Posted on 11/11/2010 12:59:17 PM PST by Kaslin
How much of the "Sarah Palin is not ready for prime time" criticism is sincere? When the harping comes from the left, it's difficult to take it seriously. Try to follow the bouncing standards.
Barbara Walters gushed over John F. Kennedy Jr. and foresaw a political future for him. Never mind that the young man had flunked the New York bar exam -- twice.
"Dumb" former President George W. Bush, caricatured as a slacker in an Oliver Stone movie, made better grades in college than did Al Gore, his opponent in 2000. Gore dropped out of divinity school after earning five F's. Then he entered law school and dropped out. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-global warming crusade, and his documentary won an Academy Award, but Gore got a D in science at Harvard. Bush also scored higher on his verbal SAT than did Rhodes scholar and "brainy" presidential candidate Bill Bradley.
"Dumb" former President Ronald Reagan majored in economics. But the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, who ran for the presidency, got expelled from Harvard for hiring someone to take a Spanish test.
"Dumb" Republican former President Gerald Ford was ridiculed as a bumbling doofus by Chevy Chase on "Saturday Night Live." Democratic former President Lyndon Baines Johnson famously quipped that Ford, who played football for the University of Michigan, "spent too much time playing football without a helmet." But Ford graduated from Yale Law School, the same school that produced Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The worldly and literate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who ran for president in 2004, didn't exactly kill on his military aptitude test. He got half the questions right and half the questions wrong -- dead average. He explained his poor showing by insisting, "I must have been drinking the night before."
Vice President Joe Biden's 1988 quest for the presidency evaporated when he plagiarized a speech by a British politician. When someone questioned his academic credentials at a campaign stop, the offended Biden claimed that he had a full academic scholarship at law school and graduated in the top half of his class. In fact, he had a need-based half-scholarship and graduated near the bottom -- 76th out of 85.
Biden, in his political career, has stacked up enough gaffes for a dozen politicians. Where to start? How about the time, during a 2008 campaign rally, when Biden stood at the podium and implored a local lawmaker to "stand up." The man in question was in a wheelchair. Or at a campaign rally when he said the opponent's plan would do nothing about "a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."
More importantly, what about Biden's judgment? Shortly after he became senator in 1972, he voted to cut off funding the South Vietnamese in their war against the North Vietnamese invaders despite President Richard Nixon's promise to provide financial support and military airstrikes against a North invasion. The country's failure to make good on this promise led to hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese "boat people" and to the murder of an estimated 2 million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge. Biden opposed the Reagan military buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative, which even some Reagan-haters grudgingly concede hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. Biden called Reagan's pursuit of SDI "one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft."
Biden opposed the first Gulf war, the "good" one. He voted for the Iraq War and co-authored a Washington Post op-ed piece in which he warned that our involvement would take a decade and urged the nation to show patience. When the war went south, along with public opinion, Biden suggested breaking Iraq into three parts. Then Biden reversed his support, said he regretted his vote, and opposed Bush's successful "surge."
Former CBS reporter Dan Rather tried to prove -- based on documents that turned out to be fraudulent -- that Bush received preferential treatment in getting into the Texas Air National Guard. Former President Bill Clinton, on the other hand, used familial political and social connections to deliberately delay issuance of his draft notice until after he began his first year at Oxford. Ordered to report for induction the next summer, Clinton again used connections -- including the approval of Arkansas Selective Service director Willard Hawkins -- to join the University of Arkansas ROTC while he attended law school, getting him a reservist deferment and nullifying his draft notice. But Clinton then returned to Oxford, not Arkansas. When the draft lottery placed him at the back of a very long line, Clinton wrote an explanatory letter telling Hawkins that he "loathed" the military. With the Vietnam War winding down and other draft requirement changes making it extremely unlikely that he would be called up, Clinton symbolically asked his draft board to drop his deferment and reclassify him "1-A."
Palin, if she decides to run, faces a grueling series of challenges -- just like the other candidates. Except she'll not benefit from the selective standard that liberals apply when evaluating "their own."
How much "vetting" did they give Hussein before his immaculation?
Their opposition to Palin is 5% ideology, 95% old-fashioned snobbery.
Sarah Palin is a Republican?
I can’t believe it! /s
And don’t even start on the anti-Palin conservatives!
Barack Obama
John Kerry
Al Gore
Bill Clinton
Michael Dukakis
Walter Mondale
Jimmy Carter
Lyndon Johnson
All of these guys were and are intellectual pygmies.
Not to mention their emotional IQs.
Besides, would you want all of your friends to think that they were the smartest guys in the room, AND be humorless?
I didn’t so.
-Rex
Also adding to their disgust is the fact that she's a practicing, unapologetic Christian.
That alone is Kryptonite to leftists but is among the many reasons Sarah Palin has endeared herself to Real Americans.
How about nada, null, zero, zilch 0?
You don't leave any room for jealous bitchery ...
You forget the high percent of jealousy among her potential rivals and their supporters, and of course the distaste for a “monstrous regiment of women” among male pols, such as the Establishment in South Carolina, who did they best to bring Haley down.
You forget the high percent of jealousy among her potential rivals and their supporters, and of course the distaste for a “monstrous regiment of women” among male pols, such as the Establishment in South Carolina, who did they best to bring Haley down.
|
I do not for a second believe that Palin can be taken down. If she runs, she wins.
However, if I am wrong and the GOP is successful in taking her out, the GOP will have committed suicide and completely destroyed themselves.
American patriots are not going to accept these power games by the corrupt bastards anymore, not this time.
If she runs and wins that’s great. But if she runs and loses to Obama in a landslide (which all the polls suggest), may Heaven help all of us.
Since politicians lie, Sarah can't be one. Her "honest" basket over floweth towards the heavens. Her lying basket is collecting dust and is sinking deeper and deeper into the ground and deteriorating from non usage.
I completely agree, but she remains our best bet.... and, I believe she’s a very good bet to win.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
