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Sarah Palin Has Crashed This Party for Far Too Long

So says top McCain campaign media strategist Mark McKinnon. Mark also helped prep Sarah Palin for her infamous debate with Joe Biden after desperate pleas from campaign insiders, a debate he later claimed she pulled off.

I guess Mark is a big fan of winks. He was also George W Bush’s media strategist and sold Bush to America twice, so perhaps Mark is simply used to lowering the expectations of Americans. But suddenly Mark is not so keen on lowered expectations. He went on MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Last Word” program last night to denounce Sarah Palin as having crashed the Republican Party for too long, “Everyone’s dancing around Sarah Palin… her stock is falling and it’s falling pretty rapidly”. Chalk Mark up as another good Republican soldier trotting out his talking points.

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Here’s Mark on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “Last Word”:

Mark McKinnon: I think Sarah Palin’s getting closer to her sell by date. Congratulations on your evolution on the show, by the way. You know, she’s comparing herself to Ronald Reagan. And you know, I didn’t know Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was not a friend of mine. But I can guarantee you this; Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. She didn’t even get the name of his movie right. She’s comparing herself to a real icon of the party. So I think it’s problematic. I think that the Republican Party is beginning to realize that Sarah Palin’s crashed this party a little too long. And it’s not good for the political party, not good for the prospects of Republican nominee and then win a general election in 2012.

Lawrence O’Donnell: What do you think is going on with guys like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani who publicly say that she’s qualified, more qualified than Joe Biden and Giuliani the same thing. They pump up Sarah Palined her credentials. Are they just playing to Palin backers hoping that they don’t alienate them for their own future political prospects?

Mark McKinnon: Yeah, that’s the interesting thing about the primary. Everybody is dancing around Sarah Palin. The interesting thing is that they talk about was she as qualified as Barack Obama, but then they turn around and say that Barack Obama is not qualified. That doesn’t square very well. We’re beginning to see as a result of these elections that she put up candidates that really weren’t qualified. They lost, we lost. The republicans could have taken the senate if not for Sarah Palin. Her stock is falling and pretty rapidly now, I think.

Well, listen, Mark, I do so loves it when the party who ran Sarah Palin as Vice President tries to smear Barack Obama as unqualified, because, you know, there is literally no difference between a constitutional lawyer who has been President for two of the toughest years in American history (governing over two wars to boot) and a failed beauty queen who had a recall campaign initiated against her as a mayor and had to hire a city manager because she could not do her job and then quit after her second year as Governor. Yeah, the two are so totally the same!

But I also love how you boys are taking to the tee-vee to denounce Sarah Palin and fact-check her now. How many times do I have to tell you media strategists and Republican smarty-smart pants that criticizing her is not how you stop her? You are doing everything you can to endear her more to her people. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted her to be President. But then, you and I both know that she’s crazy and even you find that unworkable because crazy won’t do as she’s told.

Sarah Palin always runs as the Republican outsider. It’s how she ran for Governor. It’s the game she played as Vice Presidential Maverick Candidate (aka: Rogue, aka: unqualified). The more you criticize, the more fuel for her persecution complex and the more toxic drivel she is forced to deliver from her Facebook bunker of fear about rising grocery costs in the year with the slowest rise in grocery costs since 1968 when the labor department (bad labor department, when Palin is president you will be no more, thuggery!) began keeping track of such things. Sigh.

Also, for you meanies at the Wall Street Journal who corrected Palin, I note that you have just begun to correct her, when for two years you encouraged her to “write” and publish screeds replete with an utter contempt for reality with absolutely no push back – oh, but yes, that was when the Party wanted her to poison the political debate but now that you all are done with your booty call, you are “correcting” her. Yes, that will stop her.

She is laughing at you from her Tea Party White House Palace on dead Lake Lucille, wherein her godly stewardship of our environment is evidenced in the floating dead fish carcasses amid toxic drudge that passes for a “lake” post-Palin as mayor. Yes, I can and yes, I do blame her for God’s creatures screaming deaths of agony. That’s Sarah Palin’s Alaska. And it will be you, too, Mark Meany McKinnon, if you don’t stop fact-checking she who is mantled by God to be President and get free stuff, also too.

So now we have to listen to you festering Republican snake oil salesmen sell us on your new meme: Sarah Palin can’t win in 2012 and she’s also unqualified.

Nice of you to join the rest of the country in noting that her failure to comprehend that Afghanistan is not a neighboring country of ours is not good in a Presidential candidate. But honestly, can we, should we, believe anything that comes out of your mouth?

I remember you selling me on Sarah Palin in 2008, so I think not.

And Mark, just last July, you were quoted in Time magazine telling the world this about Palin: “What she knows, you can’t teach,” says Mark McKinnon, a top strategist for George W. Bush and McCain. “And what she doesn’t know, she can learn — and she’s learning fast.”

And then there was this goody to Time in April of 2008:

““Every day they run a primary campaign, we run a general election campaign,” explained Mark McKinnon, McCain’s senior media adviser, as the campaign bus rolled through Kentucky. “And every day we run a general election campaign is a good day for us.” That was not all. McKinnon, who used to work for George W. Bush, said he saw an historical analogy. The spring of 2008, he claimed, was shaping up to be as fruitful for Republicans as past cycles. “In the Bush campaign we used to say that we won the campaign in 2000 and 2004 between March and June,” McKinnon said later in the day. “And I think the way things are going we could say that McCain won this election between March and June.””

So which side of your mouth should we believe? Inquiring minds want to know.

The lesson today is never listen to a media strategist. They only tell you what their side wants you to know today. Plus, this one sold Bush to us twice.

And he says Palin picks losers. Oh, my.

Sarah Palin has crashed this party for far too long, I couldn’t agree more. But these boys are going to be held accountable for selling us the dangerously ill Sarah Palin in 2008, and it does not matter what they say now unless they apologize for cynically pushing a mentally ill person as qualified to be Vice President in order to win an election and in the process selling America on another Bush, but this one with no manners and no Laura to calm the troubled waters.