It isn’t necessarily good; Hitler had it. Nasser had it.

Thatcher had it. Reagan the Great Communicator had it, despite his age, and even grinning Tony Blair had it before the sheeple cottoned on to the fact that there was nothing much there.

I’m racking my brains to think of someone in British public life who has it at the present moment but I’m stumped. Cameron has a teeny bit of it on occasion but the real thing just isn’t there.

Nick Griffin doesn’t have it.

If Palin was a such a drag on the McCain camp, why did she attract bigger crowds?

The crowds she attracted wouldn’t vote Democrat if Jesus himself was on the ticket. Being able to draw a large crowd of your own base to an echo-chamber rally isn’t terribly useful unless you can also attract swing voters, or at least make them not vote for the other guy, as Neil Kinnock sadly learnt.

McCain ran a semi-successful, albeit not successful candidate, by not being a Rove-ite `Republican Base’ candidate. When it became apparent that the strategy wasn’t working, instead of moving further to the centre on the assumption that ultimately his base would vote for him anyway (or at worth stay at home) he (or his handlers) decided to shore up his base. That means that the far right vote for him the same as they did, but you lose swing votes. At best, it’s a strategy that wins red states more solidly than you otherwise would, but makes swing states unwinnable.

Palin was a side-show. Any other red-state governor with conservative social views would have had the same effect.

And why are these “McCain insiders” not named, the ones making the most silly accusations.

Face it. Like her or hate her she is a force many fear. Among republicans and the democrats. And besides, she had more experience than Obama for the presidency and she buried Biden in the debates.
Funny how all that is forgotten while Biden spits one idiotic statement after another almost every week.

The U.S. and its gallant minor ally, the ever-dependable and taken-for-granted British, is/are trying to find a fast exit from Iraq, which is good enough, but the news from Afghanistan – Pakistan [the two 'problems' seem to have turned into one big insoluble problem] is anything but reassuring.

Since nobody has any clear idea what to do, we’d probably all like the Allies simply to dump Afghanistan – Pakistan and let the Afghans and Pakistanis sort matters out as best they can.

She’s a big friend to Israel.

Sarah Palin is a genuinely interesting person compared to a cardboard cutout like the present Vice-President ["Joe somebody, I think..."] but what do we know of her ethics and character?

Well, she ran unscrupulously as “the Christian candidate” against an opponent with a might-be-Jewish name [he wasn't Jewish, and she knew it]”

Palin never once said anything or did anything that could be in any way, shape or form Anti-Semitic.

“she contrived to drag the abortion issue and the legal-gun-ownership issue into elections which had nothing to do with abortion or gun laws”

Other than the fact that the Democrats claimed that McCain/Palin were going to pick right-wing nomonees for the supreme court and reverse Roe vs. Wade and Biden has a record of voting against gun ownership; including the new way to get rid of guns by allowing people to sue gun manufacturers for deaths that result from their products.