Rock, McCain, Hard Place

For the record, I don't think Palin's going anywhere. The McGovern lesson is that dumping a VP is essentially a death rattle. Plus, Palin is more well-liked among the rank and file than McCain is, so if anything, they'd dump HIM from the ticket. She was brought in to please the religious right and ramp up the phone banks and stuff the envelopes. The scandals swirling around her will not register with those folks in the least - in fact they'll see them as proof of liberal media bias and elitist liberal types harping on "experience." And they'll play the gender card explicitly to rile up the culture of the aggrieved, the permanent persecution complex among the right-wing base.

If McCain dropped her from the ticket the religious right would go apeshit and stay home en masse in November. He has no choice but to soldier on. Which leads to some of the most hilarious spin you're ever going to see as they try to rehabilitate her image.

As the chief executive of the nation's largest state, Ms. Palin oversees some of the country's largest energy reserves. She came into office at a critical time in Alaska politics, facing a system plagued by corruption. Her response was to immediately begin cleaning it up.

"The nation's largest state" in landmass, the fourth-smallest in population. Pfotenhauer is basically saying that Palin is good at managing the ice. Which, actually, considering her love of fossil fuel production and her denial of man-made climate change, she's quite BAD at.

What's key to focus on is her EXTREMISM. She's going to extreme lengths to obstruct the Troopergate investigation, trying to weasel out of the deposition and challenging the inquiry itself. Her views on the environment, on sex ed, on abortion, on creationism, are extreme and out of the mainstream. She has come out for book burning while mayor of Wasilla:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

The question continues to be asked over whether she'll be replaced. But surely she can't be. That makes her a drag on the ticket right now. This could all blow over with what I would expect to be a good speech on Wednesday. But for now, the McCain campaign is totally off message and stuck, while Barack Obama continues to work his ground game and persuasion.

UPDATE: Vetted with teh Google - you really can't make this shit up.