More a Necessity Than a Plus
20 September 2008 12:30 am by Scott Hopkins
Guest post by Scott Hopkins
Who can blame her for talking about a “Palin and McCain administration” when more people come to see her at their rallies?
An account from Cedar Rapids, IA:
McCain starts speaking 18 minutes into the rally. He begins by reminiscing about the State Fair. “I’m very grateful to be here. We intend to campaign hard across the state of Iowa again…I think we’re going to be up late on Election Night, my friends, and we’re going to need your help.” I look up, about five minutes into McCain’s address and see a steady stream of people walking out of the rally. They just came to see Palin apparently.
Not surprising, and it’s the reason why separate McCain and Palin rallies will likely be very rare.
Let’s get real: If equal or larger sized crowds for McCain could be guaranteed, we wouldn’t be seeing them together most of the time. There is simply too much ground that must be covered in the final 45 days of the campaign for it to be an effective strategy overall. With both Obama and Biden continuing to draw thousands to their separate rallies, occurring simultaneously in different parts of the country, the math is just not in the Republicans’ favor when it comes to reaching out to undecided voters in person.
But better that than risk a string of Palin mega-rallies occurring at the same time as some much smaller, less enthusiastic McCain get-togethers. I’m tempted to believe that such a scene would be quite likely at this point if they went their separate ways. That would be just fine for a Palin/McCain ticket, but not for the current configuration.
So it only makes sense to keep them together. Why open the door for more disastrous headlines like “McCain’s Crowd Numbers Plummet In Palin’s Absence” and “Palin outdraws McCain” accompanied by highly unflattering visual contrasts?
It’s not worth the risk…so expect a steady stream of joint Palin/McCain rallies from now until election day.
