Operation Leper
November 10, 2008
RedState is pleased to announce it is engaging in a special project: Operation Leper.
We’re tracking down all the people from the McCain campaign now whispering smears against Governor Palin to Carl Cameron and others. Michelle Malkin has the details.
We intend to constantly remind the base about these people, monitor who they are working for, and, when 2012 rolls around, see which candidates hire them. Naturally then, you’ll see us go to war against those candidates.
It is our expressed intention to make these few people political lepers.
They’ll just have to be stuck at CBS with Katie’s failed ratings.
Initial list:
Palin denounces her critics as cowardly
November 8, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called her critics cowards Friday for deriding her anonymously and insisted she never asked for the expensive wardrobe purchased for her use on the presidential campaign.
“I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr. Pepper once in a while,” Palin said as she returned to the governor’s office from her two-month odyssey as the GOP vice presidential nominee. She said the Republican National Committee paid for the tens of thousands of dollars in designer clothes and accessories.
“Those are the RNC’s clothes. They’re not my clothes. I never forced anybody to buy anything,” she said.
Republican Party lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was purchased for Palin at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, what was returned and what has become of the rest.
She particularly lashed out at the anonymous Republican campaign sources cited in a Fox News report who said she did not know Africa was a continent, not a country, and could not name the three countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement — Canada, the United States and Mexico.
“I consider it cowardly” that they did not allow their names to be used, she said.
Palin Aide Offers Strong Rebuke to Criticisms
November 7, 2008
A longtime aide to Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is lashing back at anonymous critics within the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, telling ABC News they are attacking the former vice presidential candidate with distortions.
Meg Stapleton offers an explanation of some of the more stinging criticisms that have come out in recent days since the McCain-Palin defeat.
Regarding the $150,000 worth of clothing the campaign bought Palin, Stapleton says a New York stylist was given a blank check and told to go and make Palin look presidential.
According to Stapleton, Palin saw a price tag of $3,500 on one outfit and said she didn’t want to wear it. Stapleton says Palin was simply presented with her wardrobe and staff. Palin was told “here’s your people, here are your clothes.”
Stapleton adds that the McCain staffers tried to hide the cost of the wardrobe. “They said, ‘bill the convention under wardrobe so that the cost could be hidden.’ And then they realized and they were told that’s illegal. So then they said, ‘OK, how do we make this legal and appropriate?’ So they had somebody pay for it and then the RNC (Republican National Committee) would reimburse them.”
According to Stapleton, the campaign said, “‘this is what you need as a VP candidate.’ It was the campaign and/or the RNC … But it wasn’t the governor saying this is what she needs.”
Stapleton says $150,000 was the original bill for the clothing, but after some merchandise was returned, the cost went down to $107,000.
There was also a directive to buy any and all clothes before Sept. 4, the day the Republican convention in St. Paul ended, so that it could be buried as part of other convention costs. The campaign also bought clothing for the children, so they, too, would look nice, Stapleton added.
Regarding another stinging criticism, Stapleton claims that the Fox News report Thursday — that quoted unnamed sources inside the now defunct McCain campaign, saying Palin didn’t know Africa is a continent — was taken out of context.
Stapleton says that during a briefing session, someone asked Palin to explain the McCain-Palin stance on an issue, and as she was responding, “in the middle, she said, ‘country of Africa’ and somebody instantly wrote it down, and said, ‘Oh, my God, she thinks it’s a country.’”
But Stapleton insists, “She knows it’s a continent. It was just a human mistake, just like Obama saying 57 states. I don’t think anyone ever doubted that Obama knows there are 50 states.”
Stapleton adds that a McCain-Palin campaign speechwriter was flown in to write a speech for Governor Palin to deliver Tuesday night after the election results were in. But after a discussion, aides decided Palin would not give a speech that evening — only McCain would speak.
Stapleton says Palin didn’t understand why they would bring in a speechwriter and then not use the speech they wrote for her which was complimentary of McCain.
Palin lays low as interview requests pile up
November 7, 2008
Gov. Sarah Palin hadn’t been back home in Alaska for a full day and her staff had begun fielding requests Thursday for postelection interviews, including from Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey, Larry King and others.
Palin had been expected at her office in Anchorage but later notified her staff that she wouldn’t be showing up after all. She stayed at her home in Wasilla, located 40 miles to the north, but was expected in her office on Friday, spokesman Bill McAllister said.
“The intensity of all the interest is amazing. Everyone wants to talk to her,” he said.
Palin for President? Not if McCain team can help it
November 7, 2008
The full scale of the tensions in the Republican election machine is emerging – and the allegations will do nothing for the running mate’s ambitions
There was more war than there was peace on the McCain-Palin ticket, American voters are starting to learn, especially in the last few weeks of the presidential election as top lieutenants serving the senator from Arizona became increasingly appalled by the freelancing ways of the very well-dressed governor from Alaska.
Mr McCain barely knew Ms Palin when he chose her. And aside from those few rallies when they appeared together, for instance in Hershey, Pennsylvania, one week before polling day, they barely spoke to each on the trail, especially towards the end.
The recriminations will be flowing both ways. Ms Palin, who has returned to Alaska after commenting briefly on the tensions in Arizona on Wednesday, has more reason to manage the post-poll gossip-trading to her advantage than does Mr McCain. He is returning to his Senate job and his ambitions beyond are of the golfing variety. Not so Ms Palin, whom some see as a future leader of her party.
“There is absolutely no diva in me,” she told reporters in Phoenix. If she meant it to be good-humoured, the context was much more brittle. Diva was the pejorative term applied to Ms Palin in the dying days of the campaign by an unidentified source in the McCain circle. On the day she and Mr McCain appeared together in Hershey, a writer for the Politico website reported a McCain aide calling her a “whack job”.
