Posted on 01/11/2010 5:14:05 PM PST by militanttoby
Is it too early to start speculating about the 2012 GOP presidential primaries? Of course not! The race promises to be a chaotic free-for-all of backbiting and recrimination, flip-flops and opportunistic conversions, feigned outrage and vicious attacks over meaningless non-issues. Throw in the fact that the force within the party with the most energy right now – the teabaggers – are not exactly known for their restraint, and it should be a hoot.
I've long held that if Sarah Palin runs, her campaign will surely be the most entertaining train wreck to hit American politics in decades. But when I read Nate Silver’s case that her chances of winning the nomination are actually pretty good, I was reminded of something fundamental that Palin has going for her. Way back in 2007, I wrote a two-part piece on the importance of narrative to a presidential candidacy. I argued that no one on the Republican side was really telling a story about why they were running, while on the Democratic side, only one candidate – a certain young whippersnapper from Illinois who at the time was a serious longshot – had really thought through what his narrative was.
Looking ahead to 2012, if there's a candidate who has a good story to tell, it's got to be Palin. You might call her story "10 Things They Hate About You (and Me)." It's a well-worn tale of cultural resentment, one saying that those elitist/socialist/godless/coastal/immigrant-loving/not-real-American bastards took over the country and are driving us to ruin as they sneer down their noses at you. It has the three essential parts of the campaign narrative: it says what's wrong with the country; it says where the candidate wants to take the country; and it says why the candidate, and only the candidate, is the person to do it. Palin has always practiced a very personal politics, one that portrays her as a martyr endlessly suffering an onslaught of slings and arrows from the kind of people you just can't stand – if you’re a real American, that is. If it turns out that she doesn't know a thing about policy, well that's because she's just like you – not some soulless policy wonk, but a real person. If it turns out that her teenage daughter got pregnant, it's not because her rhetoric about abstinence is a joke, it's because she’s just like you – she knows what it's like to have family struggles. And all the attention to her soap opera life just confirms that the liberals hate her, which is the best credential a Republican can sport.
This is Palin's story, and she's sticking to it. She's not going to try to reinvent herself as a policy wonk. And why should she? None of the other likely candidates has any story at all.
Posted this because it reflects a growing liberal consensus (Nate Silver & Andrew Sullivan in last couple of days too) that Palin is not only gearing up for 2012, but could well be the Republican nominee.
You Know The Drill
Click the Pic
Hey! FReepers!
Help Fill The Tank!
How About It? Huh?
It Ain't Askin' Too Much
Ya Know....
Paul Waldman, author and Senior Fellow for Media Matters (biggest liars on the face of the earth) funded by George Soros.
But the liberals who break windows, burn trash cans, overturn police cars and make the Washington Mall look like post-apocolyptic disaster site... they ARE known for their restraint?
Yet another Soros Serf.
Pot meet Kettle...
Conservatives’ Hate-Based Campaign Against Obama
The right-wing smear campaign against Barack Obama has already begun. Conservatives intend, as they have so many times before, to appeal to Americans’ ugliest prejudices and most craven fears.
Paul Waldman | March 25, 2008
Now there is a man who, as my wife would say has “soft hands”.
The alternate universe these people live in must really be interesting.
Waldman’s just another big question mark in a series of them that begs the question; “Why are American Jews so liberal?”
I’ve been to Israel on numerous occasions and worked with IDF forces back in the 80s and I’ve never noticed such outright hostility to one’s own roots (and conservative ones, at that) as I see in people like Waldman, Glen Greenwald, Joe Klein et al.
Obviously this idiot doesn’t have his information correct regardless...he needs to read her book
Obviously this idiot doesn’t have his information correct regardless...he needs to read her book
LMAO!!
Paul Waldman is the past associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
******
Paul Waldman: One of the things that’s so shocking, if we can just digress on that for a moment, is that everyone talks about his (Pres Bush) tremendous performance on 9/11. I don’t think it was that tremendous. He got informed of the second plane – okay, not the first plane – the second plane. He knew that America was under attack, and he stayed in that classroom for 10 more minutes. Ari Fleischer held up a sign that said: “Don’t say anything yet,” and so Bush went on reading this children’s book for 10 more minutes instead of saying, “I’m sorry children. I have to go.” He hung around as if it really wasn’t all that urgent.
And then he kind of bounced around the country, making very awkward statements that didn’t really seem to be very inspiring. It wasn’t until they could actually write something for him to say that he began to take on the appearance of a President.
You know, these idiots could take away that precious “narrative” if they’d just shut up and leave her alone, but they just can’t quit her.
She done hypmotized ‘em, and they’re completely powerless in the thrall of that wiley Sarah siren call.
Congratulations to Paul Waldman of Media Matters for America, who’s just now won the BOSA, also known as the Barack Obama Sycophant Award
“He has always presented himself as the embodiment of what we all want America to be: inclusive, future-oriented, moving beyond our differences to embrace what binds us together. So patriotic talk isn’t something he has recently embraced, it’s actually at the heart of his narrative, which has been consistent from day one.”
“no one on the Republican side was really telling a story about why they were running, while on the Democratic side, only one candidate – a certain young whippersnapper from Illinois who at the time was a serious longshot – had really thought through what his narrative was.”
This guy makes some sense. See Mudd asking Kennedy in 1971, “Senator, why do you want to be president?”
Kennedy: Well, I’m – were I to make the announcement to run, the reasons that I would run is because I have a great belief in this country that it is – has more natural resources than any nation of the world, has the greatest educated population in the world, the greatest technology of any country in the world, the greatest capacity for innovation in the world and the greatest political system in the world. And yet I see at the current time that most of the industrial nations of the world are exceeding us in terms of productivity or doing better than us in terms of meeting the problems of inflation, that they’re dealing with their problems of energy and their problems of unemployment. It just seems to me that this nation can cope and deal with its problems in a way that it has in the past. We’re facing complex issues and problems in this nation at this time, but we have faced similar challenges at other times and the energies and the resourcefulness of this nation, I think, should be focused on these problems in a way that brings a sense of restoration in this country by its people to – in dealing with the problems that we face, primarily the issues on the economy, the problems of inflation and the problems of energy and I would basically feel that it’s imperative for this country either move forward, but it can’t stand still or otherwise it moves backward.
See my tagline: I’m as serious as a heart attack in Church on Sunday, Christmas morning.
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