Pit Bull Palin Proves to be the Real Maverick
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin continued to distance herself from the Republican Party’s establishment and John McCain on Sunday by making fun of the Republican National Committee’s decision to buy clothes worth $150,000 for her.
When the story first broke that the RNC had spent such an amount on clothes for her, Palin responded that she was unaware of it and that, if she would have know, she would not have accepted the clothes.
Nonetheless, Palin believes, the story did tremendous damage to her image as a hockey mom and, therefore, possibly to her political future.
Like most other Republicans out there Palin seems to believe that the Republican ticket will lose in November. As such, she believes that the best way for her to get ahead in her political life and to be a major player of the Republican Party in the years ahead is to distance herself from the losing campaign as much as possible.
In recent weeks she has rebuked McCain on a number of issues such as an amendment to the constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman, something McCain opposes, she criticized the decision not to go after Barack Obama over his association with radical pastor Reverend Wright and, last but not least, she said she did not want to pull the campaign out of Michigan, believing she would be able to win the state for the Republican ticket if only she would be allowed to campaign there.
Speaking and campaigning on Sunday, Palin took her maverick credentials and criticism of her own party and campaign a step further. She wore, she said, a jacket she had owned for a while now, which she paid for by her own money.
“I grabbed a jacket this morning — my own jacket,” she told a cheering crowd. “Away from the filter of the media, I get to tell you the whole clothes thing. Those clothes, they are not my property. They’re like the lighting and the stage, like everything else the RNC purchased.”
It was a clear attempt to distance herself from the RNC and its ‘gaffe’ to buy her clothes worth $150,000 and will likely make her even less popular among establishment Republicans than she already is.
According to insider quoted at several newspapers, Palin blames her handlers, appointed to her by McCain and his top advisers, for her horrific favorability numbers. She believes that her image suffered terrible, not because of anything she did, but because of the way the McCain campaign presented her to the nation. Since she believes that she and McCain are losing, she is now busily trying to position herself from a powerful and influential role in the coming years. This means that she has to convince Republicans that not she but McCain and his top advisers were responsible for the upcoming defeat.
There’s no doubt that Palin will be accused of McCain’s defeat, should that happen, but I think you’re reading too much into every word she says. She’s allowed to explain herself on the clothing issue, and though she had disagreed with ‘the campaign’ at times, it comes along with her statement that McCain doesn’t want her to be his yes-man. We don’t know who are the people back-stabbing Palin in the McCain campaign, since they’re all nameless, and probably not high placed at all. But to point to something McCain said when asked if he’d like to defend Palin: he doesn’t defend Palin, he praises her.
There is a thin line between disloyalty and salvaging one’s own future. But for the grace of God and the McCain campaign, Palin would not be in the national spotlight. She owes McCain the decency of being a team player, whether or not it means going down with the ship. In some cases, it’s now whether you win or lose, but how you play the game and the quality of the relationships you make along the way.
If McCain is the campaign leader and the ship sinks, he will be held responsible, not Sarah Palin. However, since Sarah Palin’s message is increasingly conflicting with John McCain’s, and she chooses to control her own message, she does so at her own risk. I, for one, will never forget her disloyalty. This speaks volumes for her own character, and unwillingness to really put Country First.
I’m not entirely sure why Palin should get off so easily on this. Can you imagine what would happen if Biden publicly disagreed with Obama on leaving a state or was publicly disagreeing with the campaign?
I can:
“Oh boy, another Biden gaffe.”
In fact, he’s already gotten some of this, and rightfully so. So why does Palin become a “maverick” when she disagrees with the campaign or disagrees with McCain on leaving a state?
Michael:
1. Biden does it accidentally
2. Palin on purpose
A gaffe is an accidental mistake.