“a really tough sell to the American people why they should elect someone who was governor for only 2 years...”
Refresh my memory - how long did the current WH occupier serve in the US Senate before becoming a candidate?
How long was he in the Illinois house before that, and what meaningful legislation had his imprimatur in either venue?
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“she also turns off a lot of other people.”
Yeah - mainly liberal lefties, who can go kick rocks...and RINOS who should go pound sand. ANY legitimate conservative candidate will have that effect. It is not simply the person, or their persona - it is the ideology. The persona just gives them something to hoot, holler, and get the faithful exercized about...
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“The nice thing about Reagan was that he appealed to *everyone* without compromising his conservative principles”
Yeah, he appealed to everyone so much, the pundits dubbed him “the amiable dunce”, constantly referred to him as a bad or failed “B” movie actor, made constant allusions to his Bonzo movie role (”Which one was the chimp again? - har har har...”), openly questioned his intellect, painted him as a scary war-monger and a throwback sort of Cowboy in a world that required “teamwork” and “consensus” to get things done the best way.
They dismissed him as lost in an imaginary world, believing he was living the plot of one of his movies.
And now they openly lie and rewrite history to try and make it reflect that Gorby, not Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul brought on the end of the cold war and the downfall of the Soviet system and the Iron curtain - talk about galling!
Is that the “everyone” you meant?
Even after four years of Carter’s miserable failures, and only six or seven years after Nixon and Watergate - Carter still drew a surprising number of votes (anything more than 50 would have been a surprising number to me.)
Remember too, that the 1980 general election was bitterly fought and even mere days before the vote, no few “experts” were ruling Reagan out, confident of his defeat - and ignorant of how real working Americans truly felt.
The people who “loved” Reagan were by and large the same general sort of people who “love” Sarah Palin - and for many of the same (or similar reasons).
Reagan and Sarah share the same basic principles - along with their supporters...Reagan conveyed his with a distinctly common touch, and humour and likewise so does Palin.
I fail to see where she has compromised any major or critical conservative principles.
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“I think we should be looking for someone else, someone who was not exposed to death during the 2008 campaign”
Neither of us will likely agree or convert the other on this point, but we know the three wise guys from the east (the RINOs, Mitt, Rudy and Huck,) will run again, and we know they will have a lot of money behind them (I for one, don’t know exactly why!)
We can expect that they will try to overexpose themselves and overshadow the “second tier” candidates, and grind them down due to lack of funds and lack of organizing power.
For those guys, it seems posturing and winning for the sake of their egos is still more important than real dialogue in the campaign, or having the best candidate for America emerge.
Unfortunately most of the true conservatives’ potential runners are also second tier candidates - Pence, Hunter, McClintock, Thompson, etc...
Help me - how is any one of them notably distinguishable from the other?
How many non-political junkies from outside their respective regions could readily ID any two of them from a group of ten random, grey-suited, middle-aged white guys’ photos?
I am not talking about red state vs. blue state - I never was.
Leftist media are not going to issue a free pass to any conservative, no matter how badly 0dumbo tanks or what evil he wreaks upon our nation.
(I think we would literally have to suffer an attack upon American soil many times worse than September 11th for them to fully turn upon him and saddle him with blame...)
We have to see their strategy for what it is, and be ready to overcome it. They will happily promote RINOs like Mittens, Huck, Rudy, even Lindsey Grahamnesty...
attack nationally known, visible, and effective real conservative leaders like DeMint, Inofe, and Coburn...
and damn the rest with faint praise or faint notice.
You and I agree that Sarah stands out from the crowd, what we disagree about is whether that is for the right reasons, or the wrong ones. Is that ultimately an asset or a liability.
I contend that without prior exposure, one cannot succeed, politically - not on the national stage
(absent media cooperation - witness the rise of obama. All he really did before was give a speech at the ‘04 Dem nat’l convention, and hawk a couple of lame-a$$ books - books he probably did not write all on his own! hey, maybe the book hawking thing works after all...)
The media has given Palin the kind of free advertising that one cannot buy.
Sure, the majority of it has been negative, but that crap mainly sells with lockstep lefties and RINO compromisers.
The media complex in general is hemorrhaging ratings and market share exactly because of that bias.
Fewer and fewer people buy it, and many have a contrarian reaction - for example, the public reaction to this healthcare legislation farce, or to global warming.
Besides Dems, who is pushing it? “State-controlled” media, that’s who.
FWIW and BTW, I have enjoyed our lively discussion. Our differing points of view are thought provoking and serve to sharpen our skills of persuasion. We need to continue to employ them to win over independent and uncommitted folk to conservatism.
Have a great and blessed Christmas!
A.A.C.
