Should Sarah Palin go rogue?
CNN is reporting that tensions are growing between Sarah Palin and some of John McCain’s top aides. So much so that they are spilling over into the public workings of the campaign. According to CNN, Governor Palin is getting very frustrated at how she feels the campaign is being mismanaged. Actually, I can imagine how she must feel, after weeks of being told what to say and when to say it. As someone told me this morning, I am interested in what the candidates have to say, not something their aides or advisers tell them to say.
Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin “going rogue.”
A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to “bust free” of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.
McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls — recorded messages often used to attack a candidate’s opponent — “irritating” even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign’s decision to pull out of Michigan.
While I am sure the media will portray this as the McCain campaign coming apart at the seams, let me offer my take on the situation. Keep in mind that when I say the McCain campaign, I am not necessarily talking about John McCain himself. In fact, it might not be a bad idea for McCain to go a little rogue himself and bring back the man a lot of Americans liked and respected.
When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, she undoubtedly energized the Republican party base. For months, different groups of people and a few blogs had touted her as a possible VP pick for whomever won the primaries. There was a reason for their enthusiasm for Sarah Palin and it wasn’t because she was the normal, run of the mill politician. The woman could actually think for herself, instead of having key advisers telling her what to say and think. I am sure she had advisers, but she made the decisions and she wasn’t so bashful that she couldn’t talk about them.
Since she was announced, the McCain campaign has tried their best to keep her “on message”, as they like to call it. The truth is, they don’t seem to want her to speak out on her own or speak her own mind, when it comes to the campaign. However, she didn’t get her 80% approval rating as Alaska’s Governor by sitting around on her duff and letting someone else tell her what to do. She did it by getting out and as Mike Huckabee likes to call it, actually doing her job and governing the state.
People like Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, top McCain aides have been very careful to keep Sarah Palin on the message they believe she should be sharing with the American people and were very careful to limit her interaction with the press. We can all see how that turned out with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. I personally believe Palin has had enough of that nonsense and is trying to win this election.
The Sarah Palin we wanted John McCain to pick is the Sarah Palin who was governing Alaska, not the manufactured version that Schmidt and Wallace thought the campaign needed. So, maybe it is time Governor Palin started going a little off the message the campaign wants her to stay on. If that means she is going rogue, then so be it. To put it bluntly, that may be our best hope of stemming the Obama tide.
That’s my take!
Larry
