Free Republic

Chris Matthews doubted Sarah Palin’s ability to be elected President, just days after doubting the chances of any other Republican from stopping her from claiming the Republican nomination. However, one of Palin’s harshest critics, Andrew Sullivan, warned Matthews that she could in fact go all the way. Sullivan listed some possible scenarios where Palin could realistically be elected and Matthews concluded only an “Armageddon moment” could make it possible. Matthews thought she might have traction as the “angry candidate,” yet Sullivan was convinced Palin could be the “principled candidate,” in that she could argue she’s the only one effectively representing...

Jack Stuef predicts Palin's campaign strategy: She knows she can’t win, but she needs to be in the presidential conversation to make her money. So she’s probably going to refuse to go to Iowa and New Hampshire so she can take her message to the whole country, i.e., the places that will pay her tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to say her catchphrases for an hour and pose with conservative men on oxygen tanks who want nothing more in the world than to f*** her. It’s the dream of every little girl in America to run such a...

Greg Sargent notices something interesting in the PPP poll showing how unhinged GOP primary voters are on the question of Obama's very legitimacy as president: among non-Birthers, Sarah Palin has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 41 - 52. Among Birthers, it's a whoppingly favorable 83 - 12, far higher than anyone else. Here's Greg's interpretation: It seems fair to speculate that the success of Palin's approach -- her grievance-mongering, her strident attacks on Obama, her virtuosity in crafting the most lurid formulations to paint Obama as an alternately weak and tyrannical figure -- is rooted in her unique ability to speak...

"Sarah Palin represents an America this is absolutely, definitionally white, that's very much rural America." That's how The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan summed up the former Alaska governor in his appearance on the November 7 BBC Radio 4 "Americana" program. Echoing Peter Jennings' infamous description of the 1994 midterms, the liberal British-born blogger added of 2010 voters that they had "had a panic, a tantrum." For his part, Washington-based "Americana" host Matt Frei reinforced Sullivan's analysis, labeling Palin the "Evita of the North" and generally failed to question Sullivan's analysis. "Despite all the kind of hullabaloo about the Tea Party, and...

Weigel responds to the Levi-Bristol break-up by shaming the media: "Why assume that [Sarah] Palin was behind [the Levi-Bristol engagement], cleaning up a problem before a possible 2012 run? It’s because the alternative, truer explanation is dull. Palin as tabloid joke is a story for 2008. The story for 2010 is that she’s a master plotter, a recruiter of grizzlies, whose book sales and TV deals prove that she’s outsmarted everyone. This theory doesn’t have many takers inside of Alaska, where Palin’s celebrity and national designs are frowned upon by people who wanted her to serve out her term. But...

Friedersdorf wants the issue left alone: I assume Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s son, and that I don’t think we should go down the road of demanding hard evidence on these sorts of questions (even if it meant never finding out the truth in an individual case) — it sets a precedent that would mire future elections in ever more absurd accusations and counter-accusations, all of them focusing attention on the personal history of candidates rather than their professional qualifications and policy positions, a road we’ve gone too far down already, and that benefits the least qualified seekers of office...

Jonathan Bernstein asks: Sullivan believes that Palin's birth story for her youngest son is implausible. I think he has a good case for that, for what it's worth. As I've read over the last two years, I've seen three possible explanations. The first is the wild one, that the baby isn't really hers; she's covering for someone else's inconvenient pregnancy and has adopted that child. The second is that she was an irresponsible mother, and took terrible risks given the dangerous nature of the pregnancy. The third is that she made the whole thing up, or most of it: she...

A reader writes: "Kristol's ideology reminds me a lot of Marxism. It's a theory that works only in an ideal world that doesn't actually exist. In Kristol's world, the US can muster the political will and economic might to build an enormous army akin to what we fielded in World War Two. He believes we can march that army into the heart of the middle east and impose our will on a country like Iran; that doing so would have no long term negative ramifications for our economy; and that any negative consequences to our standing in the world could...

Those who believe that Sarah Palin has quit politics or does not have a future in elective office have some 'splaining to do. If she's irrelevant, why the following statements from last night: "Her decision to get - and stay - involved in the race here in South Carolina was a huge boon to our campaign, because it caused a lot of South Carolinians to take a second look at a rising in the polls but once-little known state legislator who was fighting to give them back their government,” Haley spokesman Tim Pearson said of Palin. ... “Governor Palin’s endorsement...

Peter Beinart makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: The Netanyahu government is filled with Americans. The prime minister himself attended high school in the Philadelphia suburbs. Ron Dermer, one of his closest advisors, was born in Miami Beach. His ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, hails from New Jersey. In addition, prominent Americans like Abrams regularly appear in the U.S. media to echo the Netanyahu line. But paradoxically, this familiarity breeds overconfidence and ignorance. When Netanyahu travels to Washington, he speaks before Jewish audiences that mostly dislike Barack Obama’s Israel policy, even though according...

Bernstein's rule of thumb: She should be covered because, as a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, what she says is newsworthy. The same goes for the other leading candidates. They are newsworthy to the extent that they are leading candidates, and in my view editors and producers should try to assess as best they can who those leading candidates are (using polls, endorsements and comments by informed observers and participants and evidence of campaign activity).... It's hard, of course, for the press to cover a candidate who doesn't tell the truth without inadvertently just amplifying falsehoods or...