Tea and Crackers

From The Plum Line at The Washington Post:

By some reckonings, Christine O’Donnell had a bit of a rocky time at her Delaware Senate debate with Dem Chris Coons [Wednesday] night. She wouldn’t say whether she believe in evolution, described Coons as a Marxist, and appeared to stumble over her answer on discretionary funding.

And yet, as Dana Milbank notes, in comparison to recent revelations about her and the national caricature that is the result, her performance was clearly an improvement.

If that’s so, there are two people she has to thank for that, and they’re both Sarah Palin advisers: Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb. They were the ones who took on the job of prepping O’Donnell for the debate, Goldfarb confirms.

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The Book to Nowhere: Thanks, but No Thanks

From POLITICS DAILY:

Republican Sen. John McCain, who lifted former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin out of obscurity to be his vice presidential partner last year, isn’t saying much about Palin’s new tell-all, blame-all book. But Steve Schmidt, who managed the campaign and is a chief target in the book, doesn’t think much of “Going Rogue.”

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Hong Kong Hooey

From Politicususa (9-23-2009):

Palin did actually show up for her CLSA Hong Kong speaking engagement! Let’s take a moment to congratulate her for this fine accomplishment. Showing up is half the battle, especially with her track record.

Palin gave a speech written for her by Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s fired campaign foreign policy advisor — and reportedly the only person who sympathized with her on the campaign trail. Well, Randy had help writing it from two other people (an expert on China and a DC lawyer), because you know it takes a village to regurgitate conservative ideas and attack the President on foreign soil. Apparently.

Randy is also with her in Hong Kong, which is nice, since Randy gave up his career as a serious campaign aide when he turned on John McCain publicly in order to support the nicknamed “Little Shop of Horrors”, aka: Sarah Palin.

(Read the rest at the link)

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Y’all don’t come back now, y’hear?

From Newsweek:

Newsweek has […] learned that [Sarah] Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

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Meet (everybody except) the Press

From The Boston Globe:

NEW YORK – Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin threw herself into a crash course in diplomacy at the United Nations yesterday, beginning her first of two days of meetings with foreign leaders, including Afghan president Hamid Karzai, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, Pakistani president Ali Asif Zardari, and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

The meetings with Palin, who had never met a foreign head of state before and who traveled outside North America for the first time last year, were designed to bolster her foreign policy credentials and introduce her to close US allies with whom she would work if she became vice president.

But the carefully orchestrated visits also highlighted the degree to which John McCain’s presidential campaign will go to shield the first-term Alaska governor from the press. Until CNN threatened to withdraw its pool camera crew, Palin’s aides initially banned reporters, who are traditionally allowed to briefly view private diplomatic meetings that are being photographed, and are sometimes allowed to ask questions.

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¡Ay Caramba!

From The Trail at The Washington Post:

Republican presidential nominee John McCain suggested this week that he would continue President Bush’s policy of having cool relations with the government of Spain, despite having made starkly contrasting statements to the Spanish press earlier this year saying he looked forward to normalized relations with the NATO ally.

In comments that have caused a kerfuffle in Spain, McCain seemed to lump Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero in the same category as the anti-American leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba. McCain’s remarks came during in an English-language interview with Radio Caracol WSUA 1260AM in Miami, part of the Spanish-language radio group Union Radio, conducted Tuesday.

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Rethuglican National Convention in Pictures, Part Deux

There was much excitement behind the scenes at the Rethuglican Convention! There was a lot of planning going on!

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All of Captain Underpants’s lobbyists friends and advisers were there, including Karl Rove, Phil Gramm (who kept his hands over his ears, lest there be any whining! 😆 ), Randy Scheunemann, Joe McLieberman, Nicolle “the media sucks” Wallace, Lindsey-poo, and Charlie Black. Captain Underpants snoozes in the background until they wake him up to tell him what he honestly and truly thinks.

Cronies and Phonies

Before you faint from seeing where I found this, note that this was at the bottom:

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, http://www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

From Fox Business:

This week John McCain has stayed busy trying to escape his ties to criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his shady lobbyist colleagues, including Randy Scheunemann and Ralph Reed. The McCain campaign has been trying to gloss over the details of Scheunemann’s swings between lobbying and advising McCain, often on issues of interest to recent clients, and attempting to excuse McCain’s enlistment of Abramoff crony Reed to raise money. But the McCain campaign can’t spin away Scheunemann’s shady ties, or his influence on McCain, and they’re not having any more success trying to escape the fallout over McCain’s refusal to cancel his Monday fundraiser with Reed.

(At the top: Captain Underpants and Rick Davis. In front: Randy Scheunemann, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed)

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