John McCain Needs to Speak Up

With anonymous McCain staffers blaming Sarah Palin for the Republican loss in Tuesday's presidential election, John McCain himself needs to speak loudly and clearly.

McCain seemed always ready to defend Barack Obama during the campaign whenever Obama was attacked by McCain supporters. So why has he not come to Palin's defense?

The fact is that Sarah Palin is in no way responsible for losing the election. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Sarah Palin is the reason John McCain was even close. His campaign was nearly dead in the water before announcing her selection as his running mate. After that announcement the Republican base became energized, and after Palin's speech in the convention, McCain began to surge in the polls. That momentum didn't fade until the banking crisis began to make headlines, and from there McCain's numbers dropped to a point from which he could not recover.

The banking crisis wasn't McCain's fault, but neither was it Sarah Palin's fault. If that crisis had not burst into the headlines, maybe McCain would have won, maybe not. But if it had not been for the energy that Sarah Palin brought to the party, McCain would have been out of serious contention long before the banking crisis reared its ugly head.

If John McCain had the conservative values and the fire in the belly that Sarah Palin had, he might have been able to overcome the unfair blame he and the Republican Party received over the banking mess, and we very well may have been looking at a president-elect John McCain right now.

He needs to put a stop to this nonsense!