"How Palin Came to the Top of the List
August 29, 2008
ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg reports: It wasn't until Sunday night that John McCain, after meeting with his four top advisers, finally decided he could not tap independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to be his running mate. One adviser, tasked with taking the temperature of the conservative base, had strongly made the case to McCain that it would be a disaster for the party and that the base would revolt. McCain concluded he could not go that route.
The next day, McCain studied the three men at the top of his shortlist: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. All had different strengths and negatives, but McCain was not satisfied. None of them had what McCain believed he needed to do -- and would have done -- with Lieberman....
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"Is Sarah Palin Joe Liberman's ticket ... back onto the ticket?....
I am going to go out on a limb here.
Sarah was not announced as VP until after Hillary had failed to wrest the Democratic nomination away from Obama. It could be that Sarah was a desperation ploy to have a woman on the ticket to woo disaffected Hillary voters. If so, having a beauty queen opposed to birth control and abortion was a major miscalculation.
Or maybe something else is up.
We know that McCain was still pushing for Joe Lieberman to be VP as of last Sunday. McCain might have chosen Palin in a desperation ploy, or maybe out of pique at being denied his first choice.
Or... and here is where the convention will get interesting, the GOP leadership has realized that McCain cannot win against Obama, either with Lieberman or without, and saddled him with a crippling choice for VP in a ploy to get McCain to decide to refuse the nomination, thereby opening up a floor fight for a new set of nominees.
Yes, it's kind of a wild idea. But right now I am having a hard time seeing the GOP as being that incredibly stupid in choosing Sarah Palin as the candidate for VP." -- Webmaster of Wake the Flock Up
