McCain campaign goes for shotgun approach

If this is true, it will go down in the history books as the singlemost dunderheaded campaign ploy in the history of the United States.

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

. . . McCain is expected to have a front-row seat at Bristol’s wedding and to benefit from the outpouring of goodwill that it could bring. “What’s the downside?” a source inside the McCain campaign said. “It would be wonderful. I don’t know that there has ever been a pre-election wedding before.”

“What’s the downside?” Besides trivalizing the electoral process to the point of rendering it as irrelevant as a carnival sideshow? Nothing. I can't imagine anything more important to the future of the country than suspending the campaign -- again -- for a shotgun wedding. But that could be just me.

Meanwhile, Lindsay Graham was on the bobblehead programs today defending Palin's bumbling performance in the Couric interviews. He has a great defense. When asked to translate whatever Palin said about her experience with Russia, Lindsay said Joe Biden makes mistakes too.

"If we're not going to judge Joe by one sound bite in one interview, which is fair to Joe, and we're not going to take a mistake that he's made and say that that's a death-defying blow, let's don't do it for her."

Oh Lindsay. If only it was just one isolated mistake out of over a hundred press avails, you wouldn't look like such an hapless tool when you make that argument.


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