Will Palin Do an Eagleton?

In 1972, George McGovern selected Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate as many other high profile Democrats did not want to be the VP nominee who lost to Nixon. Senator Eagleton had joined Senator McGovern in the opposition to the Vietnam War and seemed like a decent pick until the fact that he electric shock treatments for pysical and nervous exhaustion. The controversy over this revelation after the VP selection led to Eagleton deciding not to run with McGovern and McGovern selected Sargent Shriver. Of course, McGovern-Shriver lost in 1972.

This morning, I thought to myself that TrooperGate might be the Republican’s excuse for pulling what seems to be an awful McCain plunder in the selection of Sarah Palin. In his excellent discussion of TrooperGate, Steve Benen closes with:

I’m not making any predictions here, but I can’t help but wonder if Palin will still be on the Republican ticket by the time Election Day comes in November.

Also check out Steve’s coverage of how fellow Alaskan politicians think the Palin selection was a really bad choice.

Update: Many thanks to Sammy for letting us know that Bill Kristol has once again made a fool out of himself:

A spectre is haunting the liberal elites of New York and Washington–the spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism, rising out of the American countryside, free of the taint (fair or unfair) of the Bush administration and the recent Republican Congress, able to invigorate a McCain administration and to govern beyond it. That spectre has a name–Sarah Palin, the 44-year-old governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain on Friday to be his running mate. There she is: a working woman who’s a proud wife and mother; a traditionalist in important matters who’s broken through all kinds of barriers; a reformer who’s a Republican; a challenger of a corrupt good-old-boy establishment who’s a conservative; a successful woman whose life is unapologetically grounded in religious belief; a lady who’s a leader. So what we will see in the next days and weeks–what we have already seen in the hours after her nomination–is an effort by all the powers of the old liberalism, both in the Democratic party and the mainstream media, to exorcise this spectre. They will ridicule her and patronize her. They will distort her words and caricature her biography.

Patronize? McCain picked her for one reason – she’s a woman. There are a lot of women in the Republican Party that could become fine Presidents but Sarah Palin is not one of them. I have always been for the rights of women but when one picks someone for an important post – shouldn’t qualifications come into play and not the fact that a person is “attractive” to works Kristol’s own words. Free of taint? Bill? TrooperGate – check it out! And of course, when it comes to her record on earmarks – she lied about the Bridge to Nowhere! But all of this is beyond the intellect of Bill Kristol!