Perusing Broder a few hours ago for something to be outraged about, I came across this:
Palin, the most colorful and charismatic figure to pop up in the GOP since Ronald Reagan…
I’m not mocking this statement; to the contrary, I think it may be true, with all due respect to Gary Sinise and Alfonzo Rachel. I see here that NRO had a piece last October titled “Palin, The Second Coming Of Reagan”. To me, of course, Palin is a person, a human being, a mom, a wife, a daughter, once a little girl. But I wonder…how dangerous would it be for the GOP to buy into the idea that Reagan=Palin? Mark Blumenthal has a pretty persuasive piece about how little wingnuts care for Lady Starburst, but the what-about-Reagan meme is pretty powerful (almost as powerful its photographic negative, what-about-when-Clinton-did-it). You know that I mean: “sure people think Palin’s an idiot but they thought Reagan was an idiot too and he’s the one who finally defeated Hitler and Stalin, so what about that that.”
Maybe I’m wrong about all of this, but I think that if Republicans make Palin their nominee in 2012, it might really end the party once and for all. And the idea of Palin as Reagan in a jogging suit might just be powerful enough to lead the GOP down that road.
Polish the Guillotines
I seriously don’t see that happening. I think we’re gonna see a Palin personality-cult third-party.
dbrown
I hated Ray-gun but until his second term when old-timers had fully set in, the man was not stupid. Otherwise, it was mostly white middle-class repug-a-thugs and blue dogs who were all sold down the river that proved who was really stupid.
BombIranForChrist
@Polish the Guillotines:
Absolutely right. Palin isn’t Reagan. She’s Perot, but with twice … nay … three times the crazy.
Joshua Norton
Please. She’s George Bush in a skirt. (I’m pretty sure there have been times that George Bush himself has been in a skirt, but that’s a discussion for another time).
Comrade Stuck
A wingnut without a supreme leader to follow is like days of neverending night.
Polish the Guillotines
@BombIranForChrist:
Upgraded to Crazy 2.0.
Cris
“Forget it, he’s rolling.”
Demo Woman
Romney will destroy Palin using her own words. Her rambling I’m not quitting speech gave enough ammunition for a dozen ads. That will split what’s left of the party in two.
inkadu
1. Reagan finished his term as Governor of California.
2. Reagan did not begin to show significantly diminished mental capacity until after his Presidency.
NR
I don’t understand why people think that a landslide loss in 2012 will kill off the Republican party. The Republicans suffered a landslide loss in 1964 and it didn’t kill them. Quite the contrary; that was what gave birth to the modern day GOP.
kay
I completely agree with everything in this post, and that’s why, as of today, I am pulling for Sarah Palin.
She’s the best choice for the GOP nomination.
I think it’s beautiful that their primary system may actually allow this to happen, and there won’t be a thing they can do about it.
blogenfreude
A female Alan Keyes.
used to be disgusted
Sorry. I love the idea, but there are limits even to Republican crazy. Palin is going to fade, and we’re going to have to face the sad fact that the GOP may never again quite equal the sheer entertainment value they generated in Fall 2008.
Comrade Stuck
Palin doesn’t care about public policy unless it furthers her own white hot ambition.. She has seen the beast of national spotlight and come away with only dollar signs in her eyes. The rest is just to hard when people ask serious questions that even her limitless capacity for bullshit won’t suffice for answers.
She will cash in, walk away, and call it even.
JK
Nixon and Kissinger discussing Reagan’s intelligence
President Nixon: What’s your evaluation or Reagan after meeting him several times now.
Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a—actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.
President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains?
Kissinger: Well, his brains are negligible. I—
President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.
Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no . . . he’s an actor. He—When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy . . .
President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn’t know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area. He’s got to know that on defense—doesn’t he know these battles we fight and fight and fight? Goddamn it, Henry, we’ve been at—
h/t http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/and-the-award-for-missing-the-point-goes-to/
Sarah Palin is about 70 IQ points short of the “limited mental capacity” which Nixon attributes to Reagan.
media browski
“if Republicans make Palin their nominee in 2012, it might really end the party once and for all.”
There’s no if to it. Benen is reporting her cred went up w/ the GOP base-75% would vote for her for potus after last week. She’s neck and necl w/ mittens in other polls, has name recognition, fundy cred, wingnut cred, and fundraising prowess. She’s going to dominate the gop primary, and then we see the last tragic act of the Party of Lincoln.
Not with a bang, but a Wassillan.
Llelldorin
Ending the party would be good. Then we could have a Baucus/Specter/Nelson conservative party and a Leahy/Frank/Franken liberal party, and a good, healthy, sane debate between the two. The Republicans can set up little booths on college campuses and howl forth the crazy without anyone getting killed by it.
Wonk Hussein
@Joshua Norton:
Be careful what you wish for!
KG
Reagan, from what I understand, was at least intellectually curious. Palin, on the other hand, might be the stupidest public figure I’ve seen in my life time, and I’ve seen Ashton Kutcher.
demkat620
She makes me queazy. I don’t think I want her anywhere near the GOP nomination.
This is the country that re-elected George Bush. I worry that things might not get better enough for people and then in 2012 she’s the only choice. And I really think if the GOP gets backs anywhere near power especially with her, it’ll make the Bush years look like a picnic.
steve s
I have to agree with this. In a two party system, the two parties are amazingly durable over the long term. How long have the current parties been around, how many storms has each weathered? If one party finds itself sufficiently unncompetitive, it alters its platform to attract a coalition of bigger interest groups. Sure, right now you have to be a white christian with a below-average IQ in order to like the GOP, but that group is getting sufficiently small that the GOP will have to rearrange things. I have little doubt they’ll begin doing so, after another round of losses or two.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I keep thinking this too, that American politics is extremely cyclic (or perhaps episodic is the better term) and the Red/Blue divide is so deeply etched into our national culture (see Albion’s Seed or Kevin Phillips’s Cousin’s War – I wrote a comment on ObWings earlier today on this same topic) that it is never going to go away, so I just don’t see how the GOP can stay down for very long.
On the other hand, the last time the GOP came back from the brink of extinction in the 1966 midterms, it was fueled by the politics of the Civil Rights movement and the Southern Strategy. The Democratic coalition which was so dominant in 1964 was profoundly unstable, something which LBJ recognized when he signed landmark Civil Rights legislation into law after that election and said by way of comment that as a consequence we (the Dems) were handing over the South to the GOP for a generation – a prediction which turned out to be absolutely correct.
So if the GOP is going to make a 1966-1972 style comeback today, what is the burning issue that is already tearing apart the poltical fabric of this country, that is comparable to Civil Rights back then? Teh Ghey Marriage doesn’t seem like a strong enough issue to carry that kind of freight. What else would do it? Wall St insider corruption scandals? Afghanistan turning into Obama’s Vietnam? What?
lawnorder
This would be good. All the mouth breathers move to PalinParty and we are back to 2 somewhat sane political parties.
But Ron Paul will eat her alive. He has brains, except when he forgets to use them!
Roger Moore
Hmm. Looks as though some party is making the classic C novice mistake of confusing
=and==. Of course they’re also saying “Reagan=Palin” rather than “Palin=Reagan”, but redefining Reagan has never been much of a problem for them.steve s
Honestly I have no idea. And I’ve tried to figure it out. I have no doubt that after another round of losses or two they’d radically reorient themselves. But I don’t know that I can predict how they’d do it.
inkadu
@demkat620: Yep. Imagining this demonizing martyr as the head of the GOP ticket just gives me the creeps. I see violence, disputed elections, and rebellion.
It sound silly now, but remember how hopped up people get around election time — remember how we felt just between Obama and Hillary. Now imagine that, but with greater policy differences, and with the 30% of America that own guns, watch Left Behind movies, and read the Turner Chronicles. It’ll be pre-Civil War Kansas all over again.
Or maybe I’m being paranoid. Palin should not be polling at 75% of the GOP. That she does just shows how close we are to batshit gestapo insanity breaking out. I think America will give the dems two terms to sort out the economy, but if it continues to get worse, we will have a lot of very desperate people susceptible to the emotional manipulation that Palin excels at. And if it’s not the economy, it could be another terrorist attack, or the successful demonization (that’s a word, Firefox, jesus) of an internal enemy… They’ve been working on their rhetoric for over 50 years now. They’re ready.
Firefox recommends demonetization instead of demonization. That might also do the trick.
Ella in NM
Reagan=Palin?
I may not have liked most of Reagan’s policies (one good one: when he actually raised the pay level for members of the military so they could get off food stamps), I may have thought he was less of an intellectual than would have benefited the office, and I think at some point he became mentally impaired by his age and dementia allowing others to create a shadow government during his term, BUT—
I never, ever, ever thought he was an IGNORANT, VACUOUS, POOR WHITE TRASH BORDERLINE SOCIO-PATHIC OPPORTUNIST.
HumboldtBlue
No way, Keyes may be a intolerant religiously-based bigot, but the man is no dumbass, willfully ignorant and proud of that ignorance in the way Palin is. Not only that, Keyes speaks in complete and understandable sentences, Palin, not so much.
steve s
Whatever reorientation the GOP does will come with a tradeoff. The only guess I can come up with about how they could reorient themselves is by switching from anti-immigrant to wildly pro-immigrant. If they did that, they’d keep the business interests, who like cheap labor, and they could appeal to hispanics, the largest growing demographic group, who are also aligned with their social conservative beliefs. Sure, white racists would be angry, but where are they gonna go? Over to the arugula-eating seekrit muslim communist darkie side? I don’t think so.
steve s
So Alan Keyes is better at grammar than several Balloon-Juicers?
:-0
Yellowdog
I do not hope for Palin to get the Rethug nomination in 2012. I have no faith in the capacity of the American electorate to look out for their own interests. She is good theater and that may make the difference if the economy is still limping along in 2012. If it came down to a Republican, I would prefer Romney.
inkadu
@steve s: How will the party rearrange itself? It’s already pushed out moderates, and economic conservatives are warily eying the lifeboats. If those folks jump ship, who is left to guide the party back towards sanity?
inkadu
@steve s: Immigration: You don’t understand how immigration works. If you want cheap labor, what you do is build a state apparatus that is rabidly anti-immigrant, destroy the immigrants ability to save money in banks, to travel, etc, while making sure the state does nothing to prosecute employers of illegal immigrants. If you are pro-cheap labor, you have to be anti-immigrant, and it’s a strategy that higher-level Republicans have exploited exquisitely.
If you give them Mejicans rights, suddenly you can’t feed them into your combine when they complain that you fed their brother into a combine.
Ed in NJ
Next time Palin runs for anything, and her Republican opponent(s) start questioning her fitness for office, or her experience, or her intelligence, etc, etc….what is the reaction going to be in the blogosphere/punditocracy?
If anyone thinks the Republican Party, in the form of any other competent politician, is just going to roll over and allow Palin to continue to fail upwards, they’re being very naive. Her final undoing will take place when she is forced to address the questions about her from within her own party.
That’s why the comparisons wingnuts and trolls try to make between Obama and Palin make no sense. She was plucked from obscurity and never actually had to run on her own record or experience on a national level. Obama beat back all the relentless attacks on his character and experience, while she withered and eventually quit.
jake 4 that 1
Dear God, if Nancy hears about this crap one nice little old lady is going to go complete Ninja on some fReichtard asses.
JK
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
See Arthur Schlesinger’s book Cycles of American History.
Palin is a malignant cancer in the country’s body politic. I don’t think she’s a cancer in the sense that she could win the Republican nomination, but her demagogic rhetoric seriously degrades the quality of political discourse.
Keith G
I so want SP to run. Michael Dale Huckabee is as vicious a campaigner as exists. He will go after Palin in ways liberals have not dreamed of.
Oh god, it will be brilliant.
Napoleon
@NR:
I think they are completely different situations. In retrospect it is pretty obvious demographic trends (as well as the natural political cycle) was running in favor of the Republicans. On top of it there was a section of the Democratic party, the Southern conservatives, that were completely out of place in the party (in fact the 64 election made that clear) and it wasn’t a question of if but when they bolted the party (the last spasm of the move happened in 94).
The entire situation today is opposite. Demographic trends favor the Dems, it is the north and midwest moderate Reps that are realigning with the Dems (a Palin run will accelerate and cement that trend). Plus the cycle is running in the Dems favor.
If Palin is their candidate in 12 it will be an unmitigated disaster that it will take the Rep. 20 to 40 years to get past.
edit – PS, nominating Palin in 12 will have the electoral effect that would have occurred if the Dems ran someone like MLK in 68 – Dems would have lost the south immediately and a large chunk of the white vote until today. Carter and Clinton would not have happened.
binzinerator
@Polish the Guillotines:
I think she’s going to become a Limbaugh-type figure — the unelected de facto leader of the GOP. Except she’s going to be even more influential because she is an even more virulently effective demagogue than Rush.
Palin somehow combines all the incurious belligerent ignorance of Bush and all the aggressive meanness of Rove and all the vindictive malevolence of Cheney. And she brings out similar uglieness in her followers, as shown by her campaign rallies.
She is the darling of the ignorant and mean, of white trash, of bigots and racists, of the resentful and the perpetual victim, but especially of the intolerant evangelical social conservatives.
What she will seek to do is (re)start a cultural civil war. I believe her rallies are but a hint of what is to come. Boss Limbaugh has his dittoheads; Palinism will have its brownshirts and its lone wolves.
The crazy right has found its messiah, the one who has already taken them mainstream and given them a place on the national political stage, the one who will lead them to reclaim their birthright, which was wrongfully taken from them by liberals, non-whites, non-christians, feminists, gays, environmentalists, hollywood, the educated, the elites, and the city people. You know. People who they have identified as Not Real Americans.
As for being done for good in politics — never underestimate the delusional stupidity, endless resentment and bigotry of modern Conservatives. I think she’s unlikely to ever hold office but that won’t mean she won’t try.
I hope I am wrong as hell.
steve s
article is here.
Comrade Dread
You don’t spend a lot of time on Republican blogs do you? :)
The fandom for Sarah Palin is devoted, devoid of critical thought, and downright scary.
They are convinced that resigning was the bestest thing evar! And that Sarah will mop the floor with the other GOP contenders and piss off the libs when she takes the WH from that IslamofascistCommieKenyan Barack HUSSEIN “No birth certificate” Obama.
It’s like reading the lunatic cave scratchings from the most demented mind residing in the deepest jungles of insanity in Wonderland.
JD Rhoades
Wingnut PUMA?
Napoleon
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I absolutely disagree with that. The Dems basically wondered in the wilderness for something like 40 years until FDR, with occasionally taking the WH, and between 32 and 94 it was almost a solid stretch of Dem dominance.
The Republicans (or an instantly arising replacement) are going to be there, but history says the party out of power in the US can be like that for a really long time.
calipygian
She’s better than Reagan! She’s a Reagan you can jerk off to without the icky feeling of gayness!
sharksbreath
The Republican Party: The Lost Tribe Of Ignorance and Hate…
Funkhauser
DOUGJ:
Your link for Mark Blumenthal goes to a piece by Charles Franklin.
Batocchio
Made me laugh – as did “Lady Starburst.”
ksmiami
Then to my fellow BJers, be vigilant and make sure that the Palin brownshirts don’t win and one more thing I’d rather be an Obama socialist than a FUCKING REICHTARD FASCIST any day of the week.
Jason
Actually, less like Ronald Reagan or Alan Keyes, more like Tawana Brawley. When Young Republicans feature her in a rap video, the similarity will be complete.
Comrade Kevin
@JD Rhoades:
That’s redundant.
Polish the Guillotines
@binzinerator: (#39) I can’t possibly add to this. Spot on. “A Face In the Crowd” kind of stuff.
Svensker
@Ella in NM:
You have hit the nail on the head.
Svensker
@steve s:
steve s — saying “word” or “this” is not bad grammar. It may be bad English, although I’d dispute that, but there is nothing wrong with the grammar. It is simply a modern form of “amen”, which is perfectly good English, as well as being grammatically correct.
Space Captain
“Maybe I’m wrong about all of this, but I think that if Republicans make Palin their nominee in 2012, it might really end the party once and for all.”
It really doesn’t matter if the GOP withers and dies or not. The GOP constituency is the religious right, the upper class, rich people, people sitting on top of the pile, etc, and it will always be there and voting against the general good of the middle class because it threatens their little kingdom. Look
at the history of all the European countries all the way back to Rome. It’s always been a struggle of the underclasses against the rich and powerful.
But it sure would be satisfying to watch the GOP go under and it would throw that group into disarray for awhile.
Karen S.
What Comrade Dread said at #41 above… Her followers are rabid, which is something I don’t understand. I have never been that excited or rabid about a politician. I mostly like Obama and I thought he was masterful during his campaign. He didn’t quit because some people, like Palin, were mean to him. Heck, even Dubya didn’t quit because there were some meanies in the so-called liberal media who said mean things about him. HRC didn’t collapse like a house of cards because she had some darts thrown her way during the 2008 campaign and ever since her husband served two terms as president. Over and out…
Tax Analyst
Unless I’m misunderstanding the “…and between 32 and 94 it was almost a solid stretch of Dem dominance” line this doesn’t track mathematically. Republicans held the WH from 1953-60 (8 yrs), 1969-76 (8 more), and 1981-92 (12 years), or a total of 32 years. If you count from 1933 (FDR’s 1st term starting point) to 1992 (not 1994, the 1st Presidential election of the 90’s was in November 1992) you will find a total of 60 years, with Dems in the WH from 1933-1952 (20 years), 1961-1968 ( 8 years), and 1977-1980 ( 4 years), or a total of 32 years. You can add the years after 1992 and each party had 8 years of WH control up to Obama’s election. I hardly think a 50-50 split constitutes a dominant position.
I would LIKE to think we could be at the beginning of a dominant trend for the Democrats, but after Obama’s presidency (hopefully 2 terms) I tend to think events we cannot anticipate will tip the balance one way of the other. The best case I can divine would be a return to responsible and rational thought in the Republican camp. A reformulated Republican Party sans the wingnuttia-ramic factors could either prevent the Democrats from tracking towards their worst tendencies and provide thoughtful and alternatives to such excesses. However, I must qualify my “best case” scenario by mentioning that it seems almost totally unlikely to occur, given the current trend towards lower-primate-like public discourse that we see today.
OK, I guess we’re kinda screwed if Obama’s pony farm turns out duds instead of studs.
It’s really hard for me to see how we might come up with a more intelligent and capable president than Obama out of today’s Political Rookie Card Sets. There will always be plenty of stale bubble-gum in them, but beyond that we will probably be looking at a sorry gaggle of flawed hit-or-miss types.
mclaren
The parallells are precise. Ronald Reagan was an ignorant incompetent senile sociopath who proclaimed “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with” about antiwar protesters 4 months before the Kent State massacre. Sarah Palin is an ignorant incompetent dimwitted sociopath.
But why does anyone expect Palin to lose in 2012?
The way the economy is going, unemployment will hit 10% by the end of this year and should punch through 12% nationally by 2012. California will collapse, dragging down the entire U.S. economy, in the second half of 2009. Meanwhile, the second round of home foreclosures from ARM resets has just gotten started.
By 2012 we’ll be lucky if the unemployment rate hasn’t hit 14% and GDP hasn’t slid by 25%. In that environment the voters would elect Hannibal Lecter. People, it’s only been 6 months since the global financial collapse got started. Americans didn’t get really desperate until 3 years into the Great Depression. That’s when Hoover called out the army to assault the bonus marchers in Washington D.C.
Once states have slashed their welfare programs and cut off unemployment payments and tent cities of homeless family begin their food riots and the army gets called out to shoot unemployed women and children and the cities start to burn three years from now, Americans will learn a whole new definition of the words “hunger” and “desperation.” These are the conditions that brought the Bolsheviks to power in Moscow in 1917 and the National Socialist Workers Party to power in Berlin in 1935. What makes anyone think it won’t happen here?
Footnotes
Question:
I keep hearing that 75% of Republicans would vote for Palin in 2012. Does anyone know if that is (i) a scientific poll of registered Republicans, or (ii) a poll of people who are currently identifying themselves as Republican (i/e the wingnuts)?
Seems to me to be an important distinction.