[The following is a summary of a new post on Our Karl Rove as a courtesy to the Daily Kos community]
Democrats,
What with all the hoopla around the roll-out of Sara Palin for VP, it's hard to imagine that this could be bad news for John McCain.
Yet, as luck would have it, it is.
The pick of Palin not only showed those of us watching that John McCain is a bad decision maker on several fronts, but brings things into focus about John McCain and the Republican party that are unintended consequences of such a risky pick:
Sarah Palin Enthusiasm
It's clear that the right-wing Republican movement is ecstatic over Palin as VP. They are throwing money at the campaign hand-over-fist to show their pleasure in seeing "one of them" on the national ticket. Unfortunately, all this recent enthusiasm begs the question: why wasn't John McCain worthy of this money and adulation beforehand? It's clear that something is wrong with McCain as their candidate, because only the addition of Sarah Palin has "excited" the base and has Republicans "emptying their pockets" to support the ticket. If the base is only excited by the VP side of the ticket, what does that say for the P side of the ticket?
Sarah Palin Galvanization
There's no doubt that Sarah Palin has galvanized the Republican base. This creates two specific problems for John McCain: What is it about the top of the ticket that was not galvanizing his base, and, more importantly, Palin has galvanized the Democratic base. Sarah Palin is doing to Democrats what Hillary Clinton promised to do to the Republican Base if she would have won the nomination. The $10 million dollars Obama raised the day after Palin's speech speaks volumes to this unintended blow back.
To read about more unintended Palin consequences for the Republican ticket (and a summary of what it all means for Republicans), see the original post at Our Karl Rove.