Trump Can’t Help But Swipe at John McCain While Endorsing Sarah Palin for Congress

[cigaretteman]

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks as she endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign stop, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa.

CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag




It can sometimes take Donald Trump a little while to throw his weight behind a congressional candidate. It only took him two days to endorse Sarah Palin to replace longtime Alaska Rep. Don Young, who died last month. The former vice presidential candidate and early Trump supporter announced on Friday that she will be running to fill the seat. The former president announced on Sunday that he wants her to win. “Sarah shocked many when she endorsed me very early in 2016, and we won big,” Trump wrote in a statement. “Now, it’s my turn!”
Trump couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get in a dig against John McCain, the late senator who turned the 2008 presidential race into a circus when he tapped Palin, then Alaska’s governor, as his running mate. “Sarah lifted the McCain presidential campaign out of the dumps despite the fact that she had to endure some very evil, stupid, and jealous people within the campaign itself,” Trump added. “They were out to destroy her, but she didn’t let that happen.”




Trump has long resented McCain, who criticized him during the 2016 presidential campaign and then voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act, dooming Trump’s plan to sink President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. McCain lifted Palin out of obscurity in an effort to boost his chances at the White House. McCain said he regretted adding Palin to the ticket, writing that his “gut told me to ignore” advice to bring her on board and that he wishes he had.
Despite Trump’s claim that Palin lifted McCain’s campaign “out of the dumps,” The Washington Post notes that a Stanford University study found that Palin cost McCain around two million votes.
Palin has been out of politics since her turn as Alaska’s governor, but she’s maintained a presence across conservative media, and as a vocal supporter of right-wing candidates — including Trump in 2016. She made clear in announcing her candidacy on Friday that she’ll have no problem toeing the MAGA line should she make it to Washington, bashing the “radical left” and railing against “open borders.” Palin also tried to sue The New York Times for libel, but a jury rejected the case in February. She made headlines in the days surrounding the trial for violating New York City’s Covid-19 restrictions by dining out while unvaccinated and then dining out again after having tested positive.
It’s no wonder Trump was so quick to endorse her.
The primary to serve as Alaska’s lone House representative will take place on June 11. The top four finishers will appear on a ranked-choice ballot in August.

Trump Can't Help But Swipe at John McCain While Endorsing Sarah Palin for Congress

The former president’s vendetta against the dead senator will never end

www.rollingstone.com

 

[SoProudNole]

With his endorsement she's golden.

 

[Titanhawk2]

McCain and Obama were dead even in polls until June 2008, by the end of July Obama has a 10 point lead. "According to a Washington Post/ABC News survey published on September 9, 2008, John McCain had gained huge support among white women voters since the announcement;[14] he had not only surpassed the Democratic Party candidate Senator Barack Obama in white women voters, but also amassed a lead of five percentage points in the Gallup polls."

So, what he said was true and certainly not a "swipe"

 

[BGHAWK]

trump and Sarah, they really deserve each other. dumb and dumber.

 

[CarolinaHawkeye]

Thanks to sarah, I voted for a democratic candidate for president for the very first time. I guess I could see the anti-American turn the party was taking.

 

[lucas80]

No grievance in Trump’s twisted mind is ever allowed to go un-stoked. He’s always fanning the flames.

 

[BGHAWK]

trump and Sarah, they read at least one newspaper each day, between them.

 

[Hoosierhawkeye]

Palin certainly hurt McCain in the long run but I don't think he would have been likely to win no matter who he selected.

The war in Iraq was dragging on and the economy was crashing. It was just a terrible year to be running as a Republican. Even Indiana gave it's 2008 electoral votes to Obama.

 

[CarolinaHawkeye]

trump and Sarah, they read at least one newspaper each day, between them.

Which comic strip to you think was their favorite?

 

[SB_SB]

Thanks to sarah, I voted for a democratic candidate for president for the very first time. I guess I could see the anti-American turn the party was taking.

I believe the big factor in McCain losing votes was that people just couldn't take the risk that something would happen to McCain and Palin would end up president. Wow, that would have been scary.

 

[nu2u]

"It can sometimes take Donald Trump a little while to throw his weight behind a congressional candidate"

An unfortunate choice of words there.

 

[TC Nole OX]

 

[CarolinaHawkeye]

I believe the big factor in McCain losing votes was that people just couldn't take the risk that something would happen to McCain and Palin would end up president. Wow, that would have been scary.

I for one, was afraid she might have him done in. But that's just my opinion.

 

[SB_SB]

I for one, was afraid she might have him done in. But that's just my opinion.

No worry, no one would ever try to hang their running mate for personal gain.

 

[lucas80]

Why is she running for office? Oh, I'm sure she's going to say it's to save America from socialism, and the LMS, and the queers, but why is she really running? Tired of sitting up there in Alaska while MTG and Lauren Boebert get all of the attention? Is she broke? I don't think she even made it halfway through her term as governor, right? Didn't she quit on that job?

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

With his endorsement she's golden.

Kiss of death...

 

[TC Nole OX]

Why is she running for office? Oh, I'm sure she's going to say it's to save America from socialism, and the LMS, and the queers, but why is she really running? Tired of sitting up there in Alaska while MTG and Lauren Boebert get all of the attention? Is she broke? I don't think she even made it halfway through her term as governor, right? Didn't she quit on that job?

She sees the two morons whom you mention collecting a paycheck and receiving a lot of airtime. She was the first of that genre and she wants back in on the action. Honestly, I think it would be good if she won. It would further absurdify the GQP by bringing it full circle. It won't be long before the infighting begins and they start eating their own.

 

[nu2u]

She sees the two morons whom you mention collecting a paycheck and receiving a lot of airtime. She was the first of that genre and she wants back in on the action. Honestly, I think it would be good if she won. It would further absurdify the GQP by bringing it full circle. It won't be long before the infighting begins and they start eating their own.

I will grant you that Palin's election would considerably close the loop but the circle will not be complete until Michelle "corn dog" Bachman is (god forbid) re-elected.

 

[cigaretteman]

When Republican presidential nominee John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, she was meant to be so compelling that the GOP ticket would match Barack Obama in charisma and freshness, and for a brief time that seemed possible. But under the harsh lights of national attention, Palin quickly became two things at once: an object of worship for much of the Republican base, and an object of disdain, ridicule, and revulsion for liberals.
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She was, in other words, ahead of her time. And now she’s back.
Palin is running for Congress to fill the seat of the late Rep. Don Young (R-Ak.), and as she attempts to go from C-list political celebrity back to public office, she finds a Republican Party that has in many ways been remade in her image.

Donald Trump has endorsed Palin, but her election is far from a sure thing; there are a remarkable 51 candidates registered for the primary. In a statement announcing her candidacy, she explained why she’s running: “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight.”


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The political kinship between Palin and Trump is obvious, and they share a similar kind of magnetism, in which the people who loathe them find them just as fascinating to watch as the people who love them.
Or at least that used to be true for Palin. After she resigned the Alaska governorship in 2009 with one of the most bizarre speeches in the history of American politics (completing a full term would be “the quitter’s way out,” she said), she moved on to a less than entirely successful career as a media personality, cycling through numerous unsuccessful TV shows and failed enterprises (if you don’t remember the “Sarah Palin Channel,” which cost only $99.95 a year, don’t blame yourself).

It was all downhill after 2013, when Roger Ailes cut her loose from her gig as a Fox News contributor, for which they were paying her $1 million a year to opine from the studio they built in her house. It turned out that she was a disaster as a TV personality: ill-informed, inarticulate, offering commentary that ranged from the boring to the banal.


But it was Trump who made Palin truly irrelevant, even as he appealed to the same people and the same impulses she had. He took over the party in a way she never could, not least because Republicans wanted a man to champion the patriarchy, and one who would do so with a kind of venom that Palin didn’t quite manage.
So while Palin in 2008 grasped the attention of a party dominated by establishment figures like McCain and Mitt Romney, she couldn’t seize control of it in the way Trump did. And today that party has been transformed.

Though some of the old establishment is still hanging around, just look at the Congress Palin seeks to join. It’s brimming with Palinesque figures, halfwit politicians whose purpose is garnering media appearances rather than anything so dull as governing, and who want nothing more than to Own the Libs.


Is Palin going to stand out in a Republican caucus alongside the likes of Reps. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), and Matt Gaetz (Fla.)? It won’t be easy.
But there’s a whole new menu of manufactured culture war controversies for her to weigh in on. Surely someone is dying to hear Palin’s deep thoughts on critical race theory and transgender rights. Which celebrities is she mad at? Which books would she ban?

Palin will still attract the support of her old fans, the ones moved by her politics of resentment. They complained about, and drew sustenance from, the contempt and mockery aimed at her from those dastardly cosmopolitan coastal elites. And it’s true that those elites looked down on her and laughed at her frequent stumbles.
But it was well-deserved. As Trump himself might say, when small-town America sent us Palin, they weren’t sending their best. There are people from small towns who aren’t narcissistic nincompoops and who have a genuine policy agenda they can make an argument for; she was not among them.






But Palin is all about the politics of resentment, a politics that offers no hope of ever being satisfied. It has no goals, it can win no practical victories, it can never improve the lives of the people it claims to speak for, and it does nothing but justify its own continuation.
Even if she makes it to Congress, Palin will be what she was probably always destined to be: a bit player, a sideshow, just one more weird and angry voice adding to the cacophony of the American right. And who knows, that may be all Republican voters in her home state want.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/04/sarah-palin-is-back-gop-remade/

 

[Randon]

The burning question if Sarah wins is whether she'll be able to see Alaska from the balcony of her rented DC condo.

 

[BGHAWK]

Which comic strip to you think was their favorite?

The Lockhorns?

 

[TC Nole OX]

"Republican Troll Caucus"