History Of The McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign In Campaign Button Imagery

Campaign items can bring some of the passions,excitement and color that the usual media can't quite express. Buttons show what images of the candidates their teams thought had best impression making and, quite interestingly, what slogans resonated best with supporters and the wider public. 

In fact a study of a campaigns buttons can often show the progress of slogans for example, in the McCain buttons "Country First" clearly starts off as the main theme and then "Experience Counts" becomes a major theme as the campaign progressed.

The McCain-Palin campaign of 2008 had some unique aspects. Having the first female GOP Vice-presidential candidate for a start. Palin is unique in VP campaign ephemera for having a mass of buttons dedicated solely or mostly to her, about 120 supportive alone at current count. 

There are, which is absolutely unique, a mass of anti-Palin buttons which shows the genuine concern about her from the Democrat campaign and also the very real passions her campaign brought up.

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McCain/Palin Buttons (Jugate)

 NRA Button

INTEGRITY

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ADDENDUM; THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE FROM COMMERCIAL CAMPAIGN SPECIALITY STORES AND IT IS NOT KNOWN HOW MANY ACTUALLY WERE IN PUBLIC CIRCULATION DURING THE 2008 CAMPAIGN;

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SARAH PALIN FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 2008 IMAGERY, PALIN IMAGERY ALONE, OR WORDING WITH NO IMAGERY ON McCAIN-PALIN  OR PALIN BUTTONS

Final Bid(Includes Buyers Premium):	$195.8
Number of Bids: Uncle Sam	5

Final Bid (Includes Buyers Omama Premium):$157.3Number of Bids:5

Going Rogue:Final Bid (Includes Buyers Premium):$108.9Number of Bids:6

OUTSTANDING AND RARE HOCKEY IMAGERY $100 VALUATION

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Image not Palin

THE SARAH PALIN 2008 LIPSTICK VOGUE BUTTON COLLECTION LINK

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From the Historical Collectors Edition 2008 Governor Palin Biography Magazine

THERE ARE 40 PAGES OF COMMERCIALLY CREATED PALIN AND McCAIN PALIN BUTTONS WHICH MAY HAVE NOT BEEN USED IN THE CAMPAIGNS BUT ARE

VIEWABLE AT THIS LINK

AND 86 PAGES AT THIS LINK

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McCain/Palin buttons With no candidate imagery

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McCain/Palin including other candidates ("coat-tail") States and special interest  buttons

COLORADO

ALASKA

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"War on a Woman" Buttons

In all presidential elections in American history I can find, after extensive research, only 13 campaign buttons attacking a vice-presidential candidate. The earliest images date from 1968 with two attacking Nixon's running mate Spiro Agnew. 

It would appear that from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson no VP candidate was considered worth attacking and in this manner, and since LBJ, only about a dozen attack buttons were reproduced-that is until Sarah Palin was picked as John McCain's running mate in 2008.

I reproduce below the, so far fifty five 2008 buttons attacking Governor Palin-four times the number of buttons attacking every VP candidate in the entire history of presidential campaigns on the evidence too date. There have been a considerable further items produced in 2012 simply for the possibility she might run for the presidency in that year.

The left, the Democratic party and their supporters in the main stream media, Blogs and journals have been relentlessly pushing the supposed "Republican war on women" meme which is gathering momentum in view of the presumed presidential run by Hillary Clinton and some extreme statements by a small minority of GOP candidates. That such a campaign is the height of utter hypocrisy is clearly seen by the unprecedented war on Governor Palin by all those aspects of the left. How such blatant hypocrisy can be presented to the public is a mystery which can only be solved by viewing the lefts adherence to the truth as something of a myth.

A glance at the vehemence, hatred and frankly disgusting misogynism at play in these campaign images would be enough by itself to explode the leftist Alinskyite campaign. If the left shouts "Republican war on women" then the simple counter is "Democrats five year war on Palin" and referring them to these images. 

These images are of course only a tiny part of the massive campaign that was, and still is, waged against Palin. Apart from buttons there have been disgusting T-shirts, costumes banners, pornographic videos, poster against her and her family.

There can be only one reason for this campaign of hate against someone the left calls "irrelevant" whilst waging unrelenting hatred against her and that is, surely, that she is seen as a threat. The media was massively invested in Barack Obama, and the shock of Palin's 2008 vice-presidential nomination speech at the GOP convention set the left off in a frenzy never seen before in the history of a presidential campaign.

The images below, which range from a mad Palin baying at the moon, to a button so biased (a recent "Whities" button reproduced below) that it was only done in a limited edition with examples selling at auction for $261.

Palin is depicted, variously, as a vampire, a madwoman, a cannibal, a "cougar" and a pig amongst numerous other aspects of the fevered leftist imagination. Here is the true imagery of the "war on women" and it is a collection of hatred which should shame any decent Democrat and shows the feminist left, who did nothing to stop it, in their true, biased light.

"This 4 inch celluloid by Brian Campbell has stirred up some controversy. One of just 27 made."

Final Bid(Includes Buyers Premium):	$261.8

 

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Apart from the usual methods of researching past presidential campaigns, old newspapers and videos of television adverts and speeches the buttons and badges, flags and banners and all the other campaign associated ephemera help to give a broader overview. There are an army of campaign button collectors with their own conventions and magazines and serious avenues for campaign items exists at various museums and universities.

This is an outstanding site for political buttons auctions.Type in the name of any candidate e.g. Lincoln and recent auction images etc. will come up
http://www.anderson-auction.com/default.aspx

USAmerican.com has an excellent sales site at:
http://usamericana.com/store.html?cat=8

Political Collectors.com

http://politicalcollectors.com/archive/political-collectors-archive/archive_c175/

American Political Items Collectors
http://apic.us/

LORI FERBER AUCTIONS
http://www.loriferber.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=sarah+palin

Ron Wade Buttons
http://ronwade.freeservers.com/index.html