JoHNBRoDiGaNDoTCoM

Apparently there are people within the McCain campaign, in the event of a loss on Tuesday, who are setting the stage to blame Sarah Palin for the loss. Arguing that the person most responsible for the crowds, the excitement, the fundraising, and the volunteers would be the one responsible for the loss is above my pay grade, but that seems to be what’s coming.

Yes, I am well aware what the polls say about her not having the experience to be President. Obama doesn’t have the experience either, but because change is coming and experience doesn’t matter in a change election and we are the change we are waiting for, it doesn’t matter. That’s because it’s all spin, something the McCain campaign has failed miserably at. The numbers are also a reflection of that trainwreck of a Katie Couric interview (through no fault of Ms. Couric) that they never should have had her do in the first place…but “The Mismanagement of Palin” is a blog post of another time.

The fact is the McCain campaign is behind, and when the campaign is behind going into the days before an election, fingers start to get pointed. A lot of those fingers seem to be pointed at Gov. Palin. A lot of the fingers doing the pointing seem to be coming from “anonymous” McCain staffers…who used to be Mitt Romney staffers (if you’re like me an believe everything you read on the Internet), but that too is a blog post for a different time. Anyone who is pointing to Sarah Palin as being the reason the McCain campaign has been doing so poorly in the past month is quite simply wrong.

Some things to keep in mind…

1. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that the economy collapsed. This is this most important one, and you would think one that is pretty obvious. The polls were essentially tied the day of the bailout vote. As the Dow Jones dropped, so did McCain’s poll numbers. We’re not talking quantum physics here.

2. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that John McCain didn’t take a stand against the bailout, which would have a) been true to who he is, b) given the House Republicans an opportunity to break from President Bush, and c) put him on the side of the American people, who opposed the bailout by a general margin of five to one.

3. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that the McCain Campaign let Obama get away with his misleading ads aboot McCain’s healthcare plan, get away with using the usual Democrat politics of fear to scare seniors into thinking McCain was going to take their social security away, or get away with the “Obama Tax Cut” that isn’t really a tax cut.

4a. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that Joe Biden and Joe the Plumber make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

4b. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

4c. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who don’t like John McCain, make a better case for John McCain than John McCain does.

5. It is not Sarah Palin’s fault that no one ever explained to John McCain you can’t be a Republican running for president and have the media like you, or that the media was never his friend in the first place and only used him when they needed a Republican they could always count on to publicly criticize other Republicans.

Could John McCain have picked a running mate that could have delivered him the election? I doubt it. With all the criticism of Palin being a bad choice, I’ve yet to hear anyone make a case for anyone else. It’s also, in general, criticism from people who always want to tell you what the Republican party needs to do and what John McCain could have done to win…even though none of them are Republicans and never wanted him to win in the first place. Had he picked Romney/Pawlenty/Ridge/Lieberman, these same people would be criticizing McCain for not “thinking outside the box” by choosing someone like Palin or Bobby Jindal (R-LA).

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up hope for a McCain victory on Tuesday. The internals of some of these polls don’t jive with the end result, and the MSM seems to be ignoring the same signs of Republican voter turn out that they ignored in 2004. A longshot? Yes, but not impossible.

But what if he does lose? Are we really going to put all the blame on Sarah Palin, someone poised to be a future leader of our party? Or are we going to put the blame on John McCain, who is barely the current leader of our party…and who is the one that’s running for President in the first place?