BY TAYLOR MARSH
Sarah Palin would never have been John McCain’s running mate in 2000. Back then he was a different kind of man. Read John Heilemann:
I have sat across from Chris Matthews enough times now, participating in
that psychotropic ritual known as Hardball, that I thought I’d heard
it all—but then the other night he uncorked a doozy that actually rendered
me speechless. (No, that is not a misprint.) “Let’s start with
John McCain,” he said to me on the air shortly after the first presidential
debate between McCain and Barack Obama. “Do you think he was too troll-like
tonight? You know, too much of a troll?” I laughed. “Seriously,”
Chris went on. “Do people really want to put up with four years of that?
Of [him] sitting there, angrily, grumpily, like a codger?”As both a media figure and a human being, Matthews is sui generis—and
yet what made his comments so remarkable was how unremarkable they were. In
the past several weeks, the shift of press-corps sentiment against McCain
has been stark and undeniable, even among heavies such as Matthews long accused
by the left of being residents of the Arizonan’s amen corner. Jonathan
Alter, Joe Klein, Richard Cohen, David Ignatius, Jacob Weisberg: all former
McCain admirers now turned brutal critics. Equally if not more damaging, the
shift has been just as pronounced, if less operatic, among straight-news reporters.
Suddenly, McCain is no longer being portrayed as a straight-talking, truth-telling
maverick but as a liar, a fraud, and an opportunist with acute anger-management
issues. …
The traditional media made McCain. Now he’s lost them. McCain’s lost independents in the process of transforming into something I doubt even he will recognize once this is over. That is, unless the what’s now unwinding on Fox, right-wing radio, the blogs and beyond takes hold.
The truth is even more bleak. As Rush Limbaugh asked today, in between “terrorist” harangues about Obama, How many out there are actually voting against Obama, but also only for Sarah Palin? Whatever McCain hoped his candidacy would stand for, it doesn’t anymore. It’s all about Sarah Palin conservatism now.
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