Unsalvageable?

The title of this post might refer to the Republican National Convention, coming on the heels of the gladiatorial challenge that was the Democratic National Convention (with Obama coming out not into the Parthenon as the GOP spinmeisters mistakenly called it, but rather the Coloseum as if in his hard-hitting speech he was calling to McCain, "Come out, come out, wherever you are..."), or it might refer the Sarah Palin GOP VP nomination, or it might refer to John McCain candidacy itself.

At this point the RNC is a shambles, with Monday a, um, wash as Hurricane Gustav managed to force massive program cancellation but then made land more safely than expected, thank God, saving lives but denying any dramatic visit by McCain or McCain/Palin to the distressed area.



It doesn't help that tanks are roving the streets of St. Paul to quell protests and even Democracy Now's Amy Goodman has been arrested for expressing her Constitutional right to free speech:



Meanwhile, why haven't I seen any new photos or live video of Palin this past 24 hours? Am I missing something, or is she under wraps as she lawyers up on her Troopergate (and gets a deposition date), reveals a teen pregnancy in her family in order to end rumors of another teen pregnancy that might seem even stranger, turns out to have been Wasilla's "Mayberry Machiavelli" ordering loyalty tests as Mayor, appears to have lied in her Wikipedia entry about winning Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest, and been a member of a fringe Alaskan secessionist party:



You know, putting country first.

Worst political day ever? How about when right-leaning cable heads like Campbell Brown start to wail on your experience claims:



What all this does is the very thing it was meant to avoid: split the Republican Party. You've got serious government and security Republicans faced with a Presidential nominee who doesn't do sufficient vetting on the first major decision of his office, thrown into post-vetting instead and only beginning that process on the first day of their national convention. You've got what appears more and more to be a cynical violation of "country first" principle calling into question the candidate's judgment and playing right into the Obama's argument against McCain, along with the "four more years of the same" meme. You've got the first Administration Republican in history lawyering up before even being nominated. You've got a campaign that tried to throw the long-ball diversion (as Obama calls non-issue, non-policy politics) of all time boomeranging back to create the hugest possible diversion for the GOP itself at the very week where it needs to bind together in full.

You've got a Party out of any possible control by the candidate and ostensible Party Leader:



Big question: if Palin is forced by the party elders and hands to Eagleton out, who will run with the damaged McCain? McGovern couldn't do better than Sargent Shriver, who had started The Peace Corps but never held national elective office. In situations like these, the stink of the loser is too great, the label of second choice too humiliating.

My guess is McCain will/would wind up with his original choice, Joe Lieberman, mainly because that's another guy with nothing left to lose.

As for Governor Palin, I just think all of this backwoods Alaskan smalltown stuff makes her look more and more disconcerting to the average American voter, and will remain so even after she's left the scene.

Very disconcerting.