Garbage journalism. Here’s the NY Times on the vetting of Sarah Palin:
“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.
Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.
“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”
I posted yesterday on the tense relationship between Green and Palin, and here’s an excerpt from the Anchorage Daily News on how Phillips and Palin get along:
Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.
“I said to Walt, ‘This can’t be happening, because his advance team didn’t come to Alaska to check her out,” Phillips said.
Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain’s people doing research on his prospective running mate.
But here’s the worst one form the Times:
And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.
Hey, NY Times, how about a mention of how Gov. Palin filed a complaint against Ruedrich for misusing public resources?
After resigning, Palin filed formal complaints against the state Republican Party’s chairman, Randy Ruedrich,[38] and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes.[39] She accused Ruedrich, one of her fellow commissioners, of doing work for the party on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.[7][35]
. . .or how the Alaskan GOP was trying to get rid of him:
So much for change. Note to coup leaders — if you are going to have a coup, you can’t let the dictator run the meeting.
An anonymous spokesperson (for obvious reasons) told AlaskaReport, “Conservatives want our party back. We see a bright future, but only if we can cleanse the party and enact change.”
“At a time when we have the most popular governor in the nation, Ruedrich has failed to communicate with her,” apparently since the 2006 election.
Alaska governor Sarah Palin said she favors a change in leadership.
The official Alaskan GOP website fails to include space for a positive mention of the governor, a picture of Palin, and celebrating the new administration’s successes to date. No wonder conservatives feel it’s time for Ruedrich to leave. They favor the vice chair, Kathy Gissel, stepping up to the chair because she has been uninvolved in the past problems and is highly respected as a hard worker.
Imagine that. McCain’s vetters didn’t speak to Palin’s political enemies.