Posted on 09/05/2009 5:23:35 PM PDT by DB9
bttt
I got to this quote in the article and briefly thought, 'Can Obama read, is he illiterate?' And then I remembered the TOTUS!
Second, a smart person wouldn't pick the utter imbeciles he has selected to run things.
To summarize baseball legend Reggie Jackson: nobody boos a nobody. That is definitely true in the case of Governor Sarah Palin. I don’t think I am going out on a limb here when I speculate that individuals who repeatedly attack her anonymously view her as a threat. And that includes members of the media hell-bent tearing down young Republican up-and-comers as well as some in Governor Palin’s own party — a party desperately in need of redefining — who are motivated, for whatever reason, to try and crush their rivals.
The most recent and grossly unfair attack came from Vanity Fair magazine. The writer clearly had an unshakable point of view from the start and talked only to those who would criticize. For example, he personally asked me at event preceding the White House Correspondents Dinner if I would talk to him about Governor Palin. I agreed. He didn’t call. He didn’t email. He never once tried to get my take. I also know he never contacted campaign manager Rick Davis, or John McCain.
I have known many political leaders over four decades including all Republican presidents and VPs. I have come to know Sarah Palin over the past year and can state unequivocally that she is smart, curious, hard working, charming, and effective. She also has something her detractors clearly lack – a sense of honor and loyalty.
I know this is petty, but it reminds me of the 2004 presidential election where it was commonplace and accepted in much of the mainstream media to call President Bush stupid and Senator Kerry smart and insightful. At the end of the day, when Senator Kerry finally released his college transcripts, wouldn’t you know: he did quite a bit worse than President Bush.
I have seen Sarah up close with leading heavyweights, and have seen her hold her own and then some. At the dinner at my home referenced in the article, she engaged comfortably and deeply with people ranging from Alan Greenspan to Madeleine Albright to Mitch McConnell. She asked for a foreign policy discussion on her June 7 trip to Washington, and I saw her engage in an informed and spirited manner with Frank Carlucci.
Governor Palin has many admirers and defenders out there who will not allow her to be branded by jealous rivals with their own agenda and the elitists in the national media. I am not sure who the unnamed Vanity Fair sources are, but without question they lack chivalry and have acted in a craven manner. They also lack the facts. I am ashamed of my former campaign colleagues, whoever they are.
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.
An ethical person would not make many of the appointments this person has. Sarah Palin went against her party because it was right. Sarah has the ethics and the intelligence that Barack Obama lacks. And, I will continue to insist, even in 2012 Sarah Palin will have more relevant executive experience than Barack Obama.
I already thought she had more admin experience than he did. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement with her, but she seems to be doing the things that will help her. One of the misperceptions here, though, is that people only dislike her because of her “conservatism.” That’s not always the case. I notice my 21-year old son and his friends-—no liberals-—don’t like her. I teach college, and even some of the conservative college kids didn’t like her. So that is something to be overcome, not just wished away.
He is a puppet. Ted Kennedy wasn’t very bright; Pelosi and Read aren’t bright; and Soros is getting old and is only really interested in amassing money.
All acknowledged. Sarah can be sold based on substance. Obama is sold based on feelings. Our marketing and sales efforts for Sarah have begun and will continue.
According the Public Policy Polls (Dem pollsters), Palin does well with rural folks and people with high school education and/or some college. Her support declines with people who have some type of post-college education. It could be the perception that she is an insular person who is uninformed about issues outside of AK.
Interestingly, the Republican candidate who does best with 18-29 year olds is Mike Huckabee. I guess the youth likes his guitar playing and being endorsed by Chuck Norris.
People who go to Ivy League schools tend to have higher scores on standardized tests and higher iqs.
Yeah, they have IQs similar to highschool dropouts (who also tend to have higher than average IQs.)
Bump for later reading.
From where have they gotten their information about her? I know that our older boys watch The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, as do their friends, and they tend to believe what they hear. And the negative comments about her tend to get bounced around in the liberal echo chambers so much that it begins to be 'conventional wisdom'.
While I respect people with degrees from prestigious colleges, we must remember that Washington is full of these sorts of people. Especially many ultra-liberal Dem admins. Getting into a high-level school often times means a person had the ability to memorize stuff better than most of the other people in their high-school class. It has very little to do with making the right judgment or having moral clarity on a raft of issues.
Yes, but still anecdotal. Not to demean the college kids in question, but I doubt Palin has been given a fair hearing by the media. Which is to be expected. that does not mean, like every pol, Palin doesn't have faults or need improvement. But I've watched pols come and go for fifty years (I'll turn sixty shortyly), and I haven't seen anyone with this much charisma since Reagan burst on the scene.
So, again, Palin has work to do to reel in these types. Also, I think, strangely, her relatively young age as a "mom" elicits a lot of teen/early 20s angst and rebellion, whereas they may or may not just write off an older guy (Romney or Huckabee), she may provide some Freudian "competition". Just psychobabble, but something we haven't identified is at work there.
My concern---and again, many Freepers do not want to hear this---is the reaction she generates among "da yuts," namely 18-28. I don't know what it is, and I suspect there is some "mommie rebellion" there because of her own relative youth compared to them. Nor do they seem to have this with a guy, esp. Obama. But if she's in it to stay, and I were her campaign advisor, I'd fund a quiet study/focus group to figure out what this dymanic is, because clearly she can't be wiped out in this demographic.
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