by the Puppet Mistress | Maybe they don't value Palin's "refreshing candor" as much as we were led to believe? They certainly seem eager to put her back in the box for the foreseeable future. After all: Republicans.
Apparently, Sarah Palin is fleeing the lower 48 in order to get out of the way of the press. (Think Progress) Never mind that we only just met her: "McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace dismissed the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin has yet to take any questions from the press. “So what?” she scoffed." (Think Progress)
In fact, they are showing a well-nigh Bush-like in-your-face defiance regarding determination to keep her from, um, "talking off-message." When asked by Joe Scarborough if the campaign can really afford to put their shiny new VP back in storage, McCain strategist Rick Davis answer truly demonstrated that McCain-Palin would be the true spiritual successors of Bush and Cheney:
We can afford anything we want to do. … We’re going to do what we think is in our best interest. If that means access to the press, we’ll give it to you. (Think Progress)
[Newsweek's Howard] Fineman's source (and mine) said she'd spent much of the time between now and the middle of next week (when her son leaves for Iraq) straightening her affairs, tending to her official duties and packing her bags — having departed abruptly for the national stage. She also seems unlikely to do many major media interviews between now and then, and the campaign seems to feel no urgency about putting her on the Sunday shows.
The campaign will "also use the plane time and time on the ground to begin the education of Sarah Palin," Fineman said. "They want to take that pause to train." (Ben Smith)
Yeah, I'll bet.
Palin herself seems to have decided that candor is no longer the order of the day. The Anchorage Daily News is strongly critical of her stonewalling with respect to her use of political influence in the service of personal vengeance in that Alaska scandal known as "Troopergate." Whatever else you think about Sarah, she is certainly proving herself the spiritual heir of the Bush administration in this respect.
According to the report:
Gov. Sarah Palin is taking the wrong approach to Troopergate. She should be practicing the open and transparent, ethical and accountable government she promised when running for governor and boasts about now that she's on the national stage.
Instead, Gov. Palin has begun stonewalling the Legislature's attempt to get the bottom of allegations that she, her family or staff violated ethical or state personnel rules....
The allegations are that she, her family or administration improperly pressured then-Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire Gov. Palin's ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten, who had been in the middle of a custody dispute with Palin's sister.
In July, when legislators started talking about conducting an investigation, Palin denied any wrongdoing and said she welcomed an investigation.
"Hold me accountable," she said. (Anchorage Daily News)
Yeah! Except....not really.
Recently, she seems to have changed her mind and to have had her lawyer use an admirably crafty maneuver to sidestep the "accountability" proceedings. And the inferences are rather obvious.
Palin's lawyer has asked the Legislature to drop its investigation. He had the governor file an ethics complaint against herself, in a bid to turn the entire matter over to the state Personnel Board, which would hire an independent investigator.
This is not an open and transparent attempt to establish Gov. Palin's accountability. It is an attempt to drag out the investigation until after voters decide the fate of her vice-presidential bid. (Anchorage Daily News)
If you don't know the details because you've been living under a rock, they're in the article.
Anyway, now that McCain is under Karl Rove's Svengali-like spell, he seems to be re-imagining himself as a new version of Bush/Cheney:
The McCain campaign reportedly told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder not to expect any one-on-one interviews with Palin any time soon. Despite McCain’s pledge of transparency — even proposing a regular President’s question time with Congress modeled after the British version — he has been shutting off press access for months. Yesterday, a Time reporter explained that McCain bizarrely refused to answer his questions, “like he’d been body-snatched.”
Davis insisted that “there are no strings attached” to media access to McCain. Yet just this week, McCain abruptly canceled an interview with Larry King as punishment for a tough CNN interview with one of his spokesmen. What’s more, top McCain aide Mark Salter said that “only the good reporters” would get the best seats in the new campaign plane. “You have to earn it,” he said.
Yes, the McCain campaign has learned its lesson: straight talk doesn't pay.
Keeping Sarah "holed up in Alaska": a winning strategy? Alaska blog Mudflats observes:
: "Nobody even knows who she is. She read one prepared statement twice in a row, and then gave a speech written by Bush's speechwriter. Unless you're on the internet searching compulsively for YouTube videos of obscure Palin moments in churches and assembly meetings, or diving head first in to the blogosphere, you haven't got a clue."
Yes, that's got the hallmark on it all right. The McCain campaign seems determined to prevent any damage that might ensue from letting Sarah be Sarah until such time as she is prepared to be taken out of the box again and held up for inspection by the evangelical segment of the base.
Cf. Sadly, No!
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