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This clip is spreading like wildfire on the Net. Conservative pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan say what they really think about the McCain/Palin ticket and its not pretty. Host Chuck Todd plays along.
Noonan has a column about Palin in the Wall Street Journal today. Credit the Right Wing Punditocracy. They lie to your face on National TV but when the think the mikes are off, they say what they really think. They are lying to us to in an desparate attempt to hold onto power.
Here’s a rough transcript (after the jump):
Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor work. Engler, Whitman, Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. And these guys, this is all like how you want to (inaudible) this race. You know, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work.
Noonan: It’s over.
Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
CT: Don’t you think the Palin pick was insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too (inaudible)
Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.
Murphy: They’re all bummed out. I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
Todd:Â Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives and (inaudible) the picture.
Yeah, but what’s the narrative?
Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at and they blow it.
Murphy: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism and this is cynical.
And as you call it gimmicky.
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Here’s what Peggy said about this today.
Open Mic Night at MSNBC
September 3, 2008
St. Paul
Well, I just got mugged by the nature of modern media, and I wish it weren’t my fault, but it is. Readers deserve an explanation, so I’m putting a new top on today’s column and, with the forbearance of the Journal, here it is.
Wednesday afternoon, in a live MSNBC television panel hosted by NBC’s political analyst Chuck Todd, and along with Republican strategist Mike Murphy, we discussed Sarah Palin’s speech this evening to the Republican National Convention. I said she has to tell us in her speech who she is, what she believes, and why she’s here. We spoke of Republican charges that the media has been unfair to Mrs. Palin, and I defended the view that while the media should investigate every quote and vote she’s made, and look deeply into her career, it has been unjust in its treatment of her family circumstances, and deserved criticism for this.
When the segment was over and MSNBC was in commercial, Todd, Murphy and I continued our conversation, talking about the Palin choice overall. We were speaking informally, with some passion — and into live mics. An audio tape of that conversation was sent, how or by whom I don’t know, onto the internet. And within three hours I was receiving it from friends far and wide, asking me why I thought the McCain campaign is “over”, as it says in the transcript of the conversation. Here I must plead some confusion. In our off-air conversation, I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. I made the case that this is no longer true, that party leaders seem to me stuck in the assumptions of 1988 and 1994, the assumptions that reigned when they were young and coming up. “The first lesson they learned is the one they remember,” I said to Todd — and I’m pretty certain that is a direct quote. But, I argued, that’s over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people. And when I said, “It’s over!” — and I said it more than once — that is what I was referring to. I am pretty certain that is exactly what Todd and Murphy understood I was referring to. In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it. In fact, at an on-the-record press symposium on the campaign on Monday, when all of those on the panel were pressed to predict who would win, I said that I didn’t know, but that we just might find “This IS a country for old men.” That is, McCain may well win. I do not think the campaign is over, I do not think this is settled, and did not suggest, back to the Todd-Murphy conversation, that “It’s over.”
However, I did say two things that I haven’t said in public, either in speaking or in my writing. One is a vulgar epithet that I wish I could blame on the mood of the moment but cannot. No one else, to my memory, swore. I just blurted. The other, more seriously, is a real criticism that I had not previously made, but only because I hadn’t thought of it. And it is connected to a thought I had this morning, Wednesday morning, and wrote to a friend. Here it is. Early this morning I saw Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and as we chatted about the McCain campaign (she thoughtfully and supportively) I looked into her eyes and thought, Why not her? Had she been vetted for the vice presidency, and how did it come about that it was the less experienced Mrs. Palin who was chosen? I didn’t ask these questions or mention them, I just thought them. Later in the morning, still pondering this, I thought of something that had happened exactly 20 years before. It was just after the 1988 Republican convention ended. I was on the plane, as a speechwriter, that took Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, and the new vice presidential nominee, Dan Quayle, from New Orleans, the site of the convention, to Indiana. Sitting next to Mr. Quayle was the other senator from that state, Richard Lugar. As we chatted, I thought, “Why him and not him?” Why Mr. Quayle as the choice, and not the more experienced Mr. Lugar? I came to think, in following years, that some of the reason came down to what is now called The Narrative. The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself, and communicate to others. I don’t like the idea of The Narrative. I think it is … a barnyard epithet. And, oddly enough, it is something that Republicans are not very good at, because it’s not where they live, it’s not what they’re about, it’s too fancy. To the extent the McCain campaign was thinking in these terms, I don’t like that either. I do like Mrs. Palin, because I like the things she espouses. And because, frankly, I met her once and liked her. I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won’t be something in between.
But, bottom line, I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet, I am certainly sorry that someone abused my meaning in the use of the words, “It’s over,” and I’m sorry I didn’t have the Kay Bailey Hutchison thought before this morning, because I could have written of it. There. Now: onto today’s column.
Subject: Carol McCain (Former Mrs. John Mcain) A MUST READ
More about John McCain. I doubt you’ll hear this on CNN or any other station.
I thought you might find this interesting. On the show we saw last week,
McCain mentioned that his greatest failure in life was the ending of his first
marriage. No kidding? I guess he had to admit some remorse because his ex-wife was going public with the story. How shallow can one man be?
Carol McCain
McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his five years as
a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family
values, the 71-year- old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his
beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another
Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential
campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to
McCain’s three eldest children.
She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and
torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully
stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news. But
when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a
handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a
terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a
teleg raph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969.
Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive
internal injuries.
When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving
surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been
forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall,
willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a
catheter. Today, she stands at just 5′ 4′ in and still walks awkwardly, with a
pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70,
her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.
For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the
accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now
lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.
My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be
25. You know that happens…it just does.’
In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in
Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country
to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Some of McCain’s
acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a
self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the
field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty
queen, for financial reasons.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a
leading campaigner for veterans’ rights,
said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I
know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you
what it is -dece it.’
When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he
started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.
Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At
that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.’
McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and
glory,’ he said. After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her
over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona . And the rest is history.’
Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential
candidate, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both
Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is
unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.