Mar
11
Would Reagan Vote For Palin
Filed Under American Politics | 16 Comments
This is a good article from a Reagan biographer, Steven Hayward, not so much for what it says about Palin, but the insight it gives into Ronald Reagan. Moreso than the article (which should be read first), is this interesting subsequent question and answer session that Hayward conducts with his readers.
A wonky day on the blogosphere and I’m too tired for wonking, so ‘m afraid this is all I can leave you with today.
Feb
25
I read these Andrew Sullivan commentary on the resignation of Sarah Palin’s spokesperson, Meghan Stapleton and I’m struggling too see how Andrew Sullivan uses this Stapleton quote:
“Earlier this week, I handed Governor Palin my resignation, effective the end of this month. While I had hoped to work together on so many more projects, time with my precious 2-year-old has been further minimized with the whirlwind commitments of all things Palin. I have done my best to scale back, but Isabella is now resorting to hiding my BlackBerry, and she shouldn’t grow up begging for a mother to start acting like a mother.”
to be able to make this point:
Meghan Stapleton, the most loyal of all Palin’s aides, has now quit. She was the most loyal of the loyal, the most inner of the inner circle. In the end, even the closest aides cannot keep telling the kind of lies that Palin demands of them. Money quote, which surely reflects back on Palin’s decision to launch a national campaign, a book tour and a cable news career while having custody of an infant with Down Syndrome:
Now as he himself repeatedly tells us, Andrew Sullivan is a very smart man. And I’m just a dumb Palin-supporting conservative. So obviously he knows best, but I’m just not seeing the logical journey he made in this instance.
Feb
14
The Right Experience To Be President
Filed Under American Politics | 43 Comments
ABC News/ Washington Post recently conducted a poll looking at Sarah Palin and the Tea Partys. The big story coming out of the poll regarded the perception of Palin’s readiness to be President. Only 26% of those polloed thought she had the necessary qualifications to be President whilst a large 71% felt she didn’t. Even more worrying was the fact that only 46% of Republicans felt she had the necessary qualifications.
Now there’s no way to spin this as a positive, those numbers are going to have to improve drastically if she is to have a chance to win the Presidency. The question is, can they? I’ve always thought that Obama probably had the same problems at the start of his candidacy, that potential voters were unsure about him too, but I haven’t found a poll that looks at the issue of Obama’s qualifications prior to the Democratic primaries. Until now thanks to Conservatives4Palin who link to a CBS poll taken six months before the Iowa caucus that kicked off the Democratic primary season. It’s an interesting comparison:
Qualified to be President?
Palin – 26%
Obama – 29%
Not qualified to be President:
Palin – 71%
Obama – 51%
Considered qualified by members of candidates own party:
Palin – 46%
Obama – 41%
The point of this post is not to try and project that just because Obama had similar numbers, that Palin can follow the same trajectory that Obama did, but just to observe that considerations of a person’s qualifications to be President this far ahead of an election mean very little. There are differences: Palin’s unqualified numbers are much higher than Obama’s and that suggests that more people are aware of Palin than they were of Obama and have made up their mind about her. Not good for Palin. On the other hand, Palin is still more than two years away from a potential first primary which gives her plenty of time to affect her numbers positively. The Obama poll however was taken only six months before his primary season.
The big difference however may well be the role of the media. Obama’s candidacy was one in which the MSM became invested in and supported. Initially, it was to create an opponent to Hillary. There’s nothing more boring than a coronation. And following Obama’s success in the primaries, the media bought into a number of aspects of his candidacy. The desire for the first black President, the underdog nature of his campaign and others. Palin on the other hand is likely to have to gain people’s trust despite the media who are determined to undermine her whenever possible.
Palin’s path to the Presidency will be a tough one should she decide to go that route. But precedence now shows that just because people don’t think you have the necessary experience this early in the process doesn’t mean that the impossible can’t become probable.
Feb
8
Talk About Jumping The Shark
Filed Under Uncategorized | 35 Comments
Sarah Palin wrote some crib notes on her hand (five words) and the left wing blogosphere and media who fete the President who can’t speak a coherent public statement without having every word spelt out for him by a teleprompter find it a compelling story. Andrea Mitchell calls it “different rules for different folks”. You can say that again.
And once again, a complete failure to understand Palin’s ordinariness. Scribbled notes versus a speech written by writers on a teleprompter.
I must get round to watching it. Andrew Sullivan calls it:
the most electrifying speech I have heard from a leader of the GOP since Reagan.
Jan
11
Fair And Balanced: You Betcha!
Filed Under Uncategorized | 15 Comments
Palin signs on with Fox. A recipe to make liberal heads explode. Good for her, make money while you can.
Nov
26
Too Good For Words
Filed Under American Politics | 36 Comments
Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann will be two of the speakers at the first National Tea Partry Convention in February:
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) will speak at the first-ever National Tea Party Convention this upcoming February.
The announcement of plans for the conservative lawmaker to attend the Tennessee event came from Tea Party organizer Sherry Phillips via Twitter Tuesday.
Bachmann, who has emerged as a champion of the Tea Party movement, will join ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at the convention for the “purpose of networking and supporting the movements’ multiple organizations principle goals.” Palin will be the “special keynote speaker” at the event, which is taking place at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee.
Wingnut heaven; liberal hell.
On Michele Bachmann. Whatever one thinks of her, she is an excellent self-publicist. She’s really making a name for herself in this Obama age.
Nov
20
Gaining
Filed Under American Politics | 3 Comments
Sarah Palins favourables before the release of her book were getting worse. But as Politico note, her book tour has the vibe of a political campaign. I’ve always felt that a Truman-esque appeal directly to the people would be her best chance of increasing her favourable ratings. By going direct to the public and taking the media, who are determined to nobble her, out of the equation, the public get an unfiltered look at Palin. So the post book tour polls on Palin will be interesting. Has she been able to change opinion about her outside of the Washington filter (they’re still complaining about the lack of an index – how does anyone take the Washington elites seriously?).
Well one post book launch poll, from Fox, has come out. Interesting:
President Obama recently stated that he “probably won’t” read Sarah Palin’s new book. But his possible opponent in the 2012 elections trails him in personal favorability by only seven points (54 percent to 47 percent). Among the critical segment of independent voters, they are virtually even (Obama at 50 percent; Palin at 49 percent).
It’s only one poll, and it does have a slightly favourable Republican sample, but that suggests positive momentum for Palin.
Nov
19
Thank God For Andrew Sullivan
Filed Under American Politics | 7 Comments
From his blog:
This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it – and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided – is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read.
Gosh! Thank crikey that someone is out there obsessing about an individual, focusing on her vagina and offering the medical judgement that she is “deeply disturbed”. Yes, a single book warrants that sort of self- anointed gatekeeping for the benefit of all.
Personally, I think a person who is incredibly bright, a superb writer and with a lot to say on the current state of political philosophy but obsesses about one politician is the one with the mental difficulties.
so The Dish has gone silent twice, both times over Sarah Palin. Really, in the course of modern American politics, does she really deserve that? This of course is the blogger, so enamoured with Obama, that he won’t question the broken campaign promises, isn’t curious about the falsified job creation statistics or critically questioning over Obama’s dithering about Afghanistan, but thinks the matter of when Palin told her children that she’d been chosen as VP candidate is a matter of national importance. This is the man who is quick to jump on any perceived homophobia, call’s out conservatives and Republicans as racist, but sees nothing wrong in focusing on a woman’s gynaecological history.
He finishes with this:
There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.
Yes of course there is. of course, Sullivan is the only person to see this, but then he does think of himself as smarter than everyone else.
He should take an aspirin, lie down in a darkened room, or better yet, go and seek some psychiatric help.
Nov
18
The Palin Problem For The Left.
Filed Under American Politics | 57 Comments
Andrea Tantaros hits the nail on the head in discussing why Sarah Palin represents a risk to the Democratic Party:
From a political perspective, Palin is deeply threatening to the left. Classist, petit syrah swilling liberals loathe the thought of being governed by a backwater governor with five kids and a beehive. Leftist women hate her because she’s attractive and should be busy burning her bra for abortion rights (she’s also successful in her personal life, which often times aggravates liberal females and irritates certain gray—I mean, strawberry haired print columnists). Political strategists fear her because she could effectively help move the traditionally Democratic blue collar vote to the right. Think about it: who could be more unsuccessful in their outreach to this demographic: Joe Biden or Sarah Palin? Palin also has the ability to make the left appear so vile, so rude, and so disgusting by just being herself. She gets them to use the most egregious of insults and acts as a mirror to their soul whenever she appears by getting them to act so appallingly.
The operative word here is “could”. The dynamics of her approval ratings desperately need to be changed, but should that happen (and book tours and TV appearances may well be the catalyst for that), she’s in a position to shift the political center of gravity in similar ways to Johnson, Nixon and Reagan. The political landscape in America is in a state of flux at the moment. The Obama coalition that turned purple states blue, and red states purple has within the space of a year turned in to a situation in which a supposedly southern restricted party can win in Virginia and New Jersey. Incumbency, once seen as a benefit for a politician is now seen as a risk, tea partiers, Ron Paul libertarians and movement conservatives represent as much of a risk to establishment Republicanism as they do to the Democrats and the political system has shifted from one in which the youth vote was perceived as important a year ago to one in which the senior vote has become all important today.
When things are this fluid, it’s difficult to predict how things will settle.
Nov
9
Hmmmm!
Filed Under American Politics | 87 Comments
I’m no fan of the political elites, and I do think that a common sense conservatism borne out of the real life experiences that joe public faces on a daily basis can and should be considered as perfectly reasonable qualifications for the Presidency. And of course I’m a supporter of Sarah Palin, but this is taking things a bit too far:
The frenetic hostility to Sarah Palin, even by many on the Republican side, is unnerving, because her qualifications to be president are objectively better than those of almost anyone who has been on the national ticket over the past decade.
I believe that she has the necessary qualifications and I know many of you don’t. But none of that is important. What does matter, is whether the American voter think she has or not, and emphatically they don’t for now. James DeLong who wrote the linked to article is missing the point:
None of this is winning over the political class.
She isn’t winning over the non-political class either. It’s early days, and that can change (what percentage wouldn’t have viewed Obama qualified to be President three years ago?), and certainly the political classes have had a say in her unpopularity, but burying one’s head in the sand about her perceived qualifications or her unpopularity isn’t going to help. Hopefully she is realistic about those things, certainly her supporters need to be realistic about them, because she is an unquestionably powerful force within American politics. But a realistic interpretation of her popularity and perceived readiness for higher office will shape her role in years to come; whether that lies in higher office, as a kingmaker or as a conservative voice from outside the political hierarchy.