Joe The Plumber vs. Sarah The Rogue Diva

All of the Republican rhetoric of the past few months stomped out by the McCain campaign.  I will get to that in a minute, but I am not sure what will be worse for the Republican Party a loss in a week or an unlikely win.  I believe that most of the American public (excepting the most diehard Republican “fans) already had a pretty good idea about much of all of this, but I think it is simply a vindication of the media that has been taking the brunt of the blame for creating these perceptions.

In case you have not heard all of this, there are endless reports of dissention in the McCain ranks centering on Governor Palin.  The hero of the Republican party is now a “rogue” “diva” candidate undermining the McCain campaign.  The pride and joy of the campaign has become the poster child for the statement “Pride cometh before the fall.”

The latest episode has to do with the fact that Sarah Palin decided to write her own script and inadvertently distract attention from the campaign by not letting the clothing argument die.  The campaign over the past couple of days has drifted from “The Testing of Barack Obama” and “Joe the Plumber” to “Sarah the Rogue Diva.”

CNN has been reporting that members of the McCain camp are saying she has no relationships of trust with anyone in the campaign or even her own family.  That she sees herself as the beginning and end of all wisdom.  She is being described using words such as “diva” and “rogue” and on and on.

That however, is not the serious statements, those are just the entertainment to warm us up for the real bombs.  We all remember the Katie Couric interview and some other early appearances where she looked lost.  Then, after all of the talk about Senator Obama as some kind of rock star, the main defense for her presence on the campaign trail is her popularity.   Then came all of the “media bias” talk about the sexism and the evil “leftwing” media trying to paint her as someone who has no idea what is going on and has no business running for vice president.

Now suddenly, sources of many of these arguments in her defense, are turning one-eighties from within the McCain Campaign.  There are reports that members of the McCain camp are saying that she had a lack of understanding on some fundamental key issues on a level one person called “dramatic.”  Another described her as the hardest candidate to get up to speed in history.

The rhetoric is still there about how she is being picked on or that people are being mean and sexist, and on and on.  Let me spell this out.  THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HER BEST POLITICALLY ARE NOW SAYING THESE THINGS!

Again the Republican Party is doing the worst job of damage control imaginable.  The polls show that people believe she is not qualified and is hurting Senator McCain, the media has been leaning that way, Republican Party members have one by one been leaning that direction, she is found guilty of previous ethics violations while on the campaign, she holds a rally for herself a week before the election when the actual candidate is behind in all polls, and now the leadership within the campaign is verifying what the public has been suspecting all along. 

The weird part is the Republican folks are all over the media still rallying support around her far more than anything they are doing for Senator John McCain.   

It is like a ship with a hole in it.  The crew keeps trying to patch the hole but on the other side of the ship there is one crew member who keeps cutting holes on the other side of the ship.  The crew keeps having to patch the new holes and is constantly being distracted from patching the original hole.  The ship is sinking and now the “rogue” crewmember keeps punching more holes in the ship.   If you were on the ship, what would you do with that crewmember?  Apparently in the Republican camp has decided that the solution to the holes is to blame the mean people on the other boats.

The problem here is not policy and that is why nobody is focusing on policy, the problem is “WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING IN THE REPUBLICAN CAMP?”  This is the question that those of us who are not Republican are wondering and that is what the media is covering.  Most of us are satisfied that Senator Joe Biden is not the best candidate in the world, but he is savvy enough to be a vice-president.  He is no longer interesting. 

But boy, when you spend all of your time getting your clips on television attacking somebody and complaining you turn even the person who is actually in the lead into the underdog and should not wonder why so many are so interested in seeing these Republican candidates beaten.