They actually have an action figure of her now... LOL! Sarah Palin Action Figure
Posted on 09/08/2008 7:47:27 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sarah Palin is trying to seduce independent voters. But she comes across like a whip-wielding mistress who wants to discipline a naughty America.
Sarah Palin has thrown a big-time scare into Democrats. The GOP ticket received a huge bounce after the convention, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll, and McCain now leads Obama among registered voters, 50 percent to 46 percent. And it's mostly Palin's doing. The "elite media" that Palin and her fellow Republicans so lovingly excoriated in St. Paul, Minn., is reporting that her entrance into the race may have put crucial states like Ohio in play. The tough-talking, gun-toting "hockey mom" who believes that America's wars are God's will has fired up social conservatives, restarted the culture wars so beloved of Republicans, and shifted the election from being about issues into a personality contest.
Post-convention polls are highly unreliable. But the same Democrats who were crowing with glee a week ago about McCain's off-the-wall choice are suddenly panicking. And you can't blame them. Four years after Americans looked at the first term of the worst president in modern history and decided they liked what they saw well enough to sign up for four more years, it's all too plausible that just when victory is in sight, the most crucial election of our time could be tipped by the 11th-hour appearance of a slick, unqualified, right-wing extremist and religious zealot in designer glasses.
Call it Moose ex Machina.
Republican strategists have made it clear that the GOP's only chance to win is by reframing the election as a battle of images. And right now, Palin is the pinup queen in that war. She's feisty, she's a mom, she's from a frontier state, she guns down wolves from the air, she's a devout Evangelical, she poses as a reformer, and she insults the Washington elites.
And large numbers of Americans think she's hot.
This latter point cannot be underestimated. Iraq may be a quagmire, a new cold war may be looming, the economy may be tanking and the world may be heading toward environmental doom, but the presidential race may be decided by the perceived doability of the governor of Alaska.
Looks have always played a major role in politics. Nixon lost the famous 1960 debate to JFK because he looked sweaty and devious and, well, like Nixon. John Kerry's resemblance to Lurch, the Addams family butler, probably did not help him. And Palin's perceived babaliciousness, as much as her considerable ability to wield a political hatchet, has brought a spark to the moribund Republican ticket.
Never mind that Palin's absurdly ballyhooed speech at the convention was just a recitation of familiar GOP culture-war clichés, with a disgraceful swipe at "community organizers" thrown in. (Odd -- I thought "big government"-hating Republicans believed in altruism, individual initiative and charity. But apparently they believe in nothing except demonizing their opponents.) Never mind that she is grossly unprepared to be president and was obviously brought in to appeal to women who will supposedly vote gender over issues, and to wield a hatchet in the great veep tradition of Spiro Agnew. Never mind that her claim to be a reformer is about as convincing as the GOP's bogus assertion that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.
Never mind that on the issues, Palin and McCain are indistinguishable from George W. Bush. Never mind that the GOP's policies have failed and its ideology is incoherent. Never mind that McCain's speech at the convention was pathetically empty, little more than a display of his torture scars and a bombastic promise to "fight" the very practices he has happily supported as a loyal GOP foot soldier.
No, none of that matters. Because Palin's a woman, and even more, a babe, suddenly she and her party have been magically transformed into fresh-faced reformers. Like Kafka's "Metamorphosis" in reverse, the giant, hideous beetle that was the GOP has suddenly been reborn as a vigorous youth -- one that even claims to be a "maverick."
At a conscious level, the Republican duo are masquerading as reformers who will "clean up Washington." But their unconscious appeal may be more important. By choosing Palin, McCain and the GOP have elbowed the Democrats off the dance floor. In a bizarre turnaround, the uptight Republicans are suddenly the party of sex, women, fun. They're all about spontaneity, bucking convention, letting their freak flags fly. If it feels good, do it! Let Mr. Dignified, Obama, drone on about the economy or the resurgence of the Taliban or whatever boring downer of a subject he wants to lecture us on. Let that long-winded Joe Biden carry us back to that Poli Sci 201 class we fell asleep in. Hey, did you check out Palin's rack? It's party time in America!
It's no use complaining that none of this is fair. It's no use pointing out that the buy-in for the honorable title "maverick" has never been so low, that a born-again Christian ROTC trainee and part-time narc wearing a hippie wig deserves the M-word more than McCain or Palin. The GOP is working the id and the gonads. Let the Democrats appeal to reason -- the Grand Old Party is casting its lot with drives located deeper within America's collective reptilian brain.
Right now, Palin has Democrats quaking in their boots -- and with good reason. But all hope isn't lost. For even if this election turns out to be a referendum on the national libido, Palin may scare off more voters than she attracts.
Because to anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn't going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.
For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. "Drill, baby, drill!" the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani's speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke. The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the base yearned to drill her. (We will leave it to shrinks to determine whether the GOP hardcore has the hots for Palin because she's reaming the Democrats, or because authority-worshippers tend to have secret fantasies of being reamed themselves.)
The problem for the GOP, however, is that for independents, Palin comes across as someone who's going to drill them. Strict biblical literalism, trying to ban books, denying human responsibility for global warming and launching nasty vendettas against foes may put lead in the pencil of unreconstructed Bush supporters, but for those who haven't already signed up for the extreme GOP agenda, they're about as seductive as a great white shark in Victoria's Secret lingerie.
Palin was brought in to appeal to women and to independent, socially conservative voters in small towns. But aside from the crude fact of her gender, she has nothing to offer women who don't share her out-of-the-mainstream cultural values. Palin's opposition to abortion is so extreme that she refuses to even make an exception in cases of rape or incest. She sees nothing wrong with Guantánamo, the Bush administration's Big Brother-esque "Protect America Act" and the gutting of habeas corpus. She praises altruism and selflessness, except when Democrats do it (or it involves helping poor black people). She believes that God is constantly intervening in her daily life. These aren't "traditional values" -- they're radical ones. They worked for George W. Bush, but times have changed -- McCain/Palin can't win just with a base of hardcore Republicans and religious fanatics. They need the independents. And Palin's image as a maverick may pull some independents in, but that image is like a rub-on tattoo -- it won't last long.
That Gary me boy is the fatal flaw of your thought process. You've spend so much time immersed in the counter culture that you've actually convinced yourself that you are in the mainstream, and the mainstream is the counter culture. My God! The woman actually goes to a Christian church that doesn't spew anti-American venom and seems to believe what is taught there.
How many times will the left have to wake up on the first Wednesday of November and ask "But how? I don't know anybody that voted for him?" before it dawns on them that it is their values that lose national elections.
What...the...(mmmmph)!
When I read that line buried in the last paragraph, I re-read the entire piece. Kamiya -- a well-known jackass from his days in dead-tree media in San Francisco just dropped that little tablet of poison apropos of nothing.
"How low can they go?" It seems like they are racing to the ocean floor!
Lighten up. That was Gary's only good line.
I actually once worked in the same office building as Salon's HQ. I resisted the urge to go to the reception area and marvel that they hadn't yet gone bankrupt.
The left is squealing like stuck pigs since Sarah arrived.
What happened to Hillary’s whip?
Man, these liberals sure are fragile! Now they’re threatened by Palin.
This a$$ could not be more offensive if he were talking of his own vile mother that whelped him.
As a side-bar I will tell you what happened tonight. I went to the Angelina County Republican Meeting where I met a man named Ayers.....No not Mr.Obamas Ayers. This man was from Conroe, Texas. He was shot down in 1971 and was a prisoner with McCAin in the Hanoi Hilton. He referred to himself as a shorttimer. John had already been there for over 4 years. The Viet Nam captors allowed the prisoners to take a bath in a small body of water just inside the prison camp....ususally 2 at a time. This was an opportunity for them to exchange notes regarding other prisoners,...so as they bathed, they wrote crib-notes and stuffed them under their belts to take back and share with their cell mates (by the time the war was nearly over, there were 2 or 3 men in a very small cell). John McCains cell had a small window where he could see the men bathing and the viet cong captors. He was the lookout. McCain noticed the captors beginning to hurriedly gear up and knew that was a precursor to a 'crib-raid'. So McCain yelled as loudly as he could, "Crib-raid!!!" The two men bathing knew what that meant and began to eat the small pieces of paper with the notes.....and they got them down before their captors could proove they were sharing notes (this was not allowed). The men reported to their captors they had not shared anything. But they knew McCain had warned them. For this, he was beaten and put in solitary confinement for 2 weeks. And that was no day at the beach.
We don't hear of these little side-bar stories of heroism and selflessness of McCain as much as we should. McCain was not even in the state of TExas tonight, but one of his fellow prisoners was here to vouch for him and his character. If you doubt, at least give the man a second look. He was beaten and tortured for America. It seems the least we can do. All we can do observing Obama is to conjecture whether or not he would measure up to McCains calling. I cannot help but think he would not.
It's so EASY to find the queers in the press from their visceral recoiling in horror at a strong, yet feminine, woman.
Cheers!
Wow, that was a man ? No kidding, it read like an emotional woman. I think I know where “his” leather and bondage paradigm has it’s “roots”.
They are completely acluistic and have bought into their own lies about the President, economy, “mainstream”, global warming (now climate change as an accomodation to the “inconvenient truth” that it’s actually getting cooler)and, well, everything.
“In a very short time America is going to be sick of hearing the name Palin.”
True. On the same day we get sick of mom, America and apple pie.
Gov. Palin is hot, a dominatrix whipping lustful men into line. It's to laugh. She's an attractive 44 year old mother of five. You'd think from the author that she is a nymphomaniac combination of Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor, (showing my age), when in fact she seems like an ordinary intelligent woman who has achieved her position on her own merits, (Hi Hillary).
Keep it coming Democrats, this stuff is ugly, but it will help elect McCain and Palin. Funny thing is Obama knows this and tries to tamp it down, but his followers just can't give it up. Life's rough all over, I guess.
It's gonna be a close election, but Obama's worst enemies are some of his most fervent supporters.
What we are witnessing is, both figuratively and literally, the shrieking of demons in the light of truth. Happens everytime.
That is sooo funny!
Was this picture photoshopped like the bikini pic. I want to see the original. Sarah Palin “21st Century Bull Moose Party”
That pathetic rant begged for that comment! Re: keyboard-—I have some bootleg freon TF that’ll work.
> I stopped reading here..
You got further than I did.
:)
SALON.COM
What a waste of ONES AND ZEROES!
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