Posted on 02/17/2010 8:27:21 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm. He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency. This was 1964.
Barry Goldwater, whose seat John McCain occupies, chose to run with Bill Miller, a congressman from Lockport, N.Y., near Buffalo. Miller, Goldwater cheerfully explained, annoyed Lyndon Johnson. After the Goldwater-Miller ticket lost 44 states, Miller retired to Lockport, where he practiced law and lived in dignified anonymity until his death in 1983. Although he had served as an assistant prosecutor of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and spent seven terms in Congress, no one suggested he should be considered for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.
Yet Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.
Conservatives, who rightly respect markets as generally reliable gauges of consumer preferences, should notice that the political market is speaking clearly: The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber. The latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans -- including 52 percent of Republicans -- think she is not qualified to be president.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
May God save us from populists.
A highly educated, blue-blooded elite ran this country for its first 190 years or so with only the occasional blips on the map like Jackson and Lincoln. FDR was nothing more than an elite who happened to read Das Kapital.
One could make the argument that it’s really only since we started electing yahoos from the lower class like Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, and Obama that this country has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Where is William Howard Taft now that we really need him?
In the current economic environment and foreign affairs environment to come, an isolationist, regulation killing, George Patton type could easily win the presidency, but the special interests of today will not. Prepare for an ugly surprise, come 2012, IMO, because voters who have no say in choices of candidates won’t put up with the usual business any more.
The chattering class in both parties is out of touch. Most voters don’t care for extreme social sensitivities, feminism, scary wind mills, disturbances of cottontail migration routes, or in general, things the few more insulated folks in government and corporate offices care so much about. So the votes will go to the least of the choices of the elite (rather than continue so incrementally toward a communist/fascist, psychotic regime for special interests), until the situation is remedied.
See Havel in Czech, Walesa in Poland,... Then try tightening the screws on the new American peasants, who now include many Tea Party members who’ve been through foreclosures. See what happens.
November 5, 2008, huh? Since you were assigned Free Republic, do you get an office or just a cubicle? Or do you just sit down at the local Starbucks? You all getting dug out of all that snow in Chicago?
I hear Michael Savage, Richard Cohen and George Will and others rail against Sarah Palin, but do they ever offer an alternative besides another RINO, if that.
Folks, I am a conservative and I am open to the thoughts of the esteemed political scribes who propose other conservative candidates to consider but when they appear to be remiss in suggesting a name and why that name would win the GOP nomination over Palin and Romney and thus never want to enter that arena but turn it right around and bash Palin again I become dubious of their intentions. Suppose Palin like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life wasn’t born, who would be your conservative champion in 2012? Tell us, we would like to know. We really would.
That reply is tired and weak. Surely, you can think of something better.
I have 70 threads and 2,046 replies here. Feel free to look through them before you spout off.
Misogyny.
We have som real thugs here tonight. They're afraid that their short organs will get even shorter...
The fact that people are so adamantly supporting her for an election in 2012 when she isn't even running (yet) is ridiculous. I personally don't think that she will run for President in 2012 and wouldn't win the nomination anyway.
To even name a candidate at this point is silly, esp when 2010 is so important. I'll wait to see who emerges, and will keep an eye on Demint, and Toomey (beyond 2012).
You Obama noobs are a real bunch!
If only you could see how ridiculous you look.
obama noob, yep, that’s me. Even though I said I support Palin, I vote for Bush twice, I hate 90% of what obama is doing. Yep, that’s it.
Of course not. Congratulations, you just knocked down another strawman.
Oh, also aren’t you the extremist creationist? That everyone that isn’t a 6000 year old Earth believer is both a democrat and a liberal?
Well. Your visions of reality seem distorted. But maybe you didn’t really mean what you said about me.
As far as experience, she has more than Washington and Lincoln. I’m serious!! I’m going to do a study of all the Presidents’ experience and before the election in fall will post. But she has more than are best two already.
How that George!
There are many reasons why the liberal elites and the GOP establishment loathe Palin but if it can be boiled down to one reason it is that she was smart enough to figure out that she had to seize the opportunity to run for POTUS in 2012 and not later, if the political landscape allowed her to, and that to give herself the best opportunity to succeed in that endeavor she would have to resign the governorship to give her enough time to get her ducks in a row and take the necessary steps to prepare herself to run the presidential marathon.
Here is how the GOP establishment figured it: Palin would not run for reelection but serve out her term or at least not leave office until spring 2010 when her book came out. By then she would be behind the 8 ball in terms of fundraising, organization, advisors, status in the polls, and because of the Alaskan law prohibiting her from embarking on political endeavors to the lower 48 when the legislature was in session she would be handicapped by a lack of presence there at least in the first half of 2010 (not able to attend the TP convention, CPAC or the SRLC).
Simply Palin outsmarted the entire GOP enstablishment by leaving office last July and they have never forgiven her for making such an astute political move.
Mr. 5 Nov 2008 thinks Truther Medina is just swell.
Medina, the loon who stated no police officers died at the WTC on 9/11.
The Palin bashers are the bitter loons.
The bunch that has signed up in the last election cycle are the least adept that we’ve had to absorb here.
Here are some poll questions I would like to see:
Is Romney, a one-term Gov. of Mass, qualified to be President?
Is Obama qualified to be President?
Was Geoge H. W. Bush qualified to be President when he ran in 1980?
Was John Edwards qualified to be President?
Was Hillary Clinton qualified to be President?
I must have missed seeing these questions polled.
Obviously, this question of experience is selectively applied.
The three most ridiculous statements about Palin:
“I don’t thinking she is running in 2012.”
Palin is receiving daily briefings from Washington insiders and has assembled a kitchen cabinet.
Palin also said on Fox News Sunday: “It would be absurd to rule out running in 2012.”
Sarah Palin is a frontrunner now. What frontrunner ever bowed out of a contest?
“It will be 2008 over again.”
If Palin runs, no it won’t be. McCain was a RINO, plagued with white guilt and pleasing the MSM and non-aggressive and playing tippy-toe against Obama. Palin is a conservative, takes no prisoners and is on a mission to destroy Obama and his radical agenda and the Far Left.
“Palin is unelectable or too polarizing.”
That’s like saying that Rommel and the Nazi army were opposed to Patton’s offense thrusts with his tank corps. Guess who doesn’t favor Palin-Democrats and Leftist who hate her guts. Who cares how deep their hate is for her. They all only have one vote. And they have a vested interest to feel unfavorable towards her.
The beltway elites considered the fact that Obama had been “running a campaign” for two years to be sufficient experience for the office.
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