To the point of redundancy, every discussion of Romney's eventual vice-presidential pick always leads to a snarky comment about "avoiding a Palin" or how Palin lost the election for John McCain. The argument is old and tired. But more importantly, the argument is false. To believe that Sarah Palin "cost" McCain anything you would have to ignore all poll data before and after Palin was selected, the enormous cash advantage of Obama, the historical obsession with Obama, the ad-war landslide in favor of Obama, McCain's odd campaign suspension, and the fact that before Palin, McCain could barely fill a high school gymnasium. So, let's examine reality and put the Palin-bashing to bed.
If you look at the 60 polls prior to Palin being selected as McCain's running-mate taken from June 1st through August 29th this is what you would find:
John McCain and Obama tied in 2 pollsJohn McCain led Obama in 5 Polls
Barack Obama led John McCain in 53 polls.
Yes, for every one poll that showed a McCain lead, Obama held a lead in 10 polls. In that span, Obama's lead in the polls was close to 6 points, fairly similar to the final outcome. I'm not sure how it was Palin's fault that McCain was getting throttled before anyone knew who she was.
A week after the selection of Palin, the Republicans would hold their nominating convention and Palin delivered a speech for the ages. Her favorable numbers immediately soared. In fact, her favorable numbers at that point were greater than those of Barack Obama. A CNN Poll had Palin's favorable ratings at +30 (Obama was +26), Newsweek had Palin at +30 (Obama at +20), and NBC News had Palin at +20 (Obama +21). The McCain-Palin ticket suddenly led Obama-Biden in 7 polls, tied in 3, and trailed in just 2. Palin's highlight-reel speech was a big factor, but a bit of those leads had a lot to do with the traditional "post-convention bounce," too.
Many try to blame the campaign's subsequent downfall on Palin's interview with Katie Couric, but that doesn't sit well with the facts either. After the convention bounce, and before the Palin-Couric interview, Obama led McCain in 8 straight polls by margins of 5, 6, 5, 1, 4, 2, 9, and 4 points.
So why did John McCain really lose?
First, the real turning point was when McCain ridiculously and bizarrely "suspended" his campaign on September 24, 2008 due to the financial crisis. He led in one of a dozen polls before the announcement (by 1 point), and would go on to trail in every one of the 100+ polls taken and included in the RCP average following that move.
It was his destiny to lose. He trailed in 53 of 60 polls before the convention, and after a small convention bounce, he trailed in every poll following. Palin was McCain's last-ditch effort to save his faltering campaign. Yes, McCain was losing before he picked Palin and he lost even with Palin, but not because of Palin. Obama had "history" on his side. Obama had money on his side and he outspent McCain by 2-1 margins. It doesn't matter who you are, that is almost impossible to overcome. Obama was buying 1 hour Prime-time TV weep-fests and McCain was just flat-out broke.
While it's likely statements like "avoid the Palin mistake" and "scared of picking the next Palin" will forever remain, the facts simply don't make the case that Palin cost McCain the election. McCain was never going to win for many, many reasons. And no vice-presidential pick was ever going to save him.
Comments
Well written, substantiated, and argued. Too bad the Beltway GOP is too frightened of “the Left” to fight back against these memes.
Here’s all the dirt the 2008 McCain campaign dug up on Mitt Romney… No wonder they picked Sarah Palin!
Enjoy!
http://cdn2.dailycaller.com/2012/01/McCain-2008-Oppo-File-on-Romney.pdf
Oh, wow, Jim!!! That was knock out material! Thank you.
She did for me. I was set to vote for McCain until I saw Palin attempt to speak. I actually thought she might be retarded.
Who knows what motivates the independent voter? My guess is that Sarah Palin motivated those conservatives who were lukewarm, or worse, about John McCain, and repelled those independents who wanted a predictable, sane, old-fashioned Eisenhowerish GOP. And there were more of the latter than the former.
There are some very likeable qualities about Sarah Palin, and it was revealilng to see how far the Left has moved away from its historic identification with ordinary working people, and towards elitist snobbery, in their response to her. (Remember, these are people who iisten respectfully to the moronic demagoguery of Al Sharpton.)
But there is no doubt at all that she was manifestly not up to the job of being, if necessary, the President of the United States. Of course, you could say that about the current incumbent, too.
I had hoped that she would undertake a crash course, after the election, in the things she needed to know in order to play a role on the national and international stage, but this was not in her character. It’s not just a lack of knowledge on her part.
In any case, I am sure that Mr Romney’s VP pick will reflect lessons learned from the Palin affair.
@Doug1943
Sarah Palin was/ is qualified to be President.
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Sarah Palin has many years (successful) executive management experience at local, regional and state levels including command of the Alaska National Guard and has a history of being a reformer and taking on powerful interests for the benefit of ordinary people.
In Alaska, Sarah Palin’s top priorities included fiscal restraint, limiting the size of government, resource development, education, equitable oil valuation as well as transportation and infrastructure development. Sarah Palin fought for ethics reform and transparency in government.
She has cut spending, forward-funded education, and paved the way for job growth in her hometown.
Sarah Palin has fought to reduce spending and to enforce fiscal discipline as governor of Alaska. She has drastically reduced the growth of the state budget, which has helped to produce a record budget surplus.
She reformed Alaska’s pension system and used surplus dollars to help pay down underfunded pensions, which reduced Alaska’s liabilities by 34.6 % to help provide analysts at Moody’s with enough confidence to later upgrade Alaska’s credit rating to AAA.
For the past four years Sarah Palin has worked tirelessly to fight Obama’s policies and elect conservatives; she basically spearheaded the 2010 victory with her endorsements and rallies all over the country.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/07/who-is-the-real-sarah-palin
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/07/selling_out_sarah_palin.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/241251-k-street-republicans-war-on-palin
Sarah Palin was the only thing that kept McCain competitive. When Sarah Palin was brought on board, the enthusiasm immediately changed.
Where McCain had struggled to fill an arena, lines outside events featuring Palin seemed miles long.
After the bailout vote, support for the Republican ticket collapsed.
In Pew’s exit poll in 2008, voters who said Palin was a factor in their vote went for McCain by a 56-43 margin.
Sarah Palin energized the Party, and carried Senator McCain farther than he could have possibly gone without her.
For the past four years Sarah Palin has worked tirelessly to fight Obama’s policies and elect conservatives; she basically spearheaded the 2010 victory with her endorsements and rallies all over the country.
She has repeatedly offered policy statements on issues such as health care, the Federal Reserve’s money printing in funding our federal deficit, Crony Capitalism, energy independence, etc); her multitude of speeches (and unscripted Q&A’s) at various events, including the India Conclave, Seoul , Hong kong ,etc
She was the first Republican to make a high-profile critique of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, though even earlier she had marked the collapsing value of the dollar as one of her issues.
I was very unhappy that McCain was the nominee UNTIL Sarah Palin became the VP pick. She is the Real Deal. She has passion, she loves America, and she fights crony capitalism and corruption. She understands the energy issues facing this country and the importance of securing our borders. She wants to restore our nation to its original greatness and defend the Constitution. She was and IS a better candidate than Barry, Biden, and Romney. Period. I intend to write her name in as Mitt is a weak candidate being rammed down our throats by the GOP elite. If the Republican delegates were smart and had any guts, they would dump Romney at the convention.
Only idiot and Palin haters would believe such an argument. For the GOPe, they are just scared of loosing their power and elite status in Washington that is why they bashed on Palin, and for the lefty, they just hate for the sake of hate and they are so good at it. They will do anything to destroyed a person along with the likes of Chris Matthew who hopes for a date with Obama. They are bunch of dogs without moral standards.