Sarah Palin For President

Macleans ^ | July 2, 2009 | John Parisella

[2ndDivisionVet]

Sounds far-fetched and, to some, totally implausible. But the Republicans are losing potential candidates at a pace that is downright alarming if you believe in a healthy two-party system. The demise of John Ensign’s political career a few weeks ago and the surreal downfall of Mark Sanford last week is enough to send chills through the even the most optimistic Republican strategist. We know that of the 2008 crop, only Mitt Romney seems likely to stay on as a contender. The old stalwarts like Newt Gingrich may get a lot of press, but it is unlikely they can mount a real challenge to Obama in 2012. Yet, the presidential election of 2012 will be more than a simple coronation of Barack Obama if the economy stalls and there is no progress in two important areas: national security and healthcare.

Ballooning deficits and a sluggish economy could alter the mood of America by the time the 2010 mid-terms come up, giving hope to the GOP for the next presidential primary season. This is why Sarah Palin is maintaining a persistent media presence, whether it is debating David Letterman or being the biggest Republican draw on the lecture circuit. She clearly has her eyes set on the presidency.

The latest edition of Vanity Fair brings this possibility forward, though not in a favourable light. Journalist Todd Purdhom paints a picture of a woman with a narcissistic personality, who’s short on knowledge, disinterested in policy discussion, and not ready for primetime. In the end, the story says more about John McCain’s competence and character than it does about Palin, simply because he flubbed his most important decision as a presidential candidate. That said, Palin brought much needed energy to an otherwise lackluster campaign and, to this day, she energizes the base as no other candidate can. Could it be possible she may someday be a candidate for the presidency?

My experience tells me that no one should be written off in a hypothetical context. Barack Obama is proof positive of this. I still maintain that, without Bush, there is no Obama nomination. Palin is a street smart politician who has benefited from being underestimated most of her career. McCain’s disastrous choice may have been fatal to his electoral chances, but it brought Palin to the forefront of national attention. Since then, she has become a celebrity that transcends her party. However, if she is to be taken seriously and considered a viable contender, she needs to change the negative perceptions of her and develop a political profile that appeals to those outside her narrow base.

To do this, she must gradually reduce her exposure and begin to educate herself on the issues. She will not be ready for 2012 by remaining governor of Alaska and playing the celebrity. The GOP has too proud a tradition to have a re-run of the 2008 vice-presidential candidate. Also, the base Palin relies on for support no longer holds the sway it once did. Social conservatism is losing steam as a political movement thanks to the dubious habits of people like Gingrich, Ensign and Sanford, and the election of an African-American president as well as the increased attention paid to gay rights issues shows that Americans have begun to cast their old divisions aside. The future for the GOP lies with fiscal conservatism and strong national security policy—not with turning back the clock. Palin must embrace the values that created the Republican party in the first place—a belief in the individual, a belief in a limited role for the state, and a commitment to equality. The party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and (the pragmatic version of) Reagan is the path to a Republican resurgence. Palin is nowhere on that radar. She is all about celebrity status and controversy.

In the lead-up to July 4, Americans usually reflect on their great democracy. Overall, it is healthy and has shown resilience through the decades. But the Republicans have to become a viable alternative for this democracy to remain vibrant. So is Palin a real possibility for 2012 or 2016? Will she someday be a formal candidate for the presidency? Most definitely. But can she ever win? Based on what we have observed so far, I would say definitely not, though politics has been known to produce some strange developments.

[kinghorse]

And the media. I can’t believe I left out those suckers. The media needs to be screamed at. The right needs to beg the media for airtime and interviews so the right can sit there and lecture over the media for the entire time. Go radical or go home.

[romanesq]

“Everyone who voted for McCain-Palin were voting for Sarah Palin.”

Never said that. I recounted a story of three people is all.

What is fair to say is that Sarah didn’t draw enough votes on behalf of McCain. You need to maintain the distinction. For some reason you cross over all kinds of lines. Not easy to have a discussion that way.

Some Republicans want a rematch probably for lots of reasons:

1. Many feel Sarah represents the anti-Obama (numerous reasons here).
2. Many feel the attacks on Sarah were attacks on their values and families
3. Many think she will actually beat the crap out of Obama (I’m not sure)
4. Others believe there’s a reason why she is so hated. That she is the biggest threat to liberal/leftist rule.
5. Some Republicans are not RINOs or do not want a watered down Rat lite party. Sarah is clearly not a RINO.
6. Many Republicans probably don’t see it as a rematch. In point of fact it isn’t.

I’m not committed in 2012. I want to stop Obama’s destruction of American culture/society/economy and foreign policy success.

Not sure Sarah is up to all that. But right now she remains the best known threat to Obama’s clear leftist agenda. His claim of being moderate is now clearly seen as a ruse.

Many of us knew that. We looked at the record and all we saw was a left wing younger version of Al Sharpton. But the media loved it and took up the propaganda with gusto.

This last election was nothing more worthless than when Hitler ran in Germany.

[Soul Seeker]

Oh stop. People had a chance to vote for her as VP and watch her bite her tongue or moderate her positions according to John McCain’s whim. They didn’t have the opportunity to vote for her as President where she would control the dialogue and policy set forth.

[Jim Noble]

This last election was nothing more worthless than when Hitler ran in Germany

Hitler and his movement were very, VERY popular in Germany. By 1935-36, he could have won any open election with 70+% of the vote.

It's getting to be too late now, but any time between 1960-1995, any honest German of a certain age would tell you that, after a few beers.

[Earthdweller]

"Why is that, and why do you think there would magically be more of them 3 years from now?"

Because the GOP is dead. They are all indoctrinated Harvard or Yale commies that play conservative for the camera while they play toy enemy with "the other side of the isle". Their butts shine like the moon with socialism and they can't see it because the glare from their inner circle is blinding them to the reality that their pants aren't on.

Every person pushing Romney ought to put a target on their head saying, I'm a big government elite and I support my kind (totalitarian narcissists), even if they do have fake hair and lie like pirates.

The "GOP" has left the rest of the country behind with nothing left to lose. They are complicit in the downfall of the Republic. The gig is up. The Oligarchy is going down.

[Toespi]

Truth is the McCain/Palin ticket was up 8 pts. days prior to September 18th. Obama was heading south until the economy conveniently “collapsed.” That along with the ACORN fix in close states put Obama in the WH.

[counterpunch]

6. Many Republicans probably don't see it as a rematch. In point of fact it isn't.

Dewey's run against Truman is historically viewed as a rematch, even though when Dewey ran 4 years earlier, FDR was at the top of the ticket. It was considered a rematch by the press too, who was mostly pulling for Dewey.

In 1984 everyone laughed at the Democrats running a guy whose administration was booted 4 years earlier by Reagan. It was seen as an attempt to rerun the Carter campaign and return to the Carter years. No wonder he went down to a 49 state defeat.

Those Republicans who don't think of running Palin in 2012 as a rematch just haven't really had it brought to their attention in those terms. But the fact is the reason they want Palin to run in 2012 is precisely because she was on the ticket against 0bama in 2008. So a rematch is actually the reason they want her to run again, even if they don't realize it.

It really comes from a basic poverty of ideas on their part. In other words, they just can't think of anyone else.
But that is no way to choose a candidate.
It's a recipe for assured defeat.
 

[counterpunch]

If they liked her they would have voted for her.

[Diogenesis]

Toespi: "Truth is the McCain/Palin ticket was up 8 pts. days prior to September 18th.
Obama was heading south until the economy conveniently “collapsed.”"

Romney and his corrupt team threw the Election.

David Frum: "Frum was indeed a critic of Palin, calling her nomination a "huge mistake" during an October 13 Early Show appearance."

[counterpunch]

That totally doesn’t answer the question of why people who didn’t vote for Palin in 2008 would suddenly vote for her in 2012 by the 10s of millions.

On a separate note, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone accuse Romney of having fake hair. But having followed the comical hyperventilation of the rest of your rant, I wouldn’t have been surprised by anything crazy you said.

[Earthdweller]

"Obama was heading south until the economy conveniently “collapsed.” "

Everybody saw it. Thank God Al Gore invented the Internet./s It is also very apparent that nobody in "DC" is listening to the people. The "players" are in a hurry to ring fascism in because they can't cover up what is happening any longer with their paid stooges on the tube or on the net. It's getting easier by the day to figure out who the players are and what epicenters they generate from.

[Diogenesis]

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

After McCain was ahead in the polls, Team ROMNEY threw the election.

David Frum: "Two of our most plausible candidates for president in 2012 are leading Mormons: Mitt Romney and Utah governor Jon Huntsman."

---

David Frum: "I have a lot of regard for Mitt Romney as a man and politician.
Let me say for the record: If Romney emerges as the Republican nominee, I will support him without qualm."

---

Scumbag who attacked Gov.Palin, throwing Election2008 with the rest of TeamRomney.

David Frum: "Frum was indeed a critic of Palin, calling her nomination a "huge mistake" during an October 13 Early Show appearance."

---

Late in October, The American Spectator's The Prowler revealed:
"Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin's bid for the White House,
have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election.
'Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won't be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012,'
says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin.
'The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney.
He's in charge on November 5th.'"
The Prowler added: "Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a 'diva' and was going off message intentionally."
The Romney supporters in the McCain campaign had access to internal polling which indicated well in advance of the November 4 election that McCain had no chance to win.
So they began working to position their man Mitt for a run in 2012. Just two days after the election,The Palmetto Scoop reported:
"One of the first stories to hit the national airwaves was the claim of a major internal strife between close McCain aides and the folks handling his running mate Sarah Palin."
"I’m told by very good sources that this was indeed the case and that a rift had developed, but it was between Palin’s people and the staffers brought on from the failed presidential campaign of former Gov. Mitt Romney, not McCain aides."
"The sources said nearly 80 percent of Romney’s former staff was absorbed by McCain and these individuals were responsible for what amounts to a premeditated, last-minute sabotage of Palin."
These aides loyal to Romney inside the McCain campaign, said The Scoop, reportedly saw that Palin would be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2012 or 2016, which made her a threat to another presidential quest by Romney.
Erick Erickson, who organized Operation Leper, said:
"Here’s what I think: I think there are some staffers on the McCain campaign who seriously screwed up the roll out of Sarah Palin, to which Governor Palin herself objected.
These staffers are now out trying to finish her off thinking, as typical D.C. types do, that if they don’t do it to her, she’ll do it to them. They just never understood who Palin is or what she is about."
"Likewise, I do think there are some staffers and others who expect Mitt Romney to run again in 2012,
they decided McCain could not win, and decided to undermine Sarah Palin and her chances hoping it would ingratiate themselves with Mitt Romney."

---

"Who's the Palin Leaker from the McCain Campaign? (Mark Wallace, Romney pimp)
National Review Online The publication of a Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin
appears to have opened old wounds in the McCain campaign.
... the source of the “Diva” leak was Nicolle Wallace’s husband."

---

Who benefits most from Sanford meltdown? Californian (that's right) Mitt Romney

---

"Peeking Out From the McCain Wreckage: Mitt Romney"

"Someone's got to say it: IS MITT ROMNEY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBAMA'S VICTORY?"

"Vanity: Team Romney Sabotaged Palin and Continuing to Do So?"

"Romney Supporters Trashing Palin"

"Romney advisors sniping at Palin?"

---

Poor sport spoiler Romney doing what he does best:

Novak: "Fred Thompson drop-out rumors traced to Romney campaign"

Said Novak: "The rumors were traced in part to Mitt Romney's campaign,
trying to stir up strife between McCain and Thompson."

"Despite outspending his rivals by huge margins throughout the primaries,
(Mitt Romney, Carpetbagger UT,CA,MA,NH,Mexico) lost Iowa, South Carolina, Florida and California.
The only primaries he won were in Michigan, where Dad was governor; LDS states;
and a few states on Super Tuesday in which his California-obsessed rivals
couldn't spare the cash to advertise.
Only John Connolly in 1968 had a worse cash-to-delegates ratio.
And John McCain rightly did not like Romney's tactics during the primaries.
(W)hen (Romney's early leads) started slipping away, he resorted to unfair,
distorted, scorched-earth negative ads, betting that his opponents couldn't
afford to spend enough for the truth to catch up to his charges."
[Romney: A Mistake for McCain, 7/23/2008, Dick Morris]

[Earthdweller]

I don't talk with liberals pretending to be conservatives. Not everybody falls for Ann Coulter’s clown routine and I certainly don't fall for yours. You like fake Romney? Alrighty then...end of conversation.

Have a nice day.

[counterpunch]

Huh?

[mrsixpack36]

Sarah Palin is great. She is not electable though on the top of the ticket. Too much tabloid crap that the media keeps on baiting her into, and she falls for it every time. Still not ready for prime time. The sooner everyone realizes this, the quicker we can start planning for victory in 2010 and 2012.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

My “agenda” . . . is to present the historical evidence that a Palin/0bama rematch is political suicide to anyone who might think it is a good idea. If your agenda is to reelect Barack Hussein 0bama, Jr. in 2012, then it is a good strategy to run him against someone he’s already defeated as his opponent. You eliminate most of the unknowns in a situation that has proven to heavily favor your candidate. You can’t get much more of a sure thing than that.

Undoubtedly you can cite more than one case of a presidential aspirant getting a party's nomination twice, and losing a rematch against the sitting president. Certainly Adlai Stevenson would be an example. I just don't accept that it would be a "rematch" for Sarah Palin to run for president for the first time.

The difference between president and vice president is pretty much the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug." That's why, although the VP nominee is always selected to "bring something to the ticket" electorally, you can't name any VP nominee who made the difference in a presidential campaign. If McCain had won, he wouldn't have said, "I owe it all to Sarah Palin" - even tho in his case it would actually have been true.

I will agree that I am not optimistic about '12 unless the Republican VP nominee is a pit dog who is able, and cleared by his presidential running mate, to go after Obama hammer and tongs. Which certainly does not describe how John McCain used his VP nominee. I consider it possible that the best VP nominee to run with Sarah Palin - or whoever - might be an unknown black conservative who could throw back charges of racism and be an effective advocate for actual colorblindness in politics.

[MaxMax]

If Thune doesn’t meet the bar for presidential material,
then Sarah Palin certainly doesn’t

If that's your litness test, then so be it. /LAFF

[spikeytx86]

LOL!

You are ignoring my point. VP’s do not nor have they ever won elections. A VP’s job is to secure the base and to not cost the ticket any net votes come election day.

You have now stated clearly she helped him tremendously by bringing the base home and that she did not cost him any net votes in the General.

And, if it wasn't for her, he may have lost states like MO that he won by a squeaker.

So she fulfilled all that could be asked of a VP candidate. WTF else did you expect her to do? Kick McCain off the ticket and make it a one woman show LOL!?!

We have no idea what kind of candidate she would be at the top of the ticket because that was not the role she was expected to play.

That is why we have primaries. Why don't you wait till she ACTUALLY RUNS FOR PRESIDENT and then judge her performance then. If she sucks, I am sure other people will also be running for the nomination. But she has an impressive ability to surprise those that underestimate her. Let's let time and the Primaries bare her out and stop attacking her for things that were out of her control shall we?

[jla]

"Not One of Us"
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, February 25, 2009

If Barack Obama has been the most remarkable phenomenon of the recent political scene, Sarah Palin must be second. The emotional responses to each-- especially by the media and the intelligentsia -- go beyond anything that can be explained by the usual political differences of opinion on issues of the day.

That liberals would be thrilled by another liberal is not surprising. But there are conservative Republicans who voted for Barack Obama, and other conservatives who may not have voted for him, but who are quick to see in various pragmatic moves of his since taking office an indication that he is not an extremist.

Anyone familiar with history knows that Hitler and Stalin were pragmatic. After years of denouncing each other, they signed the Nazi-Soviet pact under which they became allies for a couple of years before going to war against one another.

Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama's pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.

With Governor Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.

Governor Palin's "inexperience" is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has. Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.

Governor Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."

The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.

The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.

Before the first trial of Alger Hiss began, reporters who gathered at the courthouse informally sounded each other out as to which of them they believed, before any evidence had been presented. Most believed that Hiss was telling the truth and that it was Chambers who was lying.

More important, those reporters who believed that Chambers was telling the truth were immediately ostracized. None of this could have been based on the evidence for either side, for that evidence had not yet been presented in court.

For decades after Hiss was convicted and sent to federal prison, much of the media and the intelligentsia defended him. To this day, there is an Alger Hiss chair at Bard College.

Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.

Governor Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life-- an overdue challenge, much as Chambers' challenge was overdue.

Whether Governor Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need some candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor-- worse yet-- the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.

[jla]

Welcome Back, Dad
Michael Reagan
Thursday, September 04, 2008

I've been trying to convince my fellow conservatives that they have been wasting their time in a fruitless quest for a new Ronald Reagan to emerge and lead our party and our nation. I insisted that we'd never see his like again because he was one of a kind.

I was wrong!

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.

Last night was an extraordinary event. Widely seen beforehand as a make-or-break effort -- either an opportunity for Sarah Palin to show that she was the happy warrior that John McCain assured us she was, or a disaster that would dash McCain's presidential hopes and send her back to Alaska, sadder but wiser.

Obviously un-intimidated by either the savage onslaught to which the left-leaning media had subjected her, or the incredible challenge she faced -- and oozing with confidence -- she strode defiantly to the podium and proved she was everything and even more than John McCain told us.

Much has been made of the fact that she is a woman. What we saw last night, however, was something much more than a just a woman accomplishing something no Republican woman has ever achieved. What we saw was a red-blooded American with that rare, God-given ability to rally her dispirited fellow Republicans and take up the daunting task of leading them -- and all her fellow Americans -- on a pilgrimage to that shining city on the hill my father envisioned as our nation's real destination.

In a few words she managed to rip the mask from the faces of her Democratic rivals and reveal them for what they are -- a pair of old-fashioned liberals making promises that cannot be kept without bankrupting the nation and reducing most Americans to the status of mendicants begging for their daily bread at the feet of an all-powerful government.

Most important, by comparing her own stunning record of achievement with his, she showed Barack Obama for the sham that he is, a man without any solid accomplishments beyond conspicuous self-aggrandizement.

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.

As hard as you might try, you won't find that kind of plain-spoken, down-to-earth, self-reliant American in the upper ranks of the liberal-infested, elitist Democratic Party, or in the Obama campaign.

Sarah Palin didn't go to Harvard, or fiddle around in urban neighborhood leftist activism while engaging in opportunism within the ranks of one of the nation's most corrupt political machines, never challenging it and going along to get along, like Barack Obama.

Instead she took on the corrupt establishment in Alaska and beat it, rising to the governorship while bringing reforms to every level of government she served in on her way up the ladder.

Welcome back, Dad, even if you're wearing a dress and bearing children this time around.