The Palin revisionism continues in earnest from Robert Stacy McCain:
Yet somewhere between Bush’s historic triumph in November 2004 (when he became the first president since 1988 to be elected by a popular-vote majority) and November 2006, the wheels fell off the Permanent Republican Majority. Suddenly, as if awakened from fairy-tale slumbers, conservative intellectuals began to regret that George W. Bush was not one of them.
Think about it. Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley, David Frum — what is the thread that connects them? All worked as speechwriters: Noonan for Reagan, Buckley for Bush 41, Frum for Bush 43. While these Republican wordsmiths had all praised Dubya’s machismo magnificence when he was contrasted with such pompous rivals as Al Gore and John Kerry, the bloom fell off that rose after 2006.
That born-again, down-to-earth, drawling Texas thing — somehow, it had once made Bush seem like Gary Cooper in High Noon. But as the disasters mounted and the poll numbers headed southward, that Gary Cooper glow faded and these conservative intellectuals turned on their TVs to behold, with unspeakable horror, President Jethro Bodine.
Thus their reaction to Sarah Palin. While the Republican Party grassroots looked at Palin and saw an American Margaret Thatcher (except much sexier), the conservative intellectuals looked at her and saw . . . Vice President Ellie Mae Clampett.
Look, I voted for Bush twice, and quickly came to regret it, so I am not going to pick on people who are belatedly figuring out Bush was and is a disaster. After all, what would be the point of picking on someone who is only a marginally slower learner than me?
But the Palin revisionism has got to stop. Palin’s problems were HER fault, not the fault of her handlers, not the fault of a liberal media, and most certainly not the fault of George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals.” The reason folks saw VP Ellie Mae Clampett was not because of residual Bush hatred or because they were projecting Bush’s failures onto Palin, but because of Palin’s own actions.
To my knowledge, George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t force her to lie on the stump for several weeks straight with her “thanks, but no thanks” line about the Bridge to Nowhere. George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t take part in the prep work before her disastrous Gibson interview, and Bush probably could have been counted on to give a marginally better description of the Bush doctrine (and, in fact, “conservative intellectuals” actually prostituted themselves out to provide Palin cover for her gaffe). George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t tell Palin to say all the stupid things she said to Katie Couric. George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t buy her two hundred grand worth of clothing and force her to wear it. George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t tell her to ignore every question at the debate and instead ramble on inanely about whatever her talking points were. George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” didn’t get Palin to whip up McCain/Palin crowds into something that resembled a modern day Triumph of the Will. George Bush and the “conservative intellectuals” aren’t responsible for Palin’s muddled answer about Hamas. And on and on.
One person is responsible for all that, and her name is Sarah Palin. Maybe you could ding George Bush for being such a disaster that people are no longer going to put up with this kind of idiocy, and maybe you could ding George Bush for creating a political climate that is inhospitable for incoherent rambling redneck know-nothings.
But you can’t blame George Bush or the “conservative intellectuals” for Sarah Palin being, well, Sarah Palin. Vice President Ellie Mae Clampett is a product of one person, and that person is Sarah Palin.
Moving along, McCain moves from the merely silly to the absurd:
Just as the conservative intellectuals once projected their hopes onto Dubya, now they project their disappointments onto Sarah. But the fault is theirs, not hers. And Sarah has something the intellectuals don’t have — an army. Brother, I’ve seen that army.
So you can take your David Frums and your David Brookses, and let Sarah take that army and, by God, we’ll see whose Republican Party this is.
We know full well whose party it is, and that is why it is President-elect Obama and moderates and independents fled to the Democratic party in 2008. And please stop with the Reagan comparisons. Reagan, for whatever faults he may have had, spent the better part of several decades repeatedly enunciating his beliefs. You may not have agreed with his vision for America, but he had one. Sarah Palin, by contrast, ran Wasilla into debt, sent a load of checks to Alaskans as governor while creating several scandals, and then spent three months on the trail winkin’ and not blinkin’ while mumbling something about “socialists” and “thanks but no thanks” and “pals around with terrorists.”
You guys keep running with that. We’ll see how that works out.
*** Update ***
This:
Now Palin is hiring her own handlers, making her own decisions, speaking freely. And if anything, the results are even worse than they were in 2008.
Watch the Ziegler interview yourself, and you will see what I mean. Ziegler represented a new and subtle kind of danger for Palin, the overly friendly interview. Ziegler’s questions were all traps, no less dangerous for being set unwittingly. Palin stumbled into every one.
Again and again, Ziegler invited Palin to engage in self-pity and self-excuse – and again and again she accepted.
I wonder who they will blame for her decisions now?
J.
God bless you, and the Steelers, John Cole.
Svensker
these conservative intellectuals turned on their TVs to behold, with unspeakable horror, President Jethro Bodine.
Thus their reaction to Sarah Palin. While the Republican Party grassroots looked at Palin and saw an American Margaret Thatcher (except much sexier), the conservative intellectuals looked at her and saw . . . Vice President Ellie Mae Clampett.
I dunno. Once they realized the Emperor was stark fucking naked (except for the clown shoes), it was easier to see that Palin wadn’t wearin’ nothin’ either. The nitwits who still look at Bush and see a guy wearing an expensive suit, see starbursts when they look at Palin. Apparently, the repubs weren’t drinking the Kool-Aid, they were pouring it into their eyes.
Svensker
Why I be moderated? Certainly the word "f**king" can’t cause moderation around here, can it? If so, the comments would be empty.
MattF
It’s also important to note that quite a few people wanted to see Palin favorably. The rise in McCain’s poll numbers after naming Palin as his VP choice came from people who were hoping for the ‘real thing’. But the world is what it is, the poll numbers went down again, and VP Palin didn’t happen.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Sorry John, revisionism is all the fine folks who brought us the smoking wreckage of the GOP and Conservatism have left. I’m now convinced the myth of lemmings plunging over a cliff was started by a guy who observed a Republican Furry convention.
In 10 days an intellectual will be the C-i-C. Sarah Palin will have Red State’s Stroke Farce and 18 millon pounds of hissing, spitting PUMAs. Plus, I imagine the Neo-Con habit of calling every collection of idiots, knuckledraggers, chickenshits, conspiracy theorists, wideloads, brats and bigots an army is starting to annoy people who’ve actually served. Forgive me if I fail to crap my pants.
Works for me. Whoops, I mean, Ooo, I’m a dusky-hued homollectual and I’m soooo frightened!
Grumpy Code Monkey
The American Margaret Thatcher?! What in the holy goddamned hell were these people smoking?
kommrade reproductive vigor
Never. SA2SQ vol. XXIV
Anyway, how dare you suggest she shoulder the blame, she needs her shoulders to burp Tripp and Trig!
Mutant Poodle
I heartily agree, although one could argue that the kid gloves with which Bush (and the conservative "intelligentsia") were treated over the years could make one reasonably assume that it didn’t matter what you said or did, as long as it hewed to that orthodoxy.
However, I don’t think Palin’s thought process got there at all. I just think she’s blissfully clueless.
And, FWIW, I remember the bridge lie going on longer than two weeks. But that could just be PTSD.
The Grand Panjandrum
That portable cross she’s carries around must be getting heavy. Are Republicans issued those things at registration or is special training required before you get one? I guess you get extra credit when you wrap them in Christmas lights?
J.D. Rhoades
Amazing…the wingnut contempt for intelligence even extends to the smart people (or what passes for the smart people) in their own party.
Scott
Please, please, please, wingnuts. Please keep worshipping at the twin altars of George W. Bush and Sarah Palin. Please never stop.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Scott: Amen!
Heh. I just checked RSM’s profile:
Sounds purty dang innalekchewall tuh me. AND French. Git ‘im fellas!
Ash Can
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Some genius who purportedly was once an adviser to Margaret Thatcher (the specifics of the article escape me) recently opined in the WSJ that Palin was like Thatcher. My first thought in reaction to this was, "Gee, I never thought Thatcher was that bad." My next thought was, "This guy must never have actually met Palin," and had instead only seen her on TV and hadn’t gotten past those initial starbursts. Of course, it’s also possible that "adviser to Margaret Thatcher" could also mean, "I keep talking to her office staff and giving them a piece of my mind — Mrs. Thatcher has never actually called me back, but her staffers assure me she’s getting my messages."
Actually, what truly gripes me about the whole Sarah Palin issue isn’t really Sarah Palin herself, odious as she might be. It’s the fact that, since the Reagan Administration, Republicans have enshrined ignorance as a virtue. By doing this, and getting people to agree with them, they’ve done more damage to this country than any anti-American terrorists could ever dream of doing themselves.
And BTW, John, your contrast of Reagan and Palin in your concluding paragraph reads more like a comparison that I’m sure you intended. Reagan in fact also spent the country into (far greater) debt, handed out tax cuts like after-dinner mints, winked and cliche’d his way through speeches and addresses, grumbled about socialists (or "communists," as they were called back in the day), and created (or at least facilitated) a bumper crop of scandals (breaking the Teapot Dome record for indictment of administration officials is saying something). The real difference between Reagan and Palin is that Reagan was smarter — he knew how to play the political game and win. He appointed mostly intelligent people (wrongheaded though they might have been), some of whom were actually competent, and was exceptionally successful at selling his bullshit to masses. He was a fraud, but he made himself sound believable. Palin can’t even do that; besides her insatiable ambition she has her looks and nothing more.
dmsilev
It’s pretty absurd for these revisionists to even try to make the argument for "poor abused Sarah". They seem to conveniently forget the first couple of weeks of her appearance on the national stage, when she got glowing press coverage ("Saved the McCain campaign", "Breath of fresh air", etc.). It was only after she actually started giving America a good long look at what she was really like that people started running away in horror.
For lack of a better milestone, I’d put the turning point as Tina Fey’s first Palin SNL piece (September 13th). That was just after the Gibson interview, and it gave us "I can see Russia from my house".
-dms
Shygetz
I don’t think Palin’s problem was that she lied on the stump, or that she came off as underinformed. St. Ronnie of Reagan lied his ass off early and often, and he never even pretended to be the smartest guy in the room when it came to policy. The difference is, Reagan had the charisma to make people not care about his lies and to win peoples’ trust, not as a policy authority but as a moral authority fit to guide policy makers. Palin always struck me as kinda slimy–more like an insurance sales
manperson than a statesmanperson, and apparently she didn’t have the charisma to pull off a Reagan with the rest of the country, either.Napoleon
I really suspect Palins 15 minutes of fame is up and that the moneycon wing of the Rep party and/or a huge chunk of the Alaskan Republican party makes sure she looses her reelection bid, but I hope I am wrong and she ends up being their presidential candidate in ’12. That will be the best thing that ever happen to the Dem party, to permanently brand the Reps as know nothings.
Rosali
According to the repugs who revere Reagan, his biggest accomplishment is single-handedly dismantling the USSR and ending the Cold War. What I don’t understand is why those same repugs want to revive the Cold War and elevate Russia to evil superpower status (Georgia conflict; Putin rears his head; etc) and thereby forfeit the right to claim that Ronnie was a great leader? It’s not such a big accomplishment if, in only 20 years, we’re right back to hostilities with the Russians.
Cruel Jest
Revisionism is a fundamental plank of the Republican Party platform. Hadn’t you heard? We won the Iraq war three times already! It’s approaching "Chuck Norris Facts" proportions. Their hands are raw from clapping and Tinkerbell is still dead. But they’ll diagnose her by video and everything will work out right as rain. Praise Jebus.
DougJ
That’s right, they began to criticize a president they once supported simply because he was destroying the country. Where are their priorities?
I don’t even know where to start with this one. First of all, he’s saying that "who gives a fuck about right and wrong, we’ve got a larger, more rabid mass of cretins than you do." And what will driving Frum and Brooks out of the party accomplish?
Phase 1: Eliminate conservative intellectuals from party
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Win election!
gopher2b
I honestly thought the GOP would learn its lesson after the election. Its amazing. I wonder when they will figure it out – when the east coast and California look like New England (w/o a single GOP representative).
I know thing the odds are better than half the Republican party will cease to exist within 25 years.
shortstop
She says this stuff because it works with the base (and if she actually believes she was a victim, that’s just icing on the cake). Neither the they’re-coming-to-kill-you-or-recruit-your-children nor the you’re-the-victim-of-snotty-classists messages ever loses any freshness with that crowd.
demimondian
@DougJ: The Know Nothing Gnomes think that they’ll get to pull a party coup off by pruning the intellectual old-guard from the party. After all, every party needs its message makers, and McCain and Palin believe that they will be those message makers…if they can get rid of the Reaganite guard.
And they may be right.
I keep reminding you folks that Palin isn’t stupid, merely venal and vile. She has historically used the stupid act to establish a narrative that she’s totally incompetent, and then surprises everyone by being at least marginally competent, then used that fact to discredit all critics. The 2008 election is the first time that didn’t work.
Palin, at least, has visions of herself triumphing over the increasingly-marginalized old-guard, and establishing her own cult of personality. McCain and his ilk are trying to ride her coat-tails. I won’t bet against them.
The Raven
"At What Point Will She Shoulder Some Blame?"
Maybe never. She’s narcissistic, believes everyone else is out of step. She may well make a comeback in 20 years.
caleb
For a political party who is supposed to be about "personal responsibility", republicans sure do suck at it.
Do as I say, not as I do.
rob
If the Repubs make Palin their nomimee in 2012, I know that there truly is a God. Conservatives want their own Barack Obama, they want a rock star. And sweet baby Jesus, Sarah Palin it is. I checked out the you tube link from rs mcain’s blog post, the one that was filming one of Palin’s rallys, it was sad really, to see those people in line to listen to this lunatic carry on with her eye winking, you betchas and her shrill hockey mom voice. It’s like the repubs want to show how cool they are, hey look we got a good one and her name is Sarah "also" Palin.
Tom
George Bush and the âconservative intellectualsâ didnât tell her to ignore every question at the debate and instead ramble on inanely about whatever her talking points were.
This is the most telling example of how Palin was not prepared or qualified to be the VP. More specifically, it’s the line (paraphrasing) she was given: "I may not answer all your questions, but that’s because I want to talk directly to the American people."
That line is the best evidence against Palin (well, aside from her own words). It shows that McCain’s people knew she could not hold her own in this debate, and not hold her own against Biden, but hold her own against Ifell (sp?). They were afraid of Couric x10. So they probably spent an hour or two trying to figure out how they could give Palin a free pass on answering any questions and just spew out talking points.
As the debate went on, she improved slightly, but early on she rotely stuck to talking points and did not dare veer from them. There were a couple times when Biden and Ifell challenged her to respond directly to a point Biden made and she refused to.
That was the point — if it was clear before — that it became painfully obvious she was in over her head.
Linda
You don’t understand, the repugs revere Regan for dismantling the USSR not because it was an evil empire, but because it was a Communist evil empire. If Russia had had the decency to be a capitalist evil empire, there would have been far less outcry against it. Today Russia can be re-elevated to superpower status because it is now no longer Communist. To the Repugs, the war against Communism was won by Reagan, and that is all that counts.
jrg
Palin tried to look like a folksy, down-home redneck, and the media obliged. The Republicans are bitching at the media because it did not work. The fact that most Americans don’t want another stupid redneck in the White House is completely lost on them.
Here’s a groundbreaking idea for the GOP: if you don’t want your candidates to be viewed as ignorant rednecks, stop trying to pander exclusively to ignorant rednecks.
Juan del Llano
Let the revisionism proceed. It will anyway!
The truth is, of course, that she doesn’t have a goddamn "army." But let the wingnuts go marching forth, believing that she does, and mutter prayers of thanksgiving.
The Other Steve
I think because Bush did that in 2000/2004, and by 2005 we were wise to it.
In retrospect, this has been what all of these people had in common with Reagan. It’s the missing link to understand conservatives.
Zombiehero
Most of the posters here agreeing with Mr. Cole are Obots anyway.
Democrats are afriad because Palin represents an Red America. Not latte sipping urban liberals, who hate anyone from the country. The party of tolerance has no tolerance for anyone that doesn’t fit their narrative. They believe all women should vote Democrat and any woman that doesn’t, isn’t really a woman but more of an Uncle Tom for feminism (Aunt Susan maybe).
The same people that hate Palin are the same people that think Obama is the smartest and greatest man ever. They accept everything Obama says as the truth and any evidence to the contrary is to be vilified and hated with no basis of logic or reason. Their Dogma is Barry is God and Palin is the Devil. There can be no room for debate when it comes to this dogma ever, at all. That is your party of Tolerance.
That is why the Democrats have at least one less voter from now on.
JWeidner
@demimondian: You might be right Demi. But I also suspect that after 4 years of having a competent, intellectual president in the White House, Palin’s stupid act may look even more unappealing.
Of course, if Obama’s term is an outright disaster (no reason to think it will be, but hey, people thought Bush Jr. was going to be good) there’s no telling what will happen. But I don’t think there’s any way for a Palin-led Republican ticket to regain any of the votes she lost this time around. People who looked at her in 2008 and were horrified aren’t likely, IMO, to change their mind. I’m not sure a stint in the Senate could even change that.
Hyperion
well, i guess the truth of that statement depends on the meaning of "quickly". i detect a bit of revisionism.
Bob In Pacifica
I think the problem is that most Republican deep thought has been exposed as being intellectually bankrupt. It’s always involved magical thinking, you know, like If we make the richer richer then we’ll be richer too.
There are still a lot of people on the right running around arguing for trickle down, etc., and who use their outdated moralities and fearmongering, but it’s just not rallying the troops anymore. You’ve got pockets of racists, end-of-timers, gun nuts, etc., who’ll cling to some of this, but what of the right-wing intellectuals who have to rationalize this mess? Palin can’t even get the geography straight, much less articulate the terrain.
Palin is no better than any petty fascist figure who uses charisma and rhetoric to whip up excitement around her. Unfortunately, in this day and age of media her warts were showing before she could build up momentum. Oh, she may get a political makeover, and the Right will surely try to find someone to lead us out of the sh*tpile of their own making, if not her then a new Ollie North maybe. Military men always look like leaders.
But at this point Americans are actually recognizing the problems and they don’t see the Republicans as anything other than crooks standing in the way of progress.
Vice President Ellie Mae Clampett. I like that.
lee
The Repubs will always have Texas (I live in Texas).
It is not so much that they are strong here but that the Democrats are barely alive.
J.D. Rhoades
Comparing Palin to Ellie Mae Clampett, I think, misses the point of why she turned people off.
The key word is "stupid." People don’t mind the folksy, down home, even unschooled persona as long as the person exhibits some sort of innate wit or intelligence. ( It really works well if the apparent simpleton can slip in some zingers that deflate the "pompous eggheads". (see, Clampett, Jed). It worked for Reagan because (a) he actually could think on his feet and come up with the occasional good line, and (b) he actually had some decent speechwriters for when he couldn’t do it on his own. Palin had none of that.
Another thing you have to have to make the folksy down home thing work is that you may be mean, but you can’t look mean. Remember, Ellie Mae was ignorant, but she was also kind. Reagan managed to project a sort of grandfatherly aura, even as he did some truly awful things. It helped that he was old. Palin just came off as belligerent.
John Cole
@J.D. Rhoades: This- I never felt she was folksy and down home. She just came off to me as mean and nasty and as an ugly person.
tex
You Obama-worshippers can keep on bashing Palin, Bush, and anything Republican….it is the only thing you have in your pathetic, pseudo-intellectual, vapid lives.
Your belief in the completely overblown, completely unqualified and shamelessly hypocritical and corrupt Obama and his democrat party are your weakness.
Remember, nothing is harder than actually governing and making tough decisions. Despite the Obama-adoring media, the world will soon catch up to your manger-born messiah.
When it does, the reborn Republican party, shorn of Bush, Palin and other flotsam will again rule the day. It will not happen today, tomorrow or even in 2012. But, then again, times in the wilderness are seldom brief.
P.S. From a proud conservative intellectual (M.D., Ph.D, Ivy leaguer) who can compete with you liberal losers with a quarter of my brain.
Zuzu's Petals
Well I see Stacy hasn’t wasted any time writing up a gratuitous, off-point, and strawman filled "response" to John’s post:
Update II
Prepare for the trolls.
Zuzu's Petals
Re "intellectual conservatives" :
I dunno, these are the same folks pushing a candidate who couldn’t name the President of Pakistan. How many clues did they need?
By the way, I have a friend who is a born-again fundamentalist and long-time Republican – thought GWB was literally a gift from God. She’s part of the base, but she sure ain’t stupid. She said she voted for Obama this time, and had one reason: Sarah Palin.
John Cole
LMAO. That is his whole response? A limp assertion that Sarah’s rhetoric didn’t whip the crowds up into a froth? So she never said the palling around with terrorists stuff? She never said any of that stuff.
Amazing. I feel like I am watching people shackle themselves to the masthead on the Titanic.
NorthShoreline
Zombie,
Well said. I see my female friends and family in her actions and biography. Not all of them realize that they have more in common with Sarah, than with the Democrats that are denigrating her.
Everyone has aspects of their biography that others dislike. The intensity of the anti-Palin rhetoric indicates, that there is a concern that her story resonates positively with many voters. These voters will find out the truth over the next 4-8 years. If Sarah can be propaganized out of existance as a threat, the Anti-Palins win.
Zuzu's Petals
@J.D. Rhoades:
And ( c ) he actually had experience, and had even thought about these things.
Zuzu's Petals
@John Cole:
Actually, I think Stacy would like folks to believe you claim she was whippin’ ’em up into a RACIST froth.
And remember, it only counts if you can prove there were actual threats made because of her speeches. I guess they had to breathe her talking points into the phone.
TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst)
If ya wanna bea spoof ya gotta make more speilling and grandma erors. Yer thurd line waz gud, thou.
J.D. Rhoades
Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama’s patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
http://tinyurl.com/6saz8t
That is so not true. I also have drugs and porn.
Zuzu's Petals
@J.D. Rhoades:
Yeah, I know there were threats. I was snarking on Stacy’s idea that you have to prove they were made because of her speeches.
See, it was just a coincidence that they went up after she started the un-American, socialist, terrorist-pal, stuff. Hence my snarky edit to say the only acceptable proof would be if they breathed her talking points – no, actually her name – into the phone.
AkaDad
This is clearly a slap in the face to Donna Douglas.
Dusty
Ella Mae Clampett was a very sweet girl, unlike Sarah Palin. And she loved critters.
Zuzu's Petals
PS, I don’t see anywhere that John claimed SP whipped ’em up into a threatening mob. Another one of Stacy’s strawmen.
sparkletts water works
You left out "compassionate".
J.D. Rhoades
@ John Cole:
Actually, continuing the Beverly Hillbillies analogies, Palin was less like Ellie Mae and more like Granny: belligerent, quick to take offense, and prone to dramatics. And remember, Granny rarely prevailed. A lot of the show’s plots revolved around Jed trying to mitigate the damage from Granny and Jethro’s craziness.
You want to do folksy in politics, you need to do a close study of Jed.
Man, a degree in broadcasting can really mark a person for life, can’t it?
Tsulagi
Gotta give them credit, when they revision they donât fuck around going just half assed swinging only their left cheek.
âBushâs historic triumphâ in 04? If just 60k voters in Ohio vote for the pompous ass instead of the retarded one, he would have been writing about how Kerry stole the presidency.
âWhen he [Bush] became the first president since 1988 to be elected by a popular-vote majorityâ? What, Clinton in 96 getting eight million more popular votes than Dole didnât make it into their go-to research Bible, Conservapedia?
Besides always seizing the victim mantle, another major characteristic of these tards is the firm belief that anything that manages to come out of their mouths or keyboards in decipherable language is reality. They must apprentice at the Creation Museum.
J.D. Rhoades
Well, she could kick the shit out of Jethro if she had to, but she didn’t make a big point of it.
John Cole
The last time I crossed paths with McCain, he claimed I brought up the Red State complaints about hiring Greg Sargent in order to “revisit” the Domenech plagiarism scandal, when I never even mentioned it (in fact, I even cropped the picture in the post so Ben’s resignation was not visible, because I didn’t want that to become an issue).
When I updated my post to point out I didn’t care for a bunch of Domenech bashing, McCain then claimed in another update that I had “buyer’s remorse.” Only after a commenter at his site pointed out that I had never in fact mention the plagiarism issue did McCain update a third time acknowledging as much.
Bonus funny- the commenter who pointed out that I had never mentioned the plagiarism scandal still asserted I wasn’t taking plagiarism seriously enough, even after pointing out I HAD NEVER EVEN MENTIONED IT.
Even more bonus funny- McCain made all those factual mistakes about the nature of my remarks… in a post on the merits of conservative journalism.
So don’t expect him to acknowledge the obvious.
Whammer
Hey big smart Tex,
Maybe, since you’re so smart, you can tell me why it’s bad for us to bash Bush and Palin and Republicans, while at the same time telling me that the Republicans will rise again, once they get rid of Bush and Palin and people like that there.
Explain to me, liberal loser, what exactly the Republican party is going to stand for, once they are out of the business of supporting all the stuff Bush and Palin stand for.
I hope it doesn’t trouble your big smart quarter brain.
XXOO
Whammer
El
nothing is harder than actually governing and making tough decisions.
Yup.
And your Party of Ideological Idiots proved they have no idea how to do it.
Karen
"When will she shoulder some blame?"
In a word: Never
It’s everyone else’s fault. Never hers.
Zuzu's Petals
@tex:
I’m guessing English composition wasn’t your strong point.
demimondian
@El:
Fixt that for you.
BC
Actually, can’t wait for 2012 when the Republican campaign is going to be on "fiscal responsibility" – don’t know how any Republican governor is going to be able to run on that theme, because they are all going to be having their hands out to Washington from the time the stimulus package is passed to November 2012. So, maybe Mitt Romney will have field to himself.
demimondian
@Zuzuâs Petals: No joke. I’m wondering how his or her dissertation read.
Laura W
On a much happier note, just got the mail. The Presidential Inaugural Committee requests the honor of my presence!
It’s a cool 8.5" x 11" invite with purty cursive font and the golden Inauguration seal and everything.
Just seeing:
…in the
Inauguration of
Barack H. Obama
as President of the United States of America
makes my eyes all moist and misty.
I am so going to make the most awesome frame for this puppy.
Y’all go check the mail!
John Cole
Terri Schiavo started in March 2005, less than two months after the second inauguration on 4 months after the second vote, and that was the beginning of the end for me. I would consider that pretty quickly.
demimondian
@Laura W: The eldest of the demi-offspring got one, so FDDD and I won’t be do so, we assume.
Zuzu's Petals
@Laura W:
I know, I was so excited when I got mine. I was actually hoping it meant something – anything – but oh well.
And right after that I got an e-mail pic of my granddaughter’s first smile.
So it’s all good … I get to be in the front row for the REALLY important stuff.
Laura W
@Zuzuâs Petals: Well, not that it can compare with The First Smile, but you know it means Everything, ZuZu! You brave protectoress of polling places, you.
Besides, you’ll have a front row seat right here at BJ Bar & Brawl, in the stellar company of your cyber-BFFs.
Right?
mike k.
test
mike k.
palin is just a voice for right wingers who propagate the less taxes, less government, more guns and less gay rights mandar; she’s basically a political hack and just plan too stupid to understand her message isn’t relevant to american society today.
Cruel Jest
Threats, bluster, bravado, ad hominem, individually wrapped talking points and contrary arguments. Adorable. I think you underestimate the fraction of brain required to achieve cogency.
mike k.
can’t wait for the 2012 presidential election-if palin is the repubs choice, i dare to say an army of english interpetors will have their hands full figuring out what she is saying-just calls to mind, the english lanquage must be a foreigh lanquage in alaska
Zuzu's Petals
@Laura W:
Well to be accurate, I guess it was the first smile caught on camera. Since they’re never without a camera, it’s probably close enough.
And may I say you add to the stellar company quotient here!
mike k.
liberal losers??
ha, we won the election and you conservatives left us a mess
who are the losers??????????????????????????????
you, bush and gayhaters have no shame!!
you all screwed up and want to walk away, but not before you charactor assasinate the people who have to fix the crap you left behind
ryan h.
If I recall correctly, Palin has some variation on a Minnesota/ upper-midwest accent, not an Alaskan one. She’s a couple generations removed from a small chain migration of Minnesotans that settled around Wasilla, but Alaskans don’t generally sound anything like she does.
Kyle
What I donât understand is why those same repugs want to revive the Cold War and elevate Russia to evil superpower status
Because the money men know what a gravy train a foreign ‘threat’ can be. Repuke-ism is all about ginning up fear among the scared, ignorant masses. So they declare ‘victory’, collect plaudits, then hit the rewind button to keep the scam going.
The Repukes thought they’d harness the scared-stupid rednecks to the yoke of their plutocratic project, but with Palin the rednecks are starting to grab the yoke. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Ash Can
@Zombiehero: LOLZ
@tex: Not bad. The ivy-leaguer stuff cracked me up. But Zombiehero wins out on the handle alone.
@NorthShoreline: Whoops! You’ve been had.
@Laura W: I got one too, and it makes me smile. On a purely cynical level, I recognize that it’s an effort to pick up spare change. Regardless, though, I think it’s a nice gesture, a nice acknowledgement of us supporters. And mine’s getting archived in the "cool stuff" folder too.
mike k.
you have to love the repubs-they might have a black national chairman-this after making "voter fraud" their top priority-which is simply voter surpression at a sofisicated level.
black voters know the repubs as the party not welcoming blacks-its for whites with money who believe paying nothing in taxes is just fine.
a poor person voting republican is just plain stupid
ppcli
Then the Republican Party apparently noticed nothing about Thatcher beyond that she treated her opponents with contempt. In that, Palin and Thatcher are comparable. But please. She was a grocer’s daughter who won a scholarship to Oxford at a time when English academia had only begun to pull itself out of centuries of institutional sexism. (Read a biography of Rosalind Franklin to get a sense of the hostility of the old boys club of the day.) She achieved an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and a graduate degree in crystallography. That was one smart woman.
.
And though I hated her politics, I must say that if you skimmed through Thatcher’s *entire life* and collected together every last moment in which she whined about the unfairness of it all, you would still have less whimpering than Palin serves us in that single interview.
.
Margaret Thatcher, indeed….
Please, please, please, let Palin be the standard bearer for the Republican party for years to come.
MattF
@John Cole: Hey John, you’re actually echoing Digby here. I’m impressed.
mike k.
palin doesn’t have a brain
she has a big month
she is a liar
she is a racist
Laura W
@Zuzuâs Petals: Did Fuckhead ask you to affirm me in his absence?
;-)
Zuzu's Petals
@Laura W:
Hey, that doesn’t make it not true !
LiberalTarian
@Zombiehero:
Dar. Zombiehero logged in today at the library.
First of all, I’ll eat my redneck country-western Levis if you EVER voted Democrat. Hell, I’d be surprised if you ever VOTED. Yer outa yer ever lovin’ mind.
I’m from a rural red state buddy–and I never even for a second would have voted for that John Bircher Palin. I was born in the same hospital two months and drop my g’s and sound like a hick too, but Palin isn’t stupid because she does those things. She’s just stupid–you’d have to be to admit to being a conservative these days. Obama is not just a little smarter, HE IS ACTUALLY A CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR.
This is a waste of my Americana roots breath.
The conservative movement has driven right off a cliff–and gawddamn you, you took the country with you. It won’t be too long before it becomes common to hear something along the vein of, "Have a nicer day. Punch a conservative."
Then again, Zombiehero is probably a spoof. I am easily spoofed.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: Fuckhead is never absent. Frequently bored but never absent. You seem radiant today. Perhaps it’s the uncharacteristically nice weather.
jim
From what little I’ve seen of it, that interview lets Palin present herself as a narcissist who’s infuriated at the lack of worship that she’d assumed was her natural due … & an eternal mental featherweight determined to rewrite her own folly as the malice of others.
*
In Ziegler’s interview Palin wonders out loud if there isn’t an issue of "classism" (pretty hippy-dippy PC terminology to hear coming from the lady who read/s the John Birch Society newsletter, I’d say) in the contrast between her media treatment & that of Caroline Kennedy (who also just happens to be a direct descendant of the next most popular POTUS after Washington & maybe Lincoln) … but after the sneak-preview of the interview she did a 180 & proclaimed that she’s sure Ms. Kennedy is fully qualified & will do a wonderful job, also!
*
D’oh!
*
I guess John "Wet-Start" McCain’s chronic flipflopitis must’ve been contagious.
LiberalTarian
@tex:
Man, knowing myself to be easily spoofed, and trying to get past it, this has got to be spoofage.
No one could string all this together without laughing his ass off. I mean, c’mon, the Ivy League stuff gives it away, doesn’t it? Recall these same Ivy League geniuses brought us the current financial crisis, and surely Tex is aware. Gotta be a spoof.
I mean, c’mon, Tex … Ivy League … PhD MD??? I bet he had a beer with W.
Ella in NM
According to the definition of "personality disorder", never. Read the DSM.
Folks, she’s a 40 year old (eg: this is permanent now) narcissist with sociopathic tendencies who just happens to be on this side of the line in terms of socio-economic status. Her brain is incapable of insight or of acceptance of blame for anything because it will always be everyone else’s fault. It’s how they’re wired neurologically.
Oh, and if she ever does appear to have any of these abilities it will be because she learned that your’s supposed to say that kind of self-depricating stuff to get people to believe your con.
Really, she should be selling used cars.
Ash Can
@LiberalTarian: Hey, I feed spoofs on occasion myself. I figure, what the hell. They make good target practice.
El Cid
Although, yes, Palin should take responsibility for her own horrific failure on the McCain campaign, Bill Kristol, who felt starbursts upon meeting Palin on the Weekly Standard cruise and who then took up the cause of making Palin the VP for McCain and who defended Palin every step of the way with hearts and flowers and rainbows in his eyes, should also take some responsibility.
But it is the prime characteristic of conservative ‘intellectuals’ that they take no, zero responsibility for the actual results of any of the things they advocate.
Push for an idiot VP, defend her, it’s a disaster, wash hands.
Push for a giant war & occupation, it’s a disaster, blame others for just not handling it right, wash hands.
Push for the most freakishly bizarre economic ideology allowing the most foolhardy venal super-wealthy to take any number of non-regulated gambles with our national economy, it’s a disaster, blame FDR and the blacks and Barney Frank and Jimmy Carter, wash hands.
And of course, keep advocating the exact same things.
Laura W
@Ella in NM: Just threw up in my mouth a little. You have described with absolute precision a
manboy I dated in late college. Came back around in 2001, same sick boy in a man’s body. Anything else would be TMI and bore Fuckhead further, but lemme jes say…if you can’t personally relate to Ella’s description of a classic narcissist, thank your deity of (non)choice.They are GOOD, and they are interesting, fascinating and compelling (in that morbid way…the way even Tweety claimed to view Palin recently…) due to their uncanny ability to spin reality, keep those who love them off balance (gaslight), and give people what people want from them to perpetuate their energy vampire feeding frenzy.
(The boy I knew died in 2006 at age 46. I’d bet my life he took his own life. I regret trashing all the "souvenirs" and emails. If I could get past the vomit-in-mouth part, it’d make an interesting book.)
Mandy
John, we never will agree politically, but I take my hat off to straight talk, common sense and intelligence whenever I encounter it. Bravo.
Cain
@Laura W:
I hate you. It’s like getting the candy bar with the golden wrapper. :/ I will have to see it on TV. We’ll need to coordinate the shots of alcohol we take during the inauguration and wings. There must be hot wings.
cain
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mandy: Give him time and just stay where ya are, John’s a work in progress.
kay
For someone who ran with John McCain, on a platform of Country First, I’m surprised Governor Palin doesn’t know why Caroline Kennedy carries a certain amount of historical heft just by virtue of the name.
It’s because two of the Kennedy’s died serving the country, and they died because they were serving the country. I think it’s safe to say neither man would have been slaughtered had they chosen, oh, investment banking, or commercial fishing.
That Caroline Kennedy benefits from that sacrifice might be considered a mixed blessing, by a person who had some sense of US history, or was a decent human being, even.
We were reminded again and again by Sarah Palin, why sacrifice matters, re: John McCain.
I guess it was just a bunch of bullshit. She clearly hasn’t given it much thought.
Lucky, lucky Caroline, and poor, poor Sarah.
different church-lady
GOP (or is it just wingnuts?) are now obsessed with NOTHING but personality. Everything else doesn’t matter anymore.
Palin has personality to spare. She’s got the personality of ten wingnuts. She is a shiny object. Wingnuts only care about shiny objects.
The country, on the other hand, is quite fed up with shiny objects.
Garrigus Carraig
@Tsulagi:
I’m afraid he’s right. No one got a majority in ’96 due in part to Perot’s performance. Clinton 49.2%, Dole 40.7%, Perot 8.4%.
shortstop
I received mine last night. Imagine my humiliation when my husband brought in the mail, tossed this big old envelope on my lap and, with an eye on the return address, remarked, "It’s that shirtless photo you ordered." Oops, hadn’t thought he’d noticed.
We had a good laugh at my getting an invitation to…come to the city of Washington. All that could have improved it was Mapquest directions on the back. But yeah, it was a nice gesture and it made us smile as well as chortle.
Laura W
@Cain:
No need to hate me, Cain. Well, not for that reason, anyway. It was just a cheesy shill for mo’ money. But it’s my cheesy shill and I aim to frame and display it proudly for years to come. His confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all, indeed.
Assuming you gave some pennies to the campaign, yours will arrive shortly. I’ll be sitting at home by the teevee like you doing shots of something. Well, not shots, but drinking, surely. And so help me Allah, if our power goes out that morning there will be HELL to pay, local electric company. I mean HELL.
Anoniminous
@tex:
OK.
What was the primary affect of the development of non-Euclidean geometries on Western thought?
Garrigus Carraig
@kay:
Three. Three Kennedys. Don’t forget Joe Jr.
Fulcanelli
Conservative intellectuals? Oh, yeah… Sorry. Right.
Now then, this conservative Mr. McCain fellow, who describes himself as an:
Hmmm, for an award winning columnist he doesn’t seem to be much of an original thinker, and I wasn’t able to determine if he considers himself one of the intellectuals he’s dissing or a foot soldier in Palin’s Army of Stoopid, but does seem to consider himself in a league with some pretty interesting company.
C’mon, Sarah Palin’s nothing more than an opportunist of the highest order. She never went to school for political science, history or government, she was a frickin’ TV bobblehead who probably fell into that job just like she fell into politics.
A vindictive, alpha bitch who in another type of job would stomp on the corpses of more qualified co-workers to sleep or politically conspire her way to the executive suite. Most of us have seen the type in the workplace. The clueless boss you want to strangle, that always gets away with murder, screws up and gets promoted.
I’m dumb-struck when I hear her described as having "political talent", when all I see is a shallow, incurious, culture bomb-throwing MILF, with no real ideas or solutions, but I guess that’s what passes for talent in the GOP these days. Lord knows their political ideology is well and truly fuck-ed.
More cowbell, Sarah. You can bet she bottoms from the top with the First Dude.
Tom Dockery
In 2028,Palin will be gearing up for her third term as President-the 22nd Amendment having been repealed by popular acclaim during her first term-,while Obama will be shooting hoops with a lone Secret Service agent in a South Side gym.
These Aquarian Governors come back in 12 years every time.(FDR-1920-1932,Reagan-1968-1980).
kay
@Garrigus Carraig:
Thank you. You’re right, of course. I’m not a huge fan of political dynasties, but the sacrifice was there, and I think it bears mentioning, along with any benefit. Caroline Kennedy didn’t create her own history, or demand a place in ours. It was, ahem, thrust upon her.
Palin’s self-pity aside, that all happened, and it happened to the whole country.
I know it was a long, long time ago….pre-Reagan, so therefore pre-history, to modern conservatives.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Like My Pet Goat, without the pretty pictures.
ann
I agree with everything save for one point–Ellie Mae and Jethro were both sweet, harmless characters. Ellie Mae especially loved animals remember, she didn’t shoot them from a plane. Don’t insult that darling old TV series or the great comic actors who played those roles by comparing to the likes of Sarah Palin and George Bush.
Fulcanelli
@tex: Whew! Bitter much?
You sure you need the whole 1/4 of your brain to whup us all, tex?
Dulcie
@Fulcanelli:
FTW! This made my entire day.
The Moar You Know
@Anoniminous: Effect, not affect.
demimondian
@Fulcanelli: Yeah, well, what tex isn’t telling you is that the other three quarters of his brain has turned into liquid.
demimondian
@The Moar You Know: I was getting a bit of a chuckle about the notion of affect and non-Euclidean geometry. I mean, a Euclidean geometry have would have to have a completely flat affect, but I’m not sure what kind of affect a geometry of non-zero curvature would have…
Ken
John, you say "Look, I voted for Bush twice, and quickly came to regret it…" I can not say I read your blog frequently so perhaps there is sarcasm in this statement that I am not appreciating. BUT – you write an article saying Palin is slow!!! Through four years of Bush disasters, you remained a kool-aid drinker. Nothing in his second term was in conflict with the quality of his first term and voting for him a second time, then suggesting you woke up months later is scary. I commend the change of heart, but characterizing it as quick is quite a stretch. It is also a denial of responsibility, no less agregious than Palin’s.
Garrigus Carraig
@kay: They did dynasty differently then. E.g., all four of FDR’s sons served in World War II. Unimaginable now, as fighting the wars is proles’ work.
Your point is well taken, IMHO, and I oppose (and am a bit embarrassed by) Caroline’s flimsily-based desire to be appointed a Senator.
Woodrowfan
bad troll, no cookie.
Lemuel Kinsolving
It is difficult for me to believe all Democrats are stupid. Maybe it is just the ones who comment on this blog. The Gibson interview you put your comments on was abridged and slanted. Was it Palin who said she had been to all 57 states? Who was it who threw his "racist"grandmother under the bus for Jeremiah and then trashed jeremiah after jeremiah DARED to question the chosen one. Biden and Obamessiah got a pass in the media. When Obama said leave my family alone the lemmings of the media followed that admonition but unloaded on Palin. Most of you seem to confuse Tina Fey’s insults with Palin’s comments. Try reading a little more. It must be very difficult for you people to think with your heads inserted in a very dark place. If some of you tried writing without 4 letter invectives, it would show some meager signs of intelligence but it seems that emotive rants and not civil rationale are your forte.
Maus
What’s her "army", the TeamSarah.org whacknuts?
John Smith III
I thoght "Intelectual" and "Conservative" were mutually excluyent terms…
kay
@Lemuel Kinsolving:
There were 57 contests in the Democratic primary. I can list them, if you’d like.
Conservatives jumped on that statement without any understanding of where the heck the minor gaffe may have originated, and made yourselves out to be fools, to anyone following the process, and millions of us were.
What arrogance. Tell me, why would you assume a US Senator doesn’t know there are 50 states in the Union? Are you really going with that? That’s why you lost.
blogreeder
John, let me be on record as saying I totally disagree with this post. There is so much wrong here. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up that there is a question about Trig’s birth mother.
Amongst other things, what is this obsession with her wardrobe? Who cares? That is plain sexists.
Just Some Fuckhead
Christ, this thread is like trollbait.
Just Some Fuckhead
Nevermind.
getalifeprowl
Where are courtesy and manners? A person can state an opinion without vile descriptions and insults. Did Palin deserve the nasty press she got. No. Nobody deserves that kind of press even if/when you disagree with her positions. This blog makes me think that courtesy has very nearly disapeared in this country along with women’s rights. Even Hilary Clinton was treated much more disrespectfully than ANY male candidate. I suspect there is still no such thing as women’s rights in this country without the laws to force it to happen.
Any person reading this blog must think that culture in this country has been discarded and replaced by the negative side of emotions.
dmsilev
Better trolls, please. I hear that Obama’s stimulus plan will include funding for a new generation of blogosphere trolls; perhaps this blog can put in a grant request for a few.
-dms
John Cole
@blogreeder: I never once paid any attention to the trig trutherism. In fact, most Democrats didn’t. Compare that to the birth certificate/citizenship nonsense from the right, which was turned into a Supreme Court case.
@getalifeprowl: You are right. Palin was very nice as she was calling everyone terrorists and smearing Obama as hating the troops. Piss off.
Joshua Norton
That still doesn’t preclude a Jethro/Bush comparison. Jethro was always puffed up about his "double naught spyin’", his 6th grade "education" and math prowess (or his term "guzzintas" – 3 guzzinta 6 twice. A term you can very easily imagine W using). He showed up as a military school student wearing a uniform of a 3 star general. Granny bullied him into fighting the Civil War – in Beverly Hills. He was also a perfect mark for the people around him who were trying to get to his uncle’s money. And oh so much more.
A perfect example of the Bush mental prowess (or lack thereof).
Green Eagle
Mr. Cole:
You state: "And please stop with the Reagan comparisons. Reagan, for whatever faults he may have had, spent the better part of several decades repeatedly enunciating his beliefs. You may not have agreed with his vision for America, but he had one. Sarah Palin, by contrast, ran Wasilla into debt…."
Sir, Ronald Reagan did not leave the small town of Wasilla, Alaska in debt. He left our entire country in debt. Have you forgotten that?
If Sarah Palin is a petty grifter, Ronald Reagan was a colossal grifter. That’s the only difference between the two.
sci man
"At What Point Will She Shoulder Some Blame?"
Probably after she resigns from the Republican party. Hasn’t W shown us that being a Republican means never saying you’re sorry?
Count me as another who comes to Ellie Mae’s defense.
Tsulagi
@Garrigus Carraig:
Shit, I hate it when Iâm wrong due to missing a qualifier.
So yeah, Clintonâs getting an eight million vote plurality in the popular vote over his R challenger along with a 220 electoral vote edge doesnât rate near âBushâs historic triumph in November 2004â when he got a 50.7 majority of the popular vote getting 34 more electoral votes than Kerry.
But I know I can count on that vaunted trait of consistency in our Wingnuttian conservatives. If a .7 majority rates a âhistoric triumph,â then clearly he must categorize Obamaâs 52.9%, a 9.5 million popular vote supremacy over McCain/Winky, and more than doubling their electoral vote total, as one of Biblical, Parting of the Red Sea proportion.
JL
@Laura W: I received mine also! I might even keep the envelope it was mailed in. Where did all the trolls come from?
EriktheRed
Those talking points are soooo last summer.
YellowJournalism
Don’t worry. She just folds it up and slips it into one of the Gucci handbags the McCain campaign paid for.
Paternoster888
Now that you’ve critiqued Sarah Palin, the next logical
step is to move on to Joe (the bafoon) Biden. I hope he
hasn’t started WW3 on his trip to Pakistan.
Tsulagi
@getalifeprowl:
Your comment reminds of something funny my dad, a lifelong R, said in call before the election. He said âI hear we (Rs) now love Hillary and weâre feminists. You follow this crap, tell me when and how did that happen?â Cracked me up.
Even he, and other sane Rs, had to shake their heads and laugh at the bullshit thought up by the McCain/Palin campaign. And their chasing of the mystical, mythical PUMA unicorn. They love their ponies, donât they? While Sarah ignited starbursts in the crowds holding Creation Museum annual passes, she didnât do much for others.
EriktheRed
Well, a lot of Republicans these days seem to like putting down that elite fancy-pants "book-learnin’" that you’re bragging about.
Just sayin’…..
bago
Probably because she was quoting Sarah verbatim. It has to be about job creation, also.
EriktheRed
Whoops!
Meant that last post to come out like this:
Well, a lot of Republicans these days seem to like putting down that elite fancy-pants "book-learninâ" that youâre bragging about.
Just sayinâ…..
Hyperion
@Ken: your comment is a longer version of mine at #33. Cole’s response is at #64. i think he meant "after voting for bush twice, i quickly came to regret it." at least that makes more sense (to me).
zombiehero
@TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst):
Thank you for such and intellegent and thoughtful response.
It tells a lot about the kind of person you are.
zombiehero
@TheAssInTheHatOnMyCat(Formerly Comrade Tax Analyst):
Thank you for your indepth analysis. It is much appreciated.
You are the epitome of the new Democratic Party.
EriktheRed
Btw, for all the Sarah-lovin’ trolls here, does the behavior exhibited here make you proud?
If you guys can’t come up with a better defense for Gov. Mooseburger, you really oughtta just hang it up and stop embarassing yourselves.
zombiehero
@LiberalTarian:
Great comment. Very tolerant of you buddy. Do you have your "Palin is a C*%T" shirt too? Got your Obama comemorative plate yet?
Ha ha. You Obots are just too cute.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@kay:
How could Lemuel forget how Obama said Palin was a lipstick wearing pig?
EriktheRed
With all of the rehashing of long-debunked talking points I’m wondering if you guys are seriously deranged, fuckin’ stupid or just foolishly naive enough to think they’ll fly.
kay
@Paternoster888:
Biden’s "gaffes" (and the conservative obsession with them) were fun for me.
While you were setting up clever "gaffe counters" on the websites no one ever visited, Biden was working his ass off. He visited my conservative county and the adjacent county, and my county swung 20 points to Democrats from 2004, to 2008. He stayed almost 2 hours post-stump speech, with less than 1,000 people in attendance.
Older Democrats know him, like him, and trust him.
kommrade reproductive vigor
2009 – The Year Spoof Died.
Cruel Jest
@zombiehero:
I believe you are thinking of Citizens United Not Timid and it was directed at Hillary.
I gotta say, the winged monkeys of John Stacy McCain have no Kung-Fu. If you’re going to use prehistoric talking points, at least construct an interesting sentence or box it in some [non- Dan Riehl] humor. Wagging your finger at me for using bad words will get you only one response.
Laura W
@JL: Dunno, JL. Fulfillment of NY’s resolutions?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@EriktheRed:
People always ask, "are they stupid or are they lying?"
I believe it to be a whole lot of both.
Edward
The reason why Sarah Palin is still popular and has so many people in her corner is because she is one of us. She is a woman who made it on her own, and not because she was the wife or daughter of a president.
Go Sarah! You stand for freedom and liberty!
And hello! I’m sorry, but I’m glad she shot back at Katie Couric and Tina Fey. They both suck!
kay
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
I had to check out for a time during "Palin, pigs, lipstick". For my own sanity.
By that point we’d be at it for what, a year and a half? I was going nuts. I couldn’t stands no more.
I came back in for "McCain rescues free market capitalism from certain demise".
demimondian
@getalifeprowl: Why, no. Culture has not been discarded, but rather realized.
Lady Burton said, "He who knows not, and knows not he knows not — he is a fool, shun him". She was right, and it is our job to make sure that people follow her advice. We on the left came to realize that that you on the right were irredeemable fools, we assist others in realizing this by revealing your folly.
Shorter demi: "Moar bettur trollz, plz. ktnxbai"
Iowa Housewife
@JL: Where did all the trolls come from? Kinda creepy
Garrigus Carraig
@Tsulagi: Yeah, he was dealing in trivialities. I would draw the line between landslide (e.g. 1964 & 1984) and non-landslide. Certainly the only thing historic about 2004 was how close an incumbent wartime president came to defeat.
jmt
Perhaps we should cut WhiterShadeOfPalin a little slack; after all, she gave up a potentially lucrative career in TruckStoppage to provide this sort of Mass Entertainment.
Nellcote
so Thatcher=degrees in chemistry and chrystallography(?) and Palin=Mayor of the Meth Capital of Alaska? Ok, I see the comparison.
EriktheRed
If by "one of us", you mean an ignoramus who wears her ignorance like a badge of honor, then you can keep her.
Btw, why don’t you see if you can make her go back to junior college and take some government classes.
EriktheRed
They’re watching their golden girl swirling the bowl and having a hissy fit about it. The party of personal responsibility can’t take reponsibility for backing a major lemon of a candidate.
section9
Aw, that’s what I like about John Cole, a man more Catholic than the Pope.
There’s nothing that’s more standoffish to me than a convert, a former Republican who is now so Democratic that his loathing for all things Republican, be it Palin or the moldering corpse of William F. Buckley, is hard to watch, let alone read.
Sorry, fella. Bash your former party all you want, but you guys have all the power now. It’s your ball, and your responsibility. Eventually, bashing Republicans will make about as much sense to the electorate as, well, selling indulgences.
My point? Nobody in the swing vote community, which means most of the country, cares what you say about Palin! They only care what Obama can produce. Obama knows this better than you, which is why he isn’t wasting his time beating up on Palin. BTW, that’s why he’s President and you’re banging a keyboard pretending to matter.
You can write the a Talmudic Discourse on why Palin shouldn’t hold higher office, and it won’t matter if Obama doesn’t produce. Period. If he does produce, Republicans could run Jesus Christ the Righteous in 2012 and we’d still lose.
How the hell do you think Richard Nixon won reelection in 1972? Because he produced! That’s the way politics works in this country. Now cut the crap and write something about the playoffs.
Reality-based
Shorter Robert Stacey McCain:
"Waah! Just because GW Bush was stupid, and he was a disaster as a president, those mean intellectuals – both GOP and Democrat – won’t give ANOTHER stupid person a chance to be president, too! "
Oh, and Trolls? We’ve had 8 years of Ignorant GOP governance. Look at the state of country. What ever makes you think the country wants another round of Stupid?
Oh I forgot – everything bad that happened between 1992 and 2006 is Bill Clinton’s fault. Everything bad that happened after 2006 is Obama’s fault. But NOTHING is ever Bush’s fault – or the fault of the people who voted for him.
Ok, NOW I get why the trolls love the Palin looney so much – she has taken the evasion of personal responsibility, and the cult of victimhood, to new heights – just like them.
MARTinNORFOLK
STOP ALL THE COMPLAINING ABOUT SARAH! Just Give Her More Rope! She will hang herself and take that good-for- nothing-excuse for a criminal organization (a.k.a. the Repug Party) and she will hang it with her.
G.O.P……. Generally Only white People (the w. is silent)
me
"From a proud conservative intellectual (M.D., Ph.D, Ivy leaguer) who can compete with you liberal losers with a quarter of my brain"
The hind-quarter, presumably.
nicethugbert
But, Mr. Cole, your argument is nothing more than reality based and misses the point entirely. The point is the B.S. didn’t work this time. Yes yes, Palin’s a somewhat flawed person, but, aren’t we all? That’s what campaign speech is there to augment into the background. But, why didn’t her flaws stay in the background where they belong? It’s because of people like Katie, Peggy, Chris, and Davey! They didn’t say their words! Shawn said his words. The rest did not! EBIL MEDIA!!!!!!!
Incidentally, city debt and scandal is too small time for Ole’Ronny. He crapped bigger ones than that.
Dolmance
She’ll shoulder blame when blood squeezes out of a turnip. But in fact, none of it’s Palin’s fault. She is what she is; a mean spirited, brainless creature with a little larceny in the mix. The people whose fault this is are the ones who decided she’d be an acceptable President – the same crowd who gave us George Bush.
Thanks to Republican folly, and an apathetic electorate who let a bunch of hillbillies with one tooth and one brain cell between them call the shots for the last forty plus years – the American people may not see ourselves out of this mess they’re in during our lifetime.
Don’t expect any sympathy from the rest of the world. You’ve earnes this, in spades.
Tattoosydney
@Iowa Housewife:
I love this thread. I have missed all our troll friends (both spoof and otherwise – if there are, in fact, any non-spoof). It’s like going to the zoo and watching the monkeys fling poo at the crowd.
When Borgreefer appeared yesterday, I thought it was a one off… but apparently a link from Stacy is enough to get us a new set of trolls.
Tattoosydney
@section9:
Your main point makes perfect sense to me:
True.
Doesn’t your legitimate argument that no-one cares about Palin just mean that Palin’s ongoing whining is even more pathetic?
demimondian
@Tattoosydney: Not exactly.
Palin is trying to build up a solid victim portfolio in order to be able to use it in 2011 and 2012 to -Rapture the crapublican- capture the Republican nomination. She’s planning to defend herself against the ebil men who run against her with a combination of winks and accusations of sexism, classism, and know-nothingism.
Her whining is an essential part of that plan.
Tattoosydney
@demimondian:
Oh, I know why she’s doing it – at this point she’s saying and doing anything she can to keep herself in the public eye, no matter how pathetic (cf. Joe the Plumber) – if she can leverage "poor put-upon Sarah" into political capital, that’s a bonus.
I just thought it was interesting to have a Republican (or a spoof of one) effectively make the argument that Palin should shut the hell up because no-one cares.
alanmarv
She isn’t going to admit she did anything wrong. This is the same person who when asked if she hesitated at all when she was asked to be John McCain’s heartbeat away from the Presidency, said "nope". You betcha I am ready to be President! She didn’t even know how to be humble.
The Republican Right is so desperate that they have to support someone as inane as Palin. Here’s the deal. She gets announced and the "media" has the audacity to question her (Dare we call this the "Audacity of Dope"?). She never ran for a federal office. She didn’t run in the primary. NO ONE KNEW WHO SHE WAS. The most votes she ever got in an election was about 125,000 when she ran for Governor of Alaska. More people voted for the head of my Condo Association than voted for her. And, she didn’t think she was going to be scruitized from head to toe? Now that’s stupid. Was the "media" being sexist, no. Women were embarrassed that she was now their "leader". That’s why Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker went nuts on her. Palin was the best the Republicans had?
I am hoping, praying, the Republicans embrace her. I am hoping, praying, she becomes the face of the Republican party because she has become a laughingstock like Dan "Potatoe" Quayle. She really thought that "seeing" Russia was a foreign policy credential. She really did. No one told her to say that. And the dumbest things she said were in these Gibson, Hannity and Curic interviews that were a slow pitch softball game in slo-motion. The funniest thing about the story regarding if she knew Africa was a continent, isn’t whether it was true or not, it was that most people believe she was so stupid it COULD be true.
Sarah in 2012!
Gus
Wow, the trolling here is Gary Ruppert bad.
Dave_No_Longer_Laughing
there were plenty of republicans who didn’t like the anti-intellectualism that Sarah Palin brought with her. I’m one of them and didn’t vote for McCain-Palin.
The intellectual republicans (O’Rourke, Sowell, et al.) aren’t going to run for office and my hero, Alan Keyes, isn’t a republican any more. They aren’t going to run for office, I suspect (one reason), is that they’re too unlikable to win an election at the local level. Though Rice is probably likable, she’s probably not in the mood to talk to anyone.
The loss to Obama in 2008 was, IMO, due to several factors, one: the economy; two: playing up the lowest-common-denominator American as the everyman; three: the inability to communicate plans for the future that remotely looked like they cared about doing anything for the country. In summary: change was due, the republicans fucked up on too many levels, ran a shitty campaign and were soundly beaten by a better force.
labradog
Not only is the GOP hierarchy clueless about how to proceed, their base is too, as evidenced by the invective against "latte sipping, urban, liberals, etc.".
As a rural, woodstove-heating, volunteer fireman, who drinks my Eight-O-Clock coffee by the potful, and spends my day in work jeans, sweatshirt, and work sneakers, with a lifetime of motorcycling and four wheel truck driving behind me, I heartily encourage all Republicans to keep chasing the boogeymen and snipes that haunt them.
I’m glad to have worked for victory for both Barack Obama and my new congressman, Frank Kratovil (a red to blue pick up!).
The only common philosophy among 21st century GOP is bad character and worship of money. They ought to be run out of politics – those that aren’t deserving of actual trial and incarceration.
Bubblegum Tate
@Gus:
The fact is, the heartland…something….
ekim
@JL Where did all the trolls come from?
From under the bridge to nowhere, silly.
Topher: in LA not L.A.
One thing about the people who post here is that not one of you have ever ran for public office and probably never will. There are a lot more people out there like Sarah Palin than you armchair quarterbacking latte sipping faux liberals… She may not be perfect but she is a real person and not a political creation, like Barack Hussein Obama!
You people have no clue; Barack Hussein Obama is going to be our next president in less than two weeks and not one person has vetted him; and you lot are still trashing Sarah Palin.
I wonder what you’ll be saying when Blago starts singing and his song has a chorus about Barky and his meteoric rise in politics… Say what you will, but Barack got elected to the Senate by knocking his opponents off the ballot to run unapposed and he also helped his good buddy Blago get elected… We know how crooked Blago is, what we don’t know yet is how crooked Obama is… But, one bad apple as they say… I’m waiting to see how wormy Obama is.
You are a sad group of sore winners… and the fact that you voted for Obama shows just how stupid you are!
Darcy
@Topher: in LA not L.A.: Blago? Are you serious? Blago is going to bring down Obama? The lego hair-model has the credibility of a week-old pastrami sandwich.
If this what you’re pinning your hopes on, please get a grip. I wouldn’t want you to hurt productive members of society.
psychobroad
You voted for Bush not once but TWICE??Seriously???
EriktheRed
Hey, guys….
How many of you have even tried a latte? I know I haven’t.
EriktheRed
Obama has had plenty of vetting in the press. OTOH, you might want to talk to the guys in McCain’s campaign who made the winning move of putting Gov. Mooseburgers on the ticket about "vetting".
Uh-oh, guys. This clever wingnut found out about the hologram device the Dems were using to project that Barack Obama image to the public since 2004!
AhabTRuler
@EriktheRed: Hey, I like lattes. But I don’t own an armchair and I’ve always been more of DB. Maybe I am a desk-chair Safety, but that sounds like a ‘doorknob’ situation.
Frank
Soberly and with as little venom as possible, I feel that the Republicans lost because of the overwhelming culture of their party; they govern from positions of arrogance, proud ignorance (some of them), greed, and corruption. They sold their souls to the still-more ignorant religious right, humming their collective mantra of corporate greed and self-righteousness. Now, my parents were staunch Republican. My father would insist that he was an independent because he had voted for John F. Kennedy, but otherwise, he was strictly a party voter. I’ve known, loved and respected many individuals who happened to vote Republican. To assume that one (any) party harbors all the good ideas, wisdom and compassion (or corruption, greed, and short-sightedness) is wrong. But there does seem to be an astounding number of name-calling, invective-spewing individuals in the Republican party. Are you Republicans truly — I mean really and truly — proud of Ann Coulter and company? Do you TRULY believe that you can judge someone by the fact that they enjoy lattes or drive a hybrid vehicle? Oh, how I hope that the image of the future posited by the old Star Trek series becomes true: that we may one day recognize what we have in common and form a true federation based on our collective strengths and commonalities. If you want to keep dividing, keep hording, keep destoying, you are contributing only to our collective collapse.
Comrade grumpy realist
Maybe the idea is that we’ll in the future elect Palin as president and Putin/Bin Laden/whatever evil exists will be rendered helpless with laughter.
If Palin is in fact the face of the "average" American, then god help us. A brainless stooge who thinks that winking at the audience is sufficient diplomacy, a hypocrite who proudly boasts of freedoms she is actively working to remove from the inhabitants of this country. And a total dimwit, ignorant of how government works. I’d call her Alaska’s Marie Antoinette, except that Marie Antoinette undoubtedly could read. I have my doubts about Palin, given her response about newspapers.
Sexist? No. It is those of you who would support Palin no matter what and refuse to hold her to the standards of a thinking, logical, rational human being, who are sexist. Do you honestly think that this woman, if elected to any position of power, would have ANY chance whatsoever dealing with a) the Russians b) the Chinese c) anyone else?
BlueTickDem
Well, remember, they compared Palin to a pit bull and said the only difference was the lipstick. When you remove the lipstick, what do you get? A dog, plain and simple. And now, like so many dog owners out there have surely done, the Republicans are trying to make excuses for or ignore the fact that their dog is unconsciously licking its ass right in the middle of the livingroom floor during the weekly bridge party.