Greta: About Those People Claiming Sarah Palin Cost John McCain the Election

By Gary P Jackson

It’s been said a lie can make it around the world before the truth can get it’s pants on. No set of lies told about someone fits that description better than the many lies told about Sarah Palin over the years.

I could make a list but that would take up too much time, and bandwidth. Suffice it to say Sarah never banned books, consulted a witch doctor, charged rape victims for rape-kits, said she could see Alaska from her house, [but Tina Fay did] nor was she a member of a secessionist group. She IS Trig’s mother, and no, she hasn’t had any “enhancement surgery”!

One of the most persistent lies is the one that she cost John McCain his chance to be President. Though the liberal media will trot it out from time to time, it’s the corrupt Republican Establishment™ that tells the lie over and over. The more powerful Sarah gets, the more the lie gets recycled. She’s a direct threat to the national leadership of the party, just as she was to the leadership of the Alaska Republican Party. [which she sent packing]

So, about once every two weeks someone has to dig up proof that Sarah Palin was really the only bright spot in the McCain campaign, and had McCain listened to her, instead of Steve Schmidt, he might very well be President today.

This time Greta does the heavy lifting. She’s using Fox News polls, which I find tend to understate Republican support when polling against a democrat. But even their polls show a sustained 6 point bump for the campaign, one that put them ahead of Obama for the first time, right after Sarah was chosen, and gave her masterful speech at the Republican convention.

McCain would maintain this lead until the financial meltdown, and he decided to suspend his campaign to head off to Washington without a real plan of action. It was a fatal mistake and one a smart campaign manager would have advised against, but we’re talking Steve Schmidt here, so smarts don’t enter into the equation.

The usual goal of campaigns when picking a VP is “do no harm” and I’m hard pressed to think of any VP candidate that ever moved the needle in a significant way, one way or the other. To McCain’s credit, he recognized a true leader and inspirational figure in Sarah Palin. It was an inspired choice, and a highly popular one. Problem is, once he had her on his team, he had no idea what to do with her. And again, he had the most incompetent campaign team in the business, who were really clueless, and maybe just a tad intimidated.

Sarah Palin was a seasoned veteran. An old pro with lots of CEO experience, as well as experience navigating troubled waters. She managed to take on the entire corrupt Republican Party in Alaska, and cleaned their clock. She took on Big Oil and all their dirty tricks, and whipped them as well. Barack Obama should have been a light snack for Mama Grizzly.

We can go on and on about Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace’s incompetence, but for the fact the “good old boys” in the Republican Party are on a mission to destroy Sarah Palin, and those two have become shills for the Establishment, we’d forget them completely. They are two unremarkable losers.

Take a look at what Greta found, and I challenge anyone to show me where a VP pick had such a positive impact on a campaign. I’ll add, no one in politics has as powerful of an endorsement as Sarah Palin. It’s the platinum standard. Her seal of approval is highly coveted and an almost guarantee the candidate will win. The notion Sarah Palin cost John McCain the election is as ridiculous as ridiculous can be.

I have heard so much about whether Governor Palin was good for the 2008 Republican ticket or not – so I decided to do something a bit old fashion. I went back and looked at some facts. I looked at the Fox News Channel poll numbers from the Presidential race of 2008. What I discovered was quite interesting and may rub against what has become the conventional wisdom for some as to why Senator McCain’s poll numbers went down late in the fall.

I looked at 3 sets of polls –

1/ how Senator McCain was doing right JUST BEFORE he selected Governor Palin as a running mate;

2/ how Senator McCain was doing RIGHT AFTER he chose her; and

3/ how Senator McCain was doing AFTER THE FINANCIAL CRISIS HIT ABOUT SEPTEMBER 20.

Polling from 2008/Financial Crisis dates and polling

1 Pre-Palin polling

-If the 2008 presidential election were held today (August 19-20), would you vote for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain?

McCain 39%

Obama 42%

Other/don’t know 19%

* Senator McCain was losing by 3 points BEFORE he announced Gov Palin his running mate

2. Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate on August 29, 2008

Post-Palin polling

-If the 2008 presidential election were held today (September 8-9,2008), would you vote for:

McCain/Palin 45%

Obama/Biden 42%

Other 2%

Don’t know 10%

* After Governor Palin was selected as the running mate, Senator McCain was up 3 points (thus a 6 point increase after Governor Palin was chosen.)

3. and two Post-financial crisis polling (September 22-23, 2008)

Obama/Biden 45%

McCain/Palin 39%

Other 2%

Don’t know 13%

I looked at another poll regarding the post financial crisis and the numbers were essentially the same.

Post-financial crisis polling (October 8-9, 2008)

Obama/Biden 46%

McCain/Palin 39%

Other 3%

Don’t know 11%

* After the financial crisis, Senator McCain’s number cratered 6 points.

More here.

This isn’t rocket science. The numbers don’t lie. With Sarah Palin, McCain was winning. On his own, he was losing.

The 2008 McCain campaign is a case study in what not to do if one wants to win. But of all the things the McCain campaign did wrong, choosing Sarah Palin wasn’t one of them!