Is Sarah Palin Being Unfairly Scapegoated?

At a time when Republicans are pondering Senator John McCain’s decisive loss in the Presidential race against Democratic Senator Barack Obama and looking to assess what went wrong, a noisy battle is raging between McCain’s Veep pick Gov. Sarah Palin, the McCain camp and, some suggest, a more furtive campaign by supporters of former Gov. Mitt Romney to define Palin.

In an important sense, the no-rest-for-the-weary timing of this symbolic Republican battle with implications for 2012 is not shocking. Obama himself came under immediate attack from talk radio and Republicans via email almost nonstop since Wednesday morning (with one host running audio of Reverend Wright). So the end of a campaign now means a new one IMMEDIATELY begins — so an excruciating two year presidential election campaign has now morphed into to a dentist-drilling four-year one.

But now Palin — freed of her McCain handlers — is striking back.

In recent weeks, via leaks to the press and inside unnamed source material coming from Newsweek’s usual excellent comprehensive look at what really went on the campaign and some other reporters, lots of allegations have come out about Palin: that she didn’t know Africa was a continent, could not name the three countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement, shocked McCain operatives by going on a spending spree, was a political diva who made her own staffers cry and that she wanted to give a speech on election night that had to be nixed by McCain’s staffers. Etc.

The only thing she hasn’t been accused of yet was being asked about Mississippi and saying “The river or the state?”

But now Palin is having her say.

She finally got to talk to reporters in her Anchorage offices without access and comments being supervised by McCain staffers — and labeled her critics “jerks” and flatly denied the charges:

Ms. Palin spoke to reporters from several news organizations, including the Anchorage Daily News, defending herself from a slew of criticisms that have been aimed at her from unnamed McCain aides ever since the McCain-Palin ticket was defeated Tuesday.

She responded to a recent Fox News report that quoted anonymous McCain campaign staffers who said she did not know Africa was a continent, not a country, and could not name the three countries in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“If there are allegations based on questions or comments I made in debate prep about Nafta — about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there — then those were taken out of context. And that’s cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it taking things out of context, then tried to spread something on national news,” Ms. Palin said.

She has also denounced critics who claimed she happily ran up a big clothing tag at RNC expense:

“I never asked for anything more than a Diet Dr. Pepper once in a while,” Palin said as she returned to the governor’s office from her two-month odyssey as the GOP vice presidential nominee. She said the Republican National Committee paid for the tens of thousands of dollars in designer clothes and accessories.

“Those are the RNC’s clothes. They’re not my clothes. I never forced anybody to buy anything,” she said.

Republican Party lawyers are still trying to determine exactly what clothing was purchased for Palin at such high-end stores as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, what was returned and what has become of the rest.

What can be made of this? It is a fact — in professional journalism even more so than in day to day life — that there are two sides to every story. The original allegations against Palin came out via insider stories or unnamed source revelations. There is nothing wrong about unnamed source revelations. But sources sometimes have motivations for giving reporters information. The original reports didn’t have big chunks of Palin’s response, since she was still basically handled by McCain’s staffers who are being accused of spreading the info about her now to deflect blame for McCain’s defeat on McCain, or, some say, on his judgment in picking her.

Criticism about McCain picking her comes mostly, though not exclusively, from Democrats and independents. Palin still seems to resonate well with many in the GOP’s base. A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that 69 percent of Republican voters think Palin helped the McCain-Palin ticket, even though news reports and some other polls suggest she turned out to be the Anchor from Anchorage on the ticket in terms of costing it some votes.

Meanwhile, a new rumor has been reportedly making the rounds: that Romney’s supporters are spreading the rumor. But The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder says that’s not true:

Rumor: Aides and advisers to Mitt Romney are responsible for spreading most of the anti-Palin stories that have been going around; during the campaign, they pressured reporters to look into reports of tension between McCain and Palin factions.

Analysis: As one of the first reporters to sense these ill-winds, I don’t see an organized conspiracy. The first people with whom I spoke had no connection to Romney’s campaign whatsoever — they were longtime McCain advisers and aides… so…they didn’t much like Mitt Romney. When Palin was first selected, of the five Romney aides/advisers I remember contacting, three had positive impressions and two had mixed impressions.

Now, as the campaign progressed, there were people who can be fairly described as being Romney advisers who began to criticize Palin and pass along what their Republican friends were telling them. But so did consultants, strategists and activists representing every potential 2012 candidate. And other Romney advisers continued to praise her.

Ambinder has more, so read his whole post.

Reporters won’t reveal their sources but you don’t even have to be smarter than a fifth grader to see that some of the sourcing has indeed come from the McCain camp.

It increasingly appears that a more likely scenario is that McCain make a quick choice in picking Palin, first felt it was a home run but later realized she was not as professional and seasoned as he assumed. Her debate rehearsals probably made McCain’s people fear she would be eaten alive by the media if she was allowed to circulate as freely as Joe Biden. McCain’s operatives most likely didn’t realize some of the problems they would have with her and saw that she didn’t give the ticket political support beyond shoring up the party’s conservative base — which continued to publicly show little love for McCain himself and that their hearts belonged to Sarah.

In the end, McCain probably wished he had picked someone else…such as Romney.

And now that the ticket has gone down to defeat, and not via a squeaker, the gloves are off.

But now Palin’s gloves are off, too.

Prediction: This is the beginning for a bloody battle for the soul of the Republican party, with Palin the darling of the party’s conservative base — a base that has shrunk and will shrink more unless the GOP appeals more to centrist, independent and younger voters.

Cartoon by Patrick Corrigan, The Toronto Star

UPDATE: The GOP battle with Palin at the center of it rages on.