Clearly, when you have a political party ripping on one of its own members within earshot of the media then the future of that party has to be in doubt.
Reagan’s 11th commandment MUST be followed or the GOP can forget about winning elections.
ROFL...really, Menopausal Wing!!.
Now that's a little cruel. And delicious. Hot flashes and mood swings...poor dried-up biddies and the juicy new chick in town...
The last thing the GOP/RNC want is a populist leader. The GOP/RNC is a financialists, country club, big government, big business, party, with elitists planning, command and control of citizens.
They just serve a different Washington crew.
Palin’s attacks on the Alaskan GOP buddy system is very, very troubling for the GOP.
This is KEY. Palin is one of the ONLY Republicans I hear who is RIGHT on and can rally the right enough to win big time.
Unfortunately, the powers that be are the RINOs in the party and they hate Sarah nearly as much as the dims do.
Therein lies the dilemma.
If Barack Obama has been the most remarkable phenomenon of the recent political scene, Sarah Palin must be second. The emotional responses to each-- especially by the media and the intelligentsia -- go beyond anything that can be explained by the usual political differences of opinion on issues of the day.
That liberals would be thrilled by another liberal is not surprising. But there are conservative Republicans who voted for Barack Obama, and other conservatives who may not have voted for him, but who are quick to see in various pragmatic moves of his since taking office an indication that he is not an extremist.
Anyone familiar with history knows that Hitler and Stalin were pragmatic. After years of denouncing each other, they signed the Nazi-Soviet pact under which they became allies for a couple of years before going to war against one another.
Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama's pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.
With Governor Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.
Governor Palin's "inexperience" is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has. Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.
Governor Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.
Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."
The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.
The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.
Before the first trial of Alger Hiss began, reporters who gathered at the courthouse informally sounded each other out as to which of them they believed, before any evidence had been presented. Most believed that Hiss was telling the truth and that it was Chambers who was lying.
More important, those reporters who believed that Chambers was telling the truth were immediately ostracized. None of this could have been based on the evidence for either side, for that evidence had not yet been presented in court.
For decades after Hiss was convicted and sent to federal prison, much of the media and the intelligentsia defended him. To this day, there is an Alger Hiss chair at Bard College.
Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.
Governor Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life-- an overdue challenge, much as Chambers' challenge was overdue.
Whether Governor Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need some candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor-- worse yet-- the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.
As a youth I once had a job selling door to door. They told me it was a numbers game and I would get a sale for every X number of presentations I made. So, if I met resistance I was to say “thank you” and move on, the sooner I did my X number of presentations the sooner I would have another sale. Same thing here. If she's not it, then let's move on the next one.
Personally, I think right now that she is the real thing.
Politics today remind me of the original Rollerball. Towards the end of the movie one of the guys is talking about “game winning” strategy and is put in his place by a character “in the know”. It was never about winning and losing.
Those that are still talking about strategy for a Republican win are like the crew of the Titanic, AFTER it hits the iceberg, voting on a new captain.
Politics is totally and utterly irrelevant at this point. Prep for survival in what is coming is the name of the game.
Michael Steele thinks Palin is a non-player in the 2012 election and that the Birthers are ruining the Republican Party. The Dems must be laughing themselves to sleep every night wondering how much longer the Pubbies can keep shooting themselves in the foot. Steele and the Republican Party had better wake up soon or it’s going to be Obama/Pelosi in charge of this country for a long, long time. Maybe forever.
Maybe she ought to drop hints about starting a conservative third party after all. THAT would focus the Geldings’ attention.
Remember how McCain essentially begged Ron Paul to throw in with him just before the RNC? Imagine them tripping all over themselves for an audience with Sarah, who draws a MUCH larger following. They won’t be discounting her as “irrelevant” then.
Like it or not, many, many Republicans and conservatives see the politicians running away from Sarah Palin as elites who look down on average Americans and think they know better.
If they turn their backs on Sarah, and by default us, then we’ll turn our backs on them.
I’m sick of the word ‘icon’. By the way I’m also sick of the word ‘lifestyle’ since life is not a style.