For McCain to make a snap judgment like this and put someone on the bottom of his ticket who is clearly unqualified to assume the presidency is just incredibly reckless and irresponsible, given his advanced age.

This may help McCain with evangelicals but I predict the bottom will fall out for him among Independents and traditional moderate Republicans.  I don't think they'll be too happy about Palin.

Oh, I bet Pawlenty and Mitt are just joyfull that the Dobson wing of the party decided they weren't "Conservative" enough.....

Yup, I was feeling McCain wanted Lieberman, but, he watched Obama speak, and needed to do something to shake it up.....

What a maverick! He does things without even thinking them through! He's a spontaneous guy! He chooses his running mate not on the basis of what's best for the country, but on what he's TOLD is best for him politically!

I mean, holy shit. The nation is seeing a would-be emperor already strip himself naked right before their eyes while still maintaining that he wears the clothes of a presumptive king. It would be laughable were it not for the fact that there are still substantial numbers who still refuse to see the naked truth. But I think those numbers are going to start falling.

Put this on the rec list, or the front page.  This is startling, that he could be so reckless and desperate.

There is a lot more going on to this than we have heard even now.  Did you see him at his announcement with Palin?  Watch his body language.  Not exactly gushing.

I knew it. She has not been FULLY vetted. She is wet dynamite in their hands.

I don't understand the Republican base so the Lieberman pick may have had negative consequences that I don't get, but I was scared of that one.  What happens to the focus of Barack Obama's attacks, that John McCain is an extention of the failed policies of George W. Bush, when McCain puts a (nominal) Democrat on the ticket?  The metaphor of a fork hitting water comes to mind.

Instead, John McCain brilliantly decided to take the argument that he'd been making all year and render it totally absurd.

Palin and Lieberman are both surprise picks, no doubt about it: Lieberman because it would be the first bipartisan ticket in 150 years, and Palin because she's the most ridiculous pick in history.  

The moral of the story, I guess, is that if John McCain thinks he needs to make a bang, he'll make a bang - damn the torpedos.  Republicans should be breathing a sigh of relief that he didn't pick a life-sized statue of General Patton as his runningmate.

The most surprising thing to me in this diary is the line:

Upon arrival, Governor Palin and her longtime aide Kris Perry...

If all that is true, then perhaps the biggest effect of Obama's speech last night was to get McCain to completely switch the entire framework of his campaign from "Experience" to "Reformering Mavericky Dynamo". It isn't often that one campaign to able to force another to make that kind of mid-stream swap.

Of course The Reformering Mavericky Duo will find that it is hard to argue that you're going to reform Washington when you agree with 90% of what's gone on there in the last 8 years. It makes one wonder what exactly they would change. Could it be possible to out-Bush Bush?

What I've found surprising is that McCain had only met Palin in the last six months and only had a 5 minute conversation with her before he told her she was the pick.  How do you pick a VP like that?

Why does this remind me of Bush looking into Putin's soul?  I just heard McCain say it again, once we get to know her we'l know what he knows about her "grit and integrity."  Um.  Okay.  I guess he looked into her soul (or something) in their meeting this week.  

Between rejecting Lieberman and picking a Buchanite as vp, Jewish Floridians are not going to be interested in a McCain ticket.

The only thing this pick does is to enthuse the evangelicals, which is not nothing politically, but it probably also drives away independents.

"The only thing this pick does is to enthuse the evangelicals..."

I think that is the point.  Here's their strategy:
1) pick a surprise choice right after Obama's speech to overshadow his headlines 2) pick someone who will shore up the Republican base, not alienate 3) pick someone who is not well known enough to the rest of America where the low information swing voter could actually be persuaded by their rhetoric. 4) pick someone that reinforces McCain's maverick image so as he can appear like a Washington reformer 5) pick someone that Biden is going to have to adjust his style around in the VP debate - he has to be paternalistic not rough to the young, attractive lady or it will be used to further alienate emotional swing voters. Biden doesn't do well with censuring himself (FYI - noone has to adjust their style with Clinton b/c she has been demonized for 30+ years & is not a young, attractive woman which changes people's attitudes.)

This is some of the mindset of the GOP - we'll see how it works for them.  There is no way though they are going to alienate their base.

Since she was just vetted in a few days, I'm guessing McCain camp didn't know all the juicy bits about Palin.

For example, caught on live radio laughing alongside a slimy host insulting a senator by calling her a bitch and a cancer (knowing full well the senator was a cancer survivor), with Palin laughing, giggling along merrily the whole time.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/30/ 82113/4808/746/579971

Since McCain wants more war and confrontation, she's sure to bring up confrontation with any country I bet, with that thick-skinned attitude of hers.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Palin was not necessarily a terrible choice. In my opinion, I would rather have seen McCain piss off his base and the anti-Iraq war independents by selecting that idiot Lieberman. She even has a son going to Iraq and she hasn't been trumpeting the Bush line on the war like Kay Bailey Hutchinson. When Kay Bailey speaks, she puts me to sleep and Kay Bailey has gone to bat for Bush too often on his greatest disaster - the iraq war.

People had no problem voting for religious nuts in the past. Witness 2004. They won't have a problem tolerating her exztreme abortion views. The only way you can capitalize on the abortion issue  is to get her in a Dukakis like moment regarding rape and abortion. It has to be really akward moment and not let her wiggle out of it using personal principles as an excuse.

But seriously. What you need in a president is a strong vision and leadership. She seems to have both. The fact that her vision is something we definitely do not share with her is irrelevant.  You do not need to be a policy wonk.

She will energize more voters and will attract more women as she gets to campaign in person. All the backlash you see is a result of no one really exposed to her strong points. Have you seen her speak? She blows Kay Bailey and Lieberman out of the water. People say she will turn of the crossover voters. I don't know. if those people foolishly voted for Bush and Cheney in 2004, why wouldnt they vote for her and she is only the VP candidate when she has had a more impressive rise than Bush Jr. Bush Jr needed his dad's network to get where he was as governor.  You can only hope to trip her up in the debates about some ignorance of the big issues. And that will require Biden to raise some issues himself ignoring the lame predictable questions posed by the moderators.
 

What the Republicans learned from George Bush is that anyone can be President with a heavy like Dick Cheney calling the shots from behind the scenes.  If forced to serve as President, Palin is not prepared to be anything but a proxy for some one or combination of Republicans acting behind the scenes.         The important question is not "who is Palin" but who is likely to rise to power in a McCain administration.  That's your real choice to be a heartbeat away from John McCain.  

The Republicans have also learned that they can brand anything.  It is easier for them to take someone the public knows nothing about and make her into anything they want.  The democrats have to be careful not to get caught up in details (like an extended 'experience' debate).  This race moved back into big picture branding.