I’m all for Palin being the Republican nominee in 2012, but even for Halperin this is a stretch:
Palin is operating on a different plane, hovering higher than a mere celebrity, more buoyant than an average politician. Some of you are too young, or too forgetful, to recall the breathless fusses over Donald Trump and Warren Beatty when they toyed with presidential bids, or how much oxygen Ross Perot sucked up when he ran in 1992.
Perot did more than suck up oxygen, he captured nearly 20% of the popular vote. But he did this by pouring millions of his own dollars into a third-party general election campaign. What’s that got to do with Sarah Palin winning the Republican nomination (which is what the article is about)? I can’t see Palin spending too many of her own hard-earned ameros on a campaign. And Donald Trump and Warren Beatty? I remember their proposed candidacies well and they say more about a bored press corps than any kind of political realities.
Bret
So, Doug. As the Business and Economics editor for Balloon-Juice, does that mean that you’re going to make a string of dubiously sourced, mathematically and factually incorrect arguments on every subject from here on out?
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Bret:
My motto is “whatever the facts”.
BGinCHI
Jesus, Halperin is an idiot. Trump and Palin, ok; both hungry for attention and dough. But Beatty? I assumed he just did it to change the world and get more ass.
And why does Halperin always act like he’s the Daniel Schorr of Time?
4tehlulz
GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS
Zandar
Halperin is smoking something. The something is laced with something else.
The combination of the two has turned him into Rich Lowry.
Linda Featheringill
I remember Perot. I liked his charts.
Both The Donald and Sweet Knees ran for President? When? Where was I? In a coma?
[I guess they didn’t get very far.]
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Trump would never run. His casinos have gone bankrupt 3 different times. Why banks keep giving him money, I don’t know. With Trump, it was always about his ego. Beatty has a different problem. As DougJ knows, Beatty has a history of conquest that while not in Wilt Chamberlain’s league, was certainly lengthy.
Captain Haddock
Perot talked a lot, and with specific examples, about the economy. Palin is a dipshit of epic proportions, even by today’s media standards.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
DougJ:
my previous comment is awaiting moderation. Ugh!! Is the business that made Atlantic City and Las Vegas famous something that makes the comment moderation software go nuts?
WyldPirate
For the life of me, i can’t figure out how Mark Halperin has a job. He’s perhaps one of the biggest double-barreled dumbasses in the history of journalmalsim. I ranked at the bottom with the likes of Mike Allen, who, every time I see him on my teevee reminds me of a little kid who looks like he is about to piss his pants.
BGinCHI
Calvin, software, like David Vitter, has needs too.
Southern Beale
…hovering higher than a mere celebrity, more buoyant than an average politician …
DOWN BOY.
Someone has been dipping into the Palin Internet Porn files again.
lacp
So for Halperin, Palin is “hovering higher than a mere celebrity?” Why, he sounds like he’s seeing…..starbursts….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Linda Featheringill: Perot had a pretty good economic package, IIRC, that he commissioned from some economists and released without reading it. He was shocked to find out he had proposed a national gas tax.
the Trump boomlet, again IIRC, consisted of a Larry King interview and an oped by Ed Rollins (or someone who might as well be Ed Rollins). Wasn’t Beatty gonna save the Democratic Party from that awful Al “not a dime’s worth of difference” Gore back in 2000?
General Stuck
Halperin is so vain, he probly thinks this post is about him, about him.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Linda Featheringill:
They didn’t actually run, they did two or three interviews where they discussed running. With Beatty, it might have had something to do with that Bulworth movie he did.
Dave
I’m old enough to remember Trump and Beatty. Not too many people got worked up over those two. And comparing them with Perot, who shared a god-damn stage in Presidential debates and LED the polls at one point, is just ridiculous.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
I’ll get you out of moderation.
licensed to kill time
__
More powerful than a locomotive? Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound? Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a Palin, it’s SUPERSNOWBILLYSPARKLYGODBOTHERINGBARBIEGRISLY!
Who the hell elevates her to this status, hunh? HUNH?! Tell me that, Mr. Help-her-in!
Ash Can
Yep, sounds like someone’s suffering from a loss of blood flow to the brain due to, er, misdirection.
trollhattan
Jayzus, unless she becomes the exclusive blowstress to the Koch brothers, I can’t imagine even the snow grifter accumulating enough cash to make a real run at it. Didn’t she basically flunk the value voters straw poll this weekend? That’s not what I call tough competition for the “more buoyant” Sarah.
Omnes Omnibus
Boob joke?
Brachiator
There are few things I hate more than when pundits make shit up, and try to cover themselves by invoking the murky cloud of historical remembrance. Fortunately, anyone with two seconds, a video player and the Intertubes can easily discover that Halperin is blowing it out his ass, especially with respect to Warren Beatty, who was never really considered to be a serious candidate.
On the other hand, perhaps Perot’s paranoid riding off the rails and self-destruction might be a precursor of things to come for Palin. And then there is the little thing that even at his nuttiest, Perot was more competent than La Divine Sarah. Also, too.
Tancrudo
I remember the giant sucking sound perfectly well, but it wasn’t Perot sucking up oxygen.
It was the nation sucking in a quick breath after paroxysms of laughter at the comic relief candidate.
jl
I skimmed it, which is sufficient since as soon as you read the first half of any paragraph, your mind has already completed the predictable thought and all you have to do is look at the rest for fraction of a second.
Halperin and Palin are having a torrid scorching affair, and Halperin has fallen head over heals in lust/love, and has totally lost his head.
Or some one is shelling out ginormous payola so that he will write this kind of stuff. Truly ginormous. Retire in luxury in Monaco forever payola.
Any other ideas?
edit: Halperin didn’t mention that Perot was a egomaniac with crazy ideas, like Palin. Wonder why? Actually I find the ‘reasonable radical moderate’ schtick of Perot more frightening, but both would be dangerous in any federal office.
edit eidt: or is it ‘unreasonable radical moderate’, or ‘fanatical radical reasonable person with wrong ideas of what is totally common sense obvious’ Or takfiir moderation, or ‘Extreme Broderism’. Whatever, I didn’t like Perot either.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
google leads to Slate:
Since Arianna Huffington floated the idea of a Warren Beatty presidential campaign last week, the actor’s ambitions have been the summer’s most delectable political story. The jokes abound: what Warren would do on the Oval Office carpet, whom President Beatty would hire as his intern, etc. The 62-year-old Beatty has stayed virtually silent, but his friends are encouraging speculation: “Warren has been consulting with Democratic and Reform Party activists,” they say. “Warren is taking this very seriously.” (Click here for Jacob Weisberg’s revelation that Jesse Ventura may be courting Beatty for the Reform Party nomination.) Wife Annette Bening, they report, is enthusiastic.
Annette Bening is the only name in that paragraph that doesn’t prompt a scornful eyeroll from me.
Gravenstone
Saw a snippet on Yahoo news earlier, talking about how we would be wise not to “underestimate Sarah Palin”. The gist was that the media hangs on her every word (well, her ghost Twitterer’s every word) and that we feeble plebes would do well to get taken in along with the media. Fuck the fucking “media”. Whoever said the American epitaph would be “Killed By a Story Arc” didn’t know the half of it…
wasabi gasp
What is that, a Squeaky Fromme poem?
cleek
i gotta say, i’m interested in seeing if Palin really is trying to run a non-traditional direct-to-the-people kind of campaign. if her avoidance of the media isn’t simply cowardice but is also an attempt to simply bypass political journalism (most of which, as we all know, sucks) and go right to the people, it could be revolutionary.
i don’t want her to win, but i’d like to see how far she can take this. like, maybe she can serve as a proof-of-concept, and a better candidate can improve upon her scheme.
Ash Can
@jl: Maybe Palin’s honked off that O’Donnell’s getting all the ink these days, and has promised Halperin, er, favors in return for helping her get her mug back on the first page.
4tehlulz
@Ash Can: Thanks for the image.
freelancer
@wasabi gasp:
More like Creed Lyrics:
Can you take me higher? To a place where Linemen see?
trollhattan
@Tancrudo:
Luckily we had Dana Carvey, who was to Perot what Tiny Fey is to Caribou Barbie.
Omnes Omnibus
@wasabi gasp: Where would you like your new internet to be sent?
JPL(formerly demo woman)
@Zandar: I think he laced it with C..I..A..L..I..S. Rich Lowry probably suggested it.
fourlegsgood
Halperin is a douchebag. kaithxbai
Seriously.
scav
Aaaahhhh, maybe I’m seeing the thread. Cougers. Pumas. He’s aiming for the top job as political correspondent at Tiger Beat.
wengler
Sarah Palin is telling the faithful to vote for her approved candidates and her candidates are winning Republican primaries. I don’t remember any of those other 3 with that sort of power.
That Sarah is an empty-minded slogan spouter doesn’t really matter. The Republican Party has no other agenda than to take power and use it to lavish money upon their friends and poverty among their enemies. The whole ACORN episode was pure projection. Sarah and friends think everyone thinks they way they do so taking governmental power is akin to breaking open the ATM.
Punchy
I find this funny, but more importantly, does Sully?
jibeaux
I’ve been thinking pretty wistfully about Perot lately. Yes, he was a nut, but the charts were interesting and that whole “On Wings of Eagles” story is stranger than fiction. Nuts today don’t even bother to break out a nice full color pie chart and say, “here’s what we’re going to cut so that we can keep all the tax cuts without running a deficit. I’m sure you’ve heard that we support both tax cuts and avoiding deficit spending. As you can see, defense is down 25%, and Medicare and Social Security are each at, oh, about two-thirds of what they are now while more people go into them every day and the boomers are just getting set to retire, so let me be the first to tell you, it’s going to be ugly.” I would respect that for its honestly, which is why you will never see anyone doing it. They just act like blocking food safety regulation has something the hell to do with it, and people fall for that crap.
jl
I was in that thar danged ekonomks skool when Mister Ross was running.
Gol gwarsh doggone dang it, did that crazy little rooster go off his rocker then the pressure was on, if I recall correctlike.
What I noticed, was a guy who claimed to run a major corporation, which surely had to manage its finances, saying that obviously the most important thing in the whole world was for the US to pay of its debt as quickly as possible.
I guess that’s why he was running, no one would listen to his ravings at his business anymore (or did they chase off the old crazy coot before he ran for office?).
I wonder if Palin will perform like Perot in that respect, if she runs.
Me, I think there is a very good chance that Palin is using the Gingrich approach to statemanship: running for the money is more important than actually running for office or, for that matter, actually doing or thinking about anything.
Maybe that is why Newt has gone on a truly wildass crazy town barnstorming tour, he suspects Palin will try to replace him as Grifter in Chief of the gullible marks.
jl
@cleek:
“i gotta say, i’m interested in seeing if Palin really is trying to run a non-traditional direct-to-the-people kind of campaign.”
She would stiff too many people (conwise) for that to work, I think.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@cleek:
That sums up my feelings exactly. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
bootsy
I sure hope Mistress of Her Domain O’Donnell doesn’t walk in on Halperin while he’s gazing lovingly at an image of his Sarah. Ohh, the stickiness.
Chyron HR
@wengler:
Except when they don’t, which seems to be about half the time. (Disclaimer: I have not looked it up.)
Now, you or I could hand out endorsements at random without knowing anything about the candidates or the issues and also have a 50% average, but we are not MAMA GRIZZLIES, and therefore should not be considered serious candidates for President.
Davis X. Machina
It’s the Pat Buchanan con — make a big splash (Tea Party rallies/NH primary) speech, make a lot of noise (VP run/1992 Houston convention speech), spin off/coopt/found your own party (Tea Party/post-Perot reform party) for its fund-raising and get-on-talk-show power, then live on TV and make pots of money till the heat-death of the sun.
Caribou Barbie’s leaving stage two for state three.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chyron HR:
Me neither, but if one were so inclined, one would also have to consider the many times Palin endorsed the Establishment candidate instead of the one closer to her own crazy vibe– New Hampshire, Arizona– IIRC FL gov race and California?
Amir_Khalid
Some years ago, there was a short-lived movement to draft Bruce Springsteen to run for the US Senate. Which the Boss himself quashed by declaring, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” Anybody here remember that?
That movement would have been on the some level of credibility as those mooted candidacies for The Donald or Warren Beatty (although I rather fancy the idea of First Lady Annette Bening).
As for Sarah Palin — in her time on the national stage, all she has won is millions of dollars in other people’s money. And so far, all her endorsees have won are primaries. Let them win actual seats in Congress before anyone proclaims her a force in American politics.
SIA
Slightly OT, but Obama is kicking ass in the economics forum on CNBC with John Harwood (shown on MSNBC at 3:00). Reminds me of his little trip to the Congressional GOP meeting where he wiped the floor with them. I love it that this guy can talk at length on any subject. Wow. Just wow.
/Obot
Rosalita
nevermind, messed up
The Dangerman
I wonder if I’d run into copyright issues if I had that Japanese Sex Doll company (not that I’d know anything about that) make me several gross (pun intended) of Sarah Dolls; I could sell them to Wingers and dumbfuck reporters and make a fortune (and keep them preoccupied, never to be heard from again).
Rosalita
@bootsy:
Maybe she could change him into a toad
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SIA: How many teleprompters does he have
cleek
Joe Walsh says he’s “thinking about” running again.
i hope not. i don’t want to know what kind of crazy politics goes on in his head. don’t sully Funk 49 !
kommrade reproductive vigor
@freelancer: Nuh-uh. The Police:
She came all wrapped in cardboard,
All pink and shrivelled down
A breath of air was all she needed
To make her lose that frown
I took her to the bedroom
And pumped her with some life,
And later in a moment
That girl became my wife
And so I sit her in the corner
And sometimes stroke her hair
And when I’m feeling naughty
I blow her up with air
She’s cuddly and she’s bouncy,
She’s like a rubber ball,
I bounce her in the kitchen
And I bounce her in the hall
bootsy
@Rosalita: Or a frog prince, since he’s already the King of Stooges :)
SIA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think he was reading notes off the palm of his hand.
cleek
Halperin is close to a full understanding of Sarah Palin. but he’s not quite there.
( yes, i link to myself. is that a crime, Miss O’Donnell ? )
ricky
I did not detect anything in Mr. Halperin’s work which reminded me of Stretch. And he even has his own TV show now. No more Dances with Rove. Unless he’s a guest.
Cacti
@cleek:
I don’t believe for a second that she’s in it for anything but the money.
LittlePig
@General Stuck: And General Stuck for the win!
Well played, sir or madam, well played.
ricky
Do we know if Rich Lowery is planning a version of Cougar School starring Palin and O’Donnell?
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I still have trouble seeing her campaigning at all. Running for President is hard work, and we know she’s averse to hard work. Hell, she’s averse to the difficult task of taking a birth control pill every day.
Punchy
Clearly that problem runs in the family.
Cheryl from Maryland
I thought the giant sucking sound was everyone laughing at Perot’s running mate, Admiral Stockdale (and we miss you Phil Hartman).
Wile E. Quixote
It looks like Halperin is smoking the same shit that Assrocket was when he wrote this little gem:
Then there’s this idiotic sentence:
Yeah right Mark. Who among Time’s rapidly shrinking readership is too young to remember either one of these events? I’d be willing to bet that there are more Time readers who don’t remember these events due to the onset of Alzheimer’s than there are Time readers who are too young to remember them.
I could continue mocking Halperin and Time but I have work to do and let’s face it, The Onion already delivered an intergalactic class bitch-slapping in their own inimitable style.
daryljfontaine
@Omnes Omnibus: Not necessarily a boob joke.
D
ricky
Halperin is such as old geezer. Palin has already been around for two years on the national stage. She is getting to be old news. O’Donnell is Palin without the baggage. Or stretch marks.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@SIA: I thought you meant Halperin. And I thought, “Wouldn’t they be all smudged?”
David
I wonder if Joe McGinnis got any good dirt on Grandma Grizzly.
SIA
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Yeah, kind of smeary and gross. Eeeewwww. I just made myself sick.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
As a 9 y/o, I was very impressed with Ross Perot’s charts, and how he actually showed his work. I was 9, so I had no idea whether or not he was telling the truth, but at least he was brave enough to get on tv with some shiny charts and talk about policy.
Even my inner 9 y/o can see through Palin as a sloganeering huckster.
Pavlov's Dog
During the ’92 campaign, I was working for a large Dallas based company in a small office they were shutting down in Houston. They had launched a hostile takeover of a bankrupt private company so all the executives were camping out in my office space in Houston to keep things hush-hush. Perot was a creation of the Dallas billionaire boys club, who also gave us Bush II.
I noticed the constant chatter about going to this Perot event, meetup from the night before, etc. It was takeover by day, events for Perot by night. I finally pulled one of the main players aside and asked him why they were willing to throw Bush under the bus paving the way for Clinton as Perot had no chance. He gave me the naive child look, and then said Bush had betrayed the wealthy by raising taxes. Then he went on about how the Republican party was taking all this religion and abortion wing too seriously as players, when the only players that counted was the wealthy. It was their party, bought and paid for, and they needed to teach the social issues side of the party a lesson.
Elizabelle
@SIA:
Would that be the same CNBC forum the New York Times has helpfully titled this:
Disappointed Supporters Question Obama
Lead story and the lead paragraph online is: “In a live televised session, President Obama heard from several people who said they’d expected more from him.”
Sounds like that no count Nobama can’t do nuthin right. Nuthin.
Here’s the reader comments thread, 331 hidden away on the Politics blog (from an earlier account of the CNBC appearance written by Michael Shear and someone else, now rewritten for the front page with even more Obama-bashing and attributed to Real Reporter Sheryl Gay Stoltenberg).
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/disappointed-supporters-question-obama/?sort=recommended
PS: You will find mucho kindred spirits if you sort the reader comments by “recommended.” Most of them belong on Balloon Juice.
And they have way more insight than Stoltenberg.
donquijoterocket
@Captain Haddock:
And whatever she gives for a reason she will not run because to do so forfeits the ticket wingnut welfare bought for her on the gravy train she now rides.No more book signings and probably a reduction in speakers fees, and while Fux noise plays pretty fast and loose with ethical standards even they might balk at extending a contract for an actual candidate as an “analyst”.Plus she has a monumental enough ego and just enough native cunning to know an actual campaign would expose,once and for all, the full epic proportion of her dipshitedness thus taking the luster off her golly gee whiz ah shucks persona and her king or queenmaker status.
DC10
@ricky: Exactly. Hmm… I wonder how long Half Governor Palin would support O’Donnell if a meme was started to pit them against each other, since their supposed physical attractiveness seems to be the primary reason for their popularities. It’s obviously not their brain power. O’Donnell is younger and “available” with no kids. (I assume she’s also more attractive, but I’m a woman who’s never understood what men find so attractive about Palin). How long before Palin would turn “mean girl” on O’Donnell if she felt she was being replaced as the “hot” one? I say her ego would dissolve the “sisterhood” quickly and hilarity would ensue.
MikeJ
@DC10: Start calling O’Donnell a “young Sarah Palin.”
Chuck Butcher
Huh, and here I thought what Palin was is a celebrity….?
kevina (BAD DAWGZ)
Thing about Perot is that, before going a bit, ert, nuts, and “temporarily” dropping out, he was either LEADING or tied in the polls. For a brief moment, he was a serious, legit figure.
Not so for Trump and Beatty, not in politics anyhow.
DC10
@MikeJ: Oh snap – I Like it!
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Wile E. Quixote:
Win.
John Bird
Halperin is right: there’s a lot of evidence that suggests that Sarah Palin’s undeclared presidential bid is as serious and promising as Donald Trump’s.
Cris
It must be very strange to be Sarah Palin. She is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of her time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
Davis X. Machina
@MikeJ: Ooooh, snap, that’s vicious, and funny. You should try out for “Project Runway”. Catty like that needs a reward.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Davis X. Machina:
This. Caribou Barbie’s in it for the dough, nothing more.
Bill Murray
@kevina (BAD DAWGZ): didn’t he say he dropped out because GW Bush was going to ruin his daughters wedding or kidnap or something like that?
I quite liked John Anderson’s run in 1980, but he faded pretty badly after a good start — he polled 25% when he announced but ended at 7%
priscianus jr
You heard it here first. Palin hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the GOP presidential nomination. The TP types , or a lot of them anyway, still love her but even they don’t want her to run. But the media will never give up on her. Never.