After watching Pat Buchanan on The Rachel Maddow Show just now, I get the sense that some conservatives are more interested in insulating Sarah Palin from John McCain's near-certain defeat than they are in fighting for McCain up until the end.
For these conservatives, Sarah Palin represents the future of the Republican Party; they can see that McCain is losing this election, and they just want to make sure that he doesn't take Palin down too.
So we may very well be looking at the person who will oppose Barack Obama four years from now. That's not a challenge to take lightly -- a Sarah Palin who has had three or four years to study will be a much stronger candidate than the Sarah Palin who has had four weeks to study.
So while priority number one remains winning, and winning by as much as possible, it's worth keeping in mind that discrediting Palin now will have a payoff in the future, asssuming that you don't like the sound of President Palin. With that in mind, there are three questions I'd like to see answered:
None of these questions have been satisfactorily addressed. If they aren't addressed by the time the campaign is over, we mustn't forget them.
© Jed Lewison