Sarah Palin and Kamala Harris: A tale of 2 female VP candidates

FPI / August 14, 2020

Sarah Palin offered up some advice to Kamala Harris on Tuesday after the California senator was named Joe Biden's running mate.

“Out of the chute trust no one new,” the former Alaska governor said. “Fight mightily to keep your own team with you – they know you, know your voice, and most importantly are trustworthy; don’t get muzzled – connect with media and voters in your own unique way.”

Of course the media dynamics for the two female vice presidential candidates could not be more different.

Sarah Palin is a conservative Republican with Christian values while Kamala Harris is a liberal Democrat whose religion appears to be extreme political pragmatism.

Nevertheless Palin was speaking charitably and from experience, particularly on the trust issue.

As John McCain's running mate in 2008, Palin "was ill-served by aides who later used her failure as a means to reinvent themselves as the ever-marketable, anti-Republican 'Republican strategist,' " Beckett Adams noted in a biting Aug. 12 analysis for the Washington Examiner.

Palin "reminded everyone this week that two of President Trump’s most vocal, self-righteous critics are, at their core, little more than self-serving political mercenaries, whose stated principles seem to depend entirely on how they stand to benefit," Adams wrote.

Adams referred specifically to two of Palin’s 2008 Republican campaign colleagues — Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt and MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, "both of whom are now proud, card-carrying members of the anti-Trump 'resistance.' "

In her post on Instagram, Palin also noted: “Some yahoos running campaigns will suffocate you with their own self-centered agenda so remember you were chosen for who you are. So stay connected with America as you smile and ignore deceptive ‘handlers’ trying to change you."

Schmidt and Wallace "specifically are suspected of leaking unflattering Palin anecdotes to the press during the 2008 election, which portrayed the former governor as a manic villain and her aides as exasperated, savvy experts who could not be blamed for the campaign’s many failures," Adams noted.

Adams continued: "Schmidt, who sold McCain on Palin in the first place, also based much of his post-2008 career rehabilitation on tearing down the former governor, disparaging her in very notable, public forums in a transparent attempt to ingratiate himself with media and political circles eager to gawk at the failed vice presidential candidate’s personal gaffes and misfortunes. He notably provided journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin with dirt for their 2009 tell-all, Game Change, trading campaign gossip for a chance to reinvent himself for MSNBC-style audiences."

Wallace "likewise peddled campaign information to Heilemann and Halperin. And like Schmidt, she also has no problem publicly disparaging Palin," Adams wrote.

When Wallace and Schmidt were shut out of McCain’s funeral services in 2018, a person familiar with the arrangement told Politico:

“That cathedral will be filled with people who stabbed McCain in the front. Schmidt and Nicolle and (longtime strategist John) Weaver stabbed him in the back, and you can’t find a single McCain loyalist who will say different or feels different.”

Free Press International