Posted on 12/27/2009 10:40:42 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I have in the past been a skeptic of Sarah Palin. Not of her political talent, which is considerable, but of her grasp of – and even interest in – substantive policy issues.
When she abruptly resigned the governorship of Alaska on July 3rd, I wondered if she simply hadn’t the stomach for national politics. And the rambling, disjointed speech she gave that day left me wondering if she even knew why she was making such a momentous and potentially career-crippling decision.
But then a funny thing happened: In November, Mrs. Palin debuted her memoir “Going Rogue” with great sales, which was not a surprise, but also with a luminous and successful press tour, which was. The interviews she gave in promotion for her book (at least the ones that I saw) were much improved from those given during the 2008 presidential campaign. Palin seemed to speak about both herself and national issues with greater verve and confidence.
Other stars are aligning for Palin:
Several of her potential rivals for the 2012 Republican nomination find themselves suddenly, perhaps fatally, compromised by recent events.
Mitt Romney, for example, is watching the national health care debate work against his presidential ambitions, as the tortured and torturous Senate bill resembles more and more the regime he helped institute in Massachusetts – not something that will endear him to conservative primary voters enraged at Democrats’ health care offensive.
And there is Mike Huckabee, who charmed his way into a television hosting gig at FOX News after the campaign. Revelations that a man suspected of shooting and killing four police officers in Washington state had been granted clemency years ago by Huckabee, then governor of Arkansas, are widely believed to have seriously damaged his future electoral chances.
As a result, should they decide to run again both Romney and Huckabee will certainly find their respective tenures as governor under renewed and perhaps unwelcome scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Palin appears to be having a ball, trading comedic blows with William Shatner on the Tonight Show, receiving throngs of adoring fans at bookstores across the heartland, and weighing in on global warming in the pages of The Washington Post.
Could she be preparing, in a serious way, to become a serious candidate? It certainly looks that way to this amateur Palin watcher. If she can convince independent voters that she understands the issues, has thought them through and come to reasonable judgments about possible courses of action…if, if, if.
A lot of stars have yet to align for Palin’s path to the presidency to be illuminated. But that no longer seems impossible to me. In fact, I can now quite clearly imagine that someday, someone may say the words “Madam President,” to a moose-hunting mom from Alaska.
Wouldn’t that be something?
DeMint is a good man but lets hope he has got over his recent affection for Mitt Romney. The latter isn’t real popular round here. Dunno if its true but if DeMint doesn’t run the mumble is he’ll pitch in with Mitt. That would be a travesty.
http://myclob.pbworks.com/Demint%20Letter
And ten children between them.
Just funnin you about your DeMint comment.
She is changing a lot of minds over the last few months, and that is what is really important at this time. Going Rogue is still selling real well, something unusual for political memoirs, she has speeches lined up for two TEA Party events, one in January and the other in February, as well as speeches at several other events. Then she’ll be campaigning for Perry in TX. We’ll be seeing and hearing from Palin quite a bit in the coming weeks, and probably most of 2010. The more people see her, hear her, and read what she writes, the more minds she changes, and the more the media attacks upon her make them look bad, and not her.
I was a major skeptic of Palin but now knowing how horribly the media attacks anyone conservative I’ve given her a second thought, and read her book Going Rogue. Amazingly I am with her now 99% and it is now obvious that she was made to look like a fool by design. It was Alinksy and his rules for radicals practiced by the ‘mainstream/dying media’ that made her look like an idiot. You can do that to anyone if you take just the right clips. She is a Reagan Republican and I for one will support her if she gets the nomination.
I guess he must have watched a different speech than the one I saw...
The Rancid Media will utterly destroy her with lies.
Mark Levin would clean house...
DeMint has the charisma of an insurance salesman. You really think he would pack the campaign venues like Palin did?
It’s a joke, son, just a joke. I hope Senator DeMint becomes majority leader next year.
After 18 months of relentless lying they find themselves clawing at the bottom of the dumpster. What’s left?
Me too. I think he’d square them yankees away.
Bob is waiting for the moderate republican candidate that is favored by conventional wisdom, is socially moderate, and fiscally moderate. His type of candidate understands the nuance and penumbra of the constitution.
Getting elected President is not about filling a coliseum with people. If anything, I find any candidate who can do that incredibly dangerous. Obama did that and look what it got us.
Politics is about who we should have in office, not about who can build the best celebrity cult.
Palin is a celebrity cult politician with questionable executive ability. The country elected someone of that mold in 2008 and he looks like he’s going to hand us Congress when at the time we looked to be on post mortem.
We need to present an alternative to Obama that is not a celebrity cult politician. We need a candidate who doesn’t base his candidacy on his ability to give a pretty speech and to get devoted sycophants to crowd an arena. A sober executive who has proven his executive ability.
Bob Riley fits this mold. Haley Barbour fits this mold. Mitch Daniels fits this mold. I’m sorry to say it but I have to. Sarah Palin does not fit this mold.
You’re clueless.
Did she or did she not resign the office that the people of Alaska had elected her to? And for what?
Bob Riley made a political mistake during his first term (by falling into a trap set by the Dem majority in the legislature) and it led to him have approval ratings below 35% from the fall of 2003 until Hurricane Katrina. Riley was battered. It looked like a certainty that Siegelman would defeat him in a rematch in 2006. That would have been my bet in 2005.
But then, Katrina came and Riley stepped up to the plate and showed what kind of leader he was. In 2006, he was elected with the largest margin a Republican had ever achieved in the state in modern times.
Riley was under the gun for multiple years. But he didn’t run away. He didn’t quit when the press and other politicians were saying mean things about him. He stuck it out, governed the state in a sober manner and as a result, he got the endorsement of every major newspaper in his re-election bid, including even hopeless liberal papers like the Montgomery Advertiser and the Anniston Star.
If Palin were sticking it out in Juneau right now dealing with the issues the people elected her to deal with and fighting the criticism by showing her governing ability (as Riley did) I might have more respect for her.
To me though, her actions of 2009 reminded me of how my daughters would act as children when I wouldn’t buy them the Barbie dollhouse they wanted. Many words can describe her resignation. Confidence inspiring is not one of the,.
Interesting assertion. How do you support it, exactly?
Well, let’s look at her.
What executive offices has she held? Mayor of a town (that she incidentally ran into debt) that would take five of them to equal the population of my local city council district. And governor of Alaska.
Now. Getting elected Governor was an impressive achievement. She beat two well seasoned Alaska politicians who had been around the block. I’ll give her credit for that. But then she quit that same office after too many people in Juneau and the national media criticized her. The fire got hot and she ran out of the kitchen. At least Obama had shown hardball skills in the past.
And as for the part about her being a celebrity cult politician. How is she not? The arguments I see being made for her is that she can pack auditoriums. Her rabid supporters are really really rabid. They are only seperated from the rabid Obamanuts of 2008 by ideology and party affiliation. Her idea of running a campaign is writing her own book (now who else did that?) and then going on a tour to promote said book. The woman gets parodied in music videos and in popular culture all the time. She is definitely a celebrity. She is the Republican answer to Obama in many ways. But, given how much of a failure he is do we want that.
I think we’d send far more of a message by nominating some middle aged white guy who is not hip and exciting but who people trust to run the country rather than going for our own cult of celebrity candidate to try and match Obama’s.
Bob Riley is virtually unknown outside Alabama. And he hurt himself by proposing the biggest bundle of tax increases in state history, which were defeated in a statewide vote. He’d have a long, long way to go in becoming known nationally.
Palin might have known exactly what she was doing. Her approval ratings continue to climb the more she is exposed to the public sans McCain. She will be extremely well known by the time candidates start declaring for the presidential primaries. If she develops sound, conservative policy positions she’ll be a formidable candidate, and fewer and fewer people who might even consider voting for a Republican look to the MSM for anything beyond leftist propaganda.
What happens during the next twelve to fifteen months will be what’s most important for Palin and others who might enter the presidential primaries, not what people keep trying to rehash from the past. (Except Huckabee and Romney have probably been damaged, Huckabee for his parole polices and Romney for Romneycare as a comparison to Obamacare). Few will care about Palin’s resigning as governor.
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