As I’ve said before, I don’t believe that Republicans will nominate Sarah Palin, I believe they will nominate some ostensibly less frightening and noxious candidate and that all the serious, intellectual conservatives will line up behind that candidate’s plan to voucherzie Social Security in a Burkean gradualist manner.
I realize that Erik came here neither to praise nor bury other so-called reasonable conservatives. But I’d like to ask him to explain how a serious, principled, intellectual conservative like Conor Friedersdorf can say he might have supported Newt Gingrich until Newt went nuts about the Ground Zero mosque. There are any number of reasons why no non-braindead observer would feel much Newtmentum. Since I’m on the iPad again, I’ll just give one link: here’s Newt comparing Obama’s “secular-soshulist” machine to Hitler and Staliln.
It is popular now to say that the problem with modern conservativism is that it has been taken over by crazy-cons. Isn’t it an even bigger problem when ostensibly reasonable conservative pundits are ready to drool all over the intellectual bona fides of any Republican candidate who isn’t a birther? Has there ever been a better example of the soft bigotry of lowered expectations?
Sheila
Newt Gingrich has “intellectual bona fides”?
El Cid
Newt Gingrich supported the TARP on the day it was being voted on. He should continue to be radioactive to the neo-Confederate GOP.
I think they should nominate prominent CNN analyst Erick Ericson.
JenJen
I’ve always been a member of the “No way is Palin running, she’s just after fame and fortune and she’s teasing the media” Club, but Tweety laid out a semi-compelling path to the nomination for Palin at the end of his show yesterday, and reminded me of something we often forget: base voters nominate the candidates, and the GOP base is batshit crazy.
schrodinger's cat
I think they are not crazy (conservative punditubbies that is), they just know which side of their bread is buttered. Some affect an in your face persona Limbaugh while some have better manners like Bobo and Chunky Bobo.
Ash Can
@Sheila: Maybe that means he can dress himself and tie his own shoes.
DougJ
@El Cid:
I give him credit for that, at least.
matoko_chan
@El Cid: lawl.
well…..hes a multichin so that part would work.
like i said DougJ, its teh evolution.
the conservative base has been biomemetically engineered to be low IQ, anti-science, anti-education racists for 50 years.
and now the conservative elite have to ride the tiger they built.
E.D. Kain is a stone base-panderer, like Douthat and McArdle.
They are simply terrified of their base.
So they say anything.
LGRooney
I may be wrong but doesn’t non-batshit-insane conservative translate to Blue Dog Democrat (e.g., Nelson) or Leverage Whore (e.g., Collins)?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
not just (self ID’d) conservative pundits. Al Hunt wrote a column a few months back expressing his disappointment in the partisanship of Gingrich and Karl Rove, whom he’d expected to be the voice of “responsible opposition” or some such drivel. TO his credit, he was calling them cheap hacks, but only after they’d proved that for the Nth time. How many years ago was that GOPAC memo? Susan Smith? The South Carolina Primary? Max Cleland? People like Hunt (and I think he’s one of the better center-right pundits out there) refuse to accept the fact that people like Gingrich (and Rove, and Cheney, and Palin, and Bachman, and….) really are the people they present themselves as to the broader public, rather than the congenial fellow you bumped into at the Palm or Sally Quinn’s Flag Day Open House.
Dave
@JenJen:
This.
What’s the old Mencken quote? “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” These people believe Obama is a socialist, Kenyan Muslim terrorist who may be gay. It is no stretch to believe that they will dominate the primaries and put Palin in a position to win the nomination. Common sense, moderation and long-term thinking do not exist with these people. Here in Maine, they hijacked the GOP state convention and rewrote their platform into something that reads like the lobotomized love-child of Ayn Rand and Glenn Beck.
arguingwithsignposts
Um, yeah.
BTW, DougJ – what app are you using to write on the iPad? the WordPress app sucks.
Napoleon
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I thought he was held out as a liberal?
NonyNony
But that’s just politics – economic politics at that. “serious, principled, intellectual conservatives” have no problem with ugly rhetoric in the service of keeping their tax rate low and the proles in their place. With the mosque episode Newt is peddling religious persecution – which “serious, principled, intellectual conservatives” want to believe the party has no business in. When you see stuff like this, this is generally the “serious, principled, intellectual conservatives” seeing that they’ve lost another battle to the Evangelical Dominionist wing of the party. Which diminishes the power that the “serious, principled, intellectual conservatives” have always liked to pretend that they held.
And Palin is totally going to run in the primary. She’s going to run to keep her plates spinning – she can’t ride that wingnut welfare train if she’s not at least throwing her hat in the ring even if she’s unsuccessful. But I can’t imagine she’ll play to win – she’ll play to keep her name in the public eye and keep access to those paid speaking engagements. Sadly given how the GOP has been purging the impure from their party she might actually manage to win the nomination.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JenJen: I doubt Palin could survive when the Big Guns of the party really turn on her. She could, theoretically, take them down with her, but I still think she wants the money, attention and feigned respect.
matoko_chan
@JenJen: the GOP insufficiently vetted Palin on one important aspect……her malleability.
She just won’t play galatea to the GOP’s pygmalion.
So the GOP hangs out, hoping they get to use her as a tasp on the base, but they don’t get that shes using them.
I predict they are going to wait until its too late to pull the plug and she’ll get the nom.
The thing you DON’T SEE in any conservative discussion of this is what a Palin ticket will do to Obama’s base enthusiasm.
If she’s anywhere on the ticket Obama’s base of youth and minorities is going to come screaming down out of the heavens like a swarm of MQ9 reaper drones on an afghan wedding party.
DougJ
@arguingwithsignposts:
Just the regular interface. The only real problem is you cannot scroll through categories.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Al Hunt is center-right? I agree that he is, but doesn’t he play center-left on TV?
Cacti
I see Palin as being a right wing Howard Dean as a candidate. Her supporters are more loud than numerous. She might end up being a king-maker by throwing her support to a candidate that outlasts her.
DougJ
@matoko_chan:
I like Erik’s writing.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
FTFY
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Napoleon: @Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Yup, and yup. “Reasonable liberal” = “Center right”, IMHO. Can’t remember where he stood on Iraq.
dmsilev
I’m not so sure about the Palin thing. Assuming she runs, of course, which isn’t a given. The GOP base is currently dominated by a whole host of vocal screamers, and given the near-certainty that the GOP will gain many seats in November (though not necessarily taking either house), said screamers will only get more vocal over the next year or so.
Does anyone think that a Mitt Romney or some other “safe conservative” is going to appeal to that mob?
dms
MattF
“Lowered expectations” doesn’t quite cover it, IMO. Any current Republican politician (and that class, for reasons I don’t quite understand, includes Gingrich) has seen a great deal of Limbaugh, Palin, and Beck. They’ve all heard a great deal what the ‘base’ has to say. They lived through the Bush years, and in those years, they repudiated every conservative principle they ever might have had.
What we’re now seeing is political collapse in real time. Friedersdorf is not brain-dead, but he evidently would have done almost anything to keep his political identification. But when the avalanche is comin’ down the mountain in your direction, you do what you have to do.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@JenJen:
I saw that yesterday and I thought Matthews made a very compelling case.
Zifnab
From where I sit, the conservative leader is the guy who can best make a middle class American vote against his own best interests. Whomever can best package up his personal brand of God, Guns, and anti-Government will win the nomination.
Sarah Palin isn’t going to make it for the same reason she failed to do McCain any favors back in ’08. She’s lazy, she’s sloppy, and she doesn’t make even the slightest effort to appeal to independents. She’s dead because the conservative mucky mucks that run the show come election season won’t let her win.
I’d put my money on Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, or one of the other red state governors. They tend to be fund raising machines and their scandal notoriety tend to be low before they hit the national scene.
keestadoll
“Has there ever been a better example of the soft bigotry of lowered expectations?”
Doug, a well-turned phrase does more for me than oysters, chocolate and Barry White combined. That question of yours will have me pondering all day, plus, “soft bigotry of lowered expectations” has just entered my debate arsenal.
Thank you for the brilliant word bouquet, I know they will vase well!
The Bearded Blogger
@NonyNony: Agreed, she’ll run because she needs the attention. The establishment will rally behind the “sensible alternative” (0.4% less crazy) … Palin will speak of a glass ceiling….
Tom65
I’m starting to buy into the whole “12 dimensional chess” phenom. Obama and the Dems have managed to push the GOP WAY to the right in search of votes, and it’s starting to bear real fruit – the Teabaggers have managed to turn Harry Reid from an endangered purple-state Dem to an almost sure-fire winner against Angle.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
First, Palin isn’t going to be VP again. So the only way she’s on the ticket is if she’s the Presidential nominee. Second, Palin as Presidential nominee will lead to the resuscitation of Saturday Night Live. Can you imagine another six months of Tina Fey mocking The Quittah? But you are right, having Palin at the top of the ticket will drive Democratic turn out big time.
dj spellchecka
repeating what others have written uptread “serious, principled, intellectual conservative” means someone who wants the racists, race baters and racial/religious ambulance chasers to stfu, at least in public….which is nice but the vast majority of “serious, principled, intellectual conservatives” would flunk econ 101…a slight problem
Dave
Considering the tea partiers have been electing the dumbest stumps across the country in their primaries, why is it a stretch to think they won’t do the same with Palin? She is one of the few people, for better or worse, who can get their message out WITHOUT being beholden to the moneymen in the GOP.
I mean, we are talking about people who are on the verge of electing as the GOP candidate for governor in Colorado a man who thinks that encouraging bike riding is a plot to bring the US under UN control. I shit you not.
BR
One thing that has been true about the GOP is that they usually go for the last guy standing from the previous round.
So in this case it’d be either Romney or Huckabee, depending on how you look at it.
DougJ
@keestadoll:
You will hate to hear where I got the phrase from!
The Bearded Blogger
@matoko_chan: Young voters are, rightly or wrongly, disappointed at Obama, and Sarah is not gonna fire them up. But she would totally lose the election, and create an image problem for the GOP, whose face she would become
QuaintIrene
When Angle had a personal hand in that, when she found out that she had to eventually open her mouth and say something.
Brachiator
A lot can happen between now and 2012, but one thing is clear. The Wall Street Interests and neocons are convinced that they can channel the crazy. They don’t care if moderates get disgusted and flee the party. Nor is there anything that could ever be uttered by the worst tea baggers or wingnuts that the GOP would ever find so repugnant that they would have to … refudiate it.
Whether or not Palin becomes the candidate, the GOP, helped along by Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, have succeeded in turning her into an elder statesman. No one seems to mind that she gets an intellectual airbrushing before she speaks or that she seems never to have had an original thought in her life.
But while she is fine as the face of the GOP (and also, strangely enough, the face of the Tea Party), I don’t know if there is any puppet master deft enough to get Palin through a primary campaign. Nor do I think that other potential candidates would be kind to her if she decided to make a serious run at the presidency.
On the other hand, I am surprised that she is still any kind of public figure. And naked ambition can propel a person far past their capabilities, especially if they can capture a significant part of the public imagination.
Comrade Mary
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Yeah, although Tweety scared me a bit yesterday, I agree that Democratic turnout would be immense with Palin on the ticket.
I’ve also heard or read the argument (can’t remember where) that Palin can’t even win Iowa because she’s not willing to put in the hard slog that primary voters are said to expect. I think some of her most devout fans won’t care, but if sensible Iowa Republicans turn out to vote against her, they could well prevail.
Plus, if she’s not willing to sit down with local papers for extensive interviews, she won’t get an endorsement. I know, I know: she can just screech “Lamestream media!” a few times. But that is a trick more easily pulled on national media than local. I think Angle has been especially hurt by local media’s cool reception, for example, and the same could hold for Palin.
AB
It seemed to me that the whole obsession with “reasonable conservative” primarily comes from liberals who worship the idea that every point has “both sides” to it. As far as I can see, reasonable conservatives are people who spend their time trying to find evidence to support their conclusion, which, although is a step ahead of most conservatives, are wrong anyway – you conclude based on data, not the other way around.
El Cid
@DougJ:
You shouldn’t give asshole Newt Gingrich one lick of credit for supporting the TARP on the morning it was to be voted on the 1st time — the vote which failed.
Newt Gingrich had spent the entire week or two before-hand raving against this massive soshullist onslaught.
It was only when Wall Streeters and likely prominent Bush Jr. administration types let him know that it was actually looking like it would fail and there were bowels to be lost, Gingrich turned his hypocritical ass around and gave mealy-mouthed explanations of why he now, as opposed to the prior fucking god-damned day, supported a TARP vote.
He’s a complete pseudo-intellectual piece of shit, and it galls me to this day that he gets to be treated like some sage philosophe of Republican values.
The Bearded Blogger
@DougJ: Rhymes with Gorge Bubbly Douche
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If the male Republican establishment attacks Sister Sarah it will just make her a stronger candidate and increase the amount of support from the teabaggers looking to shed the legacy of Bush like a snake sheds it skin.
NonyNony
@Tom65:
Um, no. This is not something that Obama and the Dems have done on purpose. The extremist right have worked for 5+ decades to take over the Republican party and everywhere along the way they hit some milestones – Reagan Revolution, Gingrich’s Contract on America, Bush’s entire time in office. Along the path they pulled the Democratic party further to the right because that helps them in their takeover – every time the Democrats move to a compromise position on an issue with the conservatives, the far-right conservatives take it as an opportunity to pull the Republican Party even more to the right. (Witness, oh, Clinton’s entire time in office including NAFTA and welfare reform. Or the health care reform debate where a Republican proposal for individual mandates to make sure insurance companies can stay in business has turned into “OMG SOCHIALIZM!” once Democrats compromise to it.)
Obama and the Dems are working with what they’ve been given, but where the Republican Party is now has nothing to do with 12th dimensional Democratic political chess and everything to do with hard-working activist extremists who have spend generations working their asses off to infiltrate the Republican Party and subvert it to their own agenda. It only looks like a case of “be careful what you wish for” to those of us on the outside – to the descendants of the Birchers this control of the GOP is a generational wet dream that can be surpassed only if they manage to get into office and finally dismantle FDR’s socialist-communist agenda once and for all.
The Bearded Blogger
@Brachiator: How will other primary candidates attack her? Doing so means failing the TP purity test.
I’m thinkin they pay her off somehow, promise her ambassador to Russia so she has a nice cushy job with a short commute
dmsilev
@QuaintIrene: Re: Sharon Angle, the latest bit of nonsense to surface from her is a real beauty. According to Angle, Reid’s agenda is a violation of the First Commandment. You know, the “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other Gods before Me” one.
One wonders whether she’s familiar with the First. First Amendment, that is.
dms
The Bearded Blogger
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Hard to attack Sarah… she’ll go all PUMA on the GOP, and talk about the soft bigotry of refudiated glass ceilings or something…
Mark S.
@BR:
They do. I can’t think of one dark horse the GOP has ever nominated. Shit, they nominated McCain last time, who until recently was easily the most despised gooper by the base.
I don’t think Sarah or Newt are going to run. They want you to think they might run so you’ll keep reading their tweets and buying their books, but deep down Sarah knows she’s too dumb and Newt knows he’s too unlikeable.
wilfred
The problem with conservatism is that it went from being a series of reasonable, modulated political positions to a full-blown ideological discourse incapable of finding a middle ground.
There are still people who think conservatively, i.e. people who want to maintain the status quo on social and cultural issues. But these are matters of opinion that reasonable people can disagree on, not an ideology.
Americans are too materialist to elect anyone with an ideology.
Jay in Oregon
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Non-sequitur: IIRC, there was an interview with Tina Fey where she said she was glad that McCain/Palin lost the election because she couldn’t imagine doing that role for 4 years…
kansi
@Mark S.:
Are you suggesting they are sufficiently self-aware to come to these conclusions? Heh-good one!
LosGatosCA
It’s pretty simple, you can’t reason with irrational children.
All you can do is manage the environment around them to minimize the damage.
America just needs to be Teabagger-proofed – put all the nuclear arms out of their reach, put locks on the US Constitutional cabinets, put tax policy in the cupboard above the counter.
Mnemosyne
Sarah Palin is 2012’s Fred Thompson. She will flirt with the idea of running and maybe even participate in a few debates, but she’s too fucking lazy to actually do the work that goes into running for president. She’ll trump up some reason to quit in a huff and go back to the wingnut welfare circuit.
Comrade Mary
I always misremember “soft bigotry” as a quote from The Moynihan Report (the final “t” is not silent, kids). I’m old, I guess.
Doug, can we get a thread clean-up here, please?
And is there any way to work around that stoopid WordPress hyphen-as-strikeout workaround? So many people choose to (redundantly) sign off their posts with an initial hyphen that you guys have to play clean-up a few times a week. This must be getting old for you.
aimai
@NonyNony:
I have to agree with NonyNony: “Its just politics.” At this point, pace our new best friend on the blog the sane conservative, any actual, serious, sane and humane conservative simply should have committed seppuku. To the extent that they are following an ideology that they think will produce a greater good, for the greater number of people they simply have to admit that where it has been tried, it has failed miserably and always will. To the extent that they are just evil greedheads with a yen to sell shit to the rubes and abscond with the profits before people drop dead of the snake oil then they will support whoever and whatever promises to deliver them back into power. Its just that simple. If Newt is the flavor of the month to get back into power, they will support him. If its Palin, they will support her. Because, actually, grand theory and ideology have always been mere tools to get to ripping off the electorate and draining the treasury. As well castigate a guy for using the wrong tool to get his shoes on. He just wants to get his shoes on, he doesn’t really care whether the shoe horn is actually a spoon, or someone else’s, or a human shinbone.
aimai
Bella Q
@kansi: Certainly neither has shown any actual evidence of self awareness. I believe Palin is just too lazy, however. Running from the beginning is hard work, and she was overtaxed buy the short stint as VP nominee.
licensed to kill time
@DougJ:
Well, spitenzeeoutenzee! Where? Don’t tease us, bro!
Mark S.
@Comrade Mary:
I agree with all that, and plus, she’ll have to do a billion debates during the primaries. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt since she was plucked up from nowhere. I thought she might bone up on the issues to the point she didn’t appear as a stone cold idiot to the average voter, but she’s too lazy to even read a book.
NonyNony
@BR:
They do, except for when they don’t. Like when George W. Bush became the nominee in 2000.
I don’t think Romney’s money has a snowball’s chance of winning. The party has purified itself even more than it was in the run-up to ’08 and Romney can’t make himself pure enough. The ones that don’t care about religion will insist that he’s just lying and he’s still the same “Taxachusetts liberal” that he was in ’08. The ones that do care about religion will just scream “MORMON!” and throw holy water on him hoping to make the demon go away. The only people who think Romney has a shot at a GOP nomination are the moneymen, who would really like to have their own guy in office.
The Huckster has a small chance of winning, but the anti-tax nuts still hate him as much as they did in ’08 because there was that one time he raised taxes to balance his state’s budget. Which means that they’d love to throw holy water on him and scream “LIBERAL!” and hope to make the demon go away, but since he’s an Evangelical preacher they can’t get away with that.
The Huckster and Romney both lost for very specific reasons and in Romney’s case those reasons have actually made his prospective chances worse now than they were before given the crazy-shift in the GOP. Huckster might have a shot if he can convince the anti-tax nutters that he’s repented, but the anti-tax nutters don’t believe in repentance, they believe in damnation. So it’s an uphill battle for him.
licensed to kill time
@licensed to kill time:
never mind. The Bearded Blogger ‘splained it (George Bubbly Douche, heh :)
jrg
I’m so tired of hearing about “principled conservatives”. The entire movement consists of imbeciles whining about Vince Foster, Fluoride in the water, and birth-certificate conspiracy theories.
Let’s call “principled conservatism” what it is, OK? A semantic circle-jerk, completely divorced from reality. The only people who even listen to “principled conservatives” are liberals, and that’s just so they can have a make-believe sparring partner who actually listens to reason. I suppose that’s better for your faith in humanity than trying to figure out why Palin’s so popular, but it doesn’t make the discussions any more grounded in reality.
There is no “principled conservative” party. We’re further away from having one now than ever. No amount of hot air from the likes of Sullivan or Friedersdorf is going to change that. You’d think they would have learned by now.
aimai
@dmsilev:
I’m amazed that people all over the blogs are surprised by this linkage. Its an absolute perennial on right wing/religious blogs, talks, and books. The logic of it goes in a couple of different directions. One, Charitable acts are the quintessence of christian living, but if the government orders you to act charitably (raises taxes in order to pay for social services for the poor) then you don’t get the credit, the government compelled you. Two: you lose the whip hand. Private charity can be charity with a frown, and compel the grateful masses who receive it to come to Jesus. Public charity/social services doesn’t come with that stick, and so doesn’t conduce to conversion and salvation. In fact, even worse, it makes the poor and the shiftless and the unwed mother feel “entitled.” Entitled not to starve and not to suffer. Since Christianity traditionally preaches a world of suffering followed by heaven for those who suffer that which prevents people from suffering in this life is also, ipso facto crazio, preventing people from realizing that they *need god* in their lives. You see this line of argument in Catholic arguments against (some) pain killers, suicide and euthanasia.
Phyllis Schlafly referred to the secular version of this just the other day when she argued publicly that “unwed mothers” and “single women” make up the bulk of the Democratic Party because these voters, having “thrown out their husbands” look to the Party and to Government to pay for them. They’ve been making this argument right along, for decades (of course). In this version husbands salaries are like private charity/the welfare state is like public charity. Both take away the giver’s duty to give, and free the recipient from the necessity of gratitude towards husband/god and substitute the state as the source of blessings. Makes perfect sense really.
aimai
StevenDS
I think the explanation is that Connor is too young to remember how awful Gingrich was when he actually had any power, and that he only has a superficial understanding of Newt’s long history of awfulness.
DougJ
@Comrade Mary:
What’s wrong with that thread?
Sly
A few months ago I’d have been willing to lay money on Rick Perry being the nominee, but Bill White is giving him something of a run in Texas, so now I’m pretty much uncertain on who it will be. If Perry utterly stomps White, however, I’ll be forced to revisit it. He’s really the perfect candidate for the Republican nomination, given current dynamics within the GOP.
I am, however, certain who it won’t be: Palin or Gingrich, or anyone from 2008. The only people in that group who is still in elected office is Ron Paul and John McCain (neither of whom would win), and campaigning for a major nomination has traditionally not favored those who’ve been out of politics for two or more years. The only one to successfully pull it off in nearly a hundred years was Nixon, and none of these folks have even half of his political acumen.
Indie Tarheel
@arguingwithsignposts: So, she had boner fides?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@kansi: Self aware or not, she’s lazy, greedy and vain. My Palin prediction is she’ll run, maybe or not to the point of officially declaring, because it will boost her numbers. She’ll drop out in December, to spend more time with Trig, admonishing all her great guys and gals up there with on that platform of honor and pride to remember Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment not to speak ill-ly of any the other great conservative visions up there while their running for the greatness of all Americans, they’ll all bill and coo over her, and she’ll withhold, until her primetime speaking slot is scheduled, her inevitable endorsement of the front-runner after it’s all over but the voting, then she’ll give the nastiest, most hate-filled speech since Uncle Pat in ’92. People like Uncle Pat and Pat Peale will get their panties wet with excitement, David Gregory will ask if that fired up base signals big trouble for Obama, Cokie and Luke Russert will agree it does, David Broder will write that her down home appeal and the common sense beneath her word salad represents a vital American voice, and they will all be sincerely shocked when her approval ratings drop like a rock in the next poll.
Can she pull it off again in 2016? I doubt it. The starburst factor it too central to her appeal.
liberty60
@wilfred:
And there is the point- conservatism should mean a cautious evidence based skepticism, the “conservatism of doubt”.
It has instead become everything it opposed- a radicalized faith-based dogma based on fear and rage, immune to facts or history.
Doubting that government can solve everything is a wise view, and FWIW, the view of the vast majority of Democratic voters.
Believing that the private sector is infallible and needs no moderation or oversight is a cultish belief, yet it is the creed of the movers and shakers of the GOP.
(whether it is a sincerely held faith, or a cynical one isn’t really important so far as the outcomes go.)
Comrade Mary
@DougJ: We have the strikeout problem in Jinx’s final comment onwards. It looked awful in Firefox when I posted, but just the signature is struck out now.
However, everything from that point onwards is now struck out in IE6.
Svensker
@matoko_chan:
Oooh. Eeek. Nice (nice?) simile.
Svensker
@licensed to kill time:
It was actually Michael Gerson.
Brachiator
@The Bearded Blogger:
When it comes to the primaries, the gloves come off. Consider the slime job against McCain during one of his primary runs.
To actually run for office means submitting to interviews, debates, something other than simply mouthing conservative pieties. Also, we have never seen Palin go after someone in her own party. Romney pounced all over Rudy in one of the primary debates. Right now, I don’t see any evidence that Palin is being groomed to move forward.
As I noted, the only wild card is Palin’s strange Reaganesque teflon, and the love that some of the base have for her, and her own strange way of turning stupidity into crafty political moves.
Consider: by bailing on the governorship, she is immunized from political failure, but can freely criticize others. Meanwhile, nobody even knows who the current governor of Alaska is, and nobody is trying to sell stories about how a post-Palin Alaska is doing or if there is any fallout from her half-term short-term time in office.
I strongly suspect that Palin’s political career is over, permanently.
She might always have a home on Fox News, but she doesn’t have either the clout or the political connections, let alone the smarts, to do much of anything significant in the political arena.
But as I said before, the wild cards are her ambition and the ambitions of the people behind her, including Bill Kristol and Rupert Murdoch.
JenJen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@matoko_chan: @J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Pretty much agree with all of you.
Jim, I feel that way too, that Palin was thrust upon the American people with just a few weeks to go until the big election, but a GOP Primary is a different animal altogether. If the GOP candidates feel the 2012 nomination is worth having, as in, Obama is beatable? I tend to think they’ll rip her to pieces.
But… I’m not sure that even if they do that, that it would work this time. The GOP base adores that woman, and as Tweety outlined, the momentum of winning Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Michigan is as equally compelling a case as “the GOP will crush her.”
It’s way too early to even be thinking about this kind of shit, but I’m a little more concerned about an actual Palin candidacy than I used to be. In fact, if you’d had asked me a year ago after she quit Alaska if we’d still be talking about her today, I’d have laughed heartily.
Thing is? I still think she’ll play the “tease the media/will she or won’t she” game for as long as she can without ever actually running. She could probably never really run, and still have the media playing the game all the way up until their “OMG brokered RNC convention” wank fests.
Bright side? What matoko said:
DougJ
@Comrade Mary:
Fixed it.
Tony J
Chances are Palin will have to run, or she’ll be letting down the Primary-voting rubes she counts on to fund her celebrity lifestyle. They’ve convinced themselves that “Our Sarah” was their secret weapon in 2008, and the only thing that allowed ACORN to steal the election for the Islamofascists was McCain’s cowardly refusal to buck the Liberal Media by letting her off the leash to expose Obama as a whitey-hating sokshulist fag. If she doesn’t follow the story-arc set out for her by running – and winning, natch -against Obama in 2012, why, that would almost be treason, and might impact on book sales.
As I recently saw it put, “She annoys all the ‘right’ people”. Liberals are scared of her, dontchaknow?
If the GOP base was that crazy then, and is crazy enough right now to think that race-baiting and Randist theology are what the electorate want to hear from GOP candidates, what makes you think that they won’t be crazy enough in 2012 to mount a ‘Palin for Presnit’ insurgency against the ‘centre-left’ Republican Establishment?
Shorter – How does someone like Palin turn around to the mob and say “You know what, I don’t want to be your candidate, are we cool?” Or words to that effect.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Tony J:
Even after all this time, I’m still amazed at how much of the GOP/al-Foxeera-sphere’s agenda is based in pissing off (or what they imagine pisses off) “the left”. Laura Ingram wrote an entire book, which took some physical if not intellectual effort to type, based on this, and millions of people will buy it just to, in their minds, piss off liberals. I haven’t watched the Colbert interview yet. I was hoping he’d take her down, and according to all the links I’ve seen, he did. I’m looking forward to it.
or she’ll be letting down the Primary-voting rubes she counts on to fund her celebrity lifestyle. They’ve convinced themselves that “Our Sarah” was their secret weapon in 2008
Trig. “Our Sarah, she’s a Mom before she’s anything!” and she’ll always find time to throw them red meat.
JenJen
And another thing… what does “running” even mean to Palin? She’s re-written every rule. She’s a half-term quittin’ governor who says outrageously stupid and false things on a regular basis, and the media just laps it up.
Palin could “run” without really “running,” and I think we’d be foolish to think she can’t re-write the Presidential Election rules, too. I see the potential for a GOP Nominee that actually avoids all debate, and all un-friendly media, while throwing grenades all over the process. In the end, we might end up with an Obama landslide, and I’m all for that… it’s the aftermath I’m worried about.
McCain/Palin voters have been buttsore since November 2008, but I don’t think we’ve seen anything yet, compared to what a true Obama ass-kicking of Mama Grizzly Palin might look like.
matoko_chan
@DougJ: then you haven’t read enough. Kain and Douthat are more far toxic to conservative ethos than Rush and Beck and Levin……they pander to the base, tell them their rabidly insane ideas are not crazy, just different.
The truth is, there is a difference.
That false equivalence what enables Breitbart and Palin.
licensed to kill time
@Svensker:
Of course Dubya could never have come up with that phrase on his own, too nuanced. I remembered it vaguely from the No Child Left Behind boondoggle, but forgot Gerson was the culprit who coined it. It’s a shame that such a nicely crafted phrase was used in such a cynical way.
matoko_chan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: its now or never. she won’t run in 2016– she will be post-menopausal, and her base will be less (old white christian die-off) while there will be more anti-base (youth and minorities aging into the elctorate).
If we get through 2012 she’s done……at least until Bristol can run in 2020 on her Abstinence Only platform to be the Mama Grizzly President of Secessionist Jesusland, aka the New Confederacy of Texas, South Carolina and Missippi.
Brachiator
@JenJen:
Sarah Palin as a kind of political Brett Favre. Makes a crazy kind of sense.
If Palin running would guarantee an Obama landslide victory, then I say, “Run, Sarah, Run!”
This is all happily theoretical.
Still, in my nastiest, most cynical moments, I think that Palin represents something potentially malignant. There clearly are conservatives who think that they can use Palin as a convenient front to regain the Congress and perhaps even White House for Republicans.
Palin’s media appearances are controlled and scripted, and it is no coincidence that people like Bill Kristol or Ross Douthat regularly pop up to defend or to explain La Palin.
On the other hand, Palin has thoroughly eclipsed the guy who originally brought her to the party, John McCain and has somehow managed to recreate herself as the bridge between the Republican Party and the Tea Baggers.
If she did somehow manage to free herself from the clutches of her handlers and play for the direct acclamation of her base, who knows what might happen. But even here, I don’t see her going very far against Obama, unless the economy totally collapses.
Conor Friedersdorf
Doug,
The reason I’m looking for an alternative to Barack Obama is my growing disappointment in his extension of Bush era national security policies, and his frightening embrace of executive power, most notably the assertion of an ability to order the extra-judicial killing of American citizens abroad. There was a time when I thought that Newt Gingrich might run a libertarian campaign that repudiated that sort of thing, but obviously I was sorely mistaken. I hadn’t paid much attention to him since his Contract with America days, when he was more of a libertarian populist. Now he seems to be an anti-Muslim demagogue. Perhaps I should’ve known that already by virtue of other stuff he’s said? But I hadn’t seen that stuff. Now I have.
mclaren
There are no less frightening and noxious Republican candidates than Sarah Palin.
They’re all batshit insane.
This is what William F. Buckley Jr.’s demented rallying “stand athwart history and shout `Stop!'” has led too — the Republican party has turned into a raging lynch mob of crazies screaming for a return to the Confederacy.
Triassic Sands
Fixed. Popular or not, the truth is the truth.
LGRooney
@jrg: Comment of the day, in my book.