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George Will: Sarah Palin and the mutual loathing society
The Washington Post ^ | February 18, 2010 | George F. Will

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 ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2010polls; 2012; adiosjuan; adiosmcdemocrat; adiosrinolovers; elististmeltdown; georgewill; huckabee2012; jdgoodman; jdhaworthgojd; mccain2012; mexicanbarbie; moneygrubber; nomorerinos; nonccain; obama; overexposure; palin; pds; rino; romney2012; sarahpalin; sarahtwoface; secondcoming; senorapalinrino; senoritakewpie; votehaworth
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To: Brices Crossroads
Get a clue! The original income tax fell on high earners, and was pushed by the populists starting in the late 19th century. The given reason was those "wealthy industrialists" in the north/upper midwest were "hogging all the wealth" away from the "little man" in the rural states.

Stop trying to rewrite history to fit your own attempts to redefine "populism" ie the philosophy of failures who resent that others are more successful than them.

321 posted on 02/19/2010 8:56:53 AM PST by Clemenza (Remember our Korean War Veterans)
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To: okie01
I fear that what many are seeing (even FReepers) is a provincial accent (JFK had one, too), a less than Ivy League education (Reagan didn't have one, either) and what the mainstream media wants them to see.

Actually, what you say is true more for her supporters than her detractors. Most Palin fans like her primarily because of her provincial background and lack of contact with teh nation's elite. I've seen many Freeper Palin worhsipers admit as much.

I don't think any Palin skeptics on FR care about her accent or where she went to school. I certainly don't. My concern his her lack of any coherent political philosophy or substantive ideas about governing.

YOu don't need an Ivy education or a New England accent to impress me. I care about the ideas in your head, not about your accents or what's written on your resume.

What is it that you find so compelling about her?

322 posted on 02/19/2010 10:27:06 AM PST by curiosity
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To: SmokingJoe
She tried a novel idea when oil prices fell in 2009, and Alaska's revenues fell.

Okay. So you admit that high oil prices, not Sarah Palin, were responsible for the high revenues in 2008. Good. That's progress.

It's called SPENDIG CUTS.

Right. She did such a great job with those spending cuts, the state ran a $1.65 billion deficit in fiscal 2009. What a fiscal conservative she must be! LOL.

323 posted on 02/19/2010 11:15:26 AM PST by curiosity
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To: curiosity
Okay. So you admit that high oil prices, not Sarah Palin, were responsible for the high revenues in 2008. Good. That's progress.”

I admitted nothing of the kind.
You don't hear so good. I just showed you a graph showing that oil prices actually collapsed in 2008.




http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/crude_oil.html
I also pointed out to you, that there are plenty of other states that produce huge quantities of oil, yet none of them manged to double revenues in 2008, yet Sarah Palonn did.

324 posted on 02/19/2010 11:35:40 AM PST by SmokingJoe
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To: curiosity
Actually, what you say is true more for her supporters than her detractors”

ROFL!
Now why don't you get back to me when you get back to reality?

Most Palin fans like her primarily because of her provincial background and lack of contact with the nation's elite”

I support her because she fought corruption in her own party(when her party lost touch with the masses who put them in power, and became corrupt), took on the establishment, and whupped them, putting plenty of them in orange jump suits in jail, and governed as a fiscal conservative, and never lost sight of the fact that she was there to serve the people who put her there. The congress in Washington need to go to Sarah Palin for lessons on how to govern properly.

325 posted on 02/19/2010 11:52:38 AM PST by SmokingJoe
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To: boop
"How the hell does a columnist like Will afford a 19 million dollar home? I think Bill Gates’ home only cost something like 23 million."

Will lives on Grafton St in Chevy Chase. I've seen his home, I have friends in his neighborhood. His home isn't worth anymore than than $2.5 million, TOPS. And, in any other city, it's value is well less than $1 million. This journalist is smoking crack if he/she/it thinks it's worth $19 million. It's ridiculous.

326 posted on 02/19/2010 11:59:33 AM PST by OldDeckHand
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To: SmokingJoe
You don't hear so good. I just showed you a graph showing that oil prices actually collapsed in 2008.

LOL. Do you have any idea when the fiscal year ends in Alaska?

Let me give you a clue: it ends in June.

Now do you know when oil prices collapsed in 2008? I'll let you go figure that out for yourself. But let me give you a hint: they didn't start going down until well after June.

327 posted on 02/19/2010 12:41:40 PM PST by curiosity
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To: curiosity
Do you have any idea when the fiscal year ends in Alaska?
Let me give you a clue: it ends in June”

Chortle!
Can you read a graph?
Oil prices started collapsing long before June, and it was a very sharp, steep drop. Plus no other oil producing state in the country doubled revenues in 2008.

328 posted on 02/19/2010 12:46:07 PM PST by SmokingJoe
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To: SmokingJoe
Chortle! Can you read a graph?

Yes I can. Obviously, you cannot.

Oil prices started collapsing long before June, and it was a very sharp, steep drop.

Nope. Before shooting your mouth off, you ought to look at the raw data that underlies the graph; it's kind of hard to eyeball it when the labels on x axis aren't very clear.

If you go look at the raw data, it just so happens that oil prices peeked in July of 2008. They did not start their sharp decline until October, long after Alaska's 2008 fiscal year ended.

Here's a source that has the raw data, in case you don't beleive me:

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

Plus no other oil producing state in the country doubled revenues in 2008.

LOL. You're not very good with numbers, are you?

If you were, you would realize that's because no other state produces anywhere near the volume of oil that Alaska produces. We're talking orders of magnitude here.

329 posted on 02/19/2010 3:04:59 PM PST by curiosity
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To: curiosity
“LOL. You're not very good with numbers, are you?

If you were, you would realize that's because no other state produces anywhere near the volume of oil that Alaska produces. We're talking orders of magnitude here.”

Yeah?
Will you excuse me while I laugh?
Read this:

U.S. Crude Oil Production 2007 by Major Producing States and Federal Gulf of Mexico (Million Barrels per Day)


http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/crudeproduction.html
It just so happens that Texas produces more oil than Alaska
Not only that, California is not that far behind Alaska either.
Ooops! There goes your "no other state produces anywhere near the volume of oil that Alaska produces. We're talking orders of magnitude here.”, right out the door. :)
You don't have a clue what you are talking about do you?
Alaska doubled state revenues in 2008, because Sarah Palin introduced a new system of splitting the oil profits, in a program called “ACES.”.

330 posted on 02/19/2010 3:56:04 PM PST by SmokingJoe
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To: curiosity
Actually, what you say is true more for her supporters than her detractors. Most Palin fans like her primarily because of her provincial background and lack of contact with teh nation's elite. I've seen many Freeper Palin worhsipers admit as much

Gee. I've encountered a lot of FReepers who were put off by her accent, the assertion she "didn't have a good education, even the fact she seemed to like country music. If you're not one of those, power to you.

I don't think any Palin skeptics on FR care about her accent or where she went to school. I certainly don't.

You don't need an Ivy education or a New England accent to impress me. I care about the ideas in your head, not about your accents or what's written on your resume.

Ah, good for you. But others do.

My concern his her lack of any coherent political philosophy or substantive ideas about governing.

What is it that you find so compelling about her?

Obviously, we're not listening to the same person. To me, she's Reagan in a skirt. The same openess, the same honesty, the same philosophy -- uncomplicated and resolutely American. And I've been a Reagan fan since 1964.

Philosophically, being the President of the United States is pretty simple. First, national security. Second, let the country work.

331 posted on 02/19/2010 5:24:05 PM PST by okie01 (THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance on Parade)
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btrl


332 posted on 02/20/2010 12:17:27 AM PST by Clinging Bitterly (We need to limit political office holders to two terms. One in office, and one in prison.)
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