Posted on 07/10/2009 12:37:29 PM PDT by dr_who
Sarah Palin's announcement of her resignation as governor of Alaska may be the end of her political career or, as some speculate, the real beginning. What seems clear is that Palin is not conservatism's new hope but its dead end. In recent days, this has been amply confirmed by the arguments of Palin defenders, focused less on her presumed merits than on her presumed injuries at her enemies' hands.
Thus, Ross Douthat, the new conservative voice at the New York Times, hails Palin as Everywoman—living proof you can aspire to the White House without an Ivy League degree—and deplores her abuse by the political and media elites based on her "gender and social class." The message to other non-elite women with political ambitions, Douthat sums up, is: "Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith."
Yet Douthat admits that Palin's "missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues" tarnished her role as a spunky common woman challenging the elites. But in that case, how much of the harsh treatment was due to prejudice and how much to Palin's own failings?
Yes, Palin has been the target of extremely vicious attacks (though the notion that no other politician has endured comparable nastiness would amuse Bill and Hillary Clinton). Her left-wing feminist foes have been especially rabid, mocking her in startlingly misogynistic language—"Republican blow-up doll" was one of the milder epithets—and denouncing "her pretense that she is a woman." The bizarre theory that Palin's youngest child, Trig, is really her grandson is still afloat in the gutters of the Internet.
And yes, this hostility has an element of snobbery. Former New Republic editor in chief Andrew Sullivan, currently a blogger with a bad case of Palin Derangement Syndrome, recently posted a catalogue of Palin's sins that included "white trash concupiscence."
Yet, such revolting extremes aside, some of the unpleasantness has been self-inflicted. Palin agreed to be John McCain's running mate knowing her teenage daughter was pregnant and single. (Of course, if Chelsea Clinton had been the expecting unwed mom, not one unkind word would have crossed the lips of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.) Nor was she particularly eager to shield Bristol Palin from the spotlight.
And then there's the matter of Palin's fitness for the second-highest office in the land. I say this as someone who initially hoped she would be an inspiring standard-bearer for conservative/libertarian feminism, a model of a woman who had it all and was a winner, not a victim.
It's not just the "liberal elites" that found Palin clueless; so did many in her own camp. Indeed, Douthat concedes she has to "bone up on the issues" if she is to have a political future. Those who believe Palin held her own debating Joe Biden forget that the McCain camp had requested a less-challenging format for that debate, with follow-up questions limited.
Palin critics on the right—George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Frum—have been slammed by the Palinistas as "haters," elitists threatened by a political star without proper intellectual credentials. Yet these same conservatives have been devout admirers of Ronald Reagan, hardly a product of the Ivy League.
Some of Palin's followers see her as the second coming of Reagan. But Reagan, despised as a "dunce" by his liberal detractors, had extensively read, written, and talked about the key issues of his day. While not an intellectual, he was a man of ideas. Palin is not known to harbor those. Her appeal is described in terms of "speaking from the heart" and exemplifying the virtues of faith and family—which is ironic, given the usual conservative derision of emotion-based liberal politics. Shortly after Palin's nomination, former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson suggested that her choice to bear a child with Down's Syndrome rather than have an abortion was an adequate substitute for a political philosophy.
If Palin does have a philosophy, it is the flip side of the class-and-culture warfare of which she has been a target. In fact, it was Palin who fired many of the volleys in this war—extolling the moral superiority of small towns and rural areas and calling them "pro-American parts of the country," mocking people who had traveled abroad as spoiled kids with rich parents.
While eschewing "victim feminism," Palin has enthusiastically embraced "victim conservatism": the grievances of cultural traditionalists who feel trampled and disdained by the more educated and influential (and often, more affluent) segments of American society. Like the "oppressed groups" of the left, these traditionalists have some valid complaints but channel them into a destructive ideology of polarization and resentment.
Such a zeal can energize the base—but also fatally split it and alienate the unconverted.
Most likely, Palin will be back. But if conservatives expect her to be their warrior princess in shining armor, they are courting defeat.
Cathy Young is a Reason contributing editor and a columnist at RealClearPolitics. She blogs at cathyyoung.wordpress.com. This article originally appeared at RealClearPolitics.
more crap from “what culture war?” liberaltarians
But McCain is Palin’s mentor. It is different than JFK and LBJ. McCain hand picked Palin out of obscurity in Alaska because he saw his own raw qualities in her — being a ‘maverick’ in the rough, taking on her own party, all that stuff McCain is all about — and he set out to polish her and teach her the ropes. And she was quite grateful, praising him high and low through out the campaign. She signed on to his agenda. She promoted him as the finest politician she knew.
She doesn't have to, they have already proven themselves to be little mean spirited elitists.
...if she runs against Zero in 2012, prepare for another four years.
If the moderate Republicans continue to savage her and pull put a McCain-ish moderate, the conservative base of the party will abandon ship. Both houses of congress will remain in the hands of the Democrats and RINO establishment, Sarah was the only part of the ticket that energized the base last election - and that was in spite of the name on the top of the ticket.
There is a war for the soul of the GOP. Moderate socialists verse principled conservatives. Big tent compromisers and strategists against those who believe in family, God, small government, all ten amendments of the bill of rights and private property rights. Look at the election map the war is between urbanization and rural America. Sarah may not be the candidate, but she is at present a leader for conservative values and as a conservative and a gentleman I am duty bound to defend her honor when she is maliciously attacked.
Romney sycophants are naturally disingenuous.
Okay, you have just jumped the shark. What exactly is the vice presidential nominee's job? We saw Sarah Palin stump for John McCain, for his policy positions, for his campaign. She had to work with his talking points, including the "Wall Street greed" line. She had to put up with his staff and his manager. We have not seen Palin stump for Palin. By the way, we saw every other prominent Republican sing his praises too. Does that now disqualify all of them? Romney, Gingrich, Huckabee, Giuliani, Jindal? You pretty much have to throw out every republican in the public eye last year.
During the campaign the democrats kept calling McCain 'four more years of Bush'. You are playing the same disingenuous game. Attack Palin's record. Ridicule her faults. But trying to lump together a highly successful governor who has established her conservative bonafides by how she has governed with a veteran beltway insider who loves liberals almost as much as he loves cameras shows a surprising shallowness.
Palin might not be the best choice in 2012. Someone else might rise to the top. Great. You say you don't support anyone else right now. Everyone else gets a wait-and-see. But you are working very hard to tear Palin down. It makes one question your motives.
2012 is not ‘72 or ‘96. Comparing Palin to Dole is laughable in my humble opinion. I think she will be a very effective campaigner and we haven’t seen anything yet.
The reason my support has continued for Sarah is that I have seen a definite growth already in her articulation and it hasn’t even been a year. I have gotten flamed before for saying she is not ready yet but I say that as someone who strongly believes she will be. I have my criticisms of her, she needs to get more creative and expand her rhetoric and she needs to stop responding to idiots like Letterman. But she has a huge built in following, has solid accomplishements and has integrity. No other (as of yet) republican has a chance against Obama the way it looks now. 10 million votes is a lot, but electorally it wasn’t as big a disaster as it should have been. I mean, leaving the campaign trail to rush back to DC to just bend over on tarp? That was a Muskie moment.
Here’s one conservative who totally agrees with you. Palin has been behaving like a publicity-seeking celebrity since the campaign ended. Her announcement that she was quitting the governorship made no sense. She didn’t want to be a “lame duck” finishing out her first term? Fine. Finish your first term and run for a second term. That’s how you avoid being a lame duck in politics.
How is someone who quit her job only halfway through it going to go against Obama who will have finished one term as president in 2012? Supposing Obama is challenged by a Democrat for the nomination in 2012. Let’s say his ratings are in the toilet and even the Dems don’t want him. Who’s the logical Dem candidate then? Hillary, who will have served in the Senate and as Secretary of State. A quitter who couldn’t even last out her job in Alaska and who’s spent the interim selling a book and doing the talk show circuit is going to beat that? Dream on, little children.
I don’t know who the best will be in 2012, but I know who it won’t be when I see it.
What is so hard to understand about that?
I just read back through about 30 pages of your posts. You seem to stick to three major themes. Posting your three favorite graphics. Talking down Governor Palin. And shilling for Newt Gingrich.
I also notice that you post 24 hours a day. Either you have a great job and no social life off line, you are Newt Gingrich, or you are a paid staffer on the Gingrich 2012 campaign. Or you are on the Romney payroll, pretending to be on the Gingrich payroll. I’m not sure which. But one thing is for sure. You have spent more time attacking Palin in the last week than most people have spent awake. I hope they pay overtime.
Respectfully, to be an effective campaigner means that you have to be able to articulate ideas and philosophies and policy positions in a compelling manner. Now, she speaks in a way that is welcomed by people who already agree with her, but she has yet to demonstrate any ability to convince people that aren't already inclined to her politics to move in her direction - at least not in any measurable numbers.
As for her improving, I wish that I saw some some improvement. That "speech" she gave on July 3, was amateurish at best. It was very poorly written and rambled, sometimes haplessly. Her delivery wasn't much better when, at moments, she breathlessly raced ahead of her emphasis points and appeared to be making it up as she went along - although we know now that wasn't the case.
Palin does have something, as others are so eager to point out. But, that "something" has to be met with an earnest effort to hone, deepen and improve her abilities to answer detailed, complicated and probative questions on her policy positions. She also has to demonstrate that she'll surround herself with the best political pros available, and be willing to take their advice. That's what I'll be looking for moving forward. Without significantly improved communication skills, policy awareness and media management, she's done - at least for the foreseeable future - as a national political hopeful.
Actually, I post while I work. Freelance is great.
The graphics I post are my own creations.
I haven’t been as prolific lately as I have been in past years.
I have a lot of respect for Newt. He has a brilliant mind, and brilliant minds are what our side is greatly needing right now. I don’t know that he’s running or even if he would be the best candidate in the end. But we need more people like him. And less people like Sarah Palin.
I think Sarah Palin is the single most divisive figure in politics, and what is worse, is she is divisive among even our own side. That is why the media loves to keep her story alive. She makes Republicans look stupid. But not all Republicans are. Once again, I point to needing more people like Newt and fewer like Sarah.
I’ve been pretty straight forward about everything, but there will always be people like you on FR who think they can go back and dig up some ‘dirt’. You’re a mere armature though. I’ve already had one deranged stalker dig through 6 years of my posts looking for everything he could take out of context and spin to use against me.
For some reason, there are people on FR who just cannot accept that others could have an honest disagreement with them. They can’t accept there could be people who don’t swallow the Palin mythology they have been feeding themselves. So naturally, any such people must be a secret agent for dark forces at work. DU, Mitt Romney, now Newt Gingrich apparently. There sure are a lot of people on some sinister payroll posting on FreeRepublic. Either that or a lot of paranoids who see conspiracy everywhere they look. Some of them may even be moved to dig into the posting history of some of these dastardly co-conspirators to expose their sinister plots...
“She also has to demonstrate that she’ll surround herself with the best political pros available, and be willing to take their advice.”
I agree, and I really think she can “do this”. The biggest evidence I have that she has a successful future in politics is the “full court press” underway to take her off the map. I’m not worried about her communication skills, she’ll get better. And W? She is already more articulate than he was....maybe not on his good days but the rest of the time and during his two campaigns.
That is certainly an accurate statement. There's hope for her, but she needs to hunker down and put the proverbial nose to the grindstone.
It's not worth the time and effort it takes to be a stalker. Much as it's not worth the time to argue with people who's minds are made up. We can go our own ways and be just fine.
Newt is brilliant in many ways. But he blew it at the end. Oh yeah. And then he quit. Immediately after reelection. Rather than stay and fight when he lost the gavel he took his toys and went home, under much less scrutiny than Palin is facing.
By the way, the Obama / Chavez morph is a good one. And I am not an armature. I can't generate electricity no matter how fast you spin me.
Haha. Damn Google Spell Check. ;)
Thanks about the morph.
You can’t fault Newt for resigning after his own party conspired against him. He knew his run in Congress was over once it came to an end. You can’t climb to the top and then just settle back in among the rank and file after they pull you down. Resigning was the honorable thing to do. He was in the House since 1979 though. Not exactly a half-term congressman there. He had a good run.
Whatever you say, Sweetie.
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