Not A Good Day For The Ex Beauty Queen

My blogging friend, Patry Francis (if you've never visited her site, by all means follow the link and do so; she has some of the best writing on the internet, and also, buy her book) worries in a comment to my August 30 blog entry that McCain seems to have gotten a bounce in the polls with his pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. In a response to her comment, I predicted that the bounce will soon disappear when the facts about Palin start coming out.

Seldom do my predictions come true so quickly, but as Josh Marshall points out, today was a very bad day for Sarah Palin. First, in order to knock down rumors that her four-month old baby is really her daughter, Bristol's baby, she had to announce that the 17-year-old Bristol is pregnant with her own baby. Obviously, Bristol's decision to have unprotected premarital sex has nothing to do with Governor's Palin's qualifications to be vice president, but it does reinforce the point that maybe Governor Palin's family needs her more right now than the country needs her. With her husband working on the North Slope of Alaska as an oil production worker, who exactly is looking after the family, not only the 17-year-old and five-year-old daughters, but the baby with Downs Syndrome?

Then, the main stream media is finally getting on the story that Governor Palin flatly lied at the speech in Ohio after she was introduced by McCain in claiming she had opposed the famous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

And, it turns out that her claim to have fought corruption in Alaska by taking on politicians like the recently indicted Senator Ted Stephens is another lie. Far from opposing Senator Stephens, she was a director of his fund raising group.

There's more. She was a member of the Alaska Independent Party, a far right political group in Alaska (the John Birch Society is too liberal for its tastes)that wants Alaska to secede from the United States (treason anyone?) Here's a video of their recent convention in which the party's president says she was a member of the party and they were hoping she would be elected as governor.

And here's a video of Governor Palin welcoming people to the Alaska Independent Party's convention in June, 2008.

And then there's the simmering scandal of Governor Palin lying about not having placed pressure on the head of the Alaska State Police to fire her ex-brother-in-law. The main stream media still hasn't gotten on that one, but it is going to come out because there is an on-going investigation about which there is supposed to be a report in October.

All of the fun stuff about Governor Palin only highlights the fact that Senator McCain apparently picked her impulsively, without doing any extensive vetting. Only now are the Republicans sending a team of lawyers to Alaska to check her out.

Finally, the latest polls show Obama up by eight points, according to CBS and seven points according to USA/Today. I'm still not as sanguine as Debra Hope, but I'm optimistic that Obama is going to win and that Palin is going to be a drag on McCain.