The Republicans are all on message with Palin. I've heard it on CBS Radio, on PBS and have read it in several columns today. The message is that the whole hub-bub is about Palin's child having a baby. This is being combined with a blame-the-media message. Once combined, the goal is to get the media to just move on. The GOP is trying to compartmentalize this moment, the last few days, as a mad mainstream media feeding frenzy over personal issues. If it works, the media withdraws with its tail between its legs.
The goal here is as much to get the media to withdraw from the Palin grandchild story, as it is to compartmentalize the moment. What I mean by "compartmentalize" is that they want to sell to the general public this idea that all of the media disturbance can be distilled down into an episode of the liberal media digging into the private life of a woman. Who knows, they may even frame this as just one more time when a woman was treated unfairly when running for a top office. The latter would be ballsy though, and probably not worth the effort, unless they are still trying to pass the selection off as an effort to attract disaffected Clinton voters.
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The problem for the media is that they probably will have trouble ducking this. Why? Because there are so many fucking stories. DKos, TPM & HuffingtonPost have had such fun listing the number of problems with Palin that no ONE is likely to stick. I've learned nothing from mainstream media about her failed business, her link to the Alaskan secessionist party, her laughing at a woman with cancer (though that tape is NO macaca moment), the effort to recall (and so on, so on, and so on). None of that is breaking through the din of hurricane-convention-Palin baby coverage. The only story out of all of this that has gotten attention has been the poor vetting story, with which the McCain people swat away with the "Yes, we vetted her" reply, quickly killing the story. The story isn't even framed as a competency or judgment story.
If this moment is compartmentalized, all closed up with neat bookends, and is successfully spun as Palin-family-as-victim, this story could turn. (I tend to be a pessimist, so bear with me). I don't think it will sway centrists. Nor do I think it will interest Clinton voters. I do believe it won't be the death of the McCain ticket, however.
This is going to settle down folks, and the "bad judgment" meme hasn't really distilled or been communicated. Obama's right to step back and let this one settle. They don't want the campaign to be linked to a media-as-anti-family villain story-line. They need to step back, and they are doing it.
Something else occurs to be as I watch the GOP convention. It looks like it is going through the motions. There doesn't appear to be much of a convention of believers there. It looks like millionaires disrupted their fine meals to stand as backdrop for an informercial. Oh, and when the delegates say they love Palin, and I the only one here who gets the feeling that they are talking like mothers defend their kids; embarrassed with the child's but will be damned if someone outside the family is going to think badly of him.