Rove weighs in

Karl Rove, evil Machiavellian extraordinaire:*

Mr. McCain’s other adjustment is his schedule. His campaign understands the dire circumstances it faces and is narrowing his travels almost exclusively to Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada. If he carries those states, while losing only Iowa and New Mexico from the GOP’s 2004 total, Mr. McCain will carry 274 Electoral College votes and the White House. It’s threading the needle, but it’s come to that.

This task, while not impossible, will be difficult. By mid-September, the McCain camp was slightly ahead in the polls. Then came the financial crisis. The past month has taken an enormous toll on the McCain campaign.

Whether it can find the right formula in the next 19 days to dig out is a question. If Mr. McCain succeeds, he will have engineered the most impressive and improbable political comeback since Harry Truman in 1948. But having to reach back more than a half-century for inspiration is not the place campaign managers want to be now.

So, basically, there’s still hope for McCain, but maybe not much

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*For those who don’t understand that Karl Rove rules the world from an undisclosed location (probably Atlantis), I say this facetiously.

welcome aboard, Sarah Palin!

best choice? I don’t know, but let’s add it up:

identity politics: female, young — if we look to Obama for youth, that gives Mrs. Palin a plus-plus; maybe pulls in some PUMAs

executive experience: of the four candidates (P & VP), she is the only one with executive experience as an elected official

(side-note, the Obama campaign’s reaction is a joke:

“Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency,” said spokesman Bill Burton.

we can play that card back to ‘Today, the Democratic Party put the former editor of the Harvard Law Review …’ or, even better, ‘Today, the Democratic Party put a man with zero executive experience …’ contrast it with McCain’s congratulatory message to Obama on his winning the nomination)

(which really, now that I think about it, this was an excellent opportunity for Obama to say something nice about a woman, cuz he kinda needs to, imho)

contrast: Obama picks an old white guy, a Washington insider prone to racist gaffes, as his vp; McCain chooses a young white woman and Washington outsider — who’s the candidate of change?

p.s. i guess there goes my dream of a Condi Rice vp slot …

p.p.s. also, no Mad Minerva vp slot, another shame, but I sense she’s young and may be better suited for the 2016 elections, when we’ll have to replace McCain-Palin, by which time I also suspect she’ll be half cyborg and therefore able to represent both New Overlord demographics

instapundit roundup of reactions (to the Palin pick, not to MM’s non-pick)

(and not to the non-pick of Rice, either, of course)

(care for some tea?)