DISHING ON PALIN….Don’t lie: you know you want to hear it. The presidential campaign has only been over for 24 hours, but that’s all it’s taken for two months of accumulated bitterness and rage from McCain staffers toward Sarah Palin to finally explode onto the news pages. For starters, here is John McCain’s private opinion of Palin, as reported by the Guardian:
An exasperated McCain has been telling friends in recent weeks that Palin is even more trouble than a pitbull. In one joke doing the rounds, the Republican presidential candidate has been asking friends: what is the difference between Sarah Palin and a pitbull? The friendly canine eventually lets go, is the McCain punchline.
Here is the McCain campaign’s take on Palin’s clothing extravaganza, as reported by Newsweek:
Newsweek has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy…..An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
And here are some “McCain staffers” explaining that Palin is not just a moron, but a bad-tempered moron, as reported by Fox’s Carl Cameron:
There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lacked the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We’re told by folks that she didn’t know what countries were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that being Canada, the US, and Mexico. We’re told that she didn’t understand that Africa was a continent rather than a country just in itself. A whole host of questions that caused serious problems about her knowledgeability. She got very angry at staff, thought that she was mishandled, was particularly angry about the way the Katie Couric interview went. She didn’t accept preparation for that interview when the aides say that that was part of the problem. And that there were times where she was hard to control emotionally. There’s talk of temper tantrums at bad news clippings.
Regarding the last report, Shep Smith asks the obvious question: “How could they end up with a running mate who doesn’t know that Africa is a continent?” Cameron explains that the vetting process “was truncated.”
Earlier today, I had in mind a post about Palin that would have started out by saying that I didn’t think she was stupid, just completely uninterested in national policy issues prior to August 29th. Needless to say, I’m glad I didn’t write that post.
