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Cutting bait (Steyn on Palin)
NRO ^ | 7/3/09 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 07/03/2009 10:57:15 PM PDT by pissant

With respect to many of the Palinologists below, I think they're getting way too hepatomantic over the entrails.

As a political move for anything other than the 2010 Senate race, today's announcement is a disaster. And I'm not sure it's a plus for the Senate - and, even if it were, the manner and timing suggest it was not a professionally planned event and therefore is unlikely to have any grand strategy behind it.

So Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer".

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Alaska
KEYWORDS: careerendingmove; chickenlittles; democratswin; fedindictmentcoming; gopimplosion; marksteyn; palin; quitter; sarahbarraquitta; soroswins
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To: counterpunch
The fact is, people vote for the person, not the campaign.

And the person was McCain so your argument is shot full of holes and screaming towards the ground in flames.

101 posted on 07/04/2009 12:14:48 AM PDT by TigersEye (0bama: "I can see Mecca from the WH portico." --- Google - Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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To: TigersEye

I asked you some questions.
Anyone who blindly follows a Cult of Personality to their own suicide, political or otherwise, is a Kool-Aid drinker.

Sarah Palin offers Kool-Aid to the initiated. She’s not a real politician, she is a pop culture celebrity with all the political seriousness one would expect. Find me a real conservative who is informed and formulates policies. You know, the way politicians were before the Age of 0bama.

Sarah Palin is no Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, or Mike Pence.
She is a personality, thrown up on the TV screen for people to follow her reality-show personal life drama. Not a serious politician.


102 posted on 07/04/2009 12:15:15 AM PDT by counterpunch (In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.)
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To: pissant
Mrs Palin is an honorable woman so it would be dishonorable to do anything other than to take her at her word.

I'm with the “she gave her reasons so let's wait and see” bunch.
All else is mental masturbation and oral flatulence.

Palin ain't “out” of the conservative leadership bullpen until she actually says she is out—and she ain't said no such.

As far as 2012 is concerned,our DeMint is the obvious best choice for America,but he is the only true conservative left in the United States Senate and the body would sink into it's own excrement without him..

103 posted on 07/04/2009 12:16:08 AM PDT by Happy Rain ("If every man who swore to uphold the US Constitution actually did so...")
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To: All

Thanks for the debate on this issue. I appreciate it.

I’m hitting the hay now. Good night.


104 posted on 07/04/2009 12:18:04 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (_Resident of the United States and Kenya's favorite son, Baraaaack Hussein Obamaaaa...)
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To: DoughtyOne

It’s more important you know what Sarah said.


105 posted on 07/04/2009 12:18:56 AM PDT by presently no screen name
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To: truthfreedom

well said.


106 posted on 07/04/2009 12:19:02 AM PDT by alaskanfan
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To: pissant

Who?


107 posted on 07/04/2009 12:19:54 AM PDT by Vendome
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To: Monterrosa-24

Carter didn’t lose because of Mondale, nor did McCain lose because of Palin. Nor did I suggest as much.

What I said was Palin wasn’t able to bring out more votes than 0bama.
It goes without saying that Neither was McCain.

That doesn’t mean it’s her fault he lost. It just means she didn’t have the support out there to help him win.

Elections are about which ticket has more supporters.
they can be supporters for any number of reasons.
There is no rule on why a person can or can’t support a ticket.
McCain’s strategy was to piggyback his election on Sarah Palin’s personal appeal. Unlike Reagan — who WON — McCain was not the star of his own ticket. Sarah Palin was. He ceded the top spot to her. But in the end, she had fewer people willing to come out and cast a vote on her behalf than 0bama did.
That is how elections are won and lost.


108 posted on 07/04/2009 12:20:18 AM PDT by counterpunch (In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.)
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To: Happy Rain

How many Senators have actually become POTUS?


109 posted on 07/04/2009 12:21:12 AM PDT by alaskanfan
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To: TigersEye

No, Palin was the person people were coming out to see and coming out to vote for.
And there were 10 million less than 0bama had.


110 posted on 07/04/2009 12:21:18 AM PDT by counterpunch (In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.)
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To: counterpunch

There is nothing but meaningless platitudes and sophistry in your posts. Nothing of substance. You say 0bama had 70 million supporters but I’m pretty sure he only got about 57 million votes. Your “facts” are pure BS and your logic is pretzeled beyond the absurd.


111 posted on 07/04/2009 12:21:56 AM PDT by TigersEye (0bama: "I can see Mecca from the WH portico." --- Google - Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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To: presently no screen name

I’ve listened to it three times.

It didn’t help. It is what it is.


112 posted on 07/04/2009 12:24:08 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (_Resident of the United States and Kenya's favorite son, Baraaaack Hussein Obamaaaa...)
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To: counterpunch

“...He (McCain) ceded the top spot to her...”

,,,In your fantasy world. In reality land, he chained her up and never unleashed her. McCain torpedoed his own campaign with statements like “Obama would be a good president”.


113 posted on 07/04/2009 12:24:46 AM PDT by Monterrosa-24 ( ...even more American than a French bikini and a Russian AK-47.)
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To: counterpunch
Carter didn’t lose because of Mondale, nor did McCain lose because of Palin. Nor did I suggest as much.

Now you are lying about what you have said. You said "Palin imploded in October." Unless you were assigning McCain's loss to Palin your statement makes no sense.

114 posted on 07/04/2009 12:24:55 AM PDT by TigersEye (0bama: "I can see Mecca from the WH portico." --- Google - Cloward-Piven Strategy)
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To: counterpunch

I am just finishing to listening to all the talking heads about Palin. The mostly using the same talking points from the commies, and your postings echos them exactly!!!


115 posted on 07/04/2009 12:25:12 AM PDT by danamco
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To: alaskanfan
I think she is tired of being a Pinata for everyone from comedians to politicians that couldn’t find their ass with both hands and a flashlight while socialists in her own state file bogus ethical charges against her running up a personal defense bill of 1/2 million. Her and Todd are not professional politicians and can’t afford that.

Weren't the ethics charges filed by some malevolent female blogger?
A blogger ran her out of office?
That's what it looks like

116 posted on 07/04/2009 12:25:14 AM PDT by dennisw ("stealth tribal warfare" is what the Sotomayor nomination is about)
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To: TigersEye

Obama won 69.5 million votes, far more than anybody in US history.


117 posted on 07/04/2009 12:26:08 AM PDT by Ted Grant
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To: TigersEye

57 million votes?
How do you figure?
That would be fewer votes than either Bush or Kerry.
And fewer votes than McCain.
That would mean McCain was president now.
Last time I checked, he wasn’t.

0bama’s exact vote total was 69,456,897.


118 posted on 07/04/2009 12:26:26 AM PDT by counterpunch (In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.)
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To: WVKayaker

Can we vote to get that troll banned? As you point out - he is spreading his propaganda on this conservative site - I despise his using FR for his agenda.


119 posted on 07/04/2009 12:26:46 AM PDT by presently no screen name
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To: pissant

Agreed. Her resignation is just that: resignation. Hopefully, we’ll see support for a presidential candidate who will cut spending for government schools instead of increasing it, be a man likely to be a great commander-in-chief, work to reverse the trend toward globalism and have a congressional voting record for proof instead of speeches full of contradictory generalities. Too many of the leading candidates to date have been opposing most of their constituents to accommodate their favored few.


120 posted on 07/04/2009 12:27:11 AM PDT by familyop (cbt. engr. (cbt), NG, '89-' 96, Duncan Hunter or no-vote)
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