Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Sarah Palin for John McCain Losing the 2008 Election

https://unclemikesmusings.blogspot.com/2018/11/november-4-2008-good-day.html

5. Sarah Palin. While her flakiness and extremism turned off a lot of moderates, it (and her looks -- she was a former beauty pageant winner) turned on a lot of conservatives (including McCain). We'll never know how many people, who didn't quite trust McCain, she brought back into the fold, but it may have canceled out the people she lost by being, well, Sarah Palin.

4. Barack Obama. He ran a great campaign. The opposition called him a "narcissist" -- which now seems ludicrous, in light of who succeeded him. But compare the two: He never once said, "I, alone, can fix it"; instead, he said, many times, in every part of the nation, including that night onstage in Grant Park, "Yes, we can!" We, not I.

3. The Iraq War. The outgoing President, George W. Bush, knew that his father, President George H.W. Bush, had won a war with Iraq in 1991, but ended it when Iraqi troops were kicked out of Kuwait. Bush the father didn't go on to Baghdad to take over the country and occupy it, because, as someone who understood the world, he knew it would "win the war but lose the peace."

Bush the son thought not going on to Baghdad was a big reason why his father lost his bid for re-election in 1992. That had absolutely nothing to do with it: As Bill Clinton's campaign strategist James Carville pointed out, "It's the economy, stupid!"

So Bush the son dragged his war out. He didn't want to win the war; he only wanted to have the war, to use as a club over people's perceived lack of patriotism. And the American people got sick of it, giving the Democrats control of both houses of Congress in 2006.

McCain, to his credit, thought the war should come to an end. But he thought America should end the war by winning it. He didn't say how he would do it, only that he would -- just as, 40 years earlier, Richard Nixon said of Vietnam, "New leadership will end the war." (Nixon never actually said he had a "secret plan to end the war.")

The voters wanted to end the war sooner rather than later, and didn't trust McCain to do it. They trusted Obama, who, unlike Hillary, had never supported it. McCain's suggestion that he would attack Iran next further turned voters off. On December 18, 2011, President Obama withdrew the last U.S. combat troops.

McCain counted on a Iraq, and foreign policy in general, to be his edge against Obama. But Obama was very knowledgeable on the subject, thought not as experienced in office.

And each man's Vice Presidential nominee reflected and magnified his stance. Biden had been Chairman on Senate Foreign Relations, and, beyond also being a military hawk, Palin's idea of "foreign policy experience" was that you could see Russia from Alaska.

(On a clear day, from a particular land point, this is true. She never actually said, "I can see Russia from my house!" Yet another thing a politician supposedly said, but actually didn't.)

Palin's foreign policy views did not hurt McCain. They only magnified how much his foreign policy views were already hurting him. She was a symptom, not the disease.

2. The Economy. Already in recession when the calendar year began, it crashed on September 15, and got worse all through September and October. And McCain was the nominee of the incumbent party.

There was no way to defend it: The usual Republican idea of tax cuts had helped to bring the crash on, and the people weren't buying it. They knew that Republicans, the party of conservative businessmen, couldn't be trusted to fix an economy that was wrecked by conservative businessmen. Like...

1. George W. Bush. He was the reason for Reason Number 3 and Reason Number 2. He, not Palin, and not even McCain himself, was the Republican who caused McCain to lose.