http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/12/uselections2008-sarahpalin
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When John McCain chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate, his supporters
declared the move a masterstroke. But Republican poll ratings have been
falling day by day - and now the 'Troopergate' scandal has turned the Hockey
Mom from Alaska into a liability for a campaign that has lost its way. Paul
Harris reports
# Paul Harris
# The Observer,
# Sunday October 12 2008
Nothing typifies the plight of John McCain's campaign more than the
rollercoaster ride of his surprise vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin. In
six weeks, she has gone from disaster to triumph and back again several times.
Originally greeted with disbelief after her candidacy was announced on the
eve of the Republican National Convention in St Paul, Minnesota, Palin wowed
the party with her stunning debut speech. For a while it seemed that the
self-described 'pitbull in lipstick' would be the surprise ingredient in the
race.
Palin electrified voters, taking McCain ahead of Barack Obama in the polls
and bringing in legions of undecided women. The Obama campaign floundered as
it tried to come to terms with a phenomenon so novel that the old game-plans
had to be torn up. In teaming up with a political ingenue with grassroots
appeal, McCain had taken a terrific risk. And it appeared to have paid off.
Then came Katie Couric. The network TV anchor did not so much grill Palin as
give the Alaska governor enough rope to hang herself. Palin floundered
against even the most harmless questions, such as what newspapers she read,
and became the butt of jokes on Saturday Night Live. Satirists competed to
offer the best impression of her bumbling incoherence. But then Palin
surprised everyone again with a strong performance in her debate against
Senator Joe Biden, resurrecting her supporters' belief that she could change
the campaign.
That hope has probably died with the Troopergate report. The enormous
microscope of a presidential campaign has magnified an obscure staffing
dispute in Alaska - over whether Palin pursued a family vendetta against
state trooper Mike Wooten - into a major political story. With the release of
a damaging report this weekend that concluded Palin did abuse the powers of
her office, her political trajectory has once again changed course. Gone are
the dreams of Palin bringing in the desperately needed independent voters,
former Hillary Clinton supporters and soft Democrats the McCain campaign need
so much. Instead she has now been firmly assigned to the traditional role of
the vice-presidential candidate: attack dog.
It is a role she does well and it plays to the Republican base. There is
still no doubting that Palin can powerfully move a Republican crowd. Her
angry attacks on Obama stir supporters far more effectively than does
McCain's more measured style. But she is now largely reduced to stumping in
the rural Republican heartlands of America. She is a powerful tool in working
up the party base, ensuring that they turn out on election day, but her
crossover appeal has gone. Indeed, even Republican critics of Palin have been
stamped on for questioning her. Several high-profile conservative writers -
such as David Brooks in the New York Times and Kathleen Parker in the
National Review - have poured scorn on her. Brooks even called her 'a fatal
cancer on the Republican party'.
But the response among the base was instant and brutal. Parker received no
fewer than 12,000 outraged emails, including some wishing she had been
aborted, after writing that Palin should step down. There seems little doubt
that Palin is still the darling of a huge section of red state America. But
what works for the Republican base no longer works for the country as a whole.
Attack dogs do not win the middle ground, especially ones beset by scandal
and smarting from the damning judgment of Alaska state investigator Steve
Branchflower, who discovered that Todd, Palin's husband, enjoyed
extraordinary access to his wife's closest advisers, despite being unelected
and having no salaried state post. He then used that access to try to get
Wooten fired, the report found. Palin was criticised for taking no action to
rein in her husband and Branchflower concluded there was evidence that she
participated in the campaign against Wooten.
The report states: 'The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin,
at the least, engaged in "official action" by her inaction, if not her active
participation or assistance, to her husband in attempting to get Trooper
Wooten fired (and there is evidence of her active participation).
'She knowingly ... permitted Todd Palin to use the governor's office and the
resources of the governor's office, including access to state employees, to
continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way
to get Trooper Wooten fired.'
It adds that Palin's actions created 'conflicts of interests for subordinate
employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of
facing that superior's displeasure and the possible consequences of that
displeasure'. In sum, Palin breached a code of conduct for state officials
that 'each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to
benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a
violation of that trust'. Not an ideal verdict for a vice-presidential
candidate 23 days from the election.
Troopergate has come as a body-blow to a campaign that was already on a
losing streak. All last week, as the polls showed Obama pulling away, the
atmosphere at McCain rallies had become angrier and angrier. In Wisconsin,
one irate supporter, taking the microphone, urged his chosen candidate on the
stage to do something - anything - to beat Obama. 'I am begging you, sir. I
am begging you. Take it to him!' implored James Harris, a local radio host,
as the crowd clapped and applauded. His mantra was picked up by other
speakers. 'I'm mad! I'm really mad!' said another man, who refused to let go
of the mic and whose furious rant was then broadcast on the nation's TV
screens and the internet.
Fury has become the dominant theme. As the poll numbers have worsened,
Republican supporters seem to have reacted with a mixture of disbelief and
anger. At rally after rally, from Florida to Ohio to Wisconsin, supporters
have urged their campaign to fight harder.
Mention of Obama's name prompts cries of 'traitor', 'treason' and 'kill him'.
Members of the press, universally suspected of Democratic sympathies, are
targeted and insulted. At one rally in the South a black network TV cameraman
was racially abused by a McCain supporter and told: 'Sit down, boy.'
Inside the Obama camp, and increasingly among Republican insiders, there is a
growing feeling: this is what losing campaigns look like. In the wake of
Troopergate, such a conclusion is hard to resist, even though there are more
than three weeks of electioneering ahead. After months of holding on against
what seemed impossible odds, McCain's chances of keeping the White House in
Republican hands are sinking fast.
The wheels are coming off his campaign as the key states of Florida, Ohio and
Pennsylvania all swing firmly towards Obama. In fact, the electoral
battleground has become the Republican turf of Virginia, North Carolina and
Indiana. One national poll late last week put Obama a huge 11 points clear of
McCain.
The deep-seated reasons why McCain's campaign has been swept aside can be
found in the gravity of the economic crisis and the legacy of President
George W Bush, who is leaving after eight years in office with a popularity
rate so disastrous that it compares only to Richard Nixon's. But the Palin
fall-out promises to be damaging because Troopergate is an embarrassment that
is entirely self-inflicted. The stunning, quixotic choice of Palin had seemed
to give McCain a remarkable chance of success. But after the dreadful rollout
to the national media and now 'Troopergate' , Palin has gone from saviour to
liability with a swiftness that has amazed even watchers of her meteoric
career rise. Perhaps the one thing the campaign has going for it is that it
knows it is in trouble. McCain, always a realist, is being frank about the
realities of his plight. 'I'm the underdog. I've always been the underdog
from the beginning,' he told a television interviewer late last week.
What now? Yesterday, the McCain team were engaged in a desperate damage
limitation exercise, rubbishing the Branchflower report as an exercise in
partisan politics. Nevertheless, the Alaskan mud is likely to stick.
McCain's biggest problem is still the sheer scale of the economic crisis. The
collapsing stock market, economic bail-out and banks going bust has shocked
the American electorate. It wiped out any other issue and focused the entire
election on the traditional Democratic territory of the economy. Neither is
that likely to change any time soon.
McCain must also overcome the fact that Americans increasingly blame their
problems on Bush and eight years of Republican rule. Though McCain has tried
to co-opt Obama's image of change and fighting the current administration, it
is a tough trick to pull off.
The fact is the electorate desperately wants change and faces a choice
between a Republican veteran who would be one of America's oldest presidents
and a young, fresh-faced Democrat who would be the first black politician to
sit in the Oval Office. Given that stark choice, the change mantle is hard to
yank from Obama's shoulders.
That has seemingly left only one line of attack: going negative. In the past
week, as newspaper headlines around America have reported the worst week in
Wall Street's history, McCain's campaign has relentlessly touted the name of
Bill Ayers. The 1960s radical was a member of the Weather Underground, an
urban terrorist group that bombed government targets. He is now, however, a
university lecturer in Chicago, with minor links to Obama.
But it is possible that the attacks using Ayers are but the prelude to a more
ominous main event. Despite urging from some quarters within his campaign,
McCain has not yet himself raised the issue of Obama's former pastor, the Rev
Jeremiah Wright. McCain is believed to have termed the issue off-limits so
far, even though news of Wright's incendiary sermons, condemning America as a
racist society and blaming Aids on government, almost derailed Obama's
candidacy when they first emerged.
But, as the November election gets closer and closer, and if the polls do not
shift, McCain may be tempted to let the Wright issue loose. He is already
facing pressure from Palin to do just that. In an interview with conservative
columnist Bill Kristol, Palin urged her running mate to bring the Wright
issue out of the box. 'I don't know why that association isn't discussed more
... but, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he
wants to bring that up,' she said.
That interview of course, took place before the Branchflower report. Now
Palin may find that the attack dogs are chasing her.
--
洞庭閩水,更起高潮。天地為之昭蘇,奸邪為之辟易。咳!我們知道了!
我們覺醒了!天下者我們的天下。國家者我們的國家。社會者我們的社
會。我們不說,誰說?我們不幹,誰幹?刻不容緩的民眾大聯合,我們應
該積極進行! ~ 毛澤東 《民眾的大聯合》
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標題:Palin's Alaska vendetta adds to McCain's woe
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