The Des Moines Register reported that Sarah Palin will headline a rally in Dubuque on Monday (click the link for details about the event, including how to get tickets).
Why would John McCain’s campaign send her to Iowa the day before the election? He’s trailing badly in all the recent polls, and Iowa Democrats have a big advantage in early voting.
Also, why would she go to Dubuque, which isn’t in a competitive Congressional district and isn’t close to most of the competitive Iowa House and Senate districts?
I posted a diary about this at MyDD last night, and several theories were suggested in the comments:
1. She is laying the groundwork for her 2012 presidential campaign. I don’t buy this, because I don’t think she is in control of her travel schedule. Presumably senior strategists in the McCain campaign are making those calls.
2. They are still making a play for Iowa’s seven electoral votes. I doubt they really think they have a chance here, but maybe they are that deluded. Anyway, there are a lot of anti-abortion Democrats in the Dubuque area, and maybe they think Palin will play well with them.
3. She will try to reduce Obama’s margin of victory in Iowa by going to the eastern part of the state, where he is especially strong.
4. She is trying to fire up Republican supporters for down-ticket candidates or ballot initiatives. If that were the case, I don’t see why Dubuque would be the venue. Anyway, we don’t have any controversial referendum at stake next Tuesday (just the initiative to remove “idiot” and “insane person” from the Iowa Constitution).
5. Palin is hurting McCain in the swing states, so they are trying to minimize the damage by sending her to states he’s already lost. That makes some sense to me.
6. High-ranking McCain advisers who are close to Mitt Romney are trying to damage Palin’s reputation by sending her to states McCain will lose big. That will undermine any possible claims about her broad appeal in the 2012 nominating contest. Supporting this hypothesis, people close to McCain have been blaming Palin for dragging down the ticket. Within the past week, unnamed McCain advisers have described Palin as a “diva” and a “whack job.”
What do you think?
2 Comments
7. Mismanaged Campaign
I think you might have forgotten one possibility: an already mismanaged campaign in its death throes.
It’s five days until the election, and it looks like a bloodbath no matter how you slice it. I’m sure a lot of the middle men in the campaign have pretty much checked out and gone job hunting, and most of the high level guys have probably thrown in the towel as well. So, I think you’ve got a drifting campaign–not making good strategic decisions. And even if everyone in the McCain camp is playing their “A game”, as we’ve seen during the campaign–that ain’t much.
That’s my guess. The “Mitt Romney Insurgency” idea is intriguing, but they’d keep her out of Iowa if that was their goal. It’s more important to lock her out of the Iowa GOP power players than to send her to a big loss state.
american007 Fri 31 Oct 1:23 PM
Iowa Republican Party
They are listening to the current leadership of the Iowa Republican Party. The Iowa R Party is in the control of not Evangelicals, but fundamentalist Evangelicals. That’s who Palin is, fundamentalist. They are looking toward the future. They have convinced the inept McCain campaign that this will stregnthen the party. And it will with the Hartsuch group, small as it is.
dbrog Sat 1 Nov 10:50 PM