Anchorage Daily News

LET THE BLAME GAME BEGIN: The Washington Post asks pundits and pollsters what went wrong for McCain. A couple put the blame in part on his choice of Gov. Palin as running mate:

Carter Eskew (Gore 2000 campaign adviser): “The Republicans chose tactics -- the celebrity ad, the choice of Sarah Palin, suspending the campaign -- designed to win a news cycle rather than sticking to a strategy that could win the election.”

Douglas Schoen (Democratic pollster): “(A McCain-Lieberman) ticket's strength and experience would have made McCain far more credible in running a general election campaign on who is best prepared to lead America. The choice of Sarah Palin -- Miss August, and clearly not Miss November -- vitiated that possibility because of her palpable lack of qualifications.”

Also:

As the race ends, debate begins on Palin's impact (Chicago Tribune)

Analysis: Palin rocked campaign, for good and bad (CNN)

McCain supporters give Palin mixed reviews (Wall Street Journal)

PALIN: I’M NO DIVA: In a talk on camera with CNN this morning, Palin insisted she’s not thinking seriously yet about 2012, said tension between her and McCain campaign advisers has been exaggerated and played down her effect on McCain’s fortunes.

"I don't think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain's loss to me," she said.

Palin spoke to reporters for seven minutes before leaving Arizona this afternoon. Here’s a transcript.

In Phoenix on Tuesday night, Palin aides worried that Palin’s future will be jinxed by GOP scapegoating, reports ABC News.

"She needs to go away for a while," said one Palin aide. Once Palin spends some time back in Alaska, out of the national spotlight, this aide said, then she can re-emerge on the national scene. …

"She was underserved," said an aide, who said Palin did not deserve to step onto a national stage with so little support and guidance. This aide was particularly disturbed by the way Palin's media appearances were handled, saying that the build-up was so big that Palin was doomed to be judged a failure.

NEWSWEEK OPENS NOTEBOOKS ON PALIN: Citing unnamed sources, Newsweek went online this morning with previously embargoed details from its Special Election Project about Gov. Palin’s shopping spree, her focus on Bill Ayers and more.

> While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast.”

> One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband.

> A vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill.

> Palin used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.

> McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended.

A Palin aide responds: "Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."

More from Newsweek:

> The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied.

> Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue.

> At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter (top McCain campaign officials) went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

Read the entire Part 1 of Newsweek’s series here.

Also:

Palin still wearing Neiman Marcus purchases in Phoenix (New York magazine fashion blog)

Palin faces questions, different landscape when she returns to Alaska (Anchorage Daily News)

AYERS SAYS PALIN CHARGE ABSURD: Former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, now a professor at the University of Illinois, tells the Washington Post he was not close to Barack Obama and that Gov. Palin’s campaign charge that Obama was “palling around with terrorists” was “absurd.”

“Pal around together? What does that mean? Share a milkshake with two straws?" Ayers said in his first interview since the controversy began. "I think my relationship with Obama was probably like thousands of others in Chicago. And, like millions and millions of others, I wish I knew him better."

PLOTTING PALIN’S PATH TO 2012: Republican maneuvering will begin almost immediately, the Washington Post reports, and Palin has several options open to her. Among her most prominent potential foes: former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (another favorite of evangelical Christians) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

If Palin does seek the presidency, her campaign would be far different from McCain's. ... (She) has sketched a far more conservative vision for the GOP, one of American exceptionalism in which free-market capitalism and traditional social values remain paramount.

Karen Breslau, writing in Newsweek, gives Palin a “playbook” for her future political game on the national scene. Among the tips: stay on as Alaska governor for now, demonstrate depth of knowledge about the issues, bag the maverick outsider gimmick and get to know the Republican establishment, and broaden the base.

Also: What’s next for Palin? (NBC’s “TodayToday”)

Seth Meyers of “Saturday Night Live” to Politico: “We'd be fools to think she’s leaving the national scene for good, so I imagine she is a gift that will keep on giving.”

SARAH PALIN, LAST OF THE CULTURE WARRIORS? Sarah Palin’s problems as a national politician are deeper than embarrassing TV interviews and scandals in Alaska, writes Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in his Washington Post column. Just as a 1920s culture war in America was cut off by the Great Depression, he says, so the current economic crisis will end a culture war that started in the late ’50s.

Palin's problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin's brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s -- which put questions of racial, sexual and religious identity at the forefront of American politics -- may be ending. Palin is the end of the line. …

Palin's attacks are also failing because of generational change. The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud just isn't that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage.

Also:

Why did Palin become a culture-war flashpoint? (National Review)

Conservatives aren’t laying down their arms (Media Research Center)

The enduring culture war (Virtue Online)

GLUM IN WASILLA: Despite pre-election polling, some people gathered at the Wasilla sports complex Tuesday night were still expecting a victory party, writes The Associated Press. As the prospects for that looking increasingly bleak, they contented themselves with thoughts of Gov. Palin’s future on the national scene.

"I think America made a big mistake," said Phil Straka, a photographer from Wasilla who was selling buttons with the words "McCain-Palin" superimposed over Alaska scenes. "If there was another month before the election, I think they would have won."

"Not our moment," Palin tells Wasilla (Anchorage Daily News)

Wasilla looks to Palin’s future (MSNBC)

HOW THE OBAMA CAMP REACTED TO PALIN: A New York Times piece this morning recounting Obama’s “near flawless” campaign devotes attention to McCain’s choice of Gov. Palin as running mate and how the Obama campaign reacted.

For more than a week, Palin’s star rose, along with McCain’s poll numbers, as Obama’s campaign seemed uncertain how to respond. Seeking to avoid the appearance of coming on too strong, the campaign stood by as she accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Democrats on Capitol Hill were as nervous as they had been all year.

Eventually, the Obama campaign decided not to change course.

They were confident that with the selection of Palin, who had little national or international experience, McCain would ultimately confuse voters who for months had heard his argument that experience mattered most.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE FOR THE GOP: The survivals of Don Young and, at least so far, Ted Stevens were among the results of Tuesday’s national voting that left the Republicans relieved it wasn’t a wipeout, reports Politico.

Also:

No 60 in Senate (MSNBC)

A YEAR OF MEMORIES: Wasilla photographer Judy Patrick, whose specialty is industrial photography, is behind the Sarah Palin 2009 Calendar published by Atlas Books. The calendar has 50-plus photos of Palin at home in Alaska and on the VP campaign trail. Patrick, who was deputy mayor in Wasilla when Palin was mayor, has known the family for years.

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