They were on a roll with the “Celebrity” ads, but beyond that, they had nothing. They had a horrible rollout of Palin. Her first interviews were with Gibson and Couric? Hannity, Rush, Glenn Beck, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck all would have given her a chance to get her feet under her for it.

Some of the rumors about Palin are just lame. She didn’t know what countries were in North America? Come on, I’m not stupid. She didn’t know that Africa was a continent and not a country? Not buying it. They are trying to make her sound like a “JayWalking” college student.

Palin gave McCain a chance to win.

She did her best to help a flagging campaign. She gave her all. Someone must go and see to the McCain people. Explain it to them that it is not in their best interests to damage the one gleaming diamond in the Republican party.

Losing is tough on everyone. Blaming it on Sarah helps NO ONE!!!!

We’ll never really know whether or not the infighting between McCain’s staff and Palin is true. Personally my gut tells me that part of it is true, with the rest exxagerated by the media in order to take one last shot at Palin. If I am correct in assuming that a portion of this is true, then my respect for the McCain campaign has even gone lower than the rock-bottom position it was at before the election.

Those guys are in NO position to point fingers. They need to ask themselves the question - whom does this benefit? Certainly not their own tattered resumes. I feel they (the McCain staffers) shouldn’t be able to hold a job in this field again by the way they bungled this campaign, not to mention the inexplicable decision to isolate Palin and then feed her to the wolves with the Gibson and Couric interviews. Especially Couric. Did you see all the bubbly questions she asked Obama? Now why on earth would you send Palin off to her?

I’m just disgusted whenever I hear stories of how the McCain campaign is saying things about Palin. If anything, she should be angry at how they handled her. She didn’t have a choice.

I doubt it will with most conservatives. Palin rocked and brought much of the tepid conservative vote to the ballot box. Unfortunately, the phone calls were not enough and the economy caught us in the shorts. I don’t think it was McCain’s campaigning that hurt the situation - I think it was bound to happen based on the economy.

Only Beltway Elitists and self-righteous Left Coasters could make me do that.

I don’t doubt that there were strong tensions between Gov. Palin and a bunch of Beltway types surrounding McCain. Over the years I’ve worked with lots of them who were brought in by some campaign or another or some administration and who were going to show us barbarians how to do things. I’ve never met anyone who’d spent any appreciable time in DC that I DID NOT HATE; hate deeply, hate viscerally! (And just for the record, that would include my own Congressional delegation.) I can easily see why Sarah would hate them too. I’ve heard and felt the Beltway condescension, and, frankly, it made me want to kill people.

John McCain and his people brought ignominious defeat to the Republican Party. It was a horribly run campaign that never found an identity. What kind of egocentric idiocy brought on the “suspend the campaign” thing? Now a bunch of Beltway types are trying to make themselves look better by kicking Palin to the curb. They all need a job, she doesn’t. Hopefully, we survivors of yesterday’s debacle will make certain that nobody associated with the McCain campaign will ever work in Republican politics again.

The McCain campaign can try to throw Sarah Palin under the bus, but she won’t go down easily.

Achance, my thoughts exactly. Republicans have to start running their campaigns as though they believe that the results matter; that the “wrong” results have unpleasant consequences. Right now they run them as if even they believe that “all politicians are the same.”

The first thing on my list would be, who’s the idiot that leaked the info about Sarah’s wardrobe? Someone needs to make sure that person Never. Works. Again. And if it was, as reported, Romney’s people who were causing those typs of problems, then the Republican party should make sure that Romney’s never ever elected to any post higher than dog catcher.

We all know that the Dems are willing to play rough and dirty. We don’t have to be dirty but we can sure as heck be rough and we should start by enforcing some discipline in the ranks.

John McCain’s campaign was a comedy of errors except it wasn’t funny. Achance, you mentioned suspending the campaign, I say, what’s up with calling fair issues, i.e., Jeremiah Wright, off limits? McCain has his “honorable defeat.” Well that’s really nice for him but it doesn’t get him any respect from the left. They are probably laughing at him behind his back for being weak.

What’s their problem, what Palin did or with the Palin pick itself? If they believe the pick itself cost them the election, then that’s their fault, isn’t it? They picked her, what should she have done, turned it down?

Or do they believe that things she did cost them the election, which makes no sense. A bad interview of the vp nominee doesn’t lose you an election. And the Africa nonsense happened (sic) behind closed doors and just leaked now.

Transparent cya from country club Republican sore losers.

Not for me. They were all lined up in a row at the bottom of…something. I don’t know what.

I thought all the candidates were sadly lacking in one respect or another. While some of them were sound on policy, oh, my God! They were all so freaking boring. None of those guys could have won this election. All the Republicans would have been asleep by the time election day rolled around.

Absent any other personality that represent the Party, it’s Sarah Palin now by default.

to vote for McCain out of principle. He was far from my favorite int eh primaries (Rudy was my first pick) but in good conscience I couldn’t vote for Obama or Hillary, and I wasn’t going to throw another vote to them by going for Barr or skipping that part of the ballot.
The fact of the matter is this; Republicans were not enthusiastic about McCain. Look at how he won the primaries by default. Rudy got done in by a horrible campaign, Fred Thompson could have won if he threw himself into the fray a lot earlier, and Huckabee and Romney rubbed me the wrong way from day one. McCain limped across the finish line and after the primaries he was in trouble.
As I stated, Palin gave McCain a chance. A small one, but a chance. How would have McCain won ANY states with no base to support him.
Any of these chuckleheads that worked in the campaign should be barred from working in politics again. Period. There’s actually a project I heard about called “Project Leper” that is going after the names and petitioning that they never get another job in campaigning again. Anyone know if there’s a website?