Posted on 11/26/2010 7:21:37 PM PST by Rufii
Substance Still Sells, Sarah
Writing about Sarah Palin's bizarre Thanksgiving Day defense of her North Korea gaffe, Andrew Sullivan makes the point people used to make about Richard Nixon after his rocking, socking congressional and senatorial campaigns and especially the Alger Hiss case:There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that's saying something.
Ironic, yes. Determinative, no. Though he was a divisive, highly partisan figure whom a significant number of Americans always loathed, Nixon was elected president twice. I bet Palin won't even get nominated. Sullivan's right that her Facebook note helps us understand why. But there's an element he doesn't mention. Yes, her rant, a pastiche of Barack Obama's gaffes, is disrespectful. But that won't lose her any points with most Republicans, I'm sorry to say.
Beyond that, I thought Palin's "Thanksgiving Message To All 57 States" was disrespectful of a solemn, 389-year-old American tradition. That doesn't make her unpatriotic. It just proves that she's irredeemably trivial.
For two weeks I've been marinating in the Thanksgiving statements and proclamations by presidents and many others that my St. John's friend Buddy Lang assembled for his premiere performance of "In God We Trust" at our church. The holiday offers a platform for a thoughtful public figure's reflections on the challenges, opportunities, and bedrock principles of the greatest nation in the world. On this day of family and national communion, Palin's message to her fellow Americans had all the poise and maturity of a high school senior who gets a chance to scrawl something in a rival's yearbook while the principal gives a speech about good manners.
Worse than that, it was all about her. With Palin, it's always all about her. Here she again departs from the new Nixon playbook. From his earliest years in public life, Nixon was fashioning a template for the west's conduct of the Cold War. It began with anti-communism, and about this the ambitious Nixon was utterly ruthless. But Nixon's vision also had a carefully considered and completely internalized second element that had to do with what was best about America being the best way to combat her enemies.
With Palin, all I can discern is her resentment, sense of entitlement, and, yes, Nixonian understanding for how these resonate with certain Americans who have concluded that they're disenfranchised or that Obama represents a unique threat. But what comes next? Specifically, when she's on a stage with other GOP candidates, how will she stack up? What will she have to say about tax policy to Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, about how to run a state government in a partisan atmosphere (and doing so without quitting) to Chris Christie?
Her victim game won't play, because they've all had to contend with the gosh-darn MSM, too. Unless she brings something else to the table, her support will melt away fast. Before the midterm election, the tea party creed was that criticism of lightweights and wack jobs like Christine O'Donnell and Carl Paladino would only make them stronger. We now know that, far right or far left, substance still sells. In the 2012 round, look for the rise of the Whiggish wonk, the Republican Obama. If Palin believed there was any advantage to doing some policy homework, we'd have seen evidence by now. As a candidate for national office, her high water mark was 2008.
--John h. Taylor
Never heard of this moron before. Who is he?
I’m just saying, anyone who quotes Andrew Sullivan about appropriate demeanor . . .
“We now know that, far right or far left, substance still sells.”
I sorry - I’m not buying the old BS substance you and your RINO ilk are selling any more. We’ve had enough. It seems they want the right to wild Ms. Palin without her feeling she has the right to fight back. The problem with Republicans is that they rarely fight back.
“Specifically, when she’s on a stage with other GOP candidates, how will she stack up?”
Well maybe she’ll just sit down and shut up, so we’ll never know./s
He makes some lame point about how the other candidates “have to put up” with the media attacks so she should as well. Yeah, the media really goes after those other candidates’ families./s
So many articles proclaim she has no shot or shouldn’t even try. YOU’RE MAKING HER STRONGER, thank you! We are entering a time of extreme dislike for the usual political establishment. It makes sense historically that these establishment types will be and are being taken completely unawares.
Taylor is a humorless scumbag.
Her Thanksgiving post was not about Obama, nor was it disrespectful. It was about how Obama can slip up and not be criticized, but when she says one word wrong, she is not just criticized but made to look totally ignorant and uninformed. The post was about the media, not Obama.
What this illustrates is that when anyone calls attention to Obama’s fallibility, to his shortcomings and thereby illuminates the media’s total responsibility for getting him elected, that person will be vilified by the socialist media worldwide.
They better get used to it. They are going to hear much more in the next 21 months or so and they aren’t in charge anymore.
No, you ninny - it was a shot at the MSM that refuses to acknowledge any gaffe made by Obama, but will label Palin as an idiot for misspeaking.
It's the double-standards, stupid.
YouTube.com is filled with videos of Obama saying idiotic things, yet they never see print or air time on the MSM.
Yet the MSM will flat-out make up lies about Palin and repeat them as fact.
FU MSM
She may not be the 2012 GOP candidate but she will have a lot to do with who does and does not get elected in 2012.
Uh, thanks, John. I’m trying to formulate an answer. Unfortunately, it’s rude to tell a Christian clergyman to perform something involving himself and the horse he rode in on.
How hard is it to understand that Sarah was using Facebook to poke fun at the lying, hypocritical Democrat “mainstream” newsrooms? Ubama had nothing to do with it.
Apparently someone not as well known as Gene Robinson. And who was never in my kitchen.
There is a meanness, a disrespect, a vicious partisanship that, if allowed to gain more power, would split this country more deeply and more rancorously than at any time in recent years. And that’s saying something.”
Oh really Mr. Taylor. More divisive than a petty narcissist who considers Republicans “the enemy” as he noted in the run up to the midterms, yet refuses to label Islamic terrorists as the enemy. Or calls those American citizens domestic terrorists who refuse to be unconstitutionally groped or otherwise violated in his quest to protect us from our non-enemies.
So Sarah defends herself against a media which howls about her mentioning North instead of South Korea in an ongoing discussion and yet is silent when the Chosen One lies about having an uncle who served in the US Army and then goes on about how the fictitious uncle was among those in the US Army who liberated Auschwitz. Palin defends herself against this type double standard and you scream about how partisan and divisive she has become for having the temerity to point out this folly which has now become commonplace.
Take your hand-wringing and whining somewhere else.
FU MSM
And FU John H. Taylor
Geez! This guy was old-school when old-school was just “school”.
Sarah Palin has sold two best-selling books in the last 12+ months.
Substance does indeed sell.
Sorry, but Sarah is the epitome of Substance.
The Rev. Canon John H. Taylor’s definition means you let the left walk all over you, and you are a moderate on the issues.
Basically, I believe, the good Rev. is lying.
She seems to have learned a valuable lesson. Never back down.
The Most Rev. Moron John H. Taylor. Screw him.
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