For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.





Sarah Palin on October 5, suggesting to Bill Kristol that the McCain campaign ought to go more negative:

“To tell you the truth, Bill, I don’t know why [the Revered Wright] association isn’t discussed more, because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that — with, I don’t know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn’t get up and leave — to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up.”

Sarah Palin on Sunday, telling the press that she wants to focus on the issues:

“If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand, I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war, and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls, and includes spending so much money on the television ads that, I think, is kind of draining out there in terms of Americans’ attention span.”

Those robocalls she’s denouncing as “conventional ways of campaigning” are exactly the sort of negative, association-based campaign tactics she was urging just two weeks ago. It’s almost as if her complete lack of experience on the national stage forces her to make it up as she goes along!