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Here’s what I take from Althouse’s screed:

Look at me! Look at me! Pay attention to me! I’m relevant! Look, I’m calling Sarah Palin “dumb!” That’s edgy! That’s cool! Everybody else’s doing it! Somebody listen to me!!!!

Althouse is essentially arguing that a vice presidential candidate exists to be a mindless automaton who does and says whatever “the campaign” tells him or her to say. Is that so? Did Joe Biden do and say whatever Obama’s people told him to say? Somehow I doubt it, especially since Biden contradicted Obama a number of times.

I believe this to be irrefutable: That if Sarah Palin’s first two interviews were with Chris Wallace and Greta van Susteren, the election would have been much, much closer. Instead, the McCain campaign forced her into hostile territory with Charlie Gibson, and then again with Katie Couric, all the while attempting to get her caught up on presidential politics in the cram session to end all cram sessions. She definitely was not ready for the kind of ambush journalism practiced by the “mainstream” liberals in the media.

Her first interview wasn’t even that bad, but the always despicable MSM edited the content to make her seem less thoughtful. Then came the Couric disaster, which compounded the notion that Sarah is stupid, Sarah is ignorant, Sarah can’t be elected to national office – and that notion was intentionally promoted by the MSM bastards who did everything they could to destroy her so that they might help their Obamessiah get elected.

Althouse is arguing that Palin should have just shut up and allowed the McCain campaign to doom itself, which is exactly what it did through numerous unbelievably stupid actions. We hear about the alleged stupidity of Sarah Palin; what about the stupidity of John McCain? How freaking stupid do you have to be to suspend your campaign, knowing that if your opponent refuses to suspend his as well, you end up looking like a completely ineffectual fool? I half-heartedly defended McCain’s campaign suspension back when he did it, because what else was I going to do? That idiot was our only hope of stopping Obama from being elected. And some hope he turned out to be!

And then to compound his folly, McCain elected to go have a chat with the media while his campaign was supposed to have been “suspended”, which was the excuse he gave for not going on with David Letterman. What a brilliant move, to make one of the most popular late night talk show hosts in the country angry with you a few months before the election! Naturally Letterman went on to bash McCain relentlessly every night, which I have no doubt cost him thousands and thousands of votes.

We hear from the MSM that Sarah Palin cost the Republican ticket votes. This is the same MSM that fought tooth and nail to destroy her. That is the definition of “chutzpah”. Well, MSM, I have a message for you. On Election Day, 2008, I didn’t vote for John McCain. I voted for Sarah Palin.