Sarah Palin said some of the dumbest things imagineable during her interview with Charles Gibson. The most frightening statement to me was the blithe statement that we can't "second guess" Israel's decisions about what it needs to do to protect its country. Wow.
The question now is not how to destroy Palin, but how Obama can checkmate McCain with some of Palin's more outrageous statements.
My idea below the fold.
What the Obama camp needs to do is to ask McCain directly whether he agrees with Palin's comments about (1) letting Israel attack Iran; (2) letting Georgia and Ukraine into NATO; and (3) being willing to engage with Russia in a war -- perhaps a nuclear war -- to protect Georgian control of South Ossetia.
McCain would be in a no win situation if these questions were posed to him. Here are his options: (a) refuse to answer; (b) say he agrees with Palin; (c) say he disagrees with Palin.
If he answers (a), he looks evasive. If he answers (b), Obama can then effectively define McCain as a hothead who would be willing to start a nuclear war defending a nation that isn't a longtime ally and probably is thought be most Americans to be no different than Russia itself. If he answers (c), Obama will have effectively driven a wedge between McCain and Palin and made it clear that even McCain thinks Palin is an idiot.
This needs to be done very quickly. It needs to be an ad, it needs to be on the stump. And I think Obama should do a major speech about how "not blinking" is the kind of mind set that gets countries into war. If McCain is going to fearmonger, then we should do it too. We should make the American people fear that McCain/Palin equals potential nuclear war with Russia.
You might say that Obama should be "hell bent" on undertaking this strategy.