Posted on 09/03/2008 1:45:52 PM PDT by Alter Kaker
After a segment with NBC's Chuck Todd ended today, Republican consultant Mike Murphy and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan were caught on a live mic ridiculing the choice of Sarah Palin.
"It's over," said Noonan, and then responded to a question of whether Palin is the most qualified Republican woman McCain could have chosen.
"The most qualified? No. I think they wen tfor this-- excuse me -- political bullshit about narratives," she said. "Everytime Republicans do that -- because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at and they blow it."
Murphy chimed in:
"The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical."
In today's Wall Street Journal, Noonan was warmer to Palin, whom she wrote "could become a transformative political presence."
"The Sarah Palin choice is really going to work, or really not going to work," Noonan wrote. "It's not going to be a little successful or a little not; it's not going to be a wash. She is either going to be magic or one of history's accidents. She is either going to be brilliant and groundbreaking, or will soon be the target of unattributed quotes by bitter staffers shifting blame in all the Making of the President 2008 books."
Since filing, Noonan has apparently decided which side this one is coming down on.
Ok, I revere the Gip too. But it SEEMS like I personally knew him.
Peggy Noonan: When Good Speech Writers Go Bad or How Peggy’s Weathered in Her Post-Reagan Slump
I think that poor Peggy is caught in the middle of redefining her own meta-narrative. She’s been hanging out with the post modern liberals at Columbia for so long that she has lost her own identity and feels compelled to lash out at anyone who forces her to face the fact. She needs to have a talk with Bill Clinton to find out what the meaning of “the” is.
Peggy who? (/sarcasm)
Isn’t that about the stupidest question one can ask? Who do I need to be to have an opinion?
talk to someone else
“Video at link” ?
Hope it’s the one from the movie where John Belushi says it wasn’t over at Pearl Harbor...
Because this is just as important, war fought with words and Google-bombs instead of fleets and aircraft.
You are right.
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The guy helped usher in universal health care for the first time, resulting in terrible problems there, and had to repent on abortion.
Despite this, I backed the guy for what his current stated “opinions” were.
We've got someone better in Palin. She's not had liberal fiascoes to apologize for, nor had to recant on when life began.
What did Cheney say that was bad about Palin??
Shame on you, Peggy Noonan! and such language too! I used to think you were a decent person!
Nothing... it's what he said to Patrick Leahy that I'm relaying to Peggy.
The explanation is over at National Review Online.
Peggy showed her true colors.....too many Manhattan cocktail parties...idiot!
Peggy is over. I never liked her phony, sappy, syrupy style. She takes four pages to say something that could be said in one paragraph. Her observations are trite and obvious. “Sweet” Peggy talks like a sailor in real life? Now that it’s out that she’s just another foul-mouthed beotch, maybe she can go with that in her future scribblings.
I didn’t say she was a liberal. I said she’s elite. Part of the “in crowd”. These are the people Rush talks about. They hated Reagan. I know Peggy liked Reagan, but after a while you forget where you come from.
This is on NRO Corner...
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
A Note from Peggy Noonan [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From the top of her column:
Wednesday afternoon, in a live MSNBC television panel hosted by NBC’s political analyst Chuck Todd, and along with Republican strategist Mike Murphy, we discussed Sarah Palin’s speech this evening to the Republican National Convention. I said she has to tell us in her speech who she is, what she believes, and why she’s here. We spoke of Republican charges that the media has been unfair to Mrs. Palin, and I defended the view that while the media should investigate every quote and vote she’s made, and look deeply into her career, it has been unjust in its treatment of her family circumstances, and deserved criticism for this.
When the segment was over and MSNBC was in commercial, Todd, Murphy and I continued our conversation, talking about the Palin choice overall. We were speaking informally, with some passion — and into live mics. An audio tape of that conversation was sent, how or by whom I don’t know, onto the internet. And within three hours I was receiving it from friends far and wide, asking me why I thought the McCain campaign is “over”, as it says in the transcript of the conversation. Here I must plead some confusion. In our off-air conversation, I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. I made the case that this is no longer true, that party leaders seem to me stuck in the assumptions of 1988 and 1994, the assumptions that reigned when they were young and coming up. “The first lesson they learned is the one they remember,” I said to Todd — and I’m pretty certain that is a direct quote. But, I argued, that’s over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people. And when I said, “It’s over!” — and I said it more than once — that is what I was referring to. I am pretty certain that is exactly what Todd and Murphy understood I was referring to. In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it. In fact, at an on-the-record press symposium on the campaign on Monday, when all of those on the panel were pressed to predict who would win, I said that I didn’t know, but that we just might find “This IS a country for old men.” That is, McCain may well win. I do not think the campaign is over, I do not think this is settled, and did not suggest, back to the Todd-Murphy conversation, that “It’s over.”
However, I did say two things that I haven’t said in public, either in speaking or in my writing. One is a vulgar epithet that I wish I could blame on the mood of the moment but cannot. No one else, to my memory, swore. I just blurted. The other, more seriously, is a real criticism that I had not previously made, but only because I hadn’t thought of it. And it is connected to a thought I had this morning, Wednesday morning, and wrote to a friend. Here it is. Early this morning I saw Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and as we chatted about the McCain campaign (she thoughtfully and supportively) I looked into her eyes and thought, Why not her? Had she been vetted for the vice presidency, and how did it come about that it was the less experienced Mrs. Palin who was chosen? I didn’t ask these questions or mention them, I just thought them. Later in the morning, still pondering this, I thought of something that had happened exactly 20 years before. It was just after the 1988 Republican convention ended. I was on the plane, as a speechwriter, that took Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, and the new vice presidential nominee, Dan Quayle, from New Orleans, the site of the convention, to Indiana. Sitting next to Mr. Quayle was the other senator from that state, Richard Lugar. As we chatted, I thought, “Why him and not him?” Why Mr. Quayle as the choice, and not the more experienced Mr. Lugar? I came to think, in following years, that some of the reason came down to what is now called The Narrative. The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself, and communicate to others. I don’t like the idea of The Narrative. I think it is ... a barnyard epithet. And, oddly enough, it is something that Republicans are not very good at, because it’s not where they live, it’s not what they’re about, it’s too fancy. To the extent the McCain campaign was thinking in these terms, I don’t like that either. I do like Mrs. Palin, because I like the things she espouses. And because, frankly, I met her once and liked her. I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won’t be something in between.
But, bottom line, I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet, I am certainly sorry that someone abused my meaning in the use of the words, “It’s over”, and I’m sorry I didn’t have the Kay Baily Hutchison thought before this morning, because I could have written of it. There. Now: onto today’s column.
Peggy’s great work was GHWB’s “1000 Points Of Light” speech in 1988, and it was brilliant. Since then, I think she has been irrelevant. Murphy, well, I’d rather have Steve Schmidt then Mike Murphy. Hey Mike, go back and hang out with your good buddies at MSNBC.
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