to rig the outcome, and the MSM had already done it's best to try to bury Palin, so the only choice left was to pull McCain out of the game.
And it worked.