Today, Arizona Senator John McCain told CBS This Morning that it's time for Rick Santourm to drop out of the race for the GOP Presidential nomination so Mitt Romney can get to focusing on the important stuff — like picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. Since John McCain probably hasn't forgotten about that one time he was running for President and picked Sarah Palin for his running mate and her abject stupidity kind of sank his Presidential campaign, there has to be some reasonable explanation as to why he'd encourage the Republican candidate for President to do the political equivalent of shooting himself from a helicopter.
Despite what Palin's hilariously-titled biographical documentary Undefeated might tell you, the former Alaska governor's surprise nomination for Vice President wasn't a boon to the McCain campaign; in fact, the more she talked, the less people seemed to like her. By the time election day rolled around, she was the least popular potential occupant of the White House on the ballot. McCain lost resoundingly.
And then, despite the fact that very few people actually like her, she didn't go away! There was that aborted bus tour last summer, the book tours, her Kardashian-y attempts to stage mom her oldest daughter Bristol into pathetic semi-stardom. And she still occasionally appears on Fox News to annoy the shit out the American people with folksy meanness and cheap shots at President Obama, about whom she seems to harbor almost jilted feelings.
If what former McCain staffers say is to be believed — that McCain wasn't crazy about the pick for Veep, that Palin was relatively unvetted and wildly unprepared, that she threw childish tantrums and bucked the advice of her handlers — it's difficult to imagine that John and Sarah use their anytime minutes to call each other and kvetch about any old thing. It's hard to believe that the two remain friends at all.
But today, there McCain was with that creepy smile of his on CBS suggesting that Mitt Romney should pick Sarah Palin to run for Vice President alongside him as though 2008 never happened. What in the name of Zombie Ronald Reagan is McCain thinking?
John McCain must somehow stand to gain from Palin remaining on the national stage, as it would uncharacteristically masochistic for a politician to act in a way that wasn't in his own best interest. Maybe something's changed about Palin to make her less repugnant to the American public. Maybe he truly believes that she's now ready to do a job that she would have done crappily in 2008. Or maybe he has decided that his party has become an entity that doesn't deserve to win the White House since it's been hijacked by a far-right contingent bent on focusing on ovaries and wombs rather than the economy and jobs. The nearly-unhinged-seeming Romney and the bombastic Palin would be the perfect team to run the SS GOP aground so the moderate wing of the party — the Olympia Snowes and the circa 2000 John McCains — could resume control. Or maybe McCain has finally decided, in his golden years, to stop giving a fuck and use up all of his troll points before the state of Arizona makes it illegal.
McCain: Romney should choose Palin as Vice Presidential candidate [CBS]