Posted on 01/30/2010 2:43:05 AM PST by tedbel
Sara Palin is hated by the left either for her policies or her "stupidity" or, more likely, both. I have been a supported of hers ever since she eviscerated Obama in her nomination acceptance speech. Yet I had strong reservations because she tuned me off when being interviewed. She was too verbose, superficial and repetitive. She was anything but intellectual. How many times have you heard her repeat common sense solutions, put the government back on the side of the people, get out of the way of private enterprise, lower taxes because the people know best how to spent their money and so on.
I now see this style as an asset.
Tell a lie often enough and people will believe it. So much more so for the truth. When you want to sell anything, you must brand it as "the best". It is immaterial whether it is or not. And while you are at it, brand your competition as "the worst". Selling is not appealing to the intellect but to the emotions. The same goes for winning elections. They are all about imaging and positioning. Is a candidate conservative or liberal, likable or nerdy or smart or stupid? Candidates understand this and campaign on broad stokes and not detailed policies. Being considered an intellectual is often an albatross. It did Adlai Stephenson no good.
Democrats know all about positive and negative branding. Throughout the Bush 43 presidency, they branding him as stupid or a cowboy, or a frat boy. They repetitively flaunted soundbites like "Bush lied, people died". Thus the ground work was laid for "hope and change". The "Messiah" had come.
Obama simply blamed Bush for the mess.
(Excerpt) Read more at israpundit.com ...
As someone who owns four brands I can tell you that repetition in advertising is correct. The general public needs to be hit over the head numerous times with the same boring message over and over before they even look at the brand let alone try it.
She warned them. Don’t mess with a hockey mom. I learned the hard way, too. One doesn’t coach ice hockey for 30 years without learning to let hockey moms do their thing. Your life is much safer that way.
So it is with Governor Palin. But the LIBs are too stupid to stop the character assassinations. Now it’s HER turn and it won’t be pretty.
I am one who thinks she is doing the right thing, campaigning for McCain. Look at it this way - he KNOWS that it was because of her that he almost succeeded in becoming President. He is ackowledging that everytime she helps his Senate race. And she is too classy to take credit. This is win-win for her; I’m not sure it helps McCain because now he owes her.
Calling someone stupid in your first sentence and outing yourself in the second...priceless!
I agree with your notion of repetition.
That said, Greta had Palin on for a good chunk of the first segment of her show Thursday night. After SP gave the repetitive-type answers we’ve come to expect from her, Greta asked her in terms of specific policy, what she would have said if she were giving the SOTU. Things to get the economy going. And SP did not deviate and did not get specific at all. Greta gave her an opening to drive a truck through and she didn’t take it. I am a big fan of SP (see my tagline) but I must confess, it disappointed me a bit.
Then again, maybe the gov was just having an off day!
Now is not the time for specifics such as you wanted from SP. Why? Because anything she would have outlined as a solution would have immediately been sliced, diced and ripped apart by a press intent on destroying her. It wouldn’t have mattered if what they said about her ideas was true, only that the criticisms were out there.
By keeping it general, such as saying for example, “we need to take actions which will directly translate into permanent jobs rather than jobs created by stimulus money which will disappear as soon as the cash is gone”, she makes it impossible for the detractors to criticize her on that statementm since no one can reasonably disagree with her.
I thought it was just me, but you're right. Greta asked and Sarah replied with shallow stock answers. Apparently, that's what people want to hear.
You DO understand the use of “ “ to denote irony?
How many people could answer this off the cuff?
I am hoping she’ll do a better job of putting the ideas from her Facebook posts into her onscreen appearances on FNC. Condensed, of course.
Because I find her Facebook posts just brilliant. Timely, clever, smart...and directly to the point!
But as I say, I’m a fan. I imagine these skills will come soon. She’s only been an official analyst for a couple weeks.
And she’s a quick study!
If Sarah Palin has specifics to offer and if she intends to run for higher office, she will want to release her agenda at a time of her choosing and not at Greta’s.
This article is spot on, but you’re both right—she’s going to have to come through with specifics as well. She probably hasn’t sorted out her 2012 platform, and she’s revealing more bit by bit in her Fox appearances. (E.g., she was specific in going after Obama.)
i remember when obama first started, obama was totally vague on everything until the media caught onto his a game and started demanding specifics. So he did, in that Greek Collumn theatre speech. Since then he has not kept a word on any of his specifics
If you think I believe Palin is stupid, you need to review my post history. That characterization is both wrong and uninformed.
I’m simply disappointed that when she was asked specifics, she didn’t give any. And Greta prompted her again, giving her another chance and she still didn’t. These are the kinds of moments that make OTHERS assume she is stupid, which I do not believe for one second.
The President’s SOTU speech was available before it was delivered, released online ahead of time. She had ample opportunity to put a substitute response together, with specifics. I’m simply disappointed that she didn’t.
“I doesn’t matter if Sarah Palin can knit two sentences together...”
Well if you don’t care, I suggest you start NOW. Because, believe it or not, I talk to people every day who are willing to ignore the content of what the Idiot in Chief is saying, in order to note how he “sounds.”
And unfortunately for the rest of us, they get to vote.
She could have said some of this:
“While I don’t wish to speak too harshly about President Obama’s state of the union address, we live in challenging times that call for candor. I call them as I see them, and I hope my frank assessment will be taken as an honest effort to move this conversation forward.
Last night, the president spoke of the “credibility gap” between the public’s expectations of their leaders and what those leaders actually deliver. “Credibility gap” is a good way to describe the chasm between rhetoric and reality in the president’s address. The contradictions seemed endless.
He called for Democrats and Republicans to “work through our differences,” but last year he dismissed any notion of bipartisanship when he smugly told Republicans, “I won.”
He talked like a Washington “outsider,” but he runs Washington! He’s had everything any president could ask for – an overwhelming majority in Congress and a fawning press corps that feels tingles every time he speaks. There was nothing preventing him from pursuing “common sense” solutions all along. He didn’t pursue them because they weren’t his priorities, and he spent his speech blaming Republicans for the problems caused by his own policies.
He dared us to “let him know” if we have a better health care plan, but he refused to allow Republicans in on the negotiations or consider any ideas for real free market and patient-centered reforms. We’ve been “letting him know” our ideas for months from the town halls to the tea parties, but he isn’t interested in listening. Instead he keeps making the nonsensical claim that his massive trillion-dollar health care bill won’t increase the deficit.
Americans are suffering from job losses and lower wages, yet the president practically demanded applause when he mentioned tax cuts, as if allowing people to keep more of their own hard-earned money is an act of noblesse oblige. He claims that he cut taxes, but I must have missed that. I see his policies as paving the way for massive tax increases and inflation, which is the “hidden tax” that most hurts the poor and the elderly living on fixed incomes.
He condemned lobbyists, but his White House is filled with former lobbyists, and this has been a banner year for K Street with his stimulus bill, aka the Lobbyist’s Full Employment Act. He talked about a “deficit of trust” and the need to “do our work in the open,” but he chased away the C-SPAN cameras and cut deals with insurance industry lobbyists behind closed doors.
He spoke of doing what’s best for the next generation and not leaving our children with a “mountain of debt,” but under his watch this year, government spending is up by 22%, and his budget will triple our national debt.
He spoke of a spending freeze, but doesn’t he realize that each new program he’s proposing comes with a new price tag? A spending freeze is a nice idea, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. We need a comprehensive examination of the role of government spending. The president’s deficit commission is little more than a bipartisan tax hike committee, lending political cover to raise taxes without seriously addressing the problem of spending.
He condemned bailouts, but he voted for them and then expanded and extended them. He praised the House’s financial reform bill, but where was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in that bill? He still hasn’t told us when we’ll be getting out of the auto and the mortgage industries. He praised small businesses, but he’s spent the past year as a friend to big corporations and their lobbyists, who always find a way to make government regulations work in their favor at the expense of their mom & pop competitors.
He praised the effectiveness of his stimulus bill, but then he called for another one – this time cleverly renamed a “jobs bill.” The first stimulus was sold to us as a jobs bill that would keep unemployment under 8%. We now have double digit unemployment with no end in sight. Why should we trust this new “jobs bill”?
He talked about “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development,” but apparently it’s still too tough for his Interior Secretary to move ahead with Virginia’s offshore oil and gas leases. If they’re dragging their feet on leases, how long will it take them to build “safe, clean nuclear power plants”? Meanwhile, he continued to emphasize “green jobs,” which require massive government subsidies for inefficient technologies that can’t survive on their own in the real world of the free market.
He spoke of supporting young girls in Afghanistan who want to go to school and young women in Iran who courageously protest in the streets, but where were his words of encouragement to the young girls of Afghanistan in his West Point speech? And where was his support for the young women of Iran when they were being gunned down in the streets of Tehran?
Despite speaking for an hour, the president only spent 10% of his speech on foreign policy, and he left us with many unanswered questions. Does he still think trying the 9/11 terrorists in New York is a good idea? Does he still think closing Gitmo is a good idea? Does he still believe in Mirandizing terrorists after the Christmas bomber fiasco? Does he believe we’re in a war against terrorists, or does he think this is just a global crime spree? Does he understand that the first priority of our government is to keep our country safe?
In his address last night, the president once again revealed that there’s a fundamental disconnect between what the American people expect from their government, and what he wants to deliver. He’s still proposing failed top-down big government solutions to our problems. Instead of smaller, smarter government, he’s taken a government that was already too big and supersized it.
Real private sector jobs are created when taxes are low, investment is high, and people are free to go about their business without the heavy hand of government. The president thinks innovation comes from government subsidies. Common sense conservatives know innovation comes from unleashing the creative energy of American entrepreneurs.
Everything seems to be “unexpected” to this administration: unexpected job losses; unexpected housing numbers; unexpected political losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey. True leaders lead best when confronted with the unexpected. But instead of leading us, the president lectured us. He lectured Wall Street; he lectured Main Street; he lectured Congress; he even lectured our Supreme Court Justices.
He criticized politicians who “wage a perpetual campaign,” but he gave a campaign speech instead of a state of the union address. The campaign is over, and President Obama now has something that candidate Obama never had: an actual track record in office. We now can see the failed policies behind the flowery words. If Americans feel as cynical as the president suggests, perhaps it’s because the audacity of his recycled rhetoric no longer inspires hope.
Real leadership requires results. Real hope lies in the ingenuity, generosity, and boundless courage of the American people whose voices are still not being heard in Washington.”
- Sarah Palin
Whatever she is doing, she is doing it well. I heard her on Greta and was impressed that she boiled the SOTU speech down to one word.
Lecture. It was a lecture.
She then went on to skewer Obama, yes in phrases, but it was highly effective, far better, more concise, deeper, and more interesting than the three other supposedly "brilliant" commentators she had on.
She's doing really well, and like the author of the article said, she's the one who is taking the front and center role of defining the debate and taking Obama down.
The time will come for her to get into policy discussions, she's done it before and will likely do it again. If she is running, she is positioning herself very well. If not, she'll be one of the primary voices for conservatism for a long long time.
Whichever road she chooses, she's going to be fine.
:-)
Article ping.
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