CAROL FOWLER FOR PRESIDENT!

Left: South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler. Photo from the Palmetto Scoop.

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This week, Politico reported that Carol Fowler, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman (and Obama superdelegate), harshly criticized Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, using some decidedly sharp language. Big flap all over the state. Fowler has apparently been forced to issue an apology:

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.

“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

In broadcast media, I first heard Brit Hume of FOX NEWS report this incident, and shortly thereafter, the proverbial shit hit the fan.

As stated, Carol has issued this apology:

I personally admire and respect the difficult choices that women make everyday, and I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive. I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may vote based on a single issue. Whether it’s the environment, the economy, the war or a woman’s right to choose, there are people who will cast their vote based on a single issue. That was the only point I was attempting to make.

We knew what you meant, Carol! CAROL FOWLER FOR PRESIDENT!!!!

In other news, we learn that Sarah Palin HAS NOT EVEN BEEN TO IRAQ!!! More lies, just like her false claims she didn't support the Bridge to Nowhere (she did) and just as she claims she fought those terrible EARMARKS (she ate earmarks for lunch with her mooseburgers, every day). And now we learn that she did NOT go to Iraq!

Well, what did we EXPECT?

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin's visit to Iraq in 2007 consisted of a brief stop at a border crossing between Iraq and Kuwait, the vice presidential candidate's campaign said yesterday, in the second official revision of her only trip outside North America.

Following her selection last month as John McCain's running mate, aides said Palin had traveled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. During that trip she was said to have visited a "military outpost" inside Iraq. The campaign has since repeated that Palin's foreign travel included an excursion into the Iraq battle zone.

But in response to queries about the details of her trip, campaign aides and National Guard officials in Alaska said by telephone yesterday that she did not venture beyond the Kuwait-Iraq border when she visited Khabari Alawazem Crossing, also known as "K-Crossing," on July 25, 2007.

Asked to clarify where she traveled in Iraq, Palin's spokeswoman, Maria Comella, confirmed that "She visited a military outpost on the other side of the Kuwait-Iraq border."

Left: Alaska governor and GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Photo from (of course!) FOX NEWS.

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On the second day of the trip, he said, Palin was flown to the border crossing, about 100 miles north of Camp Buehring, where she spent the morning meeting with troops and presiding over a ceremony in which an Alaska National Guard soldier extended his enlistment.

But she did not venture into Iraq, Osborn said. "You have to have permission to go into a lot of areas, and [the crossing] is where her permissions were," he said.

Palin did not stay the night in Iraq, and spent the rest of the second day at Camp Virginia and Ali Al Salem Air Base, Osborn said.

Palin also told ABC that she had traveled to Mexico and Canada. Her campaign had previously mentioned a Canada visit, but not a trip to Mexico. Comella said yesterday that Palin had visited Mexico on vacation, and Canada once last year.

"We did not have 100 percent confirmation about the Mexico trip in the initial days we were being asked. It was a personal trip," Comella said.

And hey, how do you like this headline:

Obama camp in panic as ‘Xena’ Sarah Palin scythes through support

Palinmania has washed away the Democrat’s lead in key states

Times Online (UK)
Sarah Baxter, Washington

THE high-heeled, moose-hunting governor of Alaska has sent Barack Obama’s campaign into a state of panic as support for the Democratic presidential candidate haemorrhages in the battleground states he must win to reach the White House.

Sarah Palin, 44, continued to scythe through Obama’s support among women by taunting the first potential black president for declining to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate and by declaring that questions about juggling work and family were “kind of irrelevant” in the modern age.

The mother of five, who has been called Xena, the warrior princess, said in a television interview: “I think he’s regretting not picking [Clinton] now, I do. What determination and grit and even grace through some tough shots that were fired her way - she handled those well,” Palin said.

She presented herself as a champion of no-fuss, no-non-sense working mothers. “Of course you can be the vice-president and you can raise a family,” she said brightly. “I’m the governor and I’m raising a family.”

I think I'm gonna shoot myself.

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Edit: Also see Palin powers abortion groups' coffers.