Lowering the bar for Palin

The big story about last night's debate wasn't in Mississippi at the podiums, it was in the spin rooms after the event. This is when the big gun surrogates customarily provide the campaign talking points and of course the biggest guns in the rack are the VP candidates. Oddly, although not unexpectedly, Sarah Palin was no where to be found. She wasn't even in Ole Miss. The McCain camp deployed Mr. 9/11, Rudy Guiliani, to do the on air honors while the pit poodle put on her lispstick and dressed up in local baseball garb to hit a Irish pub in Philly.

Palin appeared at the bar on 20th and Walnut streets last night to shake hands with her fans for about an hour before the first presidential debate. While the crowd inside was friendly, hundreds of people lined the street outside in protest with signs that read things like "Palin is Santorum With Lipstick."

Palin did not take questions from reporters nor did she talk policy. She posed for pictures and chatted with supporters, many of whom were from outside the city limits, and made an approximately minute-long statement.

Meanwhile the networks were flooded with hate mail from McCain supporters demanding to know why their overheated hockey mom wasn't invited to the party. My guess is the campaign will encourage the notion that this was all a result of 'liberal bias' of the hateful media rather than admit they won't allow her to speak in public. One doubts the deluded who believe sharing a maritime border with Russia "is too" foreign policy experience, will put two and two together themselves.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]