October 6, 2008 (GBN News): In a stunning new development, the McCain campaign announced today that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is voluntarily withdrawing her name from the ticket and will be replaced as Senator McCain’s running mate by NY City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The move came after a frantic late night negotiating session, whereby in return for the opportunity to replace Ms. Palin on the ticket, Mr. Bloomberg agreed to stake his considerable fortune on getting Ms. Palin elected Mayor of New York City in 2009.Sources told GBN News that the deal arose out of the McCain campaign’s growing concern over declining poll numbers; numbers that are due in large part to public perception that neither Mr. McCain nor Ms. Palin is up to the job of dealing with the current economic crisis. It was felt that Mr. Bloomberg, whose multi billion dollar fortune and PR acumen have given him the reputation as an economic expert, would bring instant credibility to the ticket.
The trickiest part of the negotiations was apparently over what incentive could induce Ms. Palin to drop off the ticket. A direct payoff from Mr. Bloomberg was deemed too unseemly, not to mention fraught with political risk if it were publicly disclosed. And the Governor would have to be perceived as gaining more than she lost in the deal, or it could jeopardize her political future. In the past, almost any job in the country would have been seen as more important than that of Vice President. However, Dick Cheney’s influence has so strengthened the power of the Vice Presidency that the only political position in the country that rivals its power and lack of accountability is that of NY City Mayor.
In the end, according to GBN News sources, it was the total Mayoral control of the city’s school system that attracted Ms. Palin to the deal. She was won over by the prospect of bringing her own kind of homespun education reform to the system, and promised immediate results. “Just because some northeastern elitist teacher asks a question,” she said, “it doesn’t mean a kid has to answer it. Let him answer the questions he wants to, and you betcha those test scores will go up!”
Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg began working on a plan to boost the McCain campaign. Just as the Department of Education has used its own figures to show a rise in test scores even though NAEP scores for the city have been flat, Bloomberg plans to boost investor confidence by using DOE experts to come up with their own stock market figures to show that stock prices have actually been rising.
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