U.S. PRESIDENTIAL RACE: The Republican vice-presidential candidate may have another way to get to Washington

By LISA VAN DUSEN
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Politics can produce some pretty nasty break-ups, but the ballad of John McCain and Sarah Palin is like something you’d hear on the jukebox at the Mug Shot Saloon in Wasilla at closing time.

He was a white-haired, silver-tongued former flyboy from Washington who strung her along with a lot of big talk about Neiman Marcus, moving sidewalks and unspecified Senate in-charginess.

She was a former Miss Congeniality who’d parlayed a head for up-dos and a knack for self-promotion into the executive mansion of the northernmost state of the union through sheer pluck and a breathtaking lack of self-doubt.

Seems like just yesterday they were mavericking their way across pro- America, with trusty Joe the Plumber in tow, spreading the word about not spreading the wealth.

Now, just weeks later, his friends are blaming her for running up the bills and going rogue and being a whack job; her friends are blaming his friends for caring too much about briefing and geography and for thwarting her presidential ambitions in favour of trying to win this election.

What Sarah Palin may be pondering, beyond the arguable reality of her own roguish whack-jobness and the vastness of Africa, is whether she should have said no.

When those fancy men in their sharp suits came a-calling about how she was on the short list to be John McCain’s lovely and talented assistant, she should have heard the whirr of that buzz saw just off stage right.

She should have known that, if it all went south, the very things they’d be barking out to the world about her would end up being spun into something else altogether: Maverick would become rogue, hockey mom would become hillbilly, gumption would become whack job.

Compared with the things the McCain camp has said about Sarah Palin in the past three weeks, some of the things the rest of us said when Sarah Palin was wheeled out about why they chose her seem downright flattering. The McCain campaign assured everyone that they knew better and that the naysayers should stop being so rude, disrespectful and negative and take their word for it.

A month ago, they were saying she was more than qualified to be president of the United States and leader of the free world and now they’re saying she’s a greedy, stupid, shallow diva. Which is a frighteningly belated way of saying, “It’s a good thing we didn’t win,” and that only confirms all the most unsettling predictions people made about the potential consequences of this pick.

Palin might have known better for her own sake than to sign up for a kamikaze scapegoat mission, but expecting her to just say no in the face of such an offer is like expecting a lottery winner to shrug and say, “Nah, never mind.”

From the moment she accepted, everything she did that had to do with her family, her record, her ability to make it through a network interview or even her spending habits was the campaign’s responsibility because these were the things they chose to overlook.

Presidential campaigns can’t be responsible for every stupid mistake made on their behalf and they can’t even be responsible for every gaffe or unguarded aside of a running mate. But to not vet Palin and then hang her for things that would have turned up in the vetting or that should have been headed off by aides — like the fake Nicolas Sarkozy interview with Mont-real’s CKOI, which has also pranked such other hillbillies as the real Sarkozy and Bill Gates — seems wildly self-serving.

Chances are, this stuff will gain her more sympathy than scorn among her fans in the Republican base, and it may also rally Alaskans, who could be electing a new senator to replace Republican Ted Stevens, who was convicted of corruption too late to remove his name from the Nov. 4 ballot and whose votes are still being counted.

If Stevens is declared the winner in that race and keeps his seat, but his conviction is upheld on appeal, Majority Leader Harry Reid has warned he’ll be expelled from the Senate.

That would create an opening for Palin to get to Washington on her own steam and take a seat in the Senate alongside John McCain. That could be a reunion worthy of a whole ‘nother song.

Her attacks on Barack reveal her hatefulness and ignorance. Now the Secret Service is reporting that her rally rants caused a spike in death plots against Barack. Her ignorance of the reality of murderous white supremacists in America is dangerous. These supremacists are hyper aggressive, hyper-paranoid and hyper-hateful — and worst of all, they willing to act out their demented rage.

We do not need her kind in government. She has no place in civil society.

Her and her husband’s associations with the anti-American Alaskan Seperatist Party are deeply troubling. It shows Palin to be another politician who wants to go to Washington for the express purpose of subverting our government from within. I’m sick of these sickos!

Haven’t we had enough of these right wing haters, who want to destroy everything that patriots have built in America for the past 250 years??