Below The Beltway

According to Roger Simon, John McCain’s aides and allies are ready to blame what appears to be an impending election loss on Sarah Palin:

John McCain’s campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.

And it has decided on Sarah Palin.

In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”

Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?

Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.”

Listen, I’ve been pretty critical of Sarah Palin over the past two months, but this is just pathetic.

If Sarah Palin has hurt the ticket, if she’s manifestly not qualified to be President, if she’s engaged in rhetoric that made McCain’s promise of a clean campaign seem like joke, if she’s demonstrated little understanding of the important issues of the day, and even if she doesn’t seem to know what the Vice-President actually does, whose fault is that ?

I’ll tell you whose, fault it is — it’s John McCain’s.

Simon puts it well:

It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August.

Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?

But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.

McCain is the one that picked her to be his running mate, after meeting her in person only one time and after a vetting process that was clearly superficial at best. If that pick has turned out to be mistake, it’s not Sarah Palin’s fault, it’s the fault of the man who exercised incredibly bad judgment in putting her on the ticket.