I am one of the people who has been railing against the preponderance of Sarah Palin diaries, but this one is just to hard for me to pass up. The AP (!) reports that Sarah Palin is no longer answering any questions from the national media about her own record as governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla. She now turns over all questions about her own actions to McCain campaign staffers, in order to "limit any embarrassing disclosures and carefully shape her image for voters in the rest of the country" (translation: we want to keep spreading lies about Palin so that voters won't find out how scary and unqualified she is.) You know your campaign is in trouble when you won't let your candidate speak for herself/himself.
From now on, whenever reporters ask Palin any questions about her own GD record in Alaska, she is referring them to the McCain campaign:
The McCain campaign is demanding that it becomes the de facto source for answers about the operations of Alaska's government during the past 20 months.
Palin's normal press secretary, for example, now turns away inquiries from any reporter who isn't permanently based in Alaska, referring questions to the presidential campaign.
Of course, since the McCain campaign is still vetting Palin, that creates a wee bit of a problem with this Kremlinesque strategy:
Trouble is, some of McCain operatives only recently have arrived in Alaska and struggle to explain Palin's positions on arcane state issues.
The article notes that McCain's campaign has sent at least a dozen researchers and lawyers to Alaska to "pore over Palin's background, ready to respond to questions about her tenure as governor and mayor of Wasilla." The team includes operatives of the Republican National Committee. Democrats are countering with their own efforts:
Democrats, meanwhile, are relying on Palin's homegrown critics in Alaska. They call themselves "Alaska Mythbusters," a nod to the popular television show. The team is made up mostly of elected officials who have opposed or know Palin and who criticize her work, such as the mayor of tiny Ketchikan, Bob Weinstein. Ketchikan was involved in Alaska's infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," a construction project that Palin initially supported but now says she opposed as an example of wasteful spending
Ooops. Looks like some truth about Palin's record slipped out to the public despite John McCain's best efforts to the contrary. If Sarah Palin can't even be trusted to talk to the voters about her own record, how can we ever expect her to answer much much more difficult questions that she'd get in the White House?