Meltdown

So, in my earlier CifA piece regarding the annoucement of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, I said:

If there's any political point to be made here at all, it is about the very real possibility that the McCain campaign did not know about this pregnancy, despite reports to the contrary. There is a whole lot McCain evidently didn't know about Palin – and there have been reports that McCain chose her for the ticket after a half-assed vetting, about which even Republicans outside of DC have been grumbling. But even that is predicated on the idea that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy is so scandalous as to warrant preclusion of a related politician on a national ticket.

And I stand by that wholly. I don't think Bristol Palin's pregnancy should be used as a political football against McCain, either, even if (as it appears) he lied about what he knew when.

However, there's plenty other stuff we're finding out about Palin that legitimately calls into question McCain's decision-making skills and competence:

• Palin was a member as recently as 1996 of the Alaskan Independence Party, "which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States" and has as its motto "Alaska First – Alaska Always."

• Palin served until 2005 as a director of a 527 group organized by corrupt fuckneck Senator Ted Stevens.

• Palin's claim, in her veep acceptance speech last Friday, about her purported opposition to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere was a flat lie.

• Palin, despite her assertion that she's "championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending," nonetheless relied on it as Alaska's governor.

• Palin has just hired an attorney regarding the ongoing Troopergate scandal, for which she's under investigation.

The New York Times (among other sources) reports that, irrespective of McCain campaign claims that Palin was thoroughly vetted, "a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check," the evidence suggests that's simply not accurate.

Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

"They didn't speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community," said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

"I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called," Ms. Phillips said. "I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven't found anybody who was asked anything."

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. "I heard not a word, not a single contact," he said.

That truly sounds like a catastrophic vetting failure of Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown proportions. By the end of this thing, I'm wondering if having "Arabian Horse Association" as your primary professional reference isn't going to look like the Good Old Days when people with experience got hired by Republican presidents. Or those aspiring to the position.