McCain’s media person, Nicolle Wallace, said that as far as she knew the closest Gov. Palin came to being a “diva” was once asking for a Diet Dr. Pepper. Wallace was the one who made the media decisions for the Palin effort and was on leave from CBS for the campaign.

The McCain campaign only allowed her to bring one Alaskan with her, her campaign manager from the governor’s race. This was a McCain disaster, start to finish.

i’m really looking forward to her taking more of the entrenched good ol boys club, although it’s scary to think what a republican party with a smart and likeable and savvy candidate can do.

yep lands end would definitely have been better.

After the election she has added allies in the Alaskan legislature, so I have a feeling she will settle some scores.

She has four years to hit the books, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her challenge Lisa Murkowski in the 2010 Senate race, after all, she has a history of taking out incumbent Murkowsis to win the Republican nomination. With a complete term as the governor, and a couple of years as Senator, she would be in a good position to run for the Presidency in 2012. She knows the process now, and she won’t make the same mistakes twice.

The Republican Party is in disarray and she is one of the few stars they have. She has the skills when she isn’t tied down by the robots who ran McCain’s campaign, generally the second team of the Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004. She has the support of the ground game of the Republican Party, the evangelicals, who wouldn’t come out for McCain. The attack ads were classic Rove tactics, but McCain didn’t understand that the Presidential candidate isn’t supposed to get involved in the attacks.

Stupid people don’t stay alive in the Alaskan bush, anymore than the Australian Outback.

The only problem she has is the media. The media hate her, just like Al Gore, John Edwards, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. They are her biggest obstacle.

If things don’t turn around in the next four years, who knows what the voters will do.

Whilst Flynt is hopeful with Obama now elected “politics will become more open and that the good ol’ boys will no longer have a monopoly on it and now that getting more people to vote,” he is still concerned over Palin’s popularity.

“Unfortunately, there’s a downside to that to because about a third of our electorate is too dumb too vote, I hate to say that, but it’s true… and those mobs who like Sarah Palin and say, “I like you, I can identify with you, you’re just like me’ and I say, ‘Yeah moron she’s just like you! You’re both morons!’’’

Yup! Especially since these are mostly the same morons that voted for that other moron, G.W. Bush, twice! The Repugs, as usual, went after the lowest common denominator (the moron class), but this time, the rest decided to get off their asses and voted. LOL

A couple of formal outfits for dressy events, but the image they built for her was wrong and was at odds with the way she talked and what she represented.

Landsend would have been a better image than St. Laurent.

ok, sarah’s clothes stylist has better taste than cindy’s clothes stylist.

That campaign was insane. They needed someone to make McCain lose the death pallor that he had in early campaign appearances and they brought in that media make-up artist for $8K+ per month. There were pictures of McCain being worked on right after the person was hired and he sure as hell looked healthier on camera afterwords.

As for Sarah Palin, her hair stylist came from the salon that Cindy McCain uses, and I would assume that the make-up artist was another Cindy innovation. How in hell would the governor of Alaska even know about these people?

Cindy McCain if a fricking millionaire, she certainly doesn’t care about other people’s money. She lives in Arizona and goes to a salon in Thousand Oaks, California. She probably doesn’t think there are stores that sell clothes other than Saks and Neiman-Marcus.

my take too, except that sarah palin has wa-a-a-a-ay better taste in clothes than cindy mccain does.

The geography bit was interesting, since the Africa thing was a Bushism several months ago, and given that McCain, who was running on national security credentials, thought that Afghanistan shared a border with Iraq, I would question the validity of any geography claims coming from the campaign staff.

The shopping sprees have Cindy McCain written all over them. If you had seen the campaign for governor that Palin ran, you would know she doesn’t care about clothes. She shops at a consignment shop in Anchorage [upscale second-hand store], not from a catalog. They say they spent $40K on clothes for Todd Palin – the guy is a commercial fisherman and oil field worker who drives a pick-up and we are supposed to believe he wants to wear suits and ties!?

Governor Palin was elected because she is a populist – she does what people want, and that annoys the career politicians who do what lobbyists want. She filed an ethics complaint against the chairman of the Alaskan Republican Party that resulted in his being forced to resign from a government job and pay a $12K fine. She backed a challenger to long-time Alaskan Congressman Don Young’s re-election. She was one of the earliest people to call for Ted Stevens to come clean on the ethics complaints against him. She backed and signed a new bi-partisan ethics bill for Alaska. Her support for a challenger to state senate president and Republican Lyda Green, caused Green to decide to retire. She defeated incumbent Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary for governor and ran her campaign without any support from the party.

The Republican establishment in Alaska hates her. John McCain served in the US Senate with Frank Murkowski and now serves with Murkowski’s daughter and Stevens. He certainly didn’t hear any kind words about her from them.

George Washington couldn’t have won running as a Republican for President this year, because there was a fairly uniform shift of about 8% to the Democrats across the country. What that means is that the Republican needed at least a 9% advantage in a state to retain it, and there aren’t that many states with that kind of advantage. The shift was caused by 8 years of the Hedgemony.

In 4 years, Sarah Palin could make a decent run for the nomination, but only if she runs as Sarah Palin. She had to learn a “role” to run as John McCain’s Vice President, and mouth policies she didn’t really believe in. She “played” the neo-conservative evangelical for the Republican base, and she isn’t that person when she’s governor of Alaska. She has a public record and people who look at it unfiltered can see that for themselves.

As for the Senate vote in Alaska – Ted Stevens has been good for Alaska in the Senate. Not as good as for himself, but the perception is he has gotten a lot of money for Alaska. We had the same problem with a long-time Congresscritter down here who finally had to resign because of his ethics problems. In both cases the money would have been allocated anyway, because a lot of it was related to defense issues that required it be spent in the area, but being politicians they claimed it was only through their diligence that the money was spent. Alaskans will stay with Stevens, just like local voters stayed with Bob Sikes, mostly because change is “scary”.

There will have to be a special election in Alaska if Steven’s conviction is upheld on appeal, and I can’t see any reason for Sarah Palin to resign as governor and run. She certainly isn’t going to resign so she can be appointed for no more than 90 days by the current lieutenant governor. The Senate isn’t a promotion for a governor, although some have tried to use it for a Presidential run.

I won’t vote for Palin, but I recognize her for who she is, not who people want to make her. The McCain campaign should have let John pick his own running mate. It wouldn’t have made any difference, but it might have been a happier campaign. If they had wanted to enliven the base they should have picked Huckabee who was the real thing and a much better fit with McCain.

Brad Blog:
Details on ‘What in the Hell Happened in Alaska’ and Georgia and Oregon…

Think Progress:
Palin spent more on clothes than previously reported, McCain aides furious at her ‘outrageous profligacy.’

Alaskans are wary of Palin’s return.

Fox’s Carl Cameron: Palin ‘didn’t understand that Africa was a continent.’

PS. I stand by everything I ever said about that selfish, self-indulgent, ignorant idiot… Palin. 🙂 One more for the road:
Palin Goes Rogue, Ignores Press Aides’ Exhortations To End Press Conference

Oh, and apparently she wanted to give a speech after McCain conceded to Obama, but the people who chose her as McCain’s running mate vetoed the request. LOL I wish they had let her give her 2012 campaign speech! That would have just been so classy of her, and typical. LOL

And, I love this one from that slimeball SOB Novak:
Novak: 3 Million Vote Margin = Mandate For Bush; 7 Million For Obama = No Mandate

BTW, I hope Obama and his family have titanium underwear. Seems there are a few serious assassination threats already, including *they who shall not be mentioned*, the KKK (which is alive and well, in spite of people wishing to believe otherwise).

Another interesting item was that most of the World leaders were praising Obama, except Russia. From Think Progress:

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: “I know that the values we share in common and the policies we work on together will enable us, these two countries, to come through these difficult economic times and build a safer and more secure society for the future.”

Spanish PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero: Obama’s victory opens “a new era of hope” for America. “This is a triumph which brings hope and confidence for a world which is experiencing moments of difficulty and uncertainty.”

Australian PM Kevin Rudd: “Today what America has done is turn [Martin Luther King’s] dream into a reality.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “At a time when all of us must face huge challenges together, [Obama’s] election raises great hope in France, in Europe and elsewhere in the world.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Obama’s election is “historic.” The German government “is fully aware of the importance and of the worth of our transatlantic partnership.”

Former South African President Nelson Mandela: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”

While Israeli and Palestinian leaders voiced hopes that Obama would speed up the slow moving Middle East peace process, the Russians offered a unique reaction to the U.S. presidential election:

President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday that Russia will deploy missiles in territory near NATO member Poland in response to U.S. missile defense plans. He did not say whether the short-range Iskander missiles would be fitted with nuclear warheads. […]

He said he hoped Barack Obama would act to improve relations with Russia but he did not offer congratulations to the president-elect.

Indeed, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin noted that Obama’s biggest challenge would be managing a punishing agenda of various crises in the U.S. and around the world. “He will need to fight on every front,” he said.

UPDATE: During the Prime Minister’s question time in Britain today, David Cameron, leader of the conservative party, crossed ideological lines and said Obama’s victory proves the U.S. is again “a beacon of hope” and “change”:

CAMERON: Can I also join the Prime Minister in congratulating Barack Obama on his stunning victory in American elections. … This is a really important moment, to gone from the horror of segregation to the election of a black president in just four decades is an incredible transformation. And it shows that the United States is a beacon of hope and opportunity and change.

Ahhh, yes! 😉