It’s not every day that I say this, but I think Matt Taibbi and Nate Silver are both fundamentally wrong about Sarah Palin. Lady Starburst will not be the Republican nominee and she is not a “supremely gifted politician”, because she is not a politician at all anymore. She’s a huckster. She’s not about changing Washington or the Republican party or any grand cause other than herself. Her book and the way it is being promoted are perfectly calculated to sell books and not all calculated to get herself elected president. Flamboyant bridge burning, a book tour that pisses off fans while generating lots of media attention, a bizarre war of words with a trou-dropping teen-ager — these are all things that sell books and lose votes.
I don’t think this is so uncommon. Maybe Sarah Palin is the first figure who has completely blurred the line between reality tv contestant and presidential hopeful, but I don’t think Newt Gingrich is so different. He’ll never make a serious run for president, but showing up on MTP every week helps keep him and his nonprofit in the pink. And it’s not just politicians — most of the regular “journalists” on the gabfests make a lot of money via speaking engagements.
It’s easy to miss this, of course, because it’s so rarely discussed. Howard Fineman and Cokie Roberts would never describe George MItchell and Tom Daschle and Billy Tauzin and Fred Thompson as the whores that they are, because what Cokie and Howard are doing isn’t so different. It’s all a big, lucrative circle jerk and no one involved wants it to stop.
Linkmeister
Why have you included George Mitchell in your list? The others, sure, but Mitchell, as far as I know, has stuck to public service. He’s currently attempting that god-awful job known as Middle East negotiator, which is damn-near guaranteed to bring no joy or money with it.
DougJ
The others, sure, but Mitchell, as far as I know, has stuck to public service.
Tobacco.
Snail Darter
Famous is often a feast of bones. And sometimes, a little fish can make a big splash. Trust me, I know these things.
DougJ
And I think George Mitchell does some great work! But he’s also a whore.
Just Some Fuckhead
That’s a pretty safe prediction given the mechanics of choosing the Republican nominee. Romney is pretty much a lock as the runner-up last time and if somehow Guiliani or Huckabee or another candidate takes off, they will no doubt be a white dude.
jeffreyw
Didja see Alterman’s take down of Howie the Whore?
Demo Woman
No one is like Sarah Palin. Maybe I had a few to many beers while watching the football games, but I have no clue what Sarah is saying. I copied this from Dowd’s oped piece in todays NYTimes.
Maybe it’s me but wtf is she saying?
JenJen
FWIW, I don’t think Taibbi is arguing that Palin is a contender. I think he’s just saying the Palin phenom is what it is, and he’s saying it well.
The Grand Panjandrum
The former half-term governor is getting pwned by a 19 year old kid who got her daughter knocked up. I don’t think she has much of a chance either and for many of the reasons you express. It isn’t that she’s not ready for primetime, as it were, it’s that she will NEVER be ready. Self-discipline is not a quality that exists in the woman.
DougJ
FWIW, I don’t think Taibbi is arguing that Palin is a contender. I think he’s just saying the Palin phenom is what it is, and he’s saying it well.
Yeah, perhaps, but he calls her a “supremely gifted politician”. I agree with a lot of what he says.
Morbo
Very nice.
cleek
and we’re the ultimate source of the lucre.
Hunter Gathers
And a black man will never live in the White House.
DFS.
I think he’s kinda using the word “politician” there for lack of a better word to describe exactly what she is. As you point out, there aren’t many other major examples of the phenomenon, although I think you’re right on with the Newt comparison. Newt’s just about as full of shit as she is – just as allergic to the truth, if you actually pay attention to what he says from day to day. He just hides it a little better, on account of he can actually string a coherent sentence together from time to time.
Kyle
she is not a “supremely gifted politician”, because she is not a politician at all anymore. She’s a huckster.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
valdivia
She has been enabled into being a ‘supremely gifted politician’. A supremely gifted politician does not quit in the middle of her term as governor. She may have stage presence but that is not the same gift as a politician!
bleh
I agree. <50% chance she’s even in the picture in 12. She’s cashing in now ‘cuz she knows her time is likely limited. She is a symbol for rage, but she can’t be its vessel — she’s too insubstantial.
JenJen
@DougJ: I don’t think she’s a contender. I don’t think Taibbi’s arguing that she is, but in fact, I think Nate Silver is straight-up wrong on this one.
She has no interest in running for office; she’s running for talk-show-host. In a good and fair and righteous world, our awesome liberal media would recognize the play she’s making, but since they don’t know how (and in this case, yes, you too Nate Silver), they have to assume she’s running for office. Otherwise, why are we covering her, right?
As if they ask themselves that question.
thomas Levenson
There is a theme running through Palin’s career: follow the money. There was the suspiciously cheap house on the lake in Wasilla; there was the potential from a pipeline deal steered to budies; there was the pleasure of living rich on the RNC’s dime as the 150K wardrobe woman (and I don’t believe for a moment in her aw shucks denials post hoc), and now quitting the governship to cash in.
DougJ has it nailed: she’s in it for the money and the starbursts she gets from being in the spotlight. She doesn’t like governing or campaigning. She doesn’t do it well. She hates to do homework. There’s nothing about being governor or what have you that is nearly as much fun as getting, spending and screeching.
She’ll tease, but I don’t think she’ll run, much less win. The pay to play Iowa speech invite was a tell.
Just Some Fuckhead
@DFS.:
She is the second coming of Oliver North.
jeffreyw
She’s the shark that jumped under the bus as it was going over a cliff and we won’t have Sarah to kick around any more because she slapped her fans in their faces when they praised her good cloth coat.
Zach
When push comes to shove, the GOP is going to nominate an evangelist. Enough wealthy GOP supporters are sufficiently afraid of empowering the Christian right that this will never happen. After Giuliani showed he couldn’t run a campaign and people turned on Romney, a good number of people shit themselves at the thought of Huckabee getting the nomination. Palin’s about a dozen Huckabees of stupid.
flavortext
Maybe she doesn’t realize that. Didn’t she get to be Governor of Alaska by burning bridges with the local GOP and screwing over everyone who had helped her? And while we might look at her spat with her grandson’s dad and think “wtf” she can play it up as another instance of Real Americans™ being victimized by liberal Playgirl cover models. That was her whole shtick in 2008 wasn’t it?
Notorious P.A.T.
I agree. If Sarah Palin is a gifted politician, then what is Barack Obama? Who the hell knew who this guy was 6 years ago? And now he’s president of the United States.
mcc
While we’re on the subject, I was kinda underwhelmed by Levi Johnston’s playgirl pictorial. It was like a Calvin Klein ad :/
Jason Bylinowski
DougJ, I think you have frequent bouts of brilliance but in this I think you are suffering from wishful thinking. Ma’am Palin not only is still a politician, she is totally gunning for this next election. I don’t have a crystal ball either but I think her body language is not saying “aspiring talk radio show host” to me. She is currently living out her podunk backwater fantasy of what it means to be “runnin fer preznit”. I don’t know how you can view her in an interview and NOT see how completely she aches for validation through political power. Will she win it? I’d doubt that very much, but I can guarantee you she is going to take it as far as she can until someone with sense (and leverage) in the GOP manages to take her off the shortlist.
Martin
@Hunter Gathers:
No, this is a different kind of prediction. Palin won’t be the nominee because she’s unwilling to work hard enough for it. This is mental hard work – she doesn’t do mental hard work. There’s no way she’ll be able to do a dozen primary debate preps + being the lead on the campaign stops, and being in the spotlight 24/7. She’s able to pick and choose her media exposure and she still bitches about it. If the press don’t like their access to her, they’ll help kill her off for a candidate that gives them acces. Their livelihood is too dependent on it.
Citizen_X
I’m going to have to disagree with some people here. I don’t think there’s any fifteen-minutes-of-fame aspect to Palinomania, unfortunately. 2012 or no, she’s not going away anytime soon. As Taibbi points out,
Anyone see that dynamic changing in the next few years?
soonergrunt
@Kyle: especially amongst republicans.
@JenJen:
You nailed it. Oprah Winfrey has too much self-respect to have that faker on for any old reason. I’ll bet Palin’s camp is in negotiations with Winfrey’s soon-to-be cable channel. They’re going to need shows. I wonder what her show will be called.
Zach
To be fair, John McCain hasn’t worked hard a day in his life since he’s been elected. He ran an extremely lazy campaign, worsted only by Rudy Giuliani’s field operation. Someone once introduced themselves to me as an important person in Giuliani’s field team and I just broke out laughing. The difference with McCain is that everyone was so afraid of Huckabee that money & organization flowed his way without any effort. Palin isn’t the default go-to person in the way McCain is, and can’t succeed in spite of laziness.
debit
@flavortext: I don’t think she realizes it. I think the people advising her are probably the same people who can’t seem to keep her from canceling her speaking engagements at the last minute. I think in her rush to punish those who offended her she never paused to think that she might be poisoning her well of future campaign staffers. I think that because she’s never suffered any repercussions in the past for this sort of behavior, she sees no reason to be mindful of the future. And as long as no one calls her on it, she needn’t be.
eemom
OMG. I am SO tired of the endless debate over this worthless woman.
She’s a fucking black hole of wasted energy.
steve
You’re absolutely right. I’m amazed that pundits and bloggers are continuing to treat her as a sure bet for the 2012 nomination. OF COURSE she doesn’t want to be President; she is far too lazy, too greedy, and too thin-skinned for that job. She bailed on the governorship of Alaska because it was too much work; how on earth could she get through a single day as President?
Palin wants to be exactly what she is now: a political celebrity who makes gobs of money giving speeches and publishing ghostwritten books. She has no interest in the messy business of actual governing. But the moment she actually says “I am not running in 2012,” she becomes less interesting and therefore less marketable. So don’t expect her to rule it out, ever.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom: You wanna go back to the nonstop Limbaugh threads?
Napoleon
@Citizen_X:
Only if there is a stunning series of media bankruptcies leaving things like Pro Publica as the major source of news.
ds
In 1977 Reagan was viewed as a joke, as unlikely a president as Palin seems now.
In 2000 Bush was just as unqualified as Palin is now, possibly even more so, because the Texas governorship is a very weak post.
I think Palin is talented enough as a politician to win the Republican primary. And once you have the nomination of a major party, depending on the circumstances of the election year, you have a very good shot at winning the general.
Don’t think she’ll lose just because she’s a batshit crazy lightweight. We saw them win in 1980 and 2000.
Ian
I believe that the first four states that will vote in Republican primaries/caucus are Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, and Michigan. Iowa is full of the crazy christian type (Huckabee) South Carolina has old military veterans and the christians (between Huckabee and whoever claims the foreign policy/military void). Nevada has mostly Mormons in the likely voter pool (Romney). Michigan will be for either Romney or whoever is the moderate.
Sarah Palin will go down like Rudi did when he ran for president. She might have a large following nationwide, but by the time the contest gets serious she will have no momentum, money, or delegates. She won’t win, because she is not a talented politician or organizer.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The problem I have with Palinanalysis is the person doing the analysis assumes that Palin will behave in a way we recognize as logical. This is a huge mistake and an odd one from anyone who has watched her for more than five seconds. So take this for example:
Yeah, sure. Makes perfect sense. But we’re not talking about someone who makes a lot of sense. Ever. For all we know, Mrs. Baked Alaska thinks that when her book sales hit a certain number, a legion of seraphim will lift her up and sweep her into the White House.
“That’s ridiculous.” you say.
“So is she,” say I.
ds
Uh, Bush spent most of his time as president on vacation at the Crawford ranch.
Reagan wasn’t even lucid for half of his presidency.
Martin
In a sense, a real disservice has been done to Palin, which I expect has tried to be corrected by many people around her, but to which she is probably totally unwilling to listen:
It’s a fuckton of hard work to get a nomination – you need to get a LOT of people on your side – from the media, to the party central, to the base, etc. McCain did all that work and Palin just walked in. She never did the hard work to even get the nomination – she didn’t run a lose in the primary, she didn’t spend even a single year in DC, and she was a short-term governor of an easy state to win. It wasn’t like picking a 2nd term governor of FL or CA.
A lot of the same criticism was directed at Obama, but he actually did all the hard work to get where he was. He won the senate seat in a difficult state, and he won over both the base and half the party central (Dean’s DNC). He ended up killing the other party central along the way, the DLC.
So, from Palin’s perspective, this isn’t a lot of work – at least not for her. She thinks money will just show up, the staff will do the real heavy lifting, and she’ll do her pageant walk and canned speech and accuse her opponents of palling around with terrorists and then she’ll be president. Now, Bush followed a model not too far from that (anyone remember the world leader interview?), but he had really good staff because they knew Bush had the connections needed to bring in money and that Bush was diligent enough to stay on message and study up enough to pull everything off. You think any of the GOP campaign gurus are willing to hitch their wagon to Palin? She doesn’t realize what she doesn’t have, and if she does manage to pull a decent team together, it’ll look like the Clinton campaign that, while well staffed outside of Penn, ended up being a team that couldn’t be managed, and Clinton wasn’t interested in managing them. Obama’s team wasn’t considered to be strong enough, but they were all pulling in the same direction, and the candidate was out there pulling harder than anyone. Palin will end up with the 2nd stringers and will be lazier than they are. If she makes it past Super Tuesday, it’ll be a fucking miracle.
Frank Wilhoit
There is a fundamental mistake being made here.
It is no longer useful to take a candidate-oriented view of politics. It is necessary instead to take a voter-oriented view.
In order to do this, it is necessary to look at the propaganda organs that purport to guide the voters, but can really only reflect them.
Majorities do not win elections. Cohesion and passion win elections.
Sarah Palin’s value as a mouthpiece is her willingness to pander. If it turns out to exceed anyone else’s, she will win. It is that simple, but it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin as an individual. She exists only as a symbol.
Brachiator
This is not necessarily a problem. But Nate Silver, in particular, shows that he is a good data analyst but a bad pundit.
None of Palin’s supposed plusses (enthusiasm, the flaws of other candidates, etc.) make her a credible national candidate.
She is still a very limited, intellectually lazy person.
And as for the idea that the media loves her. They are making money on the Palin Sparkle Express. But her appearances are still very contained, her speeches and writings ghostwritten marvels of rehashed neocon propaganda and folksy nonsense.
Can anyone seriously imagine her on Meet The Press or in a presidential debate? No matter how much the media supposedly loves her, even her most loyal journalist fans will turn on her in a New York minute.
She has not shown any maturity, or that she has learned anything from her rise to national prominence. She blames every stumble on others. She is not nearly as statesmanlike as Nixon, but she has him beat with her Wasilla paranoia and the idea that her failures are the work of others.
But also like Nixon, it appears as though she is hoping for a revised version of Nixon’s Southern Strategy to work for her. This in fact might be her only hope, but even here she will find that other Republican candidates are equally able to wallow in the mud for the last GOP voter.
sloan
Funny pictures from the official “Going Rogue” Facebook page:
The book signing is located in the Religion section of the bookstore.
Specifically, under the Christian Fiction bookshelf. Check out the ultra-creepy Palin superfan/impersonator at the book signing. Yikes – and is her friend wearing a chastity belt? WTF? (And there’s a hidden treat for grammar Nazis in the caption.)
All of this via Rumproast and their crack team of investigative commenters.
Hunter Gathers
@Martin: ‘Hard Work’ has nothing to do with it. They want a symbol. A symbol to run against the godless, communist, marxist, half-breed muslin Obama. She’ll get the nod despite her cluelessness and laziness.
Martin
@ds:
But Bush worked reasonably hard during the campaign. He brought in money, he went to events, he even prepared well for debates. Once he got the job he slacked off, which isn’t uncommon with Republicans.
Reagan was the same way.
Again, when you think government is the problem, why work hard once you become the government? Wasn’t the whole point of getting into office to show that if the government slacks off, that the country not only won’t be worse off, but will actually get better? How do you prove that point while you are busting your ass?
Snail Darter
Yes
It is called “black” because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing,
@ds:
One word. YouTube
ADM
central to Mat T.’s point, etc etc:
I think Taibbi and you are making the same point, except to say that Matt’s going a bit further in saying that “WWE huckster” is the future of media-driven politics, thanks in no small part to Palin, white resentment, and The Media.
jwb
@DougJ: Except who can doubt that she’s a supremely talented politician given that she’s gotten herself where she is despite all her liabilities. It’s doubtful that she can go further, but really she’s managed far more than she ought to have given her very real limitations.
Violet
@JenJen:
No she’s not. If she were a talk show host, she’d have to show up and do actual work. Sarah Palin doesn’t do work, except in tiny photo-op bursts. The responsibility of actually running a show, having to show up on a daily basis and be nice to people she didn’t like? No way. It’ll never happen.
I think she’ll try running for President. She likes titles and President would be a cool title to go with Governor and Miss Wasilla or whatever her beauty queen title is.
Anya
@Demo Woman: Maureen Dowd makes me angry. I usually avoid her but this time, curiosity got the better of me. Boy did I regret it. She is such an ass, I cannot believe that woman dignifying Darth Vader’s attack on Obama.
Tsulagi
You sure? Don’t rain on the teabaggers’ starbursts.
Yeah that’s a disqualification. On Intrade, she, MC Romney, and Pawlenty have been engaged in a threeway for the 2012 R-nom with Bible Spice frequently on top.
r€nato
@Snail Darter:
very astute observation and very true.
Violet
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
She doesn’t have to behave logically. But she’ll probably behave in a predictable manner. Doesn’t have to make any sense to the rest of the world, but patterns can be discerned and it’s likely she will follow her own pattern. The key is figuring that out.
r€nato
@thomas Levenson:
she’s a beauty queen. That’s how she’s gotten through life, on her looks and a wink.
It’s not at all surprising that she’s running the same con that’s gotten her where she is now. And why not? It’s worked out pretty well so far for her.
r€nato
@Tsulagi:
Gee thanks a lot… there is NO amount of brain Clorox sufficient to wipe that from my neurons.
Violet
@r€nato:
Yes, but that only works for women for so long. Eventually looks fail and winking just comes across as desperate. She’s not too far from that point now. She’s aged visibly since a year ago. Her starbursts window is closing.
jl
@DFS.: I agree. Newt and Palin are not that different, except Gingrich can BS in a way that appears to make sense at first glance, and can hide his ignorance, delusion and incoherence better.
I think the question for Palin will be whether she can make more money more easily off of a Newt type fundraising scam, or as an ex-candidate for president.
Aunt Moe
@JenJen: Of course she’s running for a talk show. Where else does she belong but on a platform where she can say what she wants without any consequence or accountability.
r€nato
I have no worries whatsoever about Palin as a presidential candidate. I honestly do not know whether she truly intends to mount such a campaign or not. She might be content to just milk the rubes.
If, however, she does start a presidential campaign, be assured that she will sink it, no matter how many competent consultants are hired on.
(besides, anybody who is good at national campaigns, wouldn’t be able to work with her for very long)
This woman was, by all insider accounts, a trainwreck. That was just during the few weeks of campaigning for VP with McCain. Can you imagine how she would deal with a grueling 2-year-long campaign?
Martin
@Hunter Gathers:
No she won’t. Only the base want that person after all, and they’re what, 30% of the electorate, tops? Independents generally don’t want that person. Remember, Bush didn’t win running on the platform he executed. A major part of his platform was opposing Clinton’s international endeavors – Bush was supposed to be the anti-nation builder, keep our troops at home, etc. That’s what helped win over independents. During the campaign, Bush looked rather moderate in many ways. Palin never does, except when she’s off-message.
But winning the nomination requires getting several things all reasonably right. One is putting out an acceptable policy platform, one is fundraising and recruiting the grassroots, one is media interaction, and one is otherwise overall execution – getting the candidate where they need to be, getting the staff saying (or not saying) the right things, getting the visuals right, and so on.
Palin can probably get the policy part right, as sad as that is to say – at least right enough to win the nomination. But that’s the easiest piece. I don’t see how she can fundamentally change the nature of who she is to run solo with the media. Maybe she can if she really busts ass here, but she’ll need the best handlers on earth to do it. But let’s grant her the benefit of the doubt that she can pull it off. The rest all land on the staff. They’re the ones that say who, where, when, and how much, and they need to be right, working as a team, and you need to listen to them. This is their career and you winning is their meal ticket. Nobody serious in this game is going to back someone for ideological reasons. That’s why Clinton and Mark Penn were a team. Mark Penn is a Republican, but the Clintons were winners. He knew where his paycheck came from and he knew that if Clinton, the presumptive nominee, won, he probably had a large steady income for 8 years.
But what serious staff are going to sign onto the Palin nomination team? She’s all risk. You could do everything right and get killed by Tina Fucking Fey. She’ll have a shitty team, mark my words, and it’ll be a team of people that have never worked effectively as a team and she won’t be willing to pull them together because she’s gotten everywhere by swinging the stick – threatening to fire people isn’t motivating for anything other than getting them to leave.
Aunt Moe
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Palinanalysis – as good a fake new word as I’ve seen in some time. Kudos sir.
Demo Woman
The GOP contenders will be Pawlenty, Huckabee and Romney with Huckabee coming out on top. The squirrels are storing their acorns as we speak.
eemom
@Anya:
you need Somerby. He’s the only one who does her justice.
He hates them all, of course, but boy does he have MoDo’s number, in particular.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/index.shtml
Myself, I think she’s just gone insane from not having gotten laid since Michael Douglas dumped her — what, 20 years ago? That’s why she hates (1) all attractive powerful men who don’t want to fuck her (i.e, all of them), and (2) all women that men do want to — well, you get the idea.
Brachiator
@Aunt Moe:
Fox News.
r€nato
@Aunt Moe: I don’t think she wants a talk show. I think she thinks she’s a cut above Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity. She wants the stage all to herself.
valdivia
@Martin:
exactly. Palin thinks she can win on her own that running for president is like running for Wasilla Mayor. A national campaign is grueling and she does not seem to have the stamina, mental wherewithal to do this. Can you imagine what the next interview with Couric is going to look like? She will need to do one if she wants to run and she is too petty to contain her anger. At least as a candidate GWB knew how to keep his mouth shut, she does not.
Martin
@Violet:
You can already see the Barbara Bush setting in with Palin. It’ll be interesting watching her fight that battle over the next few years.
ds
He babbled and lied through the debates, Palin-style. And then when Gore sighed at that bullshit, they spun it against him.
Palin will do the same fucking thing. She’s a much better speaker than Bush. She’ll pull it off.
r€nato
@Martin:
I think we said more or less the same thing!
Any consultants who sign on to her campaign, are likely to be the kind of suck-ups who won’t be able to stand up to her and tell her what she needs to hear.
Anybody who has the stones to tell Sarah “no”, will get fired.
I really, really hope she does mount a 2012 campaign. It would be VERY amusing and chock-full of Palinfreude.
Chuck Butcher
I don’t see Palin as a Politician, I see her as a Celebrity who is in the political arena. This isn’t all that bad in the party she’s playing in, remember this is less than a third of the electorate, Primaries have the dedicated show up, over half the GOP voters are whacked out GWB deadenders. She doesn’t need to be coherent or at all sophisticated or knowledgable to appeal to enough. All she needs to do is what she already did, throw out the same catch phrases that appeal to enough.
Some of you assume there’s homework to do, see the Biden debate. No, the Presidency isn’t the place for that mindset, but getting the GOP nod isn’t in the least out of the question. It would seem some of you are mistaking the [R} with the {D}.
r€nato
@ds:
just my 2 cents, but I cringed when Gore did that sighing bullshit during the debates. If anything cemented the impression of Gore as a condescending egghead prick, it was that.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not intimidated by very intelligent and learned folks. But many Americans are still stuck in the high school mode of hating/envying the smart nerdy kids.
Kirk Spencer
Palin’s chance of winning the R nomination in 2012 (assuming she runs) depends in large part on how many moderate Republicans aka Rinos aka New Independents participate in the R primaries and caucuses.
It’s all turnout.
That said, I think it is too early to pick winners. Following the normal pattern for GOP nominations, the most likely candidate is not now in the running, though his granddaughter did allude to the possibility. I speak, of course, of Cheney. When favorability polls are run, Cheney scores the highest of the possible candidates among Republicans (both self-identified and “those who voted for McCain instead of Obama”.)
No, that is not sarcasm.
eemom
@Violet:
ThisthisthisthisTHIS.
You betcha that window’s closing. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion that even now, if she was publicly visible with the makeup off, even Rich Lowry would……er, wilt.
El Cid
I think she would maintain high exposure, high influence, and low accountability as a politico-evangelical figure, sort of the dumber, more loud and self-promotey version of the already not-subtle and not-smart “Moral Majority” movement of the 1980s.
And these commentators are complete fucking assholes and idiots for describing this vapid shitbag as some sort of supremely skilled politician.
Jason Bylinowski
I’m sorry, but all of you who are saying she’s just in it for the Bennies…..I don’t think you all have been paying attention to her and the tone of her Going Rogue press bonanza. Everything about the last three interviews was basically a rubicon she was crossing to give herself some cred. She was basically saying to Steve Schmidt, “see, told you I could work with the press.” You could practically feel her brain working through the TV, this whole thing has been serious busines to her, and I don’t think it’s because of the money.
@thomas Levenson: I think that bears thinking about. That paid speech deal was rather suspicious, but then again it’s common practice in their particular desmesne; Giuliani did it all the time himself and I think he was a serious contender for at least a brief period. Now, don’t you have McArdle takedown to write? Man, I love those.
r€nato
@Chuck Butcher:
Chuck, I hesitate to question your judgement seeing as you know a lot more about politics and campaigns than most of the rest of us, but I have a hard time seeing Palin emerging from the GOP primary process as the nominee.
It would, however, be a bloodbath. The GOP nominees will go after Palin and she has such a thin skin… I can see very easily how any GOP nominee who tangles with Palin – no matter who wins – comes out a lot worse for the wear and is set up for a historic defeat by Obama.
WereBear
I see Palin good for one thing: a contrast.
She could be a stalking horse. After some spectacular crash and burn, any fool would look better by comparison, and maybe that’s how Huck (the kindler, gentler whacko) will get the nom.
Because who is going to be voting in the Republican primaries? Who is wound up, who has the ground game, who has already been running the local offices lo these many years?
They have a pretty problem with a party so seriously split. Bush was their candidate from Heaven; a (supposed) evangelical who made the big money hearts go pitty-pat. I don’t see anyone in the lineup with that kind of twisted mojo… except maybe Huckabee. He can talk populism while backslapping the big money. That could work.
ds
Why is always that yesteryear’s Republican is always viewed as better than this year’s Republican.
Objectively, Palin is more qualified than Bush. The Alaska governorship is a more powerful post than the Texas governorship.
She’s smarter than Bush. She knows more about policy than he does.
She’s a much better speaker than Bush. Her performance in the VP debates was much better than Bush did any of his debates.
She’s more hard working than Bush. She didn’t have any family connections to make her governor.
She has a much more appealing background than Bush.
If Bush can win the presidency, so can Palin.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Brachiator
Hell, she could take Oprah’s spot. I hear there’s gonna be an opening in 2011. I could easily see the networks getting into a bidding war over her.
Violet
@eemom:
Agreed. The last year hasn’t been kind to Palin. I feel like a heel commenting on her looks like this. It’s no fun to be judged on one’s looks, that’s for sure. And I’m female too, so it feels extra judgmental. But it’s so obvious that a massive part of her appeal is her looks. If she were average looking, the starbursts crew wouldn’t be nearly as vocal. So I think it’s fair to note that one of her main points of appeal is starting to fade.
valdivia
@Jason Bylinowski:
she may have thought she was working with the press but she has had no serious interview with real political reporters. Walters does not count and the rest was Fox news. Again if she were serious she would have done Couric and Gibson and Williams She did not. she has not proven to anyone that she can play with the press except fox news. she cannot run nationally that way.
gwangung
No, she’s not. SHE QUIT.
ploeg
@ds:
Sarah Palin has a dad who was president and a political network to draw upon.
Oh, wait…
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Martin: Bingo!! How do you think McCain ever got as far as he did. Because the TradMed can’t get enough of licking his ass.
Shawn in ShowMe
ds
Call me when she puts together a group of competent strategists and not a collection of sycophants. You think Bush’s people would allow him to get owned by Levi?
ds
I agree. He shouldn’t have sighed. The appropriate response would have been to punch him in the face. I doubt the Villagers would have liked that.
Bush did nothing but sneer, lie with impunity, stutter, make contradictory statements, along with crazy insinuations and distortions about Gore. I remember watching the debate and being floored by his behavior.
Palin’s performance looked like the Harvard debate society in comparison.
I don’t just think she’s a better politician than Bush. She’s a much better, more decent person as well. Bush is vile. She’s just despicable.
I don’t see what liberals are thinking when they try to claim that Palin is somehow worse than Bush. It’s absolutely crazy. The idea of her as president is disturbing, but she would be much better for the country than he was.
Brachiator
@ds:
It was easy to spin. Gore looked like a doofus during that moment.
Dubya held his own during the debate. And people forget that Dubya had to deal with a smarter younger brother all his life. Dealing with Gore’s weak ass attempt at intellectual dismissal was a piece of cake.
I don’t think that her media shelf life is all that long. She will drift back into oblivion long before the presidential primaries, and all these speculations will end up with, “Sarah who?”
Napoleon
Hey everyone upthread, memo to you all, the Republican primaries are nearly all winner take all.
If the right candidate gets in and stay in Palin can garner significantly less the 50% of the vote in every single primary and still cruise to the nomination. Just go back and look at McCain’s results on a primary by primary basis.
Silver may be wrong about her getting in (I personally am on the fence) but he is otherwise spot on.
Chuck Butcher
@r€nato:
I’m a Democrat and I know about doing Democratic elections and that is some about elections, not expertise that would get me paid. But I think there’s a mistake being made here and that is approaching it as though the voters are the same and that the requirements matched.
The Democratic base may have plenty of loons, but they tend to be highly educated and informed. The same cannot be said of the GOP. I’ve watched their campaigns and they’d never win a Democratic Primary, not on a bet.
What she’d have to count on for hired help is speechwriters, and logistics. She’s built or is building the money machine. She doesn’t need to win over the “business” arm of the GOP or the political elites, they won’t go after her – they’re afraid of the same base that got appologies from elected GOPs. The ones who’d oppose her on political ground aren’t appealing to the base anyhow – see TeaParties.
Romney can shift right all he pleases, wrong religion, wrong background (how elite can you get?) He and Newt would split the left over vote. Her problem is Huckleberry and he’s not as attractive, doesn’t have the media, and his folksy won’t match her spiel. She doesn’t need to do the work other than the travel and speeches and media appearances – the theater, the part she loves.
You’ve seen her in a debate with a real pro, Biden. These others aren’t pros other than maybe Newt. There’s serious danger in trying to gut her and you saw Biden dodge that. If she sticks to her spiel she’s fine. The voters she needs aren’t there for politics, they’re there for theater.
I don’t call it a lock, or anything like that – there’s plenty of time for a meltdown or other Sarah type stuff. I’m saying it isn’t in the least discountable.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
Look, I may know more about the nuts and bolts of politics and from experience about campaigning as the doing of it, but an opinion is still that. It may be a bit more informed in some respects, but hey, I didn’t win – either.
Brachiator
@Shawn in ShowMe:
It’s a lot harder to mount a successful talk show than people realize. Oprah chewed up and spit out many competitors during her 25 years, and Palin doesn’t show the least sign of having the necessary talent to succeed as a talk show host.
I could more easily see the networks getting into a phony bidding war and then laughing at the sucker who was dumb enough to sign her.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Chuck Butcher
You’re assuming that the GOP leadership won’t simply anoint another pretty real ‘Murican girl as their VP candidate. One ten years younger and without a dysfunctional family.
IM
I think Taibbi is more or less right. Plain is quite talented in channeling resentment. As Nixon proved that can be a powerful political weapon. So she is a talented politician, if perhaps not supremely talented.
Nixon after all had more conventional political talents too. Outside of whipping up resentment Plain seems to lack the other ingredients of a politician.
So she is probably not the next Nixon. But there are other ways of political influence. Perhaps the next Wallace?
Shawn in ShowMe
Damn it. Disregard the blockquote.
HRA
@Demo Woman:
Please! I got an instant headache reading the words and all I had was grapefruit juice during the games. OTH did Mr. O’Reilly who as I remember loves to educate his masses with new words wince or at least look uncomfortable at this slaughter of English?
If they trot out those old and middle-aged white men in look alike suits for the debates again, Palin will have a very good chance of being nominated. Certainly, we all wish it would be brains rather than appeal for the masses. Unfortunately, past presidential election history tells us this is not true.
DougJ
@ds
She’s orders of magnitude dumber and crazier than Bush. Ain’t no ballpark neither.
J. Michael Neal
Deep Thought: Does Sarah Palin exist for any reason other than to convince us that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t be so bad as the first female president?
Chuck Butcher
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Disregarded.
VP is post-nomination, so not really an issue. Palin’s looks will last through Nov 2012 with make-up help. She has to make it to 2011 without something terminal. Who the hell knows with Sarah?
dm
In that sense the Villagers are not so different from the Wall Streeters and the accounting firms and the military contractors. America in the Second Gilded Age was a lazy, materialistic, elite-justifying, morally complacent country – as befits a declining empire. The crash has not yet come in some sectors, but I suspect it will.
Martin
@Chuck Butcher:
Yeah, I know the GOP is different, but look, in 2012 the GOP candidate will be running against Obama. The GOP can either throw Palin into that woodchipper or they can nominate someone that at least has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. The adults won’t let Palin get that far if they have any interest in winning, and they’ll know how to toss a toaster into that bathtub if need be.
ds
She can give a good speech. Bush can’t.
She can debate reasonably well. Bush can’t.
She actually influenced major political issues during her time as governor. Bush didn’t.
Palin is basically a so-con version of Christie Todd Whitman.
Bush is a spoiled frat boy with a mean streak and family political connections.
Skepticat
@ds: Bingo.
Chuck Butcher
I ran in a 4 way Primary and I split vote with another guy, either of us would have been better in the General, and the candidate who won took her segment. I liked her personally and pretty much politically, but she was the wrong candidate for the General.
If Sarah runs in a multi-player Primary, her segment will be enough, she could win with under 30% with a tough split in a 4 way. In a 3 way near 40% would do. If she won a few early ones that way, she’d have the perception of momentum and winningness.
Brachiator
@Violet:
I think the issue of her looks is a big, huge deal to a lot of men, whether they are liberal or conservative. And apparently, most of these guys are married to never-aging supermodels, which makes me tremendously jealous.
And her looks is a huge deal to the shallow morans who run the media, who believe that TV cameras are actually repelled by ordinary looking people, and that there is no woman on Earth whose appearance cannot be improved by a little photoshopping.
But Palin looks like a lot of women. And she will look like a lot of women as she gets older, even if she fades, wrinkles and bloats. And I doubt that this will diminish her appeal in the eyes of Palin true believers.
kommrade reproductive vigor
That’s as simple as the MooseQueen herself:
1. Leap up and down to get everyone’s attention.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Whether or not she runs (or announces she’ll run) for ’12 will depend solely on whether she’s receiving enough attention to keep her happy.
@r€nato: For you, my friend.
El Cid
Actually, George W. Bush Jr. could give pretty good speeches, and back before the right disavowed him and started pretending it never loved and worshiped him as Reagan II: The Reaganing, they thought so as well.
Further, they thought his lack of super-polished smoothness made him even more genuine and ‘folksy’.
Lex
@bleh: “She is a symbol for rage, but she can’t be its vessel—she’s too insubstantial.”
FTW.
Getting elected president actually takes a certain amount of work by the candidate, and she’s too lazy and self-absorbed to do it. Just for starters, can you picture her dialing for dollars for more than two hours?
Chuck Butcher
@Martin:
You never saw me make any case for Palin winning the POTUS, and I don’t know how many fucking adults you think there are in the GOP and how many votes they count for.
Damn, from the GOP voter’s perspective she’s passed the smell test as the VP candidate. Which of the others has that? She wins the nasty liberal media prize. She has not fucked up the talking points with subtlety. Her face is most frequently seen which is validation. She doesn’t have to make sense, just keep on keepin on.
Any GOP with any sense doesn’t want her, that sure doesn’t mean she wouldn’t win the Primaries. Let’s speak the words NY23.
WereBear
@El Cid: I love this:
and had to let you know.
Perhaps Palin is Reagan III: The Right Boob for the Job
El Cid
Sarah Palin is Reagan III: The Search for Schlock.
Silver Owl
Republicans are all about empty window dressing. All you have to do is scream God and Guns and the conservatives are hooked.
If conservatives do not have enough common sense to know a grifter like Palin they are screwed and will be screwed over and over and over until the day they die. They have earned it.
El Cid
The problem is, and probably will be for a long time, is that the 28% of neo-feudalist ultra-right crazies only need to drag another 25% of the population with them on some fad in order to capture power, and put in power another group of super-crazy nation destroyers once again, from which we may not emerge next time.
Alex S.
@ds:
I honestly think that Bush’s speech-giving skills are underrated. They worked to his advantage until Katrina. After Katrina, the difference between the tone of his speeches and the results of his policies was too great to bridge. But even when he announced the collapse of Lehman Brothers he managed to sound sincere and not like a jerk. His speechwriters were pretty good and he could deliver well.
As for debating, Palin lost her debate. I can’t remember if Bush got a better result.
By the way, even I could be a Governor of Alaska at the all-time high of oil prices.
gizmo
Think about this…
Nearly half of the American electorate voted in 2008 to put Sarah Palin in the White House.
Awesome country.
DougJ
I honestly think that Bush’s speech-giving skills are underrated.
I do too. I think Bush’s political skills are generally underrated.
Brachiator
@gizmo:
More than half of the American electorate saw through the McCain/Palin BS and voted for something much better.
Awesome country.
ploeg
@Chuck Butcher:
Palin’s candidate lost NY-23.
Furthermore, there’s lots of difference between NY-23 and the GOP primary/caucus system, and that’s not to Palin’s benefit. There’s hands to shake and palms to grease, and there’s no indication that Palin’s interested in any of that.
Martin
@Chuck Butcher:
Oh, I know you aren’t making a case for Palin. But the grown-ups in the GOP are the guys that make the money show up. She’s going to need north of $100M for the primaries and 5x that much more for the general. She’ll get a good bit out of the base for the primary, but she’s too polarizing a figure to carry herself without the big money boys. They want something in return. You think they’ll trust her to come through? To be able to get any legislation through? To provide coattails for anyone who won’t further help destroy the party?
No, I don’t think they’re going to to along with that. I think they realize that is Palin gets anywhere they’re fucked. If it looks like Palin has any momentum, they’ll book Levi on Oprah themselves.
catclub
The key difference between Bush and La Palin is that GW Bush is a hereditary member of the ruling class.
He had money locked up in 99.
ON the other hand the crazy 25% could be over 40% of the GOP, enough to win primaries that are winner take all.
I really cannot tell if the money crowd no longer controls the crazies of the GOP. We will simply have to wait to find out.
Final waffler: Palin’s supporters will walk over glass to vote against Obama, no matter who is the GOP candidate, so she is expendable, in that throwing her out by the money crowd
(a suitable scandal at at suitable time?) does not lose any significant number of GOP votes
Cain
@catclub:
That depends on who teh alternative is. I’ll vote for Palin in an open primary if the other one is huckabee. Especially if I know the team is incompetent.
cain
Brachiator
@Martin:
But of course, the money boys are behind Palin right now, even if it is only because she is a pretty placeholder who helps to focus the irrational teabagger wingnut opposition.
Bill Kristol and the neocons regularly sing her praises and shout down the reservations of people like George Will.
If the money boys didn’t find Palin useful, you would not see Rupert Murdoch, the Sith Lord of the Money Men, giving her space for opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal.
The GOP Wise Guys see a win-win with Palin. If she fades, she will at least have kept the politics of fear and resentment alive among many Republican voters. If she doesn’t fade and continues to be a national figure, she will keep alive the politics of fear and resentment, which the Republican Party feeds on and needs for its survival.
But ultimately, both Palin and the Republican Party are irrelevancies if the Democrats succeed in solving any of the nation’s big problems.
jcricket
If she runs, she’ll lose, and badly. Of that I have no doubt.
Does anyone remember the insta-polls after the debates? Has anyone checked the polls recently?
Yeah, yeah, things could change, she could learn, etc. But she’s been “at this” a while and her political instincts (if they exist) have gotten worse, not better (quitting her governorship?).
The crazies love her and are very excited – and so yell very loudly. But everyone else is intensly turned off by her, esp. the “so called moderate center”.
Unless Democrats are supremely stupid, and I don’t put that past them, Palin will go down in a wall of self-induced destruction, taking down-ticket Republicans along with her.
Phoebe
@Violet: It’s true. But she does have the kind of facial bones that work well with surgery, so she might get some work done and some extra time.
Is it fair that she has to do this to stay popular? Is it fair that when she does what she has to do, someone’s going to notice, and put up a lot of before and after pictures with a sh*tload of little arrows all over them, most likely on the National Enquirer front page?
Well, it’s exactly as fair as the fact that she’s this popular to begin with, when there are a lot of homely women out there, just as unqualified and mean-spirited as she is, who will never get her fame and riches and chance to destroy the country.
terry chay
I agree. They’re smoking something if they think she’ll even get the nomination.
When Huckabee was running strong, the powers that be in the Republican party united around John McCain. What’s to make this one different?
Furthermore, she just doesn’t have the endurance to run for a national office.
In any case, it’ll be fun to watch.
jcricket
Note that by lose I mean in the general, against a Democrat. She may very well win primaries due to crazies taking over the Republican party.
This result would either depress Republican turnout in the general (“moderate” and “independent” right-leaning but not crazy folks staying home) or shove people into the Democratic camp.
Given how bat-shit insane that wing of the party is (burning political figures in effigy, tea parties with Hitler imagery, racist slurs against Obama, etc.) I think the latter possibility is real.
If the only group Republicans can count on is resentful white people, they’re not going to be a national force much longer.
Nick
I don’t know, the Republican Party might be crazy enough just to nominate her…obviously they won’t if they think they can win, but can they win? Their “resurgence” is based on a temporary boost…a bad economy. Once the economy improves, unemployment drops, and people are feeling good, any strength they currently have will unravel like a roll of paper towels tumbling down Chichen Itza. When they go back to being rendered unelectable in 2012 and are back to being reduced to crazy, who knows what they do.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@ds: She “did well” in the VP debate because Biden was told to lay off her. If Biden had gone after her, and if Gwen Ifill had told her she HAD to answer the questions asked instead of just saying what she wanted to say, Palin would have collapsed.
Biden was playing the gentleman and Ifill was playing the fool.
drillfork
Come on, you know what’s going to happen:
1) Palin will run.
2) Then Palin will quit.
The end…
Nellcote
Still the best analysis of LaPalin and it’s from before she quit Alaska.
She has two years to alienate her ‘base’. The post book signing in Noblesville the other day was a good start.
Phoebe
I think Biden was absolutely perfect in tone, exactly like a professional something-or-other who visits a high school and smiles benevolently upon the perky student who tries her hand at whatever it is he really does. He could not look like he was truly taking it seriously or playing to win, but also not look arrogant/patronizing. He was perfect. And she looked like an idiot to the chunk of the population who would have voted for McCain but for her. She is the reason nobody in my family voted for McCain. You have to stand back and let her be her. That’s really what Katie Couric did.
conumbdrum
One crucial difference betwitx Dubya and Palin: Bush toned his wingnut down considerably for the 2000 election. Hell, he practically ran as a moderate! All bullshit, of course, but Bush would have been smoked by Gore if he’d allowed his hard-right freak flag to fly, and don’t think his campaign didn’t know it.
Palin doesn’t have that luxury. The base loves her, but she’s simply too wingnutty (and unable to get away with dialing the crazy back) to prevail in a presidential bid. Not with a savvy campaigner like Obama.
She might have a better shot in 2016 if the Dems nominate another dullwad like Kerry… but I don’t think Palin has that much of a shelf life.
Lizzy L
Palin may be smart for some value of smart. but she’s inconsistent and untrustworthy, and the Money Men will not be comfortable with that at all. No matter what she does, the 23% batshit crazies will adore her, but having watched what she did to John McCain, I doubt very much that the Republican kingmakers will want to give her another shot at the title. She makes Huckabee look reasonable.
Now that’s scary…
WereBear
@conumbdrum: Hell yes.
That’s just it; no one knew what a boob he was. (Well, I thought so, but no one was listening to me.) He was a friggin’ Compassionate Conservative! Remember that one?
He was going to fix things like a Democrat, only with the church deacon manners of a Republican. He was a regular guy who cared about The Pippil and was going to give away money.
I well remember his own father when someone called him on his broken promises. “Those were campaign promises,” he said, evidently astonished that anyone took those seriously. Did they have no idea how the game was played?
HRA
True, many who would have voted for McCain would not vote for the “whacko”.
I don’t believe Kristol & co. are the ones in the RNC who have to promote and financially support their next POTUS candidate.
Many others have exited the party since the fiasco of McCain/Palin and what has permeated the national scene in the aftermath. Right now I can’t see any cool heads except for maybe Haley Barber.
Svensker
@Phoebe:
This. Oh, this. This!
valdivia
If you think the people that helped Obama get elected are sitting right now twiddling their thumbs ignoring the to dos of the Republicans you obviously do not know Plouffe. Last time they were caught unaware of who Palin was, by 2012 everything will be ready to go. So freaking out as if she can run as if the last 4 years of her constant insanity has not happened is pretty silly.
One thing people ignore is that from the moment NY23 was open the DNC sent an army of OFA organizers who spent month working the district for Owens. OFA does not run by the seat of their pants, 2012 will be thoroughly planned.
ds
No. Bush campaigned far to the right, but he did it with a wink and a smile, just like Reagan.
He knew that the media doesn’t like to read, or cover policy. So he could promise his crazy ass base the world, but as long as he didn’t drop the “N word” when the cameras were on the media would still call him a moderate.
Bush got an extra assist from braindead lefties, who adopted the meme that there was no difference between Bush and Gore for some asinine reason.
It was obvious that there were vast differences between the two. There hadn’t been an election where the candidates were so far apart on the issues since 1964.
Even Reagan in 1980 supported Social Security, Medicare, and civil rights.
Ravenwind
Some people seem to get close to the “real” Palin, but almost no one has done the diagnosis that nails the psychology of this woman. She is blessed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder with a side helping of Borderline that blows all other contemporary politicians out of the water. And she really is not very intelligent. Someone else here got close with this thought:
Getting elected president actually takes a certain amount of work by the candidate, and she’s too lazy and self-absorbed to do it. Just for starters, can you picture her dialing for dollars for more than two hours?
For her, there is absolutely no one else in the universe but her. Self-absorbed, yeah . . she soaks herself up like the biggest sponge in the universe. She believes that anything she wants will be delivered to her, so lazy is sort of descriptive. No, she won’t be dialing for dollars, she knows she can make sure someone does it for her. And will not be able to understand why she won’t get the money from the big players.
She got national attention by a fluke; she’s still riding the wave, and her street-smarts have helped her capitalize so far. But her “fame” is more smoke-n-mirrors than that of Bush, Reagan and Newt combined. Her illness, if you want to call it that, is simply too severe; she doesn’t come from a wealthy, powerful family; she hasn’t built a real political machine over time. She’s just a heat-seeking missile for the spotlight–and when she gets it she whines that it’s too bright, or too hot. She will self-destruct.
Deb T
Want to understand Sarah Palin?
Watch “Elmer Gantry”.
gwangung
No, sorry, that’s just wrong. Dead wrong. He campaigned as a moderate, with an appeal to minorities. Compassion conservatism is NOT a far right attitude; it’s one that’s designed precisely for moderates.
valdivia
@gwangung:
yep and also nationally people only knew Bush as the son of President Bush and what they were presented with. But people already know Palin and dems and indys loathe her, only a small section of society is crazy about her, she cannot win with just them.
ds
Bullshit. His “appeal to minorities” was to have breakdancers at the convention while calling for tough love for blacks.
His stated positions were further to the right than Reagan’s. His persona was “moderate.”
Ravenwind
Which would be ok re Palin, if she made it into the primaries, but she simply doesn’t have it in her to pivot like that in the general. Reagan was an actor by profession, Bush had a certain affinity for it as a campaigner. She does not. She has one persona when the camera’s on and the best handlers in the business couldn’t budge her during the campaign. They had to turn out the lights, for pete’s sake, to keep her from going on that stage on election night to give “her speech.”
Jason Bylinowski
@valdivia: I don’t disagree with that. Like I said, I think eventually someone within the GOP would take her down anyway, because she is unrealistic about what passes for both candidacy AND governance itself. But many here were saying that even SHE is not planning any sort of future run, and frankly I think that is not an accurate assessment of what she is thinking. I think she would like VERY MUCH to take the next step into candidacy. I would wager in fact that if the GOP gains any significant ground in the 2010 races (netting at least ten house and one or two senate seats, for example), she’ll be one of the first people to declare for the presidential of 2012. I’m NOT saying that she would make it through the primaries; I doubt she would even make it TO the primaries. My whole argument is just basically that her intentions are clear, regardless of what the realities are.
gnomedad
@Martin:
Good point. I was amazed at the Charlie Gibson interview that after three weeks under wraps she didn’t have simple and predictable questions nailed. What the hell was she doing all that time? If she can’t stick out an autograph signing, how can she handle a presidential campaign?
Brachiator
@Phoebe:
Yeah, but enough about Hillary Clinton.
valdivia
@Jason Bylinowski:
so we agree.
I see from her tour that she continues to speak very bad english (we need to pulg in conservatism in canada. Huh?)
But her new motto and what i think she will be running on is what she repeats again and again in her book “common sense conservatism” she thinks this is very clever and will win her the nomination and election. forgetting that the hyphenation of conservatism has already been tried. also starting in 2009 to run for 2012 is bad, since she has no idea what 2012 will look like.
valdivia
I would like someone to ask Palin how common sense conservatism solves the fact that 49 million have no access to food… I am sure the private sector will surely solve that eh?
Ravenwind
She’ll have a word-salad answer. But she doesn’t care. She waited until the worst had passed, and people from all over the country had banded together to send care packages to the people in the native villages in Alaska who were hungry and without fuel. Then, she went up, with a preacher, and plates of cookies. No one else exists for her but her.
handy
Hey I resembled that comment!
Re: Bush’s appeal to the middle in 2000: wasn’t part of his success due to the perception of Gore as an egg-headed elitist as well as this vague idea that he was going to usher in a new era of “seriousness” and sweep out the supposed corruption in Washington the last eight years (i.e. the Clenis).
In other words, it wasn’t so much what direction on the political spectrum he ran but more on the idea that he would change the culture, make DC a place fit for “regular decent folk.”
handy
@valdivia:
They don’t need to solve it because those 49 million people are lazy or godless and therefore aren’t worth trifling over.
Wile E. Quixote
@ds
Bullshit. Do you know anything about American history? Pull your self-righteous liberal head out of your ass and go do some reading, starting with Rick Perlstein’s two books Before the Storm and Nixonland. Once you’re done with that go look at the Wikipedia page for the 1976 election.
In 1977 Ronald Reagan was a popular two-term governor of California. He had run a very successful primary challenge against Gerald Ford in the 1976 election that came within a hairsbreadth of defeating Ford, who was wildly unpopular with the conservative wing of the Republican party. And even though Ford nearly lost the nomination to Carter, showing his lack of support among Republicans, and was unpopular with Americans because of his pardoning of Nixon and the horrible economy he only lost to Jimmy Carter by 57 electoral votes and 2.1 percent of the popular vote.
Reagan was being bruited about as a Republican presidential candidate as early as 1968 because even though he had only been governor of California for two years he spent most of the early 1960s building a base in the Republican party. He’s hardly Sarah Palin and he’s nowhere near as stupid as liberals like to portray him.
Indeed I think a lot of the liberal resentment of Reagan had to do with the fact that he defeated so many liberal Democrats. He kicked Pat Brown’s ass in 1966, kicked Jimmy Carter’s ass in 1980 (not hard, Carter was a shitty politician and even his own party wanted to dump him) and beat the living fucking Jesus out of that useless old retard Walter Mondale in 1984. I mean if Reagan was such a retard then how was he able to beat so many liberals unless those liberals were even dumber than he is?
Palin hasn’t spent any time paying her dues within the Republican party. Both Reagan and Nixon spent years doing this, building up a solid base of supporters, the kind of supporters that Caribou Barbie is building up don’t have any depth or staying power or for that matter any attention span, and outside of these supporters Palin doesn’t have any support. Reagan had been governor of California, Nixon a senator and VP, Palin couldn’t even finish a term as governor of Alaska, one of the least significant states in the Union.
gwangung
For that matter, if she helped elect a solid chunk of people over the past year or two, it wouldn’t matter as much about those supporters; delivering votes and winners is a coin that’s valued by anybody.
Hm. How many elected politicians has Palin delivered?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@thomas Levenson:
This. Sarah has discovered the non-stop beauty pageant and she is pumping this for all it’s worth. She’s a kind of two-part political version of Tonya Harding; she is vying to ‘win’ (read: cash in on) the contest of ‘ideas’ (as vapid and disjointed as the are) and her rabid supporters are kneecapping the Republican party to help her win. They don’t care about anything but their Perfect Sarah because they are blinded by the starbursts.
I can’t help but think that there are a few sane Republican pols who won’t dare say a word against Dear Sarah but who are praying fervently for her political/popularity demise. One other thing that comes to mind is that the Drooling Sarah Contingent wouldn’t be doing all of their drooling if the same ‘message’ they are receiving was instead being delivered by someone like Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Nothing against the Senator from Texass, I’m just saying that it’s not the message they like, it’s the messenger.
Starbursts. /gag
Wile E. Quixote
@Chuck Butcher
This brings up an interesting point: How long can the GOP keep up a balancing act between the Mormons and the evangelicals? Evangelicals hate Mormons, hate, hate, hate, hate them. The evangelicals I’ve known hate Mormons almost as much as they hate gays; they’re not regarded as being true Christians, but instead as members of a weird cult that worships Ba’al and does horrible evil things like recognize that gay people are human beings. If the Republicans continue to be dominated by the evangelicals then how long before the Mormons say “fuck this, we have no interest in being part of a political party run by a bunch of people who shit on our religion” and stop supporting the Republican party?
ds
Who claimed that Reagan was dumb? He was one of the smartest politicians of the 20th century.
He kicked liberal ass in all those elections and our country is probably going to continue to suffer the consequences for several more decades.
And you’re right that liberals vastly underestimated him. But his positions were so far to the right that liberals and even the mainstream media did not take him seriously until polls showed that he could actually win, which wasn’t until late in 1980. For most of the campaign Carter was in the lead.
Many polls show Palin as the LEADING candidate in the Republican primary. Don’t count her out.
Brachiator
@Wile E. Quixote:
Good points on Reagan. Palin seems content to simply try to appeal to evangelicals, tea baggers, and hard core conservatives. But she treats the Republican Party like a toy. She either has no interest in building support within the party, or doesn’t know how to do so.
In an odd sort of way, she reminds me of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, once considered a prime candidate for the California governorship, who was surprisingly unwilling or unable to attract any support outside his base within the city.
Martin
@ds:
Um, no. Bush was never going to win African Americans – no GOP candidate will. Bush went after latinos, and carried the majority of Florida latinos. What state decided the 2000 election again?
There are other minorities out there, you know.
Mr. Tactful
I believe those who don’t think Palin really wants to be CIC are being thrown off by the fact that she is going about it so ineptly.
Make no mistake, she wants it more than anything.
gwangung
I’ll count her in when she shows some solid organization chops or some sort of administrative competency.
Don’t you GET what people are telling you? Winning even a nomination takes more than just popularity. It takes organizational and administrative acumen to turn that popularity into votes.
Is her bookstore tour showing that she’s gaining that skill? Is she shaking out the kinks and building a larger organization? Is she working out the kinks with this book tour? If she is, yeah, then she’s a factor. If she isn’t, she’s going to get thumped badly, given the sterling example Obama gave to her potential competitors.
ds
True. But historically I don’t think Republicans ever had any trouble winning Hispanics. It wasn’t until Pete Wilson and the immigration freakout that Democrats starting winning them by large margins.
9 years later it’s an article of faith that a conservative candidate must hate Hispanics, but back in 2000 I don’t think that was the case.
gwangung
You’ll need to back that up because that was NEVER the case in California; Hispanics were a Democratic strength; not to the extent of African Americans, but by at least 2 to 1 margins.
JK
@Martin:
You’re right on the money. Not only is Palin one of the dumbest politicians I’ve ever seen, she’s also one of the laziest. She doesn’t have the fire in the belly to do the heavy lifting that’s required of a presidential contender. All she has is the fire in the belly to make millions of dollars.
ds
There isn’t good data available before the 80s, because surveys didn’t have a separate category Hispanics, but Reagan won about 40% of the Hispanic vote both times, and Bush I won about that much in 1988.
As for California, it was a Republican-leaning state until Pete Wilson and prop 187. That energized the Latino community against Republicans. That’s what made us a solid Democratic state.
Brachiator
@Martin:
There are only two groups with enough numbers to move the dial in electoral politics, blacks and Latinos. Any other group is just gravy.
And Latinos are a large group, and do not have a single issue that they rally around. But the Republicans, even with Sarah Palin, are doing everything they can to make sure that all Latino groups run like Hell from the GOP.
ds
Oh, and winning Florida Hispanics was hardly some impressive achievement for Bush.
Cuban-Americans used to be one of the most solidly Republican voting blocs in the entire country.
gwangung
@ds: Hmmm…the historic data I’ve been looking suggests that Hispanics in California were running much, much stronger Democratic than Florida and Texas, mainly because the Cuban and Colombian segment were much stronger in FL and TX; the Mexican segment that dominates California have always been strongly Democratic throughout the history of the state. Being the birthplace of Chicano Studies and the homebase for Caesar Chavez and farm worker rights, California would naturally tilt much more strongly to the Democrats than Republicans, which suggests Pete Wilson’s efforts are only a surface manifestation and not that important.
It also suggests that Reagan’s RELATIVE popularity owes more to the native son factor that won’t translate to other candidates.
pseudonymous in nc
There’s a quote from Obama — in the Richard Wolff insider book, I think — where he notes that the primary basically got him in shape as a campaigner, and wonders whether Palin was ready for the campaign trail.
As for her future, a point worth bearing in mind is that she’s also out on a limb from the infrastructure of wingnut welfare, with its billionaire-backed think tanks run out of shared office space bestowing bullshit titles. Yeah, Kristol and the loss-making Weekly Standard got starbursts, but she’s not Institutional Republican yet.
Martin
@gwangung:
Latinos are far from a homogenous group. You’ve got Puerto Ricans mostly in the northeast, Cubans in Florida, immigrants in Texas and Cali, and then native born across the south as well. There’s a surprising number of anti-immigration latinos across the south that simply never immigrated – they lived here before this was part of the US.
Winning these groups all require different efforts and different messages, and some lean Democratic and others lean Republican.
Martin
@Brachiator:
You’d be right if the popular vote counted for anything, but it doesn’t. In 3 states, native americans account for ~10% of the electorate – far more than both african americans and latinos combined. Do you need that 10%? Depends.
12% of California is Asian American. 60% of Hawaii is. Do you need those voters? Depends as well, but that 12% in California is a mishmash of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and every other nationality you can list. There are some issues they have in common (acknowledgement and respect, for example) but others they don’t.
Never take groups of voters for granted. Never assume that just because you can dump a label on them, that they’ll identify with your label.
Martin
@gwangung:
Also consider that the anti-tax movement that swept California really hadn’t revealed its cost until after Reagan got elected. The GOP lost more than a few voters over the current state of affairs here.
LD50
@valdivia:
Easy! Church charities. I’m positive that’s what she’d say.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Good point.
In California state elections, opinion polls often omit all Asians (or just lump them in with “other”) because there are too many groups with divergent interests, and their numbers as a percentage of the total vote just don’t appear to amount to much compared with other groups. For example, Asians overall are about 8 per cent of total Democratic voters in California, with the remainder spread among Republicans and Independents.
By the way, an analysis in October, just before the presidential election provided this breakdown of Asians on a national level:
By election time, Asians in California swung overwhelmingly for Obama.
I don’t take them for granted, nor do I ever assume that the label “Asian” means anything. The same is also true of labels like “Latino” or “Hispanic.” In the same vein, I don’t assume that any of these groups are permanent Democratic Party voters, as some would like to believe.
Robert Waldmann
Don’t dump on George Mitchell. He turned down a supreme court robe to work on health care reform. He decided not to run for re-election to work for health care reform (wouldn’t it have been nice if he had given up on reform in 94 and was still in the Senate).
After leaving the senate, he dealt with the damnable question and negotiated peace in Norhern Ireland. That is a first in human history. In his post senate career he obviously earned a Nobel Peace Prize. But that wasn’t hard enough for him, now he’s trying for peace in the Middle East.
The man is a statesman and virtually a saint. OK so he cashed in a bit. That is no reason to list him along with Daschle let alone Tauzin or Thompson. Name four people who have served the public more after leaving public office (I have 3 — Carter, Gore and Mandela who tried and failed to negotation peace in Burundi). Come on, I dare you. Try to come up with a fourth name.
Paul Rodenburg
I don’t think the Republicans have much hope of winning back the White House, if they’d seriously consider nominating Palin at any point.
gwangung
@Martin: I’m aware of that. But I’m just thinking that ds’ analysis doesn’t hold together very well (or, at least, is shallow on the historical end, because Pete Wilson’s anti-immigration initiative was far too late in history to affect much of the Latino vote, except maybe as a last straw).
dave
No Rove, no Bush.
Show me her Rove and then I’ll worry about her.
par4
‘She’s not a politician anymore she’s a huckster’… There are only a few politicians in office who aren’t hucksters.
sparky
interesting thread
but it does seem to me that there is a certain amount of conflating of different questions here:
1. is Palin interested in being a serious candidate?
don’t know yet. she may be, or may not. too early to tell. the things she’s doing now could be used that way, or just to make more money. i would be surprised if she had decided already. the largest point against her wanting to be a serious candidate (as opposed to a candidate to stay in the public eye) is that she quit being governor. serious political people don’t do that–office, after all, is the reason they put up with the rest of the crap in the first place.
2. could Palin win the GOP primaries? impossible to know as the field isn’t set yet. if Huckabee runs again she’d be in real trouble. if i had to guess she might win primaries in a few states but (a) i rather doubt the Palin supporters are interested in doing field work and (b) the rest of the GOP will coalesce against her. she has no chits with them.
3. general US election? no. as any number of people upthread have pointed out, Palin is the lite version of Bush (forget Reagan). and the comparisons with Bush as being worse that Palin are just wrong. the Bushes know how to play politics. they are truly awful at governing but they know how to get in the chair. Palin has gone as far as she can through circumstance and luck. she would have to become a different person to win a major contest and there is no evidence that she is willing or able to do so.
the first question is the only one of any interest at the moment. and the reason it’s of interest is that the one thing Palin is good at–self-promotion–is what she’s doing by keeping the question (not the answer) up in the air. more fools us for spending time thinking about it.
thomas Levenson
@Jason Bylinowski: McArdle? Another one.
Alright. Soon.
valdivia
@sparky:
best analysis of the thread. exactly on point.
catclub
Robert Waldman @ 174
I think one possibility for #4 is Herbert Hoover.
Elie
Cleek
“and we’re the ultimate source of the lucre.”
Yep
Elie
Sarah is the natural outcome of celebrity as its own end, divorced at last from any real human outcome or striving..
Her image and word salad babbling floats like a big gas ball, unrelated to any real political or social tether beyond its own self.
She is the ultimate evolution of our MSM/media gas ball, also untethered to anything substantive. Gingrich, Fox news, Cokie Roberts, and a horde of other gas balls already named are what a certain part of the US culture to which our public discourse and remaining sense of community has mutated.
Like some sci-fi scourge, they float among us, drinking attention, energy and light, but reflecting only superficiality…
They/she are the perfect representation of our bubble economy and bubble psychology…
Virtual PBX
Generally I do not post on blogs, but I have to mention that this post really forced me to do so!