McCain's Advisers Explain His Choice of Palin
According to this story, Joe Lieberman was John McCain's preferred choice for VP. Ultimately, he listened to advisers who gave him the obvious news: McCain-Lieberman was a losing ticket if he wanted to hold his base.
For weeks, advisers close to the campaign said, Mr. McCain had wanted to name as his running mate his good friend Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrat turned independent. But by the end of last weekend, the outrage from Christian conservatives over the possibility that Mr. McCain would fill out the Republican ticket with Mr. Lieberman, a supporter of abortion rights, had become too intense to be ignored.
Polling didn't help McCain pick Sarah Palin since "virtually no one had heard of her, a McCain adviser said." She beat out Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney because she had "glowing reviews from influential social conservatives" and McCain felt he needed an "attention-grabbing choice." [more ...]
McCain's advisers told him not to worry about choosing a running mate with little experience, after making Obama's inexperience a campaign theme, because his senior campaign team "had long decided that Mr. McCain’s 'experience versus change' argument against Mr. Obama had run its course, to the extent that it had worked at all."
So we almost had Lieberman lending his Jomentum to the McCain campaign. Instead, McCain pandered to the religious right. So much for the maverick candidate.
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