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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Solving the Palin Problem

I don’t have all the details, but I understand angry Republicans are working feverishly to solve their “Palin problem”.

They were ecstatic when Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin first burst onto the scene as Sen. John McCain’s surprise choice to be his running mate. She was gracious, charming and “hot”.

Married to the “first Dude” with three kids named Willow, Trig and Track, the media ate up her life style. On her way to work she could shoot a moose and fire a librarian for not banning books.

In those first giddy days of cheering crowds and words by Teleprompter, no one seemed to worry that her qualifications to be a “heartbeat away from the presidency” rivaled those of Mayberry’s Barney Fife.

It was only after her interviews with Charley Gibson and Katie Couric, hysterically reproduced by Palin look-alike Tiny Fey on Saturday Night Live, that they put her in the Witness Protection Program.

She has become such an embarrassment that many Republicans are demanding she be dropped from the ticket. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker wrote in National Review Online that if Palin were a man, “we’d all be guffawing.” Parker told how she watches Palin interviews “with held breath” her finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Calling the candidate “clearly out of her league” she wrote “if BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”

What to do? The fact that Tina Fey is a dead-ringer could be the answer to the GOP dilemma. The idea is to keep her bubbly, charismatic presence on the ticket while not keeping her. Why not replace her with politically-savvy…Tina Fey?

That’s the deal they’re working on.

Republicans have so much as stake in this election they can give Fey just about anything she wants to stand-in for Palin through the election and perhaps the first six months in office.

Palin would replace Fey on 30 Rock but since that’s a scripted show and she’s an accomplished TV performer, NBC might be willing to risk it. Whether the “first Dude” replaces Alex Baldwin is just one of the details to be worked out. As anyone who has ever viewed 30 Rock knows, writers would have no trouble creating roles for Willow, Trig and Track.

Fey, a University of Virginia graduate, is not only a SAG Award-winning writer but a smart businesswoman up to the task of dealing with that burned out building known as the Bush economy. She created and produces 30 Rock that was NBC’s biggest winner in the recent Emmys.

Writing political satire as Fey has done for the past 10 years requires knowledge and understanding of the issues—something that totally eludes Palin. Bringing that quality to the McCain campaign would allow Kathleen Parker and other worried Republicans to loosen the grip on their TV remotes and view with pride, not horror, as their candidate responds to media interviews.

Like I say, they’re still working out the details.

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