Posted on 01/19/2016 7:59:42 PM PST by Isara
Back in December, I was at a small event in a Las Vegas bar; CNN's Jake Tapper was interviewing Sarah Palin. He asked which candidate she'd most like to grab a beer with. Her answer? Donald Trump.
Trump, of course, has been sober his whole life. But the moment perfectly encapsulates the Palin-Trump romance. Because in addition to endorsing a beer run with a man who doesn't drink, she also just endorsed for the presidency a man who is neither a committed conservative nor an anti-establishment rogue.
Trump's long history of liberalism is well known. He was once a registered Democrat who supported Democratic candidates, from Bill de Blasio to Hillary Clinton. He has said publicly that the economy usually does better under Democrats. At times he's supported legalizing drugs, raising taxes on the wealthy and embracing isolationist foreign policies.
But what's most jarring is the positions he's held on a number of issues that are particularly important to Palin.
In the past, he called himself "very pro-choice." Yet Palin - who made the very courageous and compassionate decision to have a baby she knew would be disabled - is unbothered.
On guns, he once supported a ban on so-called assault weapons and longer waiting periods to purchase a firearm. That should be deeply disconcerting to Palin, a Second Amendment firebrand who once said, "If you control arms, you control the people."
And Trump has supported universal health care - expressing admiration for Scotland's single-payer system as recently as last year. Palin spent years denouncing Obamacare, which is many steps short of a single-payer plan, as "socialized medicine."
These aren't minor policy differences. The beliefs long embraced by Palin and long eschewed by Trump are fundamental to conservatism. That Trump has suddenly gotten religion - on issue after issue - should be met by Palin with suspicion.
If his world-view weren't enough to make Palin cringe, Trump's inauthenticity as an anti-establishment candidate should be. Palin admirably took on what she called the "good old boy network" to become Alaska's first female governor. Now, she leaps to support a guy who helped create that network and who thrives in it. In what bizarre world is a billionaire real estate mogul who donates money to Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid "anti-establishment"?
Over the past eight years, Palin's influence within the Tea Party has remained strong, but her favorability rating among all Americans has dropped 40 points. Worse, her rating among Republicans has declined more than 55 points.
But despite that waning influence, I've supported and admired Palin for defending life, religious liberty and gun rights, and for being a strong mother to a disabled son and another serving overseas.
The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008 - the one who campaigned tirelessly and many times thanklessly for John McCain, a war veteran Trump has openly mocked - would have seen through Trump's charlatan candidacy. The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008, a devout Christian whose faith was constantly scrutinized by the secular left, would have no affection for a man who is constantly scrutinizing the devout Christian faiths of other conservative candidates.
The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008, who was a passionate and fearless voice for hockey moms, mama grizzlies and women everywhere, all while enduring patently sexist attacks from the left, wouldn't have supported a man who calls other women bimbos and slobs, thinks women who breast-feed and go to the bathroom are "disgusting," and criticizes another candidate for her looks.
That Sarah Palin is gone. Maybe one day, over a beer, she'll tell me why.
Palin has a few million of her own.
Lighten up, Francis.
“What’s an SE Cupp?”
_____________________________________
A really large over the shoulder boulder holder.
The NY Daily News is left-wing bat crap crazy.
So is SE Cupp.
So is Glenn Beck.
The ring of truth's clarion call.
There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death.
Proverbs 14:12 (i.e., Deeper magic from before the dawn of time, as C.S. Lewis would say.)
We have to respond to Amnesty loving, Cheap Labor whores?
Was SECupp defending Palin?
Who among the chattering classes was?
Both Palin and Trump are pragmatic deal makers not bound by the orthodoxy of the professional political class which is why both are outsiders despised by the professional political establishment
Their affinity seems natural
Somehow I doubt if a woman like SE Cupp knows much about the lfe challenges of a woman like Palin, hence the maudlin faux drama about ‘ conservative values’
Amazing. America FR has been transformed......
The name IS the rebuttal.
Was she promoting amnesty or cheap labor in the article?
What happened to C. Edmund Wright?
In 2012, when Sarah Palin was banned from speaking at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump was the only person to come forward and defend her right to speak.
The whole TEA Party was treated like a red-headed bastard step child at Romney’s shindig.
Exactly. She couldn’t buy a fan around here, until today. I wonder what changed...
Pretty pathetic that you’re calling anyone a bot rather than a conservative you merely disagree with..!
I’d post a vanity but seriously,
This is a signal to the Tea Party that Trump is OK. That it is okay to back Trump and not Cruz.
Cruz screwed up in a big way in the last debate. This is a confirmation.
LOL. If you have to ask what an SE Cupp is, it can’t be explained.
Wonder if SE makes a good sammich?
Straight from DU, Rabbit.
I went 300 posts with another guy that posted that.
Care to start?
Remember that, Lakeshark? We'll leave him out of it, though. :)
“The name IS the rebuttal.”
That is the very definition of an ad hominem attack.
I don’t like Cupp either, but if you’re going to respond to this article, then respond to the damn article. Because it happens to make some good points (points that are pretty obvious, and not terribly original) about Trump’s.....not-so-conservative track record.
Amen to that!
The NY Daily News has of late become a portal of absolute sewage. I used to enjoy it, but since it's set itself up to out-smarm the NY Post, its stories, the quality of its writing, and the salacious pictures have combined to make it in actuality just some soft porn trash. There are a few good writers, but Ms. Cupp is not, in my consideration, one of them.
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