The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
This is what the right in America has come to, which shouldn’t be a surprise when one celebrates ignorance and mediocrity.
Frank Rich addresses the victim mentality that has consumed Palin and much of the Republican Party.
In the aftermath of her decision to drop out and cash in, Palin’s standing in the G.O.P. actually rose in the USA Today/Gallup poll. No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.
That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.
The essence of Palinism is emotional, not ideological. Yes, she is of the religious right, even if she winks literally and figuratively at her own daughter’s flagrant disregard of abstinence and marriage. But family-values politics, now more devalued than the dollar by the philandering of ostentatiously Christian Republican politicians, can only take her so far. The real wave she’s riding is a loud, resonant surge of resentment and victimization that’s larger than issues like abortion and gay civil rights.
The Sarah Palin farce was on full display last Friday, and more commentators are willing to speak the simple truth that she’s not suited for national office. Eugene Robinson sums it up nicely.
What can you say about a public official who ridicules those who would take the “quitter’s way out” — as she faces reporters to announce that she’s quitting? A governor who claims that “the worthless, easy path” would be to serve out the remaining 18 months of her term? An ambitious politician who says that “life is too short” to worry about, you know, boring things such as responsibility or duty?
You can say that all of us who ever took Sarah Palin seriously — or pretended to take her seriously — should be deeply ashamed. And you can say that John McCain should publicly apologize for putting the nation he loves at risk by choosing Palin as his running mate. Imagining Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency should be enough to make even die-hard Republicans shudder.
The reasons she gave for stepping down are not just contrived or implausible but literally nonsensical. She can most effectively serve the people of Alaska by ceasing to exercise the powers of chief executive? She worries that as a lame duck she would somehow be compelled to waste taxpayer money on useless junkets? In her “Don’t Cry For Me, Alaska” news conference announcing her departure, the folksy non sequiturs — “Only dead fish go with the flow” — were like nuggets of Cartesian logic amid a tub of mush.
But I’m stating the obvious. The thing is, Palin’s unsuitability for high public office has been obvious all along. Tina Fey got it right; the rest of us were far too reluctant to state plainly that the emperor, or empress, has no clothes.
Many of us in the blogosphere called this one early. It was obvious after her first two interviews that Sarah Palin was a joke as a vice presidential candidate. In many ways it wasn’t her fault. John McCain made the selection.
The pundits on television had to be more restrained, as Palin and the McCain campaign were “all in” playing the victim card.
Let’s stipulate that if there is some heretofore unknown personal, medical or family crisis, this was the right move. But Gov. Palin didn’t say anything like that. Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin’s official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words — still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random – whole words, like “TO,” “HELP,” and “AND,” and the first letter of “Troops.”
Gov. Palin’s official announcement that she is resigning as chief executive of the great state of Alaska had all the depth and gravitas of a 13-year-old’s review of the Jonas Brothers’ album on Facebook. She even quoted her parents’ refrigerator magnet. (Note to self: if one of my kids becomes governor, throw away the refrigerator magnet that says: “Murray’s Oyster Bar: We Shuck Em, You Suck Em!”) She put her son’s name in quotations marks. Why? Who knows. She writes, “I promised efficiencies and effectiveness!?” Was she exclaiming or questioning? I get it: both! And I don’t even know what to make of a sentence that reads:
*((Gotta put First Things First))*
Ponder the fact that Rupert Murdoch’s Harper Collins publishing house is paying this, umm, writer $11 million for a book. Ponder that and say a prayer for Ms. Palin’s editor.
I’m no latter-day Strunk & White, just a guy who was struck by Palin’s spectacularly rambling and infantile prose. It bespeaks a rambling and infantile mind. But perhaps not. Perhaps this is all a ruse. Perhaps Gov. Palin wants us to believe she’s an intellectual featherweight who is slightly shallower than an actor on High School Musical. Maybe she’s trying to throw us off the trail.
Naah. A lot of people thought that about George W. Bush. He couldn’t be so block-headed, they said. He couldn’t be as childish and churlish as he came off. Oh yes he could. And so, too, might Ms. Palin be as vapid and puerile as her inane statement suggests.
Palin is cashing in. She’s going to get rich with her book and speaking fees, which is rather ironic as Begala points out. I hope she stays in the spotlight, as she’ll be constant reminder to all independents and moderate Republicans of what’s wrong with the Republican Party.
Here’s her speech. It’s classic Sarah Palin – a rambling mess. It’s barely better than her answers to Katie Couric, but here she had time to prepare her remarks, though she didn’t seem to have the benefit of her old speechwriters from the McCain campaign.
This may seem like a low point for the Republican Party, but in many ways this is a gift, unless of course she actually decides to run for President. The GOP will be stuck in the mud so long as the base is infatuated with Sarah Palin, and perhaps this lame resignation will convince enough of them that she’s a fraud.
It’s quite an accomplishment to be the dumbest person on a business network that completely missed the financial crisis, but Melissa Francis takes the cake. She argues like a teenager, like today when she became totally fixated on a 30-point drop in the Dow while Obama was speaking, conveniently ignoring that the market had been up over 100 points, and had given back those gains just as Obama began speaking (meaning that the trend was down as he began speaking). Anyone with half a brain knows that swings in the market in the short term are often not rational. The market is rational over the long term, not the short term. Steve Leesman was totally exacerbated as he tried to reason with her to no avail. I’m sure he would have told her to shut the f%#& up if they weren’t on the air. It was one of the most embarrassing exchanges I’ve seen on a network that has come to be known for it’s inability to understand the financial markets it’s supposed to cover.
Unfortunately, this is the kind of “analysis” we’ve come to expect on CNBC. Commentators like Larry Kudlow have one answer to everything – lower taxes on the wealthy. Idiots like Jim Cramer scream about socialism, even though he supported Obama in the fall. They’re becoming the Sarah Palin of financial analysis.
Sarah Palin was interviewed in connection with an upcoming documentary from a conservative filmmaker about the 2008 presidential campaign. Some on the right are obsessed with the notion that the media was unfair to Palin, even when considering that Palin refused to hold a single news conference to address all the media reports she found to be unfair.
Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) believes Caroline Kennedy is getting softer press treatment in her pursuit of the New York Senate seat than Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee because of Kennedy’s social class.
“I’ve been interested to see how Caroline Kennedy will be handled and if she will be handled with kid gloves or if she will be under such a microscope,” Palin told conservative filmmaker John Ziegler during an interview Monday for his upcoming documentary film, “How Obama Got Elected.” Excerpts from the interview were posted on YouTube Wednesday evening.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out and I think that as we watch that we will perhaps be able to prove that there is a class issue here also that was such a factor in the scrutiny of my candidacy versus, say, the scrutiny of what her candidacy may be.”
Palin said she remains subject to unfair press coverage of her and her family.
“Is it political? Is it sexism?” she asked. “What is it that drives someone to believe the worst and perpetuate the worst in terms of gossip and lies?”
She observed that Katie Couric and Tina Fey have been “capitalizing on” and “exploiting” her.
“I did see that Tina Fey was named entertainer of the year and Katie Couric’s ratings have risen,” she said. “And I know that a lot of people are capitalizing on, oh I don’t know, perhaps some exploiting that was done via me, my family, my administration. That’s a little bit perplexing, but it also says a great deal about our society.”
Her discussion of Caroline Kennedy is ridiculous. Sarah Palin wanted to be Vice President, which would have put her one heartbeat away from the most powerful position on the planet. She was an unknown figure, and when given the opportunity to speak without notes, she came across as a bumbling fool. It’s only natural that she would have faced a media frenzy. That was the whole point behind her selection. John McCain needed to create a buzz, and she provided that buzz. She just didn’t have the ability to address the issues facing our nation in a coherent manner. That’s her fault and John McCain’s fault. She’s trying to blame the media, and she’s trying to avoid the real issues by discussing the media’s obsession with her family (they do that to everyone, including the Clintons and the Kennedys), but in the end she’s the one who blew it.
Caroline Kennedy might be appointed to the Senate. That is completely different from the Vice Presidency. There she will be one of 100 Senators. If Sarah Palin wanted to be a Senator, she would not face the same level of media scrutiny as she faced as John McCain’s running mate. Frankly, Sarah Palin, despite her obvious shortcomings, is herself qualified to be a Senator, just like Caroline Kennedy.
Of course, Sarah Palin and her supporters will never acknowledge that distinction. They play the victim card just as good as anyone on the left. First, everyone who questioned her was sexist. Now she’s bringing up class. Conservatives used to mock those on the left who wallowed in victim-style politics, and now they’re doing the same thing. It’s pathetic, and it just might keep them in the minority for years to come.
Obviously, it’s time to move beyond Sarah Palin, but she keeps inserting herself in the news by agreeing to do all the interviews that she should have done when she was a candidate for high office.
The results have not been impressive. She’s incapable of giving logical answers to most substantive questions, and she throws out more cliches than any politician in recent memory. That’s quite an accomplishment.
I was watching a panel of Republican governors today on C-Span, and it’s striking how impressive governors like Mark Sanford and Tim Pawlenty can be when discussing the future of the GOP. Sarah Palin just doesn’t measure up.
It’s fun watching Republicans argue about the future of their party, but they will not make much progress as long as many in the base remain fixated with Sarah Palin.
Some of the polls have tightened a little, but most are holding steady and we have some outliers showing a huge lead for Obama. The state polls also look great.
Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has finally started to talk about the economy, but they can’t even get that right.
If McCain had not opposed the Bush tax cuts in the past, and if he was proposing a flat tax, he might have some credibility on this idiotic charges of “socialism.” One wonders whether he really is senile. Also, when you add in the economic genius of Sarah Palin (she must have shaken hands with Mitt Romney), your argument looks even more ridiculous, given that Sarah Palin raised taxes on the oil companies in Alaska in order to redistribute the tax dollars to all Alaskans in the form of a check.
Of course, she’s too stupid to understand the irony here, and McCain has no trouble repeating any charge trumped up by his idiotic advisors. So, they continue to stomp around the country calling Obama names and revealing themselves as utter fools.
This campaign is a disgrace. Many conservatives have already come to that conclusion. Others are so blinded by their own idiology that they drink up the silly name-calling, hoping for a dramatic comeback. Fortunately, their numbers seem to be shrinking.
So much for small-town Sarah! This news story is hilarious.
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.
Politico asked the McCain campaign for comment, explicitly noting the $150,000 in expenses for department store shopping and makeup consultation that were incurred immediately after Palin’s announcement. Pre-September reports do not include similar costs.
One could argue that this is “shocking” in light of our economic crisis, but it shouldn’t be surprise. Sarah Palin has always been a prop in this campaign. We now know that she’s totally unqualified to be president. Not because she has little experience, but rather that she doesn’t appear to have the requisite intellect.
The fact that the campaign wanted to dress her up makes sense. Her job was to look and sound good – to recite the campaigns attack lines with a smile.
Of course, the strategy fell apart when she couldn’t handle simple interview questions without a scripted response.
The disclosure of these ridiculous expenditures just puts an exclamation point on the most absurd VP choice in history – even worse than Admiral Stockdale.
Welcome to Sarah Palin’s world. Fortunately, Americans aren’t in the mood this year to buy her bullshit. The situation we face is just too serious, and she’s not a serious candidate.
Many conservative intellectuals are jumping ship, and Alaskans are getting sick of her as well. The Anchorage Daily News published an editorial today about her response to the troopergate report.
Sarah Palin’s reaction to the Legislature’s Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation.
She claims the report “vindicates” her. She said that the investigation found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part.”
Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian.
Page 8, Finding Number One of the report says: “I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.”
In plain English, she did something “unlawful.” She broke the state ethics law.
Perhaps Gov. Palin has been too busy to actually read the Troopergate report. Perhaps she is relying on briefings from McCain campaign spinmeisters.
Because if she had actually read it, she couldn’t claim “vindication” with a straight face.
Palin asserted that the report found “there was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.”
In fact, the report concluded that “impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.”
Palin’s response is the kind of political “big lie” that George Orwell warned against. War is peace. Black is white. Up is down.
More conservatives are speaking out about Sarah Palin. David Brooks thinks she’s not qualified, and he doesn’t pull any punches.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn’t think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
The conservative movement used to pride itself on ideas. With Sarah Palin, those days are over.
Despite Sarah Palin’s horrific performance in interviews, and her simplistic answers in the debate, many conservatives are still defending her.
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting theory explaining this phenomenon.
What I think has happened to some otherwise very brilliant and perceptive people is that they have become so hostile to “liberal pundits” or “Hollywood liberals”, that their reactions are really reactions not to Palin herself but to those criticizing her and the selection of her. These people are anti-anti-Palin and if forced to be pro-Palin, they’d have a very hard time explaining it. Actually, Camille is pro-Obama, so she doesn’t have to go that far. But just because liberals are annoying and Hollywood liberals make you want to vomit doesn’t mean Palin is qualified to be vice-president. Look: Tim Robbins is about the only person who could make me support McCain. But I’m not stupid enough to let my loathing of idiotic Hollywood liberals affect my judgment of this farce of a veep candidate.
I don’t think Palin is dumb; she is just proudly ignorant, a cynical opportunist and a pathological liar.
This makes sense. In the heat of a campaign, people get very emotional about supporting their own side. It makes it very difficult to acknowledge the obvious – that Sarah Palin is a joke of a candidate. Perhaps when the election is over many conservatives will sober up and acknowledge this as well. On the other hand, some are talking about Sarah Palin in 2012. Of course this is silly. She would never survive a protracted primary season. But this is the best thing that could happen to the Democrats, though it might not be the best thing for the country. If the GOP loses this year, they will need to rebuild the party, and they’ll need to do it with qualified candidates who can enunciate a governing philosophy for our times from the conservative perspective. Sarah Palin cannot do this.
Regardless of who is in power, we need a robust party in opposition to keep the ruling party honest. The Democrats didn’t live up to this responsibility in the run-up to the Iraq War.
We knew it was coming, but now that John McCain is plummeting in the polls, we’re seeing a renewed attack on Barack Obama and his “associations.”
It’s amazing that in these tough times John McCain is unable to engage in a principled debate on the economy. Commentators on this blog have put up conservative arguments, yet McCain seems to be completely unable to offer a coherent argument as to why he is the better choice when it comes to the economy. Sarah Palin can barely utter a coherent sentence at all. Instead, McCain sends out Palin to make personal attacks on Barack Obama. The strategy is clear – change the subject and hope that the fickle electorate will turn on Obama.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Obama has been calm and steady thoughout this crisis while McCain has acted like a desperate fool. It also doesn’t help that these disgraceful attacks will now give the press an excuse to look at John McCain’s past and Sarah Palin’s past. They each have their own questionable associations, and we will be hearing more about them.
We’re also seeing the fruits of McCain’s ugly campaign, as taunts like “kill him” and “sit down boy” come from their frenzied audiences. I guess this is what happens when you whip up fear and hatred.
Further, these allegations are not brought up in news conferences or in interviews, where McCain or Palin would be forced to answer tough questions about their allegations or about their own records. Palin has yet to conduct a single news conference. Yesterday, the press was also prevented from speaking with Palin supporters at a campaign event. Unbelievable.
Conservatives need to look in the mirror. Is this what you want from your candidates? Is winning at all costs worth it? Can you defend candidates who can’t even enunciate or defend conservative principles?
If this doesn’t work, this will be a fitting end to the Reagan conservative movement. By embracing a mediocre intellect like Sarah Palin, following the disaster of the George W. Bush presidency, conservatives will have proven that identity politics, cronyism and the politics of personal destruction have replaced conservative principles as the driving force of the movement. In many ways, today’s conservatives are the mirror opposite of Ronald Reagan, who relied on ideas and a sunny optimism to lead our country.
Rich Lowry of the National Review is being mocked for this statement about Sarah Palin following the VP debate.
Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
