The story has been that McCain's choice of Palin proves that he is willing to buck his party and shake things up. He's his own man, a maverick who goes his own way no matter what anyone thinks.
Now we here don't buy that for a second. In fact, I bet that no one in America seriously believes that McCain chose Palin to prove his independence, rather than as a token and to fire up the base (and, as others have said, if McCain needed to fire up his base he is in deeper trouble than the MSM wants to admit).
But his pick worked. The Republican base is much more excited about McCain than they were two weeks ago, without a doubt. But do they buy their own spin that his choice proves McCain's maverick credentials?
No. At least not all of them. According to American Conservative writer David Larison:
While it is commonplace to say that the Palin choice reinforced his "maverick" and "gambler" reputation, which is still partly true insofar as the choice is politically risky in the general election, the choice really represented a moment when McCain surrendered to what he considered to be political necessity.
McCain has surrendered his vaunted independence and accepted a standard party yoke. The Republicans can be excited now, because they have tamed him, broke him, branded him, and made him their own.
Above all, as I said earlier this week, the enthusiasm derives from the feeling that conservatives compelled McCain to back down from picking Lieberman and choose "one of us" instead.
Now, after the pick, they are trying to celebrate McCain's uniqueness, where before they were only talking about his experience. Now they insist that he's not a typical Republican, that he's his own man and willing to take chances, when taking chances was a dangerous thing just a few weeks ago. But they are only willing to make that argument now that they have proven that it's no longer true.
Because no one is more willing to talk about how wild and unpredictable a maverick is than the ones who broke him.