[Vision2020] The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XI: Asking The Girls?

[Saundra Lund]

The Atlantic

The Daily Dish

Andrew Sullivan

19 Oct 2008 10:29 am

 

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin XI: Asking The Girls?

 

This is indeed odd. Here is Palin answering
<http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/blinking-or-no
t.html#more>  Hannity's question about her decision to accept the
vice-presidency:

"It was a time of asking the girls to vote on it, anyway.  And they voted
unanimously, yes.  Didn't bother asking my son because, you know, he's going
to be off doing his thing anyway, so he wouldn't be so impacted by, at
least, the campaign period here.  So ask the girls what they thought and
they're like, absolutely.  Let's do this, mom." 

 

But here's the official
<http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/29/1307122.aspx>  tick-tock
of the announcement from McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker on
August 29:

"Later that morning, John McCain departed for Phoenix and Governor Palin
departed with staff to Flagstaff, Arizona.  Governor Palin, Kris Perry,
Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter proceeded to the Manchester Inn and Conference
Center in Middleton, Ohio. They were checked into the hotel as the Upton
Family. While there, Governor Palin's children, who had been told they were
going to Ohio to celebrate their parents' wedding anniversary, were told for
the first time that their mother would be a nominee for Vice President of
the United States of America." 

 

Here's the ADN story that claims that the pick was a total surprise
<http://www.adn.com/politics/story/510777.html>  to her family and children
in Ohio. Here is more Palin from the Hannity interview
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/09/sarah_palins_interview_wi
th_se.html> :

PALIN: Well, I found out about the actual selection just a couple days
before you guys all did. Getting that nod was quite an experience, of
course, because I knew that Senator McCain and his team had been doing a
heck of a lot of research and vetting of many names.

 

But according to the McCain campaign, it was not "a couple days" between her
being asked and our finding out. It was one day. She was asked 11 am on
Thursday and the pick became public Friday morning: one day. Moreover, Todd
Palin insisted <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423843,00.html>  in an
earlier interview that during that one day between the nod and the
announcement, the girls were kept totally in the dark:

So this was Thursday morning. I wake them up at 5:00 o'clock in the morning,
and I said, OK, hey, we're going on a surprise trip to celebrate your mom
and I's anniversary, 20th anniversary. So give me your cell phones. Well,
why do you want my cell phone? Because I know you're going to call people,
and you might call mom and ask what's going on. So I said, Give me your cell
phones. If there's any questions -- whoever wants to ask questions is going
to stay at Grandma's house, so who's going?

So they gave me all their cell phones. And so later that day, Sarah called
me -- or that morning, Sarah called me and then we were on a plane south.

 

Look: Palin can't have taken the "two days" between McCain's offer and the
announcement to get the girls to vote on the question because a) it was one
day, not two and b) because her husband and the McCain campaogn have already
told us they were kept totally in the dark in the period after their mother
had accepted McCain's offer. There was no time for them to vote and no vote
could have been offered.

 

I know this is trivial, but the point is that there is a very powerful
pattern here of Sarah Palin's difficulty with telling the truth. Here we
have some clear facts and chronology about events in the public record that
happened only a couple of weeks ago and Sarah Palin's stories are hopelessly
contradictory. This is a pattern. She seems to have imagined a conversation
that could not have taken place.

 

And the other weird detail, of course, is her dismissal of Track's views
because he would be in Iraq "doing his thing." In fact, an active duty
soldier would have plenty of reason to be consulted about the possibility of
his mother becoming vice-president. It could compromise his ability to blend
in, require possible extra security protection, and perhaps jeopardize his
chance to be in combat. Think Prince Harry or McCain's sons whom he wisely
keeps very much in the background.

 

 

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/the-odd-lies-18
.html

 

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