▪️ EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was first published in American Thinker. You can link to it here.▪️
It’s hard to believe, but it was 18 years ago today, August 29, 2008, that John McCain introduced America to Sarah Palin as his running mate.
It was 10 years later, to the day, August 29, 2018, when news broke that Cindy McCain told Sarah Palin (through intermediaries) to stay away from all of his many memorial services.
It was a despicable thing to do to someone who had been unfailingly loyal to her running mate.
And that one request to stay away had a lot of ROI; it actually equaled at least 5 snubs, given that McCain had at least 5 official memorial ceremonies over the course of 5 days, plus highly orchestrated arrival and departure ceremonies. It was a regular rolling rally of a funeral. Befitting a President. A great President. Way over the top for a Senator, but of course the the Democrat Media Complex was happy to play along, with cameras at every stop, for every tear, every Democrat ally, every sanctimonious RINO send-off.
It was a galling, garish display for a small, petty, mean man.
Why do I say small, petty, and mean? Because of what he did to Palin in his biography. (And his thumbs down for repealing Obamacare, but that’s another column for another day.) You may recall:
In May [2018] he [McCain] published a book, saying he regretted choosing Mrs Palin and should have instead picked his friend and former Democratic senator Joe Lieberman.
It’s one thing to have a bad moment, in the heat of a moment, and say something awful about someone, but to do it with cold forethought, with many, many chances to think it over before it becomes published and public, was downright cruel, especially after the years-long, white hot, unrelenting hazing she took.
I know I’m not alone in why I pulled the lever for McCain/Palin in 2008: it was a vote for Palin, not him. McCain’s only value to me was that he wasn’t Obama. He could have been a houseplant and I’d have voted for him. That he had such a vibrant former Governor at his side brought desperately needed excitement to his rather moribund campaign, as anyone who lived through it and assessed it honestly knew to be true.
Maybe McCain never stood a chance in 2008 against the juggernaut of The One, but one thing is for certain, in the end, as McCain knew he was dying, he cruelly disparaged the one good, legitimately energizing decision his campaign ever made, bringing Sarah Palin on board. That Cindy McCain so ostentatiously banned her from any one of his rolling rally funerals was just the cherry on top to their nasty display of disrespect to a woman who had been nothing but gracious to them.