Guess again, Jughead.
Yeah, I thought McCain should pick Romney back when there seemed to be not a snowball’s chance in hell that he would pick Palin. Better Mitt than Lieberman, Ridge or that snooze in Minnesota, I thought at the time.
Many FReepers who know me well also know that I slammed Romney pretty hard back in the primaries. But one by one, as my first choices kept getting eliminated - first Allen, then Thompson - I figured I’d rather have Romney than Rudy, McCain or the Huckster. Simple process of elimination.
And after McCain got the nomination, I did indeed write a couple of posts saying that he should choose Romney. But when I heard that he was considering Palin, she went right to the top of my list, and she’s stayed there ever since:
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/08/beauty-of-sarah-palin.html
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/08/biden-check-palin-checkmate.html
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/08/accomplished-sarah-palin.html
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/09/watchdog-group-lifts-fog-from-alaskan.html
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/09/quaified-to-be-vp.html
http://mainstreamconservative.blogspot.com/2008/09/media-campaign-to-destroy-sarah-palin.html
And numerous other posts in defense of Sarah Palin...
Oh, and just for the record, I also have a blog which supports Sarah Palin - not Mitt Romney - for president:
http://govpalin4prez.blogspot.com/
Do your homework next time, sonny. People who make rash decisions and/or claims based on one freakin’ blog post without looking at all the evidence are either clueless or have some agenda of their own.
What’s your excuse?
- JP
Here's the
entire article. Decide for yourself if the author (me) is a "Romneybot" - or if a Mitt-obsessed poster is blowing smoke out of his hind end:
The Palin-Reagan Connection
I'm one of those who refuses to proclaim Sarah Palin as "the next Reagan." To do so would be to open myself to all sorts of attacks from Reagan admirers and detractors alike, but that's not why refrain from equating the two. I truly believe that Ronald Reagan was a rare and unique leader, a giant of the conservative movement who pushed it ahead as much as did Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. I do admire and support Gov. Palin, and I think she has her own brand of uniqueness. Rather than cast her as "another" Reagan, I see Palin as one of Reagan's
disciples, as is Fred Thompson. Sarah and Fred both preach the Gipper gospel of fiscal restraint, national security, smaller government and traditional values.
Ronald Reagan's son Michael, however, has a different opinion. He shows no such restraint in comparing Palin to his late father. He actually sees her as his dad's reincarnation, at least in spirit. As someone who knew Ronald Reagan better than anyone, with the singular exception of Nancy Reagan, his opinion cannot be dismissed out of hand. After Governor Palin delivered her acceptance speech to the RNC convention last summer, he wrote
this:
Wednesday night I watched the Republican National Convention on television and there, before my very eyes, I saw my Dad reborn; only this time he's a she.
And what a she!
In one blockbuster of a speech, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resurrected my Dad's indomitable spirit and sent it soaring above the convention center, shooting shock waves through the cynical media's assigned spaces and electrifying the huge audience with the kind of inspiring rhetoric we haven't heard since my Dad left the scene.
This was Ronald Reagan at his best -- the same Ronald Reagan who made the address known now solely as "The Speech," which during the Goldwater campaign set the tone and the agenda for the rebirth of the traditional conservative movement that later sent him to the White House for eight years and revived the moribund GOP.
That was from Michael's column dated September 4.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the relatively short period of time since that convention speech. A young governor who was scooped up out of Alaska and thrust onto the national stage has taken much more than her fair share of abuse from both ends of the political spectrum, and the middle to boot. She has had her shining moments and some awkward ones. She has been blamed for John McCain's loss by some and credited with preventing that loss from being a blowout of epic proportions by others. Proponents on both sides of the argument can cite poll numbers to support their claims.
Actually, John McCain's loss can be directly attributed to the three factors: an unpopular president from McCain's own political party, a financial crisis finding its flash point just weeks before the election and being outspent by a factor of seven to one. Sarah Palin made no difference between winning or losing for the GOP presidential ticket. She couldn't have pulled McCain's chestnuts out of the fire, and neither did she cast them into the flames.
Where Palin made a major difference was with the conservative base. She energized and motivated a core group which has never trusted McCain and was lukewarm to his candidacy at best. She was poorly served by his campaign staff. They put her into situations without properly preparing her for them, and they denied her access for too long to local media and conservative talk show venues. When she pulled larger and more enthusiastic crowds than her running mate, McCain, to his credit, seemed amused by that outcome and quite happy with it. His campaign aides, on the other hand, were outraged. Fearing that it reflected poorly on
them, they made sure Sarah Palin paid dearly. they began whispering sweet nothings into the ears of a media so smitten by McCain's opponent that it was only too happy to spread these rumors and outright lies far and wide. It is to McCain's discredit that he did nothing to put a stop to it and roll some heads.
Having made new political enemies, Gov. Palin is now back home in Alaska, where she has to deal with the same old ones. The difference is that the national media, which wasn't that much interested in the political tug of war between Gov. Palin and those in her own state who wanted to take her down before her ridse to fame, will now process every little smear and false accusation through its giant megaphone. And those old Palin enemies now have new allies - powerful ones. But don't count out Sarah Palin. She's smart, a quick learner and connects with common people. Yet she has uncommon political talent and instincts. She will be back in the national political arena, better prepared and well-versed on national and world issues.
In Michael Reagan's words:
Like Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin is one of us. She knows how most of us live because that's the way she lives. She shares our homespun values and our beliefs, and she glories in her status as a small-town woman who put her shoulder to the wheel and made life better for her neighbors.
Her astonishing rise up from the grass-roots, her total lack of self-importance, and her ordinary American values and modest lifestyle reveal her to be the kind of hard-working, optimistic, ordinary American who made this country the greatest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
And with that, I have no disagreement.
- JP