Following up the last post — Marc Ambinder argues that Sarah Palin is setting herself up to be “THE voice of the angry Right in the Wilderness” in the years ahead, and the GOP standard-bearer in 2012.
I don’t know about the last part, but I think it’s possible she has it in her to keep some shreds of the Reagan coalition together in the immediate future. Unlike most GOP leaders today, she appeals to both the religious Right and the bomb-’em-all warhawk Right. She speaks the language of both groups.
As I said earlier this week, I don’t think Palin is stupid. I think she was grossly unprepared for national scrutiny, but she could learn.
However, I’m not sure Palin could redeem herself as anything but a whackjob to the saner parts of the electorate. It’s even possible she won’t win re-election in Alaska. That’s not a prediction, just a speculation. However, I think it’s likely that by 2012 the GOP will be in the process of re-aligning itself into a more moderate party, the whackjob Right will be shut out, and Sarah Palin will have moved on to a career as a right-wing “personality” on Faux News.
Ambinder also says,
There’s a suspicion in some McCain loyalist precincts that Gov. Sarah Palin is beginning to play the Republican base against John McCain — McCain won’t let her campaign in Michigan…McCain won’t let her bring up Jeremiah Wright… McCain doesn’t like her terrorist pal talks….
She’s in this for herself now.
If she runs in 2012, she should consider naming her campaign “The BiPolar Express”.I don’t think she’s stupid, but she is crazier than a sprayed bug…….
Too bad her new $150,000 wardrobe will already be a bit out of style in 2012. (Well, wingnut welfare and a Fox News stint will probably take care of that for her.) I do believe she is in it completely for herself, and she is probably annoyed that she has to be polite, for now, to that cranky old geezer she’s forced to campaign with.
The only way I see Palin as the GOP frontrunner in 2012 is if the rabid, social conservative, Michelle Bachmann-Limbaugh wing of the party somehow becomes ascendant and takes control. And even if that were to happen they would not be able to piece together a majority coalition on the hate, mendacity and idiocy that’s been their stock in trade.
There’s a lot of bad blood between the sane wing of the party who’ve recently been embarrassed by all the xenophobia and pitchfork waving, and the social conservatives. The chorus of those on the right who blame Palin for dooming McCain is growing, and will continue to grow if McCain loses, as is likely.
Also, I don’t see the neocon wing looking to Palin as a standard bearer. Ken Adelman, as uber a hawk as there ever was, has become so disgusted with McCain-Palin he’s voting for Obama. That’s a very long distance to cover, to go from that to enthusiastic support of Palin as their leader, and one I don’t think they can cover in four years.
Let’s hope she’s not the standard bearer in 2012, or 2016 for that matter. Not because I’m afraid of her, per se. If the country has fallen so far into the toilet that the kind of neo-fascist demogogery of which she is seemingly so capabable has anything like broad enough support to make a run for the presidency credible, we’ll have more problems than her to deal with.
we’ll have more problems than her to deal with.
Ain’t that the truth? And I don’t think the GOP has hit bottom yet.
I have read, but don’t know how much stock to put in it, that if she doesn’t win as VP she’ll return to Alaska to impeachment.
They aren’t particularly happy at the way she handed over the governor’s office business to underlings from the Mccain cam,paign, not to mention Troopergate and the billing/bilking the state for her kids’ travel expenses, her time at home, etc.
While it isn’t “stupidity” per se, Palin exists in a purely clueless state, blind to her own unreadiness and unfitness. If I were to jump up right now and try to run a marathon, go a few rounds with Laila Ali, audition for a Broadway musical, or drink Russell Crowe under the table, I’d crash and burn just like our dear Mooselini. And if people mistook me for stupid, I wouldn’t blame them.
So, if Palin wants to become the 2012 GOP standard bearer, in the next four years she’ll need to find herself a Svengali– a Turdblossom of her very own. And even if she does, it’ll be a waste of time. Unless the Obama administration also crashes and burns, by 2012 no decent American will fall for the old Turdblossom scams.
On the one hand she has a magnetic personality and loves the spotlight, and made her career initially in media before moving into government – a common Republican career path, Alaska style. And I will say she is a quick study – she exceeded everyone’s expectation in her first national debate.
On the other hand, there is simply nothing there. She has a limited worldview, a limited intellect, and sees things in black and white. Her speeches are largely cliches and word salad and hokey emotional appeals. She’s ambitious and overeager and will step over many lines and on people to get what she wants. She’d make a great little TheoFascist.
I am cheered that everyone got a good look at her in 2008, when she was hamstrung by things outside her control (aging McCain, the last eight years/destruction of the GOP brand, and Obama who even Republicans were forced to admit easily outclassed their candidates and their tired tactics).
There is a fight ahead for the soul of the Republican party, and I don’t think the theocrat extremists are going to win it. Fringe candidates from the past: Ross Perot, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader – tend to have their moment in the sun and never again quite draw the same numbers. And so I’m cautiously optimistic that Sarah Palin is not really going anywhere, except quite possibly to a bimbo slot on Faux News.
Palin grabbed for the brass ring and missed. In doing so she exposed who she really is…a political fabrication. She took on the oil industry?.she resigned from the Alaskan Gas and Oil board in protest because of her high ethical standards? She faced down the red menace as CoC of Alaska’s national guard? Really!
Her natural position in the political pecking order is that of a small town mayor, and her achievement of the governorship was a fluke where her congeniality and fortunate timing probably counted for more than they were worth.
When you listen to her interviews, it become apparent that she’s over her head and relies on broad abstractions and word salads as a shield to cover what she doesn’t know. She leaves me with a feeling that she said something, but at the same time she’s said nothing. She lacks real substance in her knowledge, but has the ability to talk for talking’s sake..that’s great when you have to improvise or come up with an excuse on the spot. When discussions need substance, Palin doesn’t have what it takes to deliver.
My belief is that Palin reached her political zenith with the VP nomination and she’s headed to the dust bin of history. She might have possibilities of a future working the televangelist circuit as a warrior of God who came against evil, but politically I think she’s done.
I’m kind of hoping she’s a front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2012 – it would mean that party is fully in the grasp of the wing that appeals least to the general electorate, and they’ve still not recovered from the Bushian failure to groom a ‘bench’ of plausible candidates.
How I’d love to see the GOP primary devolve into a battle between Palin and Huckabee to head the Party of (the White Christianist) God. Particularly after four years of Obama’s brainy pragmatism, when the electorate has fully remembered what it’s like to have a government led by people who know what they are doing.
Hey, speaking of the dust bin of history..Take a look at Rudy Giuliani for example. He’s got nowhere to go politically..just the dust bin where Sarah will be headed also.
Fox News hostess has been the widespread speculation.
I don’t think she has, or ever had, any interest in politics other than as a stepping stone onto the field of high-stakes pageant-walking. I wouldn’t be at all suprised to hear her announce this February that she’s resigning her office in Alaska to continue her mavericky fight for the down home, main street, conservative cause as a Fox News personality.
Why would she continue to pretend that she has any interest in the mundane business of government when she can immediately make the leap to a million dollar salary, fancy hotels, and shopping sprees at Saks in exchange for a few telepromter readings and winks for the boys at home?
Are you people sure you aren’t over estimating the intelligence of the American electorate. I mean, look at recent history.
Are you people sure you aren’t over estimating the intelligence of the American electorate. I mean, look at recent history.
Point taken. But Bush would be nothing without the lucky (for him) confluence of a PR mastermind (Rove), an election thief (Katherine Harris), and an earth-shattering event (9/11).
Palin was thrust onto the national stage without grooming of any kind, so by the time she was groomed, in behavior as well as dress, the fraud was already evident. If Professor Higgins had taken Eliza down to the flower market in her ball gown, her old cronies would’ve laughed her right back into the gutter. It’s entirely possible that will be Palin’s fate.
Unfortunately, even with a Democratic victory, the wingnuts in charge of the Republican party still excel at badmouthing and backstabbing. I think they have the potential to pull the same dirty political stunts they used to great effect during the Clinton administration. They will stop at nothing to delegitimize the election and the next Democratic administration. We have to be prepared to stop it.
Maybe Palin can just be the voice in the wilderness
and stay in the wilderness without the rest of us.
It’s scary how she laughs at science and research,
and seems to see no value in them nor need to fund them.
the thing about Palin is she has a teflon-esque persona ( can’t hit the pretty girl) and what comes out of her mouth is really nasty demagoguery. she evidently inspires in crowds some nasty emotions, evokes anti urban and racial animosity, while twirling around as unassailable Barbie. She is all performance and alot of people are taken in by performance( see Reagan, Ronald). I hear on TV talk of a talk show. Hopefully she would go that route and become irrelevant.