This is great news from John McCain!
Via the Wall Street Journal:
I am entertained every time I see these people attack her and attack her and attack her. She’s irrelevant, but they continue to attack her. I am so proud of her and the work that she is doing,” McCain said.
A scant one year after tapping the former Alaska governor to be his running mate, Senator John McCain is "proud" of his nonetheless "irrelevant" former running mate Sarah Palin.
This despite recent polls that show Palin to be the early frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2012.
More below.
A recent CNN poll of the Republican field yielded the following results:
According to the poll, 18 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say the former Alaska governor best reflects core GOP values. In second place, 5 points back, is Sen. John McCain of Arizona, last year's Republican presidential nominee, followed by former Arkansas governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee at 7 percent, former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney at 6 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at 4 percent and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh at 2 percent. Other current Republican leaders were picked by 1 percent or less of those questioned in the poll.
At first glance, those are encouraging numbers for Palin. She leads McCain by a statistically significant 5-point margin. However, ... hang on, let's do the math (18 + 13 + 7 + 6 + 4 + 2 + 1) 49% of Republican voters don't want any of them. In any case, McCain is clearly even less relevant than his former running mate.
Of course these numbers can't tell us the full extent of the damage Palin's book has had on her standing within the Republican establishment; and even though McCain lavishes her with hollow praise, her book was clearly not well received by McCain who, by all accounts (and despite his primary woes), still wields considerable influence in Republican circles.
Perhaps a realization that she'd lost support among the party establishment motivated Palin's recent decision to go birther and consolidate her base?
HUMPHRIES: Sarah Palin here on the Rusty Humphries Show. One of the questions Jason asks is would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?
PALIN: I think the public rightly is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue because I think there are enough members of the electorate that still want answers.
HUMPHRIES: Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?
PALIN: I think it’s a fair question just like I think past associations and past voting records. All of that is fair game. You know, I’ve got to tell you too, I think our campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area. We didn’t call out Obama and some of his associates on their records and what their beliefs were, and perhaps what their future plans were, and I don’t think that was fair to voters to not have done our job as candidates and a campaign to bring to light a lot of things that now we’re seeing manifest in the administration.
Whatever. I think the more likely reasons she "went there" are:
- Her inability to control her
stupidity message in front of a microphone.
- Her racism.
And reason number two is particularly galling because the McCain campaign had received warnings from the Secret Service that such conspiracy theories were fueling threats against Obama. So when she "goes there", she knows what's she's doing. Nonetheless, her current political strategy is one of bucking the party elites and playing to the base. Frankly, I can't see what other cards she has to play.
Finally, speaking of irrelevance, Joe the Plumber had this to say about Palin:
"I hope she doesn't (run) because I think she could do a lot for America outside of office," Wurzelbacher said. "And I think she could rally Americans to get together and make some changes from the grassroots level. I think she could be an incredible rallying point, and I think that's where she could serve America best."