“The Ruling Class has spoken.”
This is going to be 1980 all over again. The Bushes on one side and the Reaganites on the other. Right now, the Bushes have no champion. But the Reaganites do. So they are aiming all their artillery at the Reaganite, Sarah Palin. With Michael Gerson and Karl Rove, to name only two, and now Barbara Bush out there making snarky and insulting comments about Palin, it is difficult for me to believe that the Bushes are not of one mind about Palin and that they mean to stop her if they possibly can.
In 1980, the Bushes and their Establishment henchmen came close to derailing Reagan in Iowa because he listened to John Sears and tried to run an imperial campaign, without debating or even visiting Iowa much. Fortunately, he righted the ship in New Hampshire by benching Sears and trusting his gut, which told him to barnstorm the state.
Palin will not repeat the mistake Reagan made early in the 1980 Primary campaign by trusting so-called experts (Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove, are you listening?). She will run her campaign her way. Up to now, she has been mighty successful, and the hostile Establishment still has no clue how to stop her.
Actually, they have (I believe) miscalculated, at least tactically, by heaving all their criticisms at her in 2009 and 2010 and leaving nothing to throw at her when the rubber really meets the road in late 2011 and 2012. Their unfair treatment of her has innoculated her against anything, fair or unfair, they might throw at her during the primary campaign.
Her two principal challengers (Romney and Huckabee) have not been scratched yet and they have major baggage which is well known among political junkies (pardons, Romneycare, $50 copay abortions, to name only a few), but which I and many others will aim their way if they dip their toes in the water. That applies double for Gingrich.
The other possibilities (Barbour, Thune, Pawlenty, etc) are backbenchers, none of whom can generate the support necessary to compete in only 12-13 months, by which time the Iowa caucuses will be upon us.
Look at it this way: If the Establishment was NOT in absolute panic mode, would they be wheeling out poor old, octogenarian Barbara Bush to trash Sarah Palin? The question answers itself.
I must say...it won’t work. But it does expose the Bush clan. They are not the avuncular, benign group that they have been portrayed. Most have forgotten, but many of us have not, how they trashed Reagan unmercifully in the runup to 1980 as a “lightweight”(according to David Keene, Bush’s national political director in 1980, quoted on page 97 of Rendezvous with Destiny) and “too old” (a “calicified yahoo”, according to an interviewer quoted on the same page of Rendezvous) to be President.
And the Bushes did not discover loyalty even AFTER Reagan made the single collossal mistake of his Presidency and put Bush on the ticket in both 1980 and 1984. Mikhail Gorbachev, in an interview, had this to say about a conversation with George H.W. Bush while Bush was Reagan’s Vice President:
Mikhail Gorbachev:
“By the way, in 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: “Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/gorbachev-george-h-w-bush_n_339147.html
So, I say to Governor Palin: If the Bushes are insulting you and your supporters, take heart. This was exactly what they did to Reagan, even AFTER they had benefited from his generosity and magnanimity.
We whupped ‘em once. We can do it again.
Exactly! The Rats and their media activists will attack the GOP nominee and are just waiting for Mittens and Huckster.
With Sarah, they have shot their wad and have nothing left except to attack her children...which they are doing with a vengace. They will fail.
So Sarah is not only our best conservative candidate but also the least vulnerable...and the Rats and media know it.
Not exactly a surprise to either of us, or to many here. Some still don't get it, though.
As more and more conservatives wake up to what's taking place I hope we can get this internal party fight over with and proceed to the real task of getting rid of the rampant corruption and statism in Washington.