Posted on 10/16/2008 10:11:33 PM PDT by acsuc99
But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality. But it's unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things. Her supporters accuse her critics of snobbery: Maybe she's not a big "egghead" but she has brilliant instincts and inner toughness. But what instincts? "I'm Joe Six-Pack"? She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—"palling around with terrorists." If the Ayers case is a serious issue, treat it seriously. She is not as thoughtful or persuasive as Joe the Plumber, who in an extended cable interview Thursday made a better case for the Republican ticket than the Republican ticket has made. In the past two weeks she has spent her time throwing out tinny lines to crowds she doesn't, really, understand.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Noonan is so freakin’ jealous of Palin she’s turned in to a monster. Shamful woman.
Methinks Peggy is more sensitive to studio lights than some, she has been a bit daft of late, imo.
I think the situation for Peggy is a bit more than simple jealousy. She sees the end of the Reagan Legacy coming. Let me explain that a bit.
Ronald Reagan has been the inspiration for our party for many decades, but Ronald Reagan was a man of his times. The perfect man, as it turned out. He accomplished more than most Presidents can even begin to contemplate. Sarah Palin has been called “The New Ronald Reagan’ but I think that may be wrong.
Sarah is something new. I think she resembles Teddy Roosevelt in many ways. The “can do” attitude....not just “can do” but “H3ll yes! let’s go do it, we’re American!”.
Sarah’s charisma is overwhelming and it is less due to her beauty than most of the elites would like to admit. This is a woman who typifies the best of America in the 21st century. She is the same type of American who starts and runs high tech companies, who runs a trucking firm with her husband, the same type of American that many of us would like to be when we grow up. The type of American who could be Vice President and who could lead the country well and enthusiastically, accomplishing much in very short timeframes.
I typified her as somewhat like Teddy Roosevelt which may lead some to think of her as being a creature of the past. But that is not my intent. She resembles him in her grasp of what makes America truly great. The high energy, the firm grasp on the difference between right and wrong (an American signature attribute) and the unwillingness to back up when challenged in her beliefs, the willingness to follow through on her beliefs, the love for the family, the willingness to use our own resources for the good of the people of America as well as others around the world, these are the hallmark of a true American.
The second time I listened to her speak, this phrase (about America) kept running through my mind:
“The future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades.”
Sarah is the future of America.
So let’s put on our shades and go vote for McCain/Palin. Let’s speak gently with our friends and tell them about our country’s bright future. It may turn some heads and some votes.
Women of spirit. They recognize a soul-sister.
Some people just don’t know when to retire.
Peggy, if McCain didn’t have Palin, obama would be ahead by 20%.
Damn right! She really is irritating and useless. She is just another latte sipping geezerette in Manhattan.
Yes Peggy, Joe Biden is a much better VP choice than Sarah Palin. I’ve got a three letter word for you. JOBS JOBS JOBS!
Just saw Peggy Noonan’s latest attack on Sarah Palin. I have now had it with her. What the Hell happened to Noonan??
She used to be a Rock Ribbed Conservative and admired and worked for Ronald Reagan, now she has become the worst kind of RINO and instead of helping Palin she joins in with the rest of the MSM Mob and denigrates her.
Noonan is now just just a dried up wench who used to be on the right side of the good fight and now living in New York has made her just another Liberal Republican in Love with herself.
Whatever respect I once had for her is now gone.
If McCain and Pailn can win this thing I hope it sticks in the Craw of her and every other stinking RINO!!!!!!!!!
Jealousy is so unbecoming for a withered debutante.
Adios Ms. Noonan, we hardly knew ye...
You know, I went to Peggy Noonan’s website, and she has a service screening all her email.
Mustn’t let the riff-raff sully her ears with things untoward.
Maybe someone will shoot her this link.
Peggy - you’re an elitest. President Reagan would not know you as you are now.
This article reminded of something I read in a biography of the poet Ann Sexton. The biographer noted that it’s always sad to learn that a great writer didn’t live up to the wisdom of her own words.
My favorite political memoir is Peggy Noonan’s “What I Saw at the Revolution.” One passage in that wonderful book stands out in my mind:
“I’ll tell you something surprising: This sunny man touched so many Americans in part because they perceived his pain. They saw beyond the television image, they saw the flesh and blood, they felt those wounds, they caught that poignancy. The reporters and correspondents and smart guys, they missed it. But the people saw. They thought, Look at the courage it took at his age to be shot in the chest by a kid with a gun and go through healing and therapy and go out there again and continue being president, continue waving at the crowds as he walks to the car. Think of the courage that old man had!”
Tens of thousands of ordinary Americans are standing for hours in the rain to see Sarah Palin because they see in this “sunny lady” the “flesh and blood”. The reporters and the smart guys don’t get it. Dear Ms. Noonan doesn’t get it either.
We see in Sarah Palin two qualities lacking in Washington, DC: courage and integrity. We see a woman who was brutalized by the media and the kooks on the left, and yet was plucky enough to step on stage and give a speech that wowed the world and then go toe to toe with a six term senator and come out the better. We see a woman who blew the whistle on the crooks in her own party – resigning from her first big six figure job despite the very real possibility that doing so would spell the end of her political career. We see someone who beat both an incumbent and a well respect former governor though she was outspent and didn’t have the support of her own party, the labor unions, the environmentalists, and the oil industry. She did it all by herself. And if you want to know what her governing philosophy is you need only look at her record. One of her first acts in office was to request that all government agencies reduce their spending by 10 percent or she'd reduce it for them.
The left is attempting to paint Palin as George W. Bush in a skirt, and some members of the right are buying into it. Palin governed as a strict fiscal conservative. Bush did not. Palin's populism is based on American values of self reliance and local autonomy. Bush's populism was grounded in what he called "compassionate conservatism" -- which translated into big government spending programs which were really only a more efficient variation of LBJ's Great Society. Palin doesn't promise goodies and programs. She simply promises to put government back on the side of the people by reining in spending and making sure taxes are low. That's basic Reagan Revolution conservatism.
Ms. Noonan strangely asserts that Palin doesn’t understand us. I disagree. I think she gets us quite well. Her closing comments during her debate struck a cord. She said:
"It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free."
We're in the midst of billion dollar bailouts and government takeovers of private industry. We're becoming crippled by our dependency on foreign sources of oil. We're witnessing our Chinese bankers walk on the moon, and our former European welfare wards mock our current financial crisis and gleefully report that our days of economic preeminence are over. I think Palin has a point when she expresses the fear that our sunset years will be defined by a bitter nostalgia for all that we lost.
The permanent political punditry on the right and left still don't really understand the average smoes like me. The current batch of rightwing punditry are graduates of the Reagan years and yet they no longer really understand what made him new because they themselves have grown old. The rest of us don't spend our days chronicling Belt Way intrigues. We don't know what the "Dingell-Norwood" is and frankly we don't care. Many of us don't even feel the need to vote because we've come to expect government to be useless and politicians to be little more than pandering freeloaders. We pay our taxes every April 15 and expect that our elected representatives will do their job or at least not make things worse for us. We secretly suspect that they do next to nothing, or at least nothing really useful. They just live off our money. Fine, just don't burn down the house. And don't try to soak us for more money.
What do we “Main Streeters” hear in Sarah Palin? We hear a person who doesn’t make wild promises. She doesn’t promise to give everyone a pet unicorn and an eco-friendly magic carpet. She promises to protect our interests by reigning in the growth of this selfish beast that eats our tax dollars and finds new ways to bring our country to the brink. She promises to responsibly lead us in completing missions in distant countries where we never wanted to go and hope never to have to return. She doesn’t promise that the wars will be over tomorrow, but she does promise that we will listen to our generals from now on so that we won’t be seeing dozens of flag-draped coffins every month. She doesn’t promise that the whole world will love us again (if they ever did), but she promises that we will stay strong enough to deter those who don't like us, and we will become self-sufficient in the one area most crucial to our long term security -- energy.
She gave a clearer and simpler explanation of what America represents that any neocon I've read:
"America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world."
That might sound like boilerplate to Ms. Noonan, but to us it sounds true and heartfelt without seeming belligerent or arrogant. It’s simple, but not simplistic. It’s even humble in admitting our faults. And she said it all with a wink and a smile just like that other sunny optimist.
The pundits don't get it. They think it's either phony populism or politically savvy populism. It's not either. It's just "Main Streeter" Americanism.
Palin in this campaign has shown herself to be the quintessential happy warrior. Her jab at Obama’s “palling around with terrorists” was spot on. First because it applied the correct moniker to Bill Ayers and his wife – terrorists. People who blow up government buildings and plot to murder soldiers and their dates are terrorists. It’s shameful that the media is unwilling to acknowledge this. By describing his connection with this disreputable couple as “palling around,” Palin is not being flippant, she’s mocking Obama. She’s mocking the weird world of leftist activism in which an unrepentant leftwing version of Timothy McVeigh can magically be rehabilitated into a respectable edu-crat. Barack Obama palled around in that bizarro world of ends-justify-the-means leftist activism, and for that he deserves to be mocked.
As for “Joe Six-Pack” being divisive – oh, please. Come on. She didn’t specify whether it was microbrew or Budweiser, Sam Adams, Rolling Rock, Coors, Corona, or Alaska Amber. This is America and we like beer served cold on the Fourth of July!
Peggy feels betrayed by W. and so she has a "never again" mentality, which has sadly made her blind to Palin's virtues.
Just to be fair, I have to point out that Peggy’s just following the WSJ’s style guide by using “Mrs. Palin.” They do, in fact, use Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama.
I think Peggy is also suffering from an unfounded fear that Palin is another Bush. As I noted in my post above, Palin is no Bush. Palin governed as a strict fiscal conservative. Bush did not. Palin's populism is based on the American tradition of self reliance and local autonomy. Bush's populism was grounded in what he called "compassionate conservatism" -- which translated into big government spending programs which were really only a more efficient variation of LBJ's Great Society. Palin doesn't promise goodies and programs. She simply promises to put government back on the side of the people by reining in spending and making sure taxes are low. Peggy feels betrayed by W. and so she has a "never again" mentality, which has sadly made her blind to Palin's virtues.
A vile, envious woman. A cheap Beltway hack, afraid she won’t be invited to media cocktail parties if she doesn’t join the lynch mob savaging our Sarah. A moral coward.
Gipper Gal you rock! That was just a fine response to Ms. Noonan. Peggy N. has certainly betrayed herself as someone that could not have understood the RR appeal or else she has become too cynical or possibly had personnel problems??
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