I’ve come to realize that it’s pathetic for me to to hope that Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann will get into the Republican primary. My support for anything that pisses off David Brooks is no better than conservatives’ support or anything that pisses off liberals. Anyway, I suspect that Steve M. has it right on Palin ’12:
If I had to guess, I’d say she’s never going to announce a run, she’s never going to announce that she’s not going to run, she’s going to threaten to jump into the race until the last conceivable second, and even then she’s going to threaten to declare herself a candidate at a brokered convention as long as the race is in flux. Oh, and she’ll also never declare herself a third-party candidate, but she’ll never stop floating rumors that she might become one.
Amir_Khalid
Nor are you waiting on a friend, come to think of it.
Yutsano
Grifters gotta grift. And Sarah will always do what is best for Sarah. Although I could see her trying for Senate in Arizona all off a sudden after she’s soaked her rubes flirting for the Big Chair.
fraught
she really expect to be a draft candidate. It’s in her make believe world. Such a passive-aggressive …can I use a t— word here?
Violet
I just figured you were trying to help out popcorn companies.
@Yutsano:
The thought of her running for Senate in Arizona, after her video performance debacle after the Giffords shooting is mind boggling. Even more so if Giffords decided to get in the race.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Steve M. – dingdingding! We have a winner!
The Dangerman
I don’t think one can ride a bus for week (or whatever the length is) with the Constitution on the side or float a 2 hour documentary debuting in Iowa and not be forced to answer the question someplace along the way; sooner or later, it’s piss or get off the pot. I think she’s pissing.
As for being the beneficiary of a brokered convention, I want a little of whatever she is smoking.
phantomist
Well, if you weren’t also afraid to ask the opinions of those who risk there lives in the ‘pro-American’ parts of this great country, you might find real answers.
Ash Can
@Violet: Unfortunately, I don’t see how Giffords could recover from her injury to that extent. I’d be thrilled and delighted if she did, but I don’t think it’s within the bounds of realism. And especially without her in that race, the wackos in AZ, of which there seem to be plenty, could be enough to put Palin in office.
That said, I think Steve M. touches on the crucial point — Palin will always go for whatever gig allows her to rake in the cash and stay in the spotlight without having to do any actual work for it. If it shakes out as he describes, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Violet
@The Dangerman:
She refuses to talk to any media except for a few folks at Fox. Who’s going to ask her? George Bush was able to hand pick people for his rallies and screen all questions when he was running for President. Sarah can do the same.
Yutsano
@phantomist: Okay…
@Ash Can: Giffords is already shocking shit out of her doctors every day, but she will be very lucky if she can even return to the House as it is. The rigors of a Senate race so soon after the shooting would be too much of a danger. I’m hopeful the Dems have someone waiting in the wings somewhere, like maybe the mayor of Tucson.
The Dangerman
@Violet:
You’re right; it won’t be from the typical media. But, someplace along the way, while on camera, she’ll get the question; a donor, a fan, someone. She can’t just fake it (insert “When Harry Met Sally” reference here).
Violet
@Ash Can:
I don’t think Giffords will recover enough, soon enough anyway, to run. It was just kind of grim speculation about the craziness factor if she did.
@The Dangerman:
She’ll have prepared answers, like “I’m just happy to be out here meetin’ the great citizens of [early primary state] and seein’ this great country of ours!” Fans will be thrilled to have her “answer” any kind of question. Small donors the same. Big money donors will understand her need to time any announcement, and I’m sure she’ll reassure them of whatever they need to hear to get them to part with their money. Grifters gotta grift.
Groucho48
There’s no way Palin will run for the Senate. She needs to be in control. She couldn’t handle being the lowest little kid on the totem pole and not get her own way on everything.
ABL
Lawrence O’Donnell nailed it the other night.
She’s not running. Grifters gonna grift.
Jim Newell
But are you waiting on a FRIEN– oh, damn, fuck you commenter #1.
phantomist
@Yutsano:
Shoot, I must have lived such a doggoned sheltered life as a normal, independent hard workin’ American , schooled with only public education and a lowly state university degree, because obviously I haven’t learned enough to dismiss common sense.
jheartney
If she thought being Governor of a sleepy statehouse was too hard, that’s nothing on being a Senator. She’d have to read legislation, deal with constituents, logroll with the other senators, etc. IOW she’d have to Do The Job. No way that’s for her.
Steve M has it right. She’ll never do the work it’d take to assemble a campaign, even to the extent of getting the filing paperwork done. Instead she’ll hang about like a miasma, pretending she might run in order to collect whatever attention/grift that she can.
Mike
This whole episode reminds me of this woman I dated a few years ago. She showed interest initially, then backed off, which is fine, but then she kept on contacting me… like she was interested. The first couple of times I pursued, but the same backoff occurred again, so I realized it was some weird attention game or something. She was clearly not interested, yet wanted to appear otherwise for whatever reason. Regardless, I stopped playing whatever game that was and moved on. Every so often, she *still* tries to contact me occasionally years after the fact. Crazy stuff.
Anyways, this Palin stuff reminds me a lot of that woman. The same false pretense, and the same attempt to bring suck everyone into that false pretense for an unclear reason.
Yutsano
@phantomist: WTF does that even mean? Is my wingnut translator on the fritz or something?
phantomist
@Yutsano:
Sorry.
That was almost a direct quote from Palin.
WTF indeed.
balconesfault
I still believe Sarah will jump into it. Yes, she’s in it for the money, but moreover, she really believes that she has some kind of calling from God. Doubt that calling at your peril.
nwithers
Sara Palin – Schrodinger’s candidate, forever in the box
Violet
@balconesfault:
Her narcissism and grifter natures are in direct opposition to each other. She thinks she’s got a higher calling (Queen Esther), but she also wants the money. Can she do both? If not, which will win?
Honestly, I don’t know.
Yutsano
@phantomist: Okay then the issue is my snark needs recalibration. It still makes no sense even (or especially) knowing the source.
phantomist
@Yutsano:
I think that’s ridiculous. That’s one of those things, where that issue…that I don’t read balloon juice, or that I’m not informed, it’s one of those questions where I like to turn that around and ask the other commenters, ‘Why would it be that there is that perception that I don’t read balloon juice?'”
Yutsano
@Violet: It’s not like Esther was a poor woman herself IIRC. Plus she ended up marrying quite well in the end. Sister Sarah has no such luck. And yet on some strange level I’d still do Todd. I know I know, bizarre.
Rihilism
@nwithers: Fantastic analogy! Well done…
Murc
I honestly can’t think of any good reason for her NOT to run. Is there any downside for her, no matter the outcome? Any at all?
Sidebar: What I’m looking forward to the most is, IF she declares, John McCain will run as fast as he can to endorse whoever her chief rival is, and will campaign relentlessly for them. McCain is all about vengeance and payback, and boy, he must have a special list made JUST for Sarah.
Spaghetti Lee
I will maintain that she has a strong aversion to anything that looks like work, political campaigns require work, and on the wingnut media circuit she will remain forevermore. The pettiness and paranoid don’t help either.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Esther didn’t have much choice with the marriage. She was abducted into the king’s harem and then essentially raped and forced to marry him. I studied the book of Esther at one point and was incredibly angry at how they glossed over that bit.
Yutsano
@Violet: That sort of thing wasn’t very uncommon back in Esther’s day unfortunately. The concept of female sexual autonomy is a very recent sociological phenomenon. But hey if that’s what Bible Spice wants to be vaya con Dios.
hilts
Palin Bachmann 2012
Chris Matthews’ Wet Dream Special
Ghanima Atreides
meh.
She is runnin, but im not sure for what….it might be for the VP slot.
She aims to give everyone the big middle finger.
If she doesnt run, then shes nuthin’ after 2012.
She will jump at the last possible minnit, unless she has a back door deal to ride someone else’s ticket.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Obama made fun of her, in the lightest, most subtle way possible, and it burns her.
Rove and the wide boiz used her brutally right up to midterms and then threw her under the bus.
She is creature of primordial and savage needs, bottomless greed and endless vanity…and its all about teh revenge at this point.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Oh, yeah, I know it was common back then. But what angered me is that studying it now, the people who led the discussion glossed over it without acknowledging the horror of it and discussing the cultural issues of that time. I was so angry I could hardly sit through that discussion. I was there with a friend, which was the only reason I didn’t leave. Didn’t want to create a scene.
Yutsano
@Violet: Okay then the fury is definitely righteous. You should at least put the violence against her person in context or else it’s pretty much meaningless. Plus I’ve noticed discussions like that just get dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant. Ugh.
Jenny
See the thing is Palin can do this tease for the next 2 to 3 election cycles. Just like Newt has done the past 15 years.
Cliff
My support for anything that pisses off David Brooks is no better than conservatives’ support or anything that pisses off liberals.
No, it’s okay, see, because David Brooks is a Grade A Douche Canoe who gets paid a ridiculous amount of money to write stupid, stupid things.
Fuck that guy.
Viva BrisVegas
@Yutsano:
Exactly. It’s not difficult to predict what Palin is going to do, you only have to follow the money. If there is money in running, Palin will run. If there is more money in pretending to run, Palin will pretend to run.
She is to money what pigs are to truffles.
James E. Powell
@Viva BrisVegas:
Palin wants money, no doubt, but she also wants the crowds. All politicians love adulation, but Palin’s craving is intense. Even in friendly settings, she rambles incoherently and speaks like an idiot about very serious matters. She must know, at some level, that she is making an ass of herself. All the people who mock her or roll their eyes cannot be wrong. But she cannot help herself.
People give her credit for being shrewd or clever, but that’s not it at all. She is just raw, shameless hunger for attention.
SRW1
@phantomist:
Please stop the torture, or at least preface it with a warning sign. You’re getting my axons all twisted.
pluege
it would be really great if people just stopped talking about palin, because palin is a pathetic disgusting example of the human species that no one needs in their lives and it would be best if palin was left to slither back to her pathetic disgusting life on her own without us knowing anything about it.
bob h
We have the latest Republican perversion of our democratic process: the faux campaign which supports a money-making brand name.
Nick
A rival campaign messed with Palin’s rollout last week using TuckerC. Her top speechwriter/ghostwriter hasn’t tweeted for 9 days and may have been fired. Palin should still be running after she hires someone new, and in fact is now the frontrunner. She’s buying up the Breitbart crew. What good does ignoring her do?
Richard Fox
Palin has boxed herself into a corner where she has to run. The fadeout into obscurity after that asinine “blood libel” crap wasn’t working for her, so she has to maintain $relevance$ and this is just the ticket.
Personally I find Palinism a hateful, hateful phenomenon and the thought of her running gives me a rash.
moonbat
To paraphrase from Miller’s Crossing: She’s a
grifter, just like her brother. They probably
had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and
they’ve already spawned little grifter kids–
Pongo
@Violet: Are you kidding? Her behavior after the Giffords shooting made her an icon in Arizona. These are the same people who re-elected a barely literate woman to be their governor because she’s just mean enough and who overwhelmingly support a textbook-case psychopath for their sheriff. Combine that with their idiotic gun laws and codified hatred of brown people and Sarah’s a shoe-in for Senator from AZ.
Navigator
Palin will promote herself but cannot run, as she cannot risk another loss.
Right now she’s another glorious Lost Cause, but the base will not revere a proven loser.
RossInDetroit
After all of this hype, if she doesn’t run I think she loses a lot of credibility with the credulous people who think she’s an actual politician. It’s now or never for her or the game is up.
RossInDetroit
One gambit that might work would be to start a campaign, reap the $$ and attention then drop out for honorable or sympathy inducing reasons. Family issues. The good of the country. I can make more of a difference doing XX instead. That would garner enough attention to keep her going while not requiring that she do actual work.
jheartney
@Navigator:
I think that’s true, but I also think she won’t run because she hasn’t got the discipline to put together even a half-assed campaign.
If you recall, no one can schedule her for anything because she backs out at the last minute, and from the looks of things this bus tour may or may not end up going anywhere – there’s no published itinerary, and the suggested area she’s going (the northeast) doesn’t make any sense. As Larry O’Donnell points out, she hasn’t dropped her Fox gig, as would be expected if she was anything other than a fake candidate a la Trump.
Fred
She is not running. Full stop. She never had any intention of running. Full stop. I was saying the same about Chump and none of you listened then either. So once again I just shake my head at all you numb skulls who get sucked in by all this nonsense every single time.
So congratulations on being turned into Palins bitch!
You people are like stupid fish that keep getting hooked and after you get thrown back in the water you will turn around and snap at the first baited hook you see once again. You never learn. Does not matter if it is faux presidential candidates faux manufactured controversies. You take the bait every single time.
And you wonder why the MSM is so full of lies. Look in the mirror. It’s because of people like you who believe it over and over again.
NamelessGenXer
One polling scare and thirty-four months ago, John McCain inflicted on this continent a desperation move, conceived in cynicism, and dedicated to the proposition that all women shall vote for a token VP candidate and also too that high-end Saks suits and Wal-Mart clearance are created equal.
Now I, Sarah Palin, am engaged in a Great Grifting Scheme, testing whether dumpy white Christian women, seething with vile racist hatred, can be fleeced of their Gubmint Soshulist Security checks. We are met at a great fundraising event of that scheme. I have come to dedicate a portion of SarahPAC proceeds, as proof positive that those who here give their cash, do so that my daughter may have unlimited cosmetic surgery and her own reality show. It is altogether fitting and proper that us Real ‘mercans®—yes, even those who don’t have their own personal Witch Doctors—should do this.
But, in a larger sense, Charlie, I cannot dedicate, I cannot consecrate, I cannot hallow this ground without demonstrable profit. The decrepit white Christian men, living and dead, who struggled to get up that hill in their free Medicaid scooters, have consecrated it, far above my expectation of the gate receipts. The world will little note, nor long remember the nonsensical word salad that consistently spews from my Twitter account, but it can never forget how much money I made here.
It is for us the wealthy, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who pay me have thus far so nobly advanced. It is instead rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining until my Greed Tour is over—that from these ignorant rubes I take increased donations to that cause for which they give the last full measure of their measly bank accounts—that I here highly resolve that these rubes shall not have contributed in vain—that Sarah Palin, under the Warmongering God of Joel’s Army, shall give a new birth to Fascism—and that government of the non-believers, by Tax-Exempt Big Oil, for the sake of Sarah Palin’s personal net worth, shall not perish from the earth.
Fred
@The Dangerman: Oy Vey. She is on the road selling books and videos. Speaking engagements. Paid endorsments. Whatever makes money. Just follow the money. Is it so hard to understand???
Sounds to me like you will be one of the ones stupid enough to go out there and buy whatever she is selling. So the fact she is keeping this thing hanging out there is more profitable for her.
Once again, is it so hard to understand???
RossInDetroit
@Fred:
You’re the one who’s not paying attention. Nobody here actually expects her to hold office – or do actual work of any kind – again. The question is whether she will have a campaign for her own purposes. These are different things. if you can’t keep up, take notes.
shortstop
@RossInDetroit: Sometimes I think that, but other times I ponder the fact that feeling like perpetual victims is their idea of an orgasmic state. If she says she doesn’t run because godless liberals, the communist media and the Republican establishment are all joining forces to keep her down, she might be able to get a little more play* among that credulous base.
*euphemism for cash
shortstop
@NamelessGenXer: Oh, splendid! Well done.
James E. Powell
@Fred:
You know that part where you compared me to a stupid fish? That was when I really understood that you were better than me.
Fred
@RossInDetroit: Can YOU keep up?
In order to run a campaign there are some practical things you need. Certain types of high level advisors. Campaign advisors. You can’t just throw this stuff together at the last minute either.
Still paying attention or has the ADHD kicked in. You want me to say….it…slower …..with ….simpler….words? How about pretty pictures and video?!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/43189038#43189038
Still with us or still with the walking zombie know nothings?
Yutsano
@RossInDetroit: She does have a rather convenient out there in having a special needs child. Will she use that? Probably. She hasn’t been above using him as a prop for her plans before.
@Fred: Make your point without being a smarmy asshole some time. You might just actually be persuasive.
Fred
@James E. Powell: Glad we are on the same page for a change.
Fred
@Yutsano: Duly noted and promptly ignored.
The stupid it burns and I won’t go out of my way to warm that over and make it seem warm and fuzzy. If I think you are a fucking idiot for believing whatever horseshit the media feeds you day in and day out then I will call you a fucking idiot.
Yutsano
@Fred: As expected. But hey enjoy your certitude, it can sometimes be a lonely place.
Fred
@Yutsano: Always happy to hear from all my fans. Over and over again. Just like their ability to take the media bait. Over and over again.
Hugs and kisses.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/43189038#43188972
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jO2dScuNnDI
RossInDetroit
@Fred:
Go away. Stay away.
That is all.
uptown
That’s the nice thing about the direction the Republican Party has headed. It attracts the biggest con artists and freeloaders out there, and all they care about is grabbing the most money from their supporters/marks that they can.