It's been asked on multiple news shows, by concerned citizens here on Daily Kos, and by right-wing nutjobs like Phyllis Schafly alike: where has Sarah Palin been hiding? Doesn't McCain want her come out and personally rebut all of the information that has been floating around on the blogosphere the past 96 hours? Isn't she going to stroke the Republican base's various erogenous zones during the RNC? Well, the Washington Post has served up an insider look at the hotel room where Palin is holed up with McCain's top advisers. And despite the McCain campaign's best attempts to control the creation of this story, ugly truths have slipped through.
First of all, we learn that her speech had to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch.
Not anticipating that McCain would choose a woman as his running mate, the speech that was prepared in advance was "very masculine," according to campaign manager Rick Davis, and "we had to start from scratch."
His campaign manager wasn't aware. His top speechwriter, Mark Salter, wasn't aware. She only gave her first practice speech this afternoon, and they still don't know whether she's going to mention the pregnancy issue when she talks tomorrow night.
And, of course, they had to take out a lot of the attacks on Barack Obama, because attacking isn't appropriately "feminine". Or something.
So what is she going to talk about? Rather than trust her to attack or show off some chops on foreign policy to quiet the skeptics, they are going to try to play to her small islands of strength.
In the speech, Palin is likely to emphasize her areas of policy expertise -- particularly energy and political reform -- rather than focusing on her biography or gender.
I think the mainstream media is starting to catch on to what a sham her political reform claims are; we need to hammer this home and emphasize what a disaster her energy and environmental policies are tomorrow.
Ultimately, however, the biggest question this article answers is whether the McCain campaign has even the tiniest leg to stand on when it comes to Palin's utter lack of foreign policy experience. Having been backed off the absurd Alaska-Russia claims, and having been forced to admit that she has only traveled to Germany and Iraq once, with personal trips to Mexico and Canada, this is what they are reduced to...
Graham... said Palin would be able to handle foreign relations in McCain's absence as long as she relied on his staff.
"She can do fine in foreign policy because of the infrastructure we have around us. She's smart and she will learn over time," he said, adding that when it comes to selecting a vice president, "there is no perfect person. If we could have found someone who's an expert in everything, we would have picked 'em, right?"
Boy, that is really gonna sell the independents, John. I can't wait to see you run with that in the fall.