How quickly did Senator McCain choose Sarah Palin?

Question

Did he take the time to vet his choice? She is under investigation in her own State.

Answer 1

As fast as he dumped his ailing first wife for younger, richer Cindy. So fast he didn't wait till he was divorced to apply for a second marriage license.

Answer 2

McCain first met with Gov. Palin in February.  She was fully vetted.

The investigation is silly. The trooper tazered his small son and committed various other violations.

Answer 3

She was well vetted by well paid investigators.  All potential candidates are.  McCain was told of Bristol Palin's pregnancy.  It didn't matter to him and it shouldn't matter to anyone else, but the Palin's, especially Bristol.  Most of the smears that the Dems post are so blantantly ridiculous that they are hilarious, but don't mess with kids period.

Sarah Palin -- Dream Girl

A Commentary by Debra J. Saunders

Sunday, August 31, 2008 Email to a Friend

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MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL -- Bingo.

For weeks, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been the Republican whom conservatives barely dared to hope could become John McCain's pick as his running mate.

For Republicans angry at Washington's big-spending bonanza when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, Palin, like McCain, is an antidote. She is the Alaskan who pulled state support for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere and bucked Alaska's congressional and state Republican leaders.

For social conservatives, the mother of five has impeccable credentials. She's a member of Feminists for Life, who walked the walk in April when she gave birth to a son, shown by genetic testing to have Down syndrome. "I'm looking at him right now, and I see perfection," she said of her son, Trig. "Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"

For conservatives, who felt that McCain has been at times too cozy with the Washington left, Palin is a conservative's conservative -- a moose hunter and co-owner of a commercial fishing operation.

As an Alaskan, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Her husband works for BP on an Alaska oil field. Yet, as the Almanac of American Politics has reported, she stood up to Big Oil when she supported a natural gas pipeline instead of an oil pipeline backed by the state's major petroleum interests. McCain has been too much of a wishful thinker when it comes to energy policy. Palin could champion a more grounded approach to energy.

As a female candidate, Palin just might attract disgruntled Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters -- or at least give them pause before voting for the Obama-Biden ticket.

After Barack Obama picked Joe Biden as his running mate, I began to steel myself for the possibility that McCain might make a similarly uninspiring, but seemingly safe, choice. The top pick of Beltway insiders was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a strong campaigner with solid economic credentials -- but flawed by what seemed an opportunistic shift to the right on social issues in order to win the GOP primary. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge supports abortion rights -- a plus for me -- but he likely would be the butt of late-night talk-show jokes because of the color-coded federal warning system devised to alert Americans to the likelihood of terrorist attacks when he was director of Homeland Security. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty looked OK -- but he wasn't Sarah Palin.

Is she short on experience? Yes. Voters will have to watch her performance on the campaign trail to judge how she responds to high-stakes politics and the international arena.

That said, as a governor, Palin she has more experience running a government than Obama, who began serving his first term in the U.S. Senate in 2005. And unlike Obama, Palin has shown herself willing to challenge her jaded ethical policies within her party. That's change.

As McCain said Friday, Palin is "exactly who this country needs" to help him confront "the same old Washington politics of me first and country second."

On the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she investigated fellow commission member Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, in an effort that led to his resignation and paying a $12,000 fine levied by Alaska's attorney general. In 2006, she ran against the incumbent Republican governor, Frank Murkowski -- and won.

She is not a hard-core social conservative. For example, Palin supported awarding benefits for same-s*x couples. But she is a good fiscal conservative, who used her veto power to reduce her state's budget by $124 million.

Palin is a maverick, like he's a maverick. She complements McCain's ardent opposition, not only to congressional earmarks, but also to the pork-rich farm bill and ethanol subsidies supported by Obama.

Pollster Frank Luntz told me in Denver that the key to victory for McCain is to trumpet one theme -- "accountability." McCain, he said, should promise government that does what it is supposed to do, punishes bad actors who break the rules and ends "wasteful Washington spending." On that score, Palin was made to order.  

Answer 4

You Dems are scrutinizing and asking waaaaay more questions about Sarah Palin than you EVER did of your own Presidential nominee: Barack Hussein Obama!

You Dems are really weird people!  And I do mean WEIRD!!!!!

Answer 5

There is some solid evidence that the only vetting they did was an interview.   McCain has admitted to only meeting her once, and the newspaper archives for Alaskan papers weren't even searched.  

What's clear is that the decision was rushed.   God knows what McCain was planning to do for weeks prior, cause it looks like the end result was picked over the course of a day or two.

Sidney Blumenthal has some interesting rumors, he says McCain picked Palin as a compromise between his first choice (Lieberman) and Rove's (Romney), see below.

Funny, cause the Republicans act like the Democrats are the ones infighting with Clinton - Obama....but their decision process was clearly a clusterphuck of epic proportions, producing a unique but very likely damning candidate for the VP spot.

Answer 6

Obama is also under investigation for violating Federal Campaign Finance Laws.  Sarah Palin was on John McCain's V.P. list back in June.  So it was no quick decision.

Answer 7

He took one look at her butt and his mind was made up -- two seconds.

Answer 8

nope. .like 10 minutes, he looekd her up on wikepedia.  

Answer 9

Apparently he's been considering her for several months. I even found an article on the net by a female journalist about it from waaay back, saying something like, "Hey, why couldn't a woman be the GOP VP?" She's been in strong consideration for awhile. I guarantee they looked over all that legal stuff well in advance. Heck, it wouldn't take you too long to find all the answers you'd need on Google to dismiss the investigation as a concern yourself. No matter who was governor, that trooper needed firing.  

Answer 10

How many seconds does a desperate man have?

Answer 11

I don't have a source for this, but I am sure you could find the information on CNN.

However, what I have heard several times on TV is that McCain only knew Palin for less than an hour before picking her as his VP.

Answer 12

No he drew her name out of a hat.  Absolutely no thought was put into the biggest selection of his life.

Answer 13

15 min

Answer 14

He saw her pretty face and nice body and said "You the woman!" Then he said...."We will make history".

Answer 15

He took a half day at best.

"Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

Although the McCain campaign said that Mr. McCain had known about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy before he asked her mother to join him on the ticket and that he did not consider it disqualifying, top aides were vague on Monday about how and when he had learned of the pregnancy, and from whom"

They vetted her Thursday, and announce on Friday.

Answer 16

I think he got the idea about 8 or 9 years ago when he heard about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Maybe McCain got the idea to use the Oval Office for his private party room.

Answer 17

I'm sure he thought about it for a while. If he were elected President, he'd have to work long hours beside his Vice President. So, would he rather spend time with Romney, Pawlenty, or Palin ?

Hmmm, Palin is a babe. Simple choice.