With less than two and a half hours until his official announcement, TV journalists are scrambling to confirm that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is his pick for Vice President. Fox News and NBC News are confirming that Govs. Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney are out of the running, with Palin’s name surfacing onto the news networks just this morning.
At 7:10am Fox News reported a plane had left Anchorage overnight en route to Ohio. CNN reported Palin’s name in the mix at 7:37am. MSNBC began discussing her name a couple minutes later. But by 7:57am, on Morning Joe, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Mark Whitaker said, “Our David Gregory is just reporting that his sources within the McCain campaign are telling him ‘no'” about a Palin pick. Still, Palin’s name played prominently for the next hour.
Then at 9:14, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough reported, “Joe Lieberman is in Dayton.”
So, as of 9:30amET, no one has confirmed a pick. The McCain campaign is doing a heck of a job making sure the reporters can’t report, only speculate.
And, is it us, or does Palin look a bit like TV president Mackenzie Allen, played by Gena Davis in the short-lived 2005-06 ABC show “Commander-in-Chief?”