Posted on 04/19/2010 5:52:15 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Sarah Palin, 55 percent unfavorable poll ratings notwithstanding, is a political phenomenon the likes of which American public life rarely has seen. There's something distinctive, something deeply personal, about the way her legions of strong supporters rush not just to defend her but to counter-attack any and all of her critics. Palin has a way of establishing a sense of connectedness with her backers -- such a strong, attitudinal sense that she is not just like them but one of them -- that she has created what amounts to a one-woman, conservative "identity politics" writ very, very large.
Yet if conservatives are to continue a political love affair with this admirable and galvanizing woman, we need to insist on more than mere identity. And more than mere attitude.
We know that Sarah Palin shares our conservative values. But is she the leader conservatives need?
IN HER RECENTLY RELEASED memoir, Going Rogue, Palin tells a story about how she approached the first state budget she handled as governor. It sounds like something right out of the 1993 Kevin Kline movie, Dave, except that Palin's tale is fact instead of fiction.
We worked late into the night with the warm midnight sun still pouring through my office windows....Pens in hand, we combed through the budget, line by line, page by page -- my inner nerd coming out again, just like Wasilla City Council days....I had to know what was in there, or I wasn't doing my job. We spent days trying to decipher who put in what and why. Late one night, I looked up from the table and asked our veteran staffers, "What did past governors do? How did they get through these budgets with so little detail?" "They didn't," was the response.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
“Oprah, Jennifer Anniston, Lady GaGa, Beyonce, Tom Cruise and several other “celebrities” can draw crowds. None has any chance of being President.”
Thanks for the great example of reductio aburdum fallacy.
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“I share Hillyer’s concern about Palin’s lack of experience, but I also feel with just a little more experience on the national level (senator for instance) Palin would make a great candidate”
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Would you like to think about that ridiculous statement?
Time spent in congress is a huge DISQUALIFIER for the presidency. We desperately need a constitutional ammendment prohibiting congressmen from becoming presidents!
BUsiness experience is the best qualifier, and without it one cannot be an effective leader of a nation.
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Will you also admit you hate her and therefore are every bit as guilty of doing what you accuse Palin supporters of doing?
Will you admit that your respond to any thread is based on your personal feelings about Palin, that you are not even bothering to actually look at the data?
This is the most obnoxious habit of you Palin haters. You all accuse anyone who disagrees with you of "worshiping her" while total ignoring the emotion based source of your position on her.
It is very hypocritical of you all to lecture everyone when you all are guilty of the very same sort of mindset when it comes to opposition to her.
Finally, If those of you who dislike her are so sure there is such an overwhelming huge majority who hate Palin as much as you all do, why are you wasting so much time and bandwith slandering her?
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“They do not like Palin because they haven’t found a way to compromise her”
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Yes, that is 99% of the motivation of the PDSers.
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I'm not only up with that, I'm down with that, too!
Okay, now you're just being silly. Does that mean that, for example, Mitt Romney or Charlie Crist would be a better choice than Fred Thompson or Michelle Bachman?
Nope.
Sarah is already an executive, and legislators rarely become POTUS.
Sounds like Palin is as unqualified as Reagan. Liberals and elitists still spew spittle when they say his name. I’m looking forward to the same for Palin in another 10-15 years.
Let’s hope you and I will still be here to see it....
Correction, Jefferson was Governor for three years. But those three years were during wartime, when governors had a great deal power and responsibility over military affairs.
Perchance you refer to the Patrick Henry citation?
And for the record, "Old Tom", prior to being elected our third President, served as Vice President, Sec of State, Governor of Virginia; Delegate to the Virginia Assembly.
State your case, for or against Mr Hillyer's article, but try to be a little less ignorant in going about it.
This egregious slander of Palin’s record needs to be reported to the Wash Times and Spectator editor.
"instead of what she did in looking out for her family by going out into the marketplace, earning $12 million..."
That is exactly how it will be played out by her opponents and the msm...."Show me the money..."
PALIN RESIGNATION SHOULD BE a major warning to those who, in mind-numbingly unconservative fashion, denigrate the importance of government experience -- those like Palin herself, who write that "government experience doesn't necessarily count for much."
Frankly, this deification of government inexperience is nutty. An old Latin saying holds much truth: Discimus agere agendo, which means "we learn to do by doing." Nobody would argue that a 22-year-old right out of engineering school should be the lead designer on a major urban bridge. Nobody would ask a Peyton Manning right out of high school to lead an NFL team into a Super Bowl, the way the experienced Manning twice has done. Nobody would ask a junior member of the diplomatic corps to negotiate directly with Vladimir Putin. So why should anybody in his right mind believe that the mind-bogglingly multi-faceted job of president of the United States -- a job involving economics; a massive administrative state; and war, peace, and survival of the very planet in the face of weapons of frightening power -- should be handled by somebody whose primary asset is an attitudinal anti-establishmentarianism combined with a virtue uncorrupted but also completely untested by the fires of national politics?
When Palin was hoisted on her own petard of Alaska's new ethics system, it should have taught all conservatives that inexperience is no virtue. As George Will wrote just days after John McCain chose Palin as his running mate, the selection flew in the face of the single philosophical document probably most revered by American modern conservatives, the Federalist Papers. Wrote Will: "The word ‘experience' appears 91 times in the Federalist Papers....[According to the Federalist,] ‘Accumulating' experience is ‘the parent of wisdom' and a ‘guide' that ‘justifies,' ‘confirms,' and can ‘admonish.' America's Founders were empiricists and students of history who trusted ‘that best oracle of wisdom, experience,' which is humanity's ‘least fallible guide.'" And so on, with James Madison particularly insistent that attitude and goodwill alone are hardly substitutes for wisdom accumulated in the cauldron of statesmanship -- a wisdom that understands human nature well enough that it casts a skeptical eye on even the noblest intentions.
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The 'electorate' didn't do that at all. The 'electorate' in this country doesn't do its own research, never has. The 'electorate' was sold a bill of goods by a complicit MSM. The same MSM that will hammer Palin over the inescapable fact that she quit.
...but you left out the part where it was also the best political decision she could have made also.
Now she is making money, campaigning for the 2010 midterms, and very visible...playing it her way.
“The ‘electorate’ didn’t do that at all. The ‘electorate’ in this country doesn’t do its own research, never has. The ‘electorate’ was sold a bill of goods by a complicit MSM. The same MSM that will hammer Palin over the inescapable fact that she quit.”
Bingo.
Both are large and complicated states. Alaska even has certain challenges that California does not.
Palin resigned when it became clear that because of the peculiarities of Alaska law, that she could not govern the state and defend against the frivilous lawsuits simultaneously. The Presidency has buffers against said frivilous lawsuits.
To be true to my own beliefs, that is the worst of the motivating reasons. I don't want a pol who motivates for politics. I want a pol who motivates for the public good. I believe she acted in the public good, in resigning.
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