Let me defend her seeing as how no one else will

Geraghty the Indispensable calls it "craven and stupid." The Melbourne Herald-Sun gives us the skinny on the comments being made about her. In short the knives have been pulled out for the one person that certain Republicans are blaming for John McCain's loss on Tuesday night.

Sarah Palin. Yep, they're blaming her. They're jumping on the Noonan/Parker/Buckley bandwagon, and claiming she was the reason John McCain lost. The "see I told you so" meme goes a little something like this.

-- She was a rookie in worse ways than Obama, and didn't know anything.

-- The clothes shopping spree was all her doing, and she and her family were "Wasilla hillbillies" enjoying the E-ticket ride at the campaign's expense.

-- She sounded like a hick from the sticks that made a fool of herself on countless occasions.

-- She showed she was ill-prepared for the campaign all because of two gotcha interviews conducted by two of the MSM's most liberal and unwatchable "journalists. (Yes, I use that word loosely for a reason.)

Memo to the McCain staffers that are flapping their yaps: Sarah Palin was the one attracting tens of thousands to campaign rallies. Sarah Palin is the reason why John McCain racked up over 57 million votes. Sarah Palin is what energized the base in ways McCain could have only dreamed of.

Let me be perfectly honest here (not that I'm not always honest). Marcie and I supported John McCain and voted for John McCain because he was our nominee. But we weren't excited about him. For us, prior to the Palin announcement, it was "anybody but Barry" for us. But with Palin being added to the ticket we started to hear things from her that we'd never heard from moderate McCain.

We started to hear conservatism preached. When she spoke of things like taxes and national defense, it was Reagan-esque, and the base got fired up. For a brief moment we actually believed he could pull off beating Obama in the election because the base was backing his veep. The future, for the base, looked bright just like the "shining city on a hill" that was once spoken of.

Now for the facts. McCain and his handlers botched her roll-out. Yeah, the unveiling went down without a hitch, and her convention speech rocked St. Paul. But then they toned her down, and kept her bottled up. They claimed she needed to "bone up" on some issues, and that was their excuse for keeping her away from the one medium they despised. Let's face facts, folks. John McCain has NEVER been a fan of the New Media. In fact, the God's honest truth is he blames us for the failure of his immigration reform that went down in flames (no pun intended) in 2007.

So instead of getting her on every talk radio show they could find, instead of opening her up to blogger conference calls, they tossed her to the wolves. They gave her Charlie Gibson, who was doing the poorest impression of William F. Buckley I've ever seen, and then they tossed her to Katie Couric who has been a joke as a journalist ever since she left The Today Show. (No offense Katie, but you stink, and your ratings prove that. The only boost in ratings you've gotten since going to the CBS Evening News came from the Palin interviews.)

The "media darling" candidate in John McCain just couldn't shut himself, or Sarah Palin, away from the wolves in the MSM. He couldn't resist opening her up to ridicule on SNL. He even went back to Letterman -- hat in hand after snubbing him -- and didn't take him on once about the cracks he made about Sarah Palin.

Before his staff goes on to continue blaming Sarah Palin for John McCain's failure, they might want to take a look in the mirror. After all, what were John McCain's mistakes int he eyes of the base?

Could it be that we were sick of hearing him repeat he'd work across the aisle? More than likely, this ticked off the base more than anything. Why? Because we'd seen how the GOP "worked across the aisle" throughout the Bush years. It wasn't that both sides compromised. It was Democrats that were unwavering, and Republicans forced to capitulate to their demands. (Honestly, very few Republicans in Congress stood up to the Democrats, and when they did -- save Mitch McConnell who was and will likely be the Minority Leader in the Senate -- they were marginalized by their own party.)

Could it be the fact that he was short on specific issues, and long on character? This is another possibility. Like John Kerry in 2004, John McCain tried to run on his honorable service. No one is going to discount that, and no one will criticize him for that service. But that service was thirty years ago. To put it bluntly "Johnny, what have you done for us lately other than be a pain in our @$$?" He talked about staying strong and on offense in this war, which is a no-brainer to begin with. This nation doesn't like losing a war, and the soldiers hate tipping out the door when the job isn't done. He talked about the economy, but every time he did, he had to take swipes at corporate executives and their salaries. (Um, I don't want to hear it considering how much his wife makes running Hensley -- the largest distributor of Budweiser in the southwest.) He talked about naming names when it came to out of control spending and malfeasance in Washington, but only once did he ever name names in the Freddie/Fannie fiasco!

Hist staffers can try to spin him as the last, best hope for the party, but in reality he wasn't. He won the nomination, and as Republicans we were asked to support him. We did. But he didn't support us. He didn't support what we believed in. People can say what they want (and if any of my chat-mates end up reading this, I'm sure to pi$$ a few of them off) but had McCain been elected, we wouldn't have gotten a Reagan Republican. We would have gotten a moderate Republican much like Bush-41 and Bush-43. (And no, you can't argue that point because you only need to look at Bush-43's domestic record to see he was, in fact, a big-government conservative, which is an oxymoron in and of itself.)

John McCain lost this race because he wasn't specific on ideas. He lost this race because he just seemed like he didn't want to fight. He lost this race because he made a number of mistakes, and among them was the talk of bipartisanship. And now, even after that defeat, he seems to think he's the voice of the party; urging Republicans to support incoming president Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin offered her conciliatory congratulations to Obama and Biden, but you can bet she's not going to roll over for them. They stand for everything that is contrary to her conservative beliefs. For her to play the go-along, get-along game that McCain wants to would have been like asking Reagan to roll over for Tip O'Neill and accept the fact tat he wasn't going to accomplish anything.

Whether the party moderates like it or not, their days as spokespeople are numbered. The base is sick of them, and the base isn't liking what's being done to Sarah Palin. His staffers can say what they want, but in truth they have no one to blame for the loss but themselves, and the candidate they worked for. Sarah Palin brought a breath of fresh air into a lackluster campaign, and she brought with her the hope of the future -- an energized Republican base. The only thing she couldn't do was inspire the Republican naysayers to come out of their homes on election day, and we really can't blame them for staying home. Knowing what they knew about McCain, they knew that he wasn't the change that was needed in Washington despite his speeches to the contrary.

Publius II