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Posted
Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:32 PM
| By
Rachael Larimore
The debate is over, and the Republican base is breathing a huge sigh of relief. Sarah Palin didn't make a royal mess of the debate, something that a lot of us feared might happen after her disastrous sitdown with Katie Couric.
Yes, she benefited from the fact she didn't have to take follow-ups, and she benefited from low expectations. But she was tough and charming, and she held her own against an opponent with vastly more experience and who was on his game in his own right. She almost made me want to believe in a windfall profits tax.
This is precisely what I was hoping for. I like her personally—she's endearing, even with that accent—and we share some important beliefs. (Not all. I will cheer the day any presidential or VP candidate, Republican or Democrat, stands onstage in an important debate and calls out for marriage equality.) However inexperienced she might be, I don't want her to get the blame for taking the whole ticket down with her.
Before McCain stunned all of us with the Palin pick, the consensus is that it's rare for a vice-presidential candidate to make a big difference in the outcome of the election. But then Palin took McCain on a meteoric rise and seemed poised to take him to equally low depths. I think, or at least hope, that she halted that tonight.
I don't know if McCain is going to get a boost from it. She might not pick up any independents. If you look at the instant—and unscientific—Internet polls that appear on Drudge and some of the news sites, they are laughably partisan. Drudge an InstaPundit readers love Palin. MSNBC.com, home to Keith Olbermann, has Biden winning by ridiculous margins.
There's no doubt that McCain is in trouble. He's trailing in the polls, and some of that has got to be because Obama is viewed by voters as better on the economy and the way the House Republicans made him look bad on the bailout. It's going to take more than an amazing vice-presidential nominee to pull him out of that. She saved his campaign five weeks ago. It would be nice if she could do more interviews and perform well in them. But at the end of the day, it's still John McCain running for president. Let's at least say that if Obama beats McCain next month, it's because Barack's the better candidate, not because a hockey mom from Alaska brought down the GOP.
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