[So reasonable people can’t disagree about whether or not Gov. Palin would be a good presidental candidate?]
No one said that, and I for one could vote for a couple of the conservativves out there. I’m not into personality cults and I fully understand te danger and te need for criticism, as long as it is constructive. I just get burnt when all I see is a one trick pony, a vendetta against one candidate to the exclusion of others.
If Palin’s flaws are heinous, then certainly there should be at least equal time spent posting the flaws of people like Newt and Romney, whose abuses of conservative principles make Palin’s flaws seem miniscule.
I find it useful to have negative articles posted for dissection (pro and con), I just think there needs to be some balance. If you are posting Palin diatribes exclusively, without bothering to post anything about the conservative messiahs who are supposed to magically take her place, then that’s what ticks me off.
The problem with monomaniacally tearing down Palin (or anyone else, for that matter) is that it begs the question: Who would be better, and why?
Most rational people would concede that Palin has flaws. But then, everyone does.
I think there would be wide agreement here on FR that a primary job requirement of the next President would be to preside over a rational downsizing of the Federal Government—which will be done against the shrill screaming of all of the special interests who have bellied up to the trough of federal money.
Who’s shown the ability to stand up to the shrill screaming, and not only stay on message but to rhetorically swing back and connect a few haymakers in return?
Who’s been doing that on the national stage? Really doing it, not just lobbing a few softballs from the peanut gallery every once in a while, and generally being ignored by everybody on all sides?
I mean, besides Sarah Palin?
It appears to me to be an awfully, awfully short list. People wanting to be Presidential candidates need to be doing things to get on that list—if nothing else to give Palin some covering fire (to use a violent, uncivil metaphor). Because you absolutely, positively know that Palin’s going to give anybody else who sticks their head out of the political foxhole and starts firing for effect covering fire, too. (There I go again.)
We need a half-dozen high-profile Presidential wanna-be’s, all out there firing verbal artillery the way Palin has been doing. That is how we will know who’s serious about being the Republican Presidential nominee in 2012.
But the truth is that most of the Republican Presidential wannabes look to me to be just too danged intimidated by either the RNC Mandarins and/or by the MSM to fight the good fight.
We need “happy warriors” right now. The more, the merrier.
I was responding to the above statement in your post #2. I admit I didn't watch her address, although I did try to listen to what I believe are her remarks afterward.
There seem to be two types of Sarah Paling threads commonly found on Free Republic: those started by Palin cultists, and those started by anti-Palin cultists. In both, the posts rapidly degrade into personal attacks. In this one, it started with the second post, yours.
If Palin is indeed viable, it certainly can't be proven by the behaviour of conservatives on Free Republic.