Pat Dollard

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Don’t blame Sarah Palin for John McCain’s loss to Barack Obama

By S.E. Cupp – (NYDaily News)

I am the first to admit John McCain made serious mistakes in his star-crossed bid for the presidency. But let me beat some excitable pundits to the punch: Sarah Palin wasn’t one of them.

Although conservative intellectuals were disappointed in McCain’s decidedly down-home selection, ask any Republican who does not work for a conservative think tank what they thought of Palin, and the answer is a resounding “Hallelujah.”

Not only was she the answer to deserved criticism that McCain would fail to sufficiently unite the party, but she was practically a love letter to a country full of restless conservatives who wanted to see and hear something new, something exciting, something different – for once.

So before gleeful liberals rejoice at the seeming demise of Sarah Palin, and conservatives shame her back to relative obscurity for single-handedly ruining the indomitable McCain, allow me to offer a brief recap, lest we rush to throw Palin on the pile of other used-up politicians we loved until they lost.

It’s admittedly hard now to remember back to the Paleolithic era of this campaign – June – when John McCain won the Republican nomination for president. But conservatives, who have long been suspicious of the Maverick, were bitterly divided. His was hardly a convincing primary season victory. He won just 47.25% of the popular vote – outlasting the likes of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, not roundly defeating them.

McCain faced an uphill battle from the start. In an overwhelmingly Democratic year, either of his eventual opponents in Barack “The Messiah” Obama or Hillary “The Ceiling Cracker” Clinton were going to be tough competition for a 72-year-old white guy who said his favorite song was “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.

Immediate complaints from within the party focused not just on his well-publicized breaks from the GOP on immigration, Guantanamo Bay and campaign finance reform, but on his inability to speak authentically to values voters. Conservative radio host Doug Giles acerbically admitted, “McCain’s campaign excited pro-life, pro-family evangelicals as much as Janet Reno would Ted Nugent if she was working a pole in a cat suit.”

These values voters, who are the very core of the party, yearned for a candidate to call their own, and they promised to stay home in November if they didn’t get one. McCain knew he had some healing to do, and Palin was just what the doctor ordered.

It was not a pander, but a promise – a promise to these voters that his administration would understand them. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, the Navy chaplain who says he was kicked out for his brand of preaching, says, “As I’ve traveled the country to speak at churches, I’ve talked to hundreds of evangelical voters who otherwise would’ve stayed home, rather than vote for McCain, but were suddenly energized with Palin on the ticket.”