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?
The main thing now about Bob Riley is that few outside Alabama know him. However, FR participants would no doubt like him far better than other governors who are considered possible candidates (other than Palin), such as Huckabee, Romney, Pawlenty, Daniels, and possibly others. He’d probably be closer to Palin on the issues than most any other potential Republican candidate. He was on Palin’s old Tweeter governor’s page.
People occasionally toss his name out in the state, but he’d have a lot of work to do to make himself widely known.
Perfect choice. The Libs would have caniption fits and turn blue. Thousands would suffer Heart Attacks and the media would be out of their minds.
Inhofe for EPA, Issa for Attorney General, Jindahl for HHS. Just my $.02. :-)
As another poster said, you are spectacularly ignorant. If you haven’t kept up with the reasons Sarah resigned, you have no business voting. Sarah was nearly bankrupted by an unending series of frivolous ethics complaints, which she personally had to defend, and left her $500,000 in debt. They were bound to continue. This is one of the vagaries of Alaskan law. She had no choice but to resign (she was not wealthy). She angered Republican pols in Alaska by taking on the oil industry and winning. She was very effective as governor. As the old saying goes, you can’t control an honest man (or woman).
As another poster said, you are spectacularly ignorant. If you haven’t kept up with the reasons Sarah resigned, you have no business voting. Sarah was nearly bankrupted by an unending series of frivolous ethics complaints, which she personally had to defend, and left her $500,000 in debt. They were bound to continue. This is one of the vagaries of Alaskan law. She had no choice but to resign (she was not wealthy). She angered Republican pols in Alaska by taking on the oil industry and winning. She was very effective as governor. As the old saying goes, you can’t control an honest man (or woman).
Bob Riley , Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels may be nice folks but could only carry their own state and perhaps a few neighboring states.
The idea to win an election is to get the most votes.
They would guarantee an Obama 2nd term in a landslide.
Because it was such a good idea for the governor of Arkansas to run in 1992.
Because it was such a good idea for the one term governor of Georgia to run in 1976.
2008 was the first election in a long time that I can remember where it was all about national superstars.
Daniels would win every state Bush won in 2000 and would also do well in the Rust Belt.
Barbour, admittedly, is a Southerner. But he also has a reptutation as a moderate Southerner. The same kind of reputation that Sanford was alleged to have had that made him such a good candidate. Barbour definitely has handled multiple crises in his tenure. His executive ability is beyond question and his success in a state where the opposition controls both houses of the legislature and much of the local governmental apparatus is simply phonemenal.
And everything I just said about Barbour I could say about Riley. And Riley presents a special advantage. He’s not as moderate as Barbour (and both men are conservatives) but within Alabama politics he is perceived as a moderate and Riley’s refusal to go along with Roy Moore when he defied that court order would sell well to the law and order types in the middle of the country.
And you don’t win a presidential election by “getting the most votes”. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton both did that and neither of them became President because of it. You win by getting a majority of nominating delegates and then by winning the electoral college.
Riley was not being sued by his adversaries. Not to mention his personal wealth.
Riley hasn’t written a book. He’s been too busy governing the state.
And how do you know that the ethics complaints are “frivolous.” Usually, when ethics complaints are filed there is something there. There is some reason for that complaint to be filed against you.
I don’t understand why I am supposed to believe that the ethics complaints filed against all other politicians are reasonable but against her they’re not.
It might also be a good time to point out that Alaska has a socialist system of wealth redistribution whereby taxes levied on companies are returned to Alaskan citizens in the form of a free government check.
Mitch Daniels lost a county GOP straw poll to Palin a few weeks ago in his own state.
Gotta call bologna sandwich on this post.
Obama ran an empty suit campaign on platitudes, with no practical work history to support what he did or didn’t believe.
Sarah Palin draws crowds because of the positions she articulates and has upheld throughout her adult life, not just as a governor. Sarah Palin has/does own a small business, has/does raise a family, has and does show that you can make the right decisions in life about life.
Riley has small business experience, Barbour is a lawyer, and Daniels has big business and bureaucrat type governing experience, including OMB head under Bush, where he kept a tight rein on spending./sarc
PS- making this kind of analogy is to imply that conservatives are mind numbed sheep like libs. Sheep-like behavior and conservatism/independence/personal responsibility/accountability are diametrically opposed. They cannot co-exist in the same individual unless that person is on a bi-polar medication to manage the condition.
It is a different world since 1976 and as far as Clinton,
if half the idiots who voted for Perot would have voted for G.H.W. Bush we wouldn’t have some of the crap we are facing today.
Have you lived outside of your state and have you traveled much?
Thanks Matt! Nice of you to tell us you are an airhead in the first two sentences. No need to read further. Come back in a couple years when you learn about politics from something other than the TV.
Uh, I am a man.
And it’s not ignorance to say that Haley Barbour would be far and away a better head of the ticket than Palin.
Incidentally, I can’t think of the last time that a VP candidate on a losing ticket came back to win 4 years later. Bob Dole had 20 years between 1976 and 1996 and he still lost. Edwards campaign imploded. Quayle hasn’t been heard from post VP’ly. Lloyd Bentsen could have contended in 1992 but he stayed out. Geraldine Ferraro did nothing. Ed Muskie had a real shot but he blew it. Kefauver had potential but fell victim to the political climate of the time.
In fact, to find a president who had been a vice-presidental candidate on a losing ticket you have to go back to Franklin Roosevelt who was Cox’s running mate in 1920. And even then, he won 12 years after that fact and between that time picked up a fair amount of governmental experience he hadn’t had in 1920 and in 1920 he had been a part of the Wilson administration.
I think that’s the only instance of it ever happening in American history. I wouldn’t expect that trend to break in 2012.
They were frivolous law suits and there was no there, there.
As ret. Legal Support with the County Attornys I can say your slant of the law shows ignorance.
You admit you don’t want to read the facts about this.
Your opinions vs the facts are very telling.
Exactly. I was only trying to be polite.
The majority of Americans don’t even know who they are.
Executive experience, nevertheless. In terms of the skills required, running a small business (city) isn't appreciably different from running a large business (city). The CEO of a large business (city) has more help, that's all.
As a group, Wasillans don't seem to be unhappy with the bond issue that got them a convention center, either. Isn't that what successful big cities do, too -- invest in their future?
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.
Credit for her political skills? But you make no mention of what she accomplished in her two years in office. She was, in reality, the most accomplished executive on either ticket in 2008.
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.
I'll avoid calling that assessment what it is, but you and I have a totally different reading of her motivations. Her stated reasons made perfectly good sense. And she put herself in the same position Ronald Reagan occupied in 1976-80 -- a private citizen who could comment freely and help elect fellow Republicans.
She's not running from anybody.
I call BS, men don’t purposely remain ignorant.
You betcha.
I have lived in New Orleans, I have lived in the suburbs of Birmingham and I have lived where I live now in my home town which is Alabama’s oldest city. My wife (and in-laws) are all from an old Charleston family.
I was in business till I retired and regularly went on business trips across the country and had to interact with a lot of people. That I have seen the country does not change the fact that Barbour is probably pound for pound the best candidate to go against Obama unless you know of some other governor that has his kind of record.
Sanford blew it. Crist looks like he’s on the way out. When I think of successful, crisis tested governors who would sell well in the America of 2012 the best ones that come to my mind are Barbour and Riley and if you take out Alabama hometeam prejudice, Barbour is far superior to Riley. Sanford would have been great but he had to throw it all away for some Argentinian woman. Vitter would also be excellent if he weren’t also a pervert. Jindal has no charisma to speak of.
Barbour is someone who can win and who I know can effectively govern. Daniels probably gets states like Wisconsin that Barbour has no chance to but Barbour can definitely win and would make a great president.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.