A debate can be had regarding Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee. While I think she added to the ticket and helped garner votes McCain would have otherwise lost, others see it differently. One area in which there can be no disagreement is the disgust over her post-election treatment. A band of political mercenaries who worked for McCain-Palin 2008 are now out to savage Governor Palin to save their own skins. We at RedState are not having any of it.
We have launched Operation Leper. Our commitment is to publicly expose and actively oppose those McCain staffers now savaging Sarah Palin with lies and distortions of her record. For too long the Republican Party has been staffed with people like this: political mercenaries who have no loyalty to either the cause or candidate, just the party and paycheck. It is our intention to drive them out of politics.
For the next four years, we are pledging to monitor these people to see if they work for political candidates. Should they, we will oppose their employers. Just to be clear, we are not talking about people who criticize Sarah Palin as a candidate or person. We are talking specifically about the McCain staffers now filling the press with anonymous stories about Sarah Palin that are either not true or are total exaggerations.
You can sign up to be a part of Operation Leper here.
John McCormack, writing at the Weekly Standard, documented one of the most recent smears against Palin that is too implausible to be true. According to the smear, Palin refused to be on stage with Senator John Sununu and congressional candidate Jeb Bradley because they were pro-choice and opposed drilling in Alaska. As McCormack pointed out, Palin has repeatedly attended events with pro-choice individuals during the campaign and ran with Senator McCain, who is also opposed to drilling in ANWR. The facts do not add up.
So who is leaking? I’m told by McCain staffers and Palin staffers that there is only a small group. Publicly exposed already is Nicolle Wallace. Mrs. Wallace ran the Bush communications shop in 2004 and then worked at the White House. Governor Palin allegedly questioned why the McCain campaign would stick her with a Bush staffer when the campaign had wanted to distance itself from Bush. Maybe that triggered the animosity. Other McCain staffers, Bill Kristol, and David Frum have all pointed to Wallace as smearer-in-chief against Palin. Palin aides tell me they aren’t surprised.
Over the coming weeks, RedState intends to continue outing and tracking these political mercenaries in our quest to make them political lepers. The irony here is, as a friend told me, it is clear John McCain has nothing at all to do with these smears, but in the Senate encouraged his staff to savage political opponents with innuendo and smears. Now his close advisors are just doing what they were trained to do. You can help stop them.
