'McCain' rally with Sarah Palin on the ticket
Posted on 09/16/2010 10:22:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Delaware Republicans have proved it: Sarah Palin is the best asset the GOP has right now.
There has been a lot of carping about Republicans' prospects for November since Palin-backed candidate Christine O'Donnell defeated longtime Delaware officeholder Mike Castle for the Republican Senate nomination Tuesday. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the 2008 vice presidential nominee has kept the party strong. How? She has kept the Tea Party faithful inside the GOP tent. Had she instead encouraged these disillusioned voters to mount third-party challenges across the 2010 general-election ballot, dozens of Democratic incumbents, not to mention challengers, would be smiling like Woodrow Wilson in 1912.
That year, a simmering feud between two wings of the Republican Party resulted in the "Bull Moose" independent presidential candidacy of former president Teddy Roosevelt. The Rough Rider's support four years earlier landed William Howard Taft the GOP nomination, but the two had a falling-out. Their disunity allowed Wilson, the governor of New Jersey, to claim the White House with the lowest winning percentage of the popular vote since the two-party era began in 1864. Wilson was only the second Democrat elected president since the Civil War; a GOP united by a temporary, even testy, marriage of convenience would have triumphed easily. But egos proved too large. It did not matter that Wilson was, in TR's term, the "coiner of weasel words."
Establishment Republicans, including former Bush aide Karl Rove, have said this year that the strength of the Tea Party movement has sometimes forced the nomination of contenders with weak prospects for winning a general election. This is surely right; O'Donnell's upset on Tuesday is merely the latest example, but there were similar complaints about the Nevada Senate contest.(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Um, every state has two senators. That’s why there’s 100 of them. I think you meant to say that DE only has one Congressman.
Pissant, that's the weakest knock on Sarah Palin you've ever posted.
C'mon, man. We expect a better standard of virulence from you.
Someone, somewhere has an issue with that?
Yes, people like that do indeed exist. Some of them are posting to this very thread.
bump
Exactly...and I don't think the polls are catching these people...
She is a Beltway Outsider, which is good, but that also means that most of the GOP leadership will not like her, and in the end will work against her.
I don't think she will run in 2012 (the money isn't there), but I do think that the GOP will move against her soon.
That is because in the end the GOP view the Tea Party as a bigger threat than the Dems.
“something did happen the day McCain picked her”
She’s just an extraordinary person. Ralph Waldo Emerson says history is changed by single extraordinary people.
You may have used it in another two word form, but it was distinctly from the Pitts in this form.
She has shown little inclination from what I've seen. Instead she throws her weight around indiscriminately. She went way too far backing McCain and had no business backing Fiorina.
Her real test is in assembling a solid team of knowledgeable loyal people in those areas where she is lacking. Reagan certainly did.
Reagan spent years traveling the country learning how real business works in the company of a GE manufacturing expert Lemuel Boulwars:
But Reagan learned more in his GE years than a set of prepared remarks. He became familiar with such diverse thinkers as von Mises, Lenin, Hayek, and the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. He read and reread the practical economics of Henry Hazlitt. He quoted Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton. He observed GE’s vice president Lemuel Boulware, whom many leaders in corporate America regarded as the most successful labor negotiator of all time, and Reagan himself sharpened his negotiating skills during this period when he served another term as president of the Screen Actors Guild.
That is what I mean by learning. Reagan didn't spend two years; it was eight years of immersion in free market economics and manufacturing at the side of an exert and outstanding communicator. Palin shows no such inclination; she's running around shooting off her ignorant mouth, not learning. Now, we many need her attractiveness to put the spotlight on local candidates, but I'll feel a lot better if she's spotted with a dog-eared copy of "Road to Serfdom" or better yet, one of MY books. :-)
If she has the wisdom to choose the right people and uses her authority to provide the political will to move the best ideas from these people forward she could be an excellent President.
The wrong people will be throwing themselves at her from every side, all breathing pleasing prose. I can only imagine.
A President doesn’t have to know everything - and simply cannot. What makes an excellent President is having the wisdom to recognize other people who do have good workable ideas and putting them into action.
It takes a foundation upon which to build discernment. She's showing me little inclination to acquire one, preferring to be clever instead of knowledgeable.
She is clearly a shrewed politician and it takes brains to do that well. I don’t doubt her brain power in the political arena. You can’t fake it this long.
Unfortunately, when the audience is star-struck and as long as you keep moving, yes, you can.
Obama did. It was only when he was confronted with the reality of daily decisions that he showed himself. Palin is nowhere near so thin there, but I would call her performance stellar as she has shown weakness in making decisions that are problematic. It's easy to look good with that much oil revenue.
I'm talking pipeline fees. The system was byzantine. Ask FReeper thackney.
To be honest, I think Sarah is correctly dimantling the GOP such that what the GOP is now will be gone, replaced by a new GOP, which is a good thing.
She incresed profit tax on oil companies. There was no change in royalties.
I don’t know where you came up with giving it away.
After Palin’s increases the State government took $47 per barrel on every Alaskan barrel produced in 2008.
“To me, she is a calculating politician, not a true reformer, with policy weaknesses that she tries at times to mask with questionable assertions.”
I was wondering about your take on this. Will Palin be able to do in DC what she did in Alaska? And what were the questionable assertions?
Sorry, I did the above post from memory.
It wasn’t $47 per barrel, it was 47% of the value of every barrel. This is not pipeline taxes nor a change in royalties. Most of the increase was a retroactive profit tax.
In 2008, Total Alaskan Oil Production was 266.45 million barrels of oil.
http://www.tax.alaska.gov/programs/documentviewer/viewer.aspx?426
In 2008, Alaska collected 11,288.1 million dollars from the oil companies.
http://www.tax.alaska.gov/programs/documentviewer/viewer.aspx?1785f
Page 2, 2008 History
Royalties were only 29% of the total they collected.
That is $42.36 per barrel that the Alaskan Government collected. That does not include any of the taxes collected by the Federal Government.
In 2008, the average price for Alaskan Crude Oil was $90.10.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=F005071__3&f=A
In 2008, the TOTAL take by Alaska was 47% of the price of the barrel of oil.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404473/posts?page=3#3
- - - - -
Before the Palin tax increases, see below:
Spring 2007 Revenue Sources Book, Alaska Department of Revenue – Tax Division
http://www.tax.alaska.gov/programs/documentviewer/viewer.aspx?840f
Page 4 in the Excutive summary, Figure 2-2
First Column, Historical numbers for 2006.
Total Oil Revenue (including all taxes and royalties) $4,358.9 million
Alaska Department of Revenue, Tax Division, Fall 2008
Crude Oil Production-History
http://www.tax.alaska.gov/programs/documentviewer/viewer.aspx?426
2006 Total Alaska Oil Production = 0.858 million bpd = 313.2 million barrels
Total taxes, fees and royalties paid were $11.81 per barrel
Alaskan Crude Oil selling price in 2006 = $56.86 per barrel
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_dfp2_k_a.htm
In 2006, oil companies 21% of the selling price of their oil to the Alaskan Government.
I don’t consider 21% taxes and royalties to be giving it away. I think that between 20~25% sounds about right.
:-)
I completely agree except that she might do well as President as she is smart and humble enough to know when she doesn’t know!
'McCain' rally with Sarah Palin on the ticket
What happened? The percentage of actual Conservatives in the Republican party all of a sudden had a reason to pay attention. There was someone on the national stage who was not afraid to be Conservative. It'd been a long time since we've seen that.
Once the election ended, alternative outlets (like FR and the blogs) and social media like Facebook and Twitter kept her message in the spotlight. This is a shining example of the way new media has altered politics as usual.
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