Posted on 10/07/2011 1:42:59 PM PDT by Yaelle
Editorial by John Ziegler
An Open E-mail to Sarah Palin
10/5/2011
The following is an actual e-mail "Media Malpractice, How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted" Filmmaker John Ziegler sent to Sarah Palin's personal e-mail address after she announced she was not running for president.
Dear Governor Palin:
Wow. So, is this really how your political saga is going end? By letting down your remaining supporters and telling them, with a straight face, that you can do more to impact change as a Fox News Contributor than you can as President of the United States?
I was almost positive you would run because it appeared that your brand demanded it from a career maintenance perspective. I had even written a long letter blasting you for being either selfish or delusional in making a decision to run which could help President Obama get reelected. While I applaud you for making the right decision, thanks to the way you made it, I must also question your real rationale.
One of the many reasons (other than the conversation I had earlier this year with Todd about working on your campaign) I was so sure you would give it a shot was that I figured you were way too smart to go this far with a blatant tease without a legitimate exit explanation.
While you have used the “I don’t need a title to impact change” line before (to justify your politically inexplicable resignation as governor of Alaska), I never figured you would actually try to float that as a last minute reason for not pursuing the most important job in the world. It is hard to believe that even the most crazed of your fans will buy that, but I am sure at least some of the remaining lemmings will.
Of course, there is no way you actually believe it yourself. First of all, how is this “issue" new information? You mean to tell us that in the last year since you started talking openly about running for president that this never occurred to you before? If it was a decisive factor now, why wasn’t it that way several months ago before you started acting like a candidate? Why did you selfishly put your supporters through the long wait and stunt the process for the actual candidates?
Secondly, exactly what change have you impacted since resigning from office? Being generous, you raised legitimate questions about a healthcare bill which ended up passing, you may have helped energize a base that assisted in winning back the House, and you were heavily tied to three senate candidates who lost otherwise very winnable races (btw, if “titles” are so unimportant, why did you even bother trying to help those campaigns to begin with?).
Finally, what change do you think you can possibly “impact” in the future now that everyone knows there is no chance of you ever having real political power and your base of current support is sure to wither away? You do realize (as I warned you about after your resignation) that people/media will stop caring about what you say/write once they know for sure you are never going to be president, right? If you still don’t believe me, just ask any promising athlete whose career is cut down prematurely by injury (as yours was by an unfair kneecapping by the media) how they are treated once a comeback is no longer achievable.
It is certainly possible that you may not accept this premise because you are under the understandable delusion (thanks to the media’s obsession with you) that you are somehow special and not bound by the same rules which govern mere mortals. After all, if you didn’t think you deserved extraordinary consideration, you would never have had the audacity to even float the idea of a presidential run after resigning office in a way that was clearly designed to get rich and stay famous.
If this is indeed the case, you are finally in for a rude awakening.
The only reason the liberal media has been obsessing over whether you might run for president is that you would have added to the entertainment value of a Republican race with which they are already getting bored. As you recently accurately (and, given your family’s penchant for participating in such endeavors, rather ironically) observed that they see the whole thing as a “reality show” in need of a new wacky character to spice things up. Plus, they would love for you to have somehow been the nominee to insure Obama’s reelection.
The conservative media has been going along with this charade as well because they see their own ratings as more important than the cause of beating Obama and because they fear offending your fans who are some of their most important customers.
Now that you aren’t running you have made yourself almost totally irrelevant. Unlike with Chris Christie (did you notice how much more passionately the media pined for him than you?), no one with an actual chance will want your endorsement. Once the nominee and the new VP candidate are chosen you will be very old news, and with no elected office (or, thanks to you’re your incredible lack of popularlity in Alaska, even the theoretical chance of one), you will have no opportunity to alter your narrative or make any news.
My guess is that you won’t even end up speaking at the convention because you are too big for a minor slot and too dangerous for a prime one.
If the Republican ends up winning you will no longer have a purpose at all (unless you go really rogue and decide to be the chief conservative critic of the new president) and 2016 is obviously not an option, especially with no way to significantly enhance your resume. If they lose, by the time 2016 comes around a whole new wave of Republican superstars will be ready to take the plunge and you will have already shown yourself to be afraid of getting in the water even when people were still begging you to get in. By 2020 your name will be almost as remote as Dan Quayle’s and you will have been out of office for almost five times as long as you held it.
About the only way you could retain any semblance of political potency is to become the conservative Ralph Nader, constantly threatening a third party run. This would be roughly the “fall from grace” equivalent of Tiger Woods being reduced to doing a dating reality show for attention.
Now, if you realize all of this, then I praise you for making a selfless decision for the betterment of the cause. There was a time not long ago when I truly believed you when you said you were letting your principles guide you and, “If I die politically, I die.” You are now, clearly, about as politically dead as someone of your celebrity could possibly be.
However, based on my personal experience, I have lost my faith in your ability to correctly perceive reality or to be totally honest with yourself and the public. Therefore, I question whether this realization was truly the motivation for your decision not to run.
Doesn’t sound much different than bunches of the Palin stuff I’ve heard around here for the last year or so.
John, John. Put down the torch for Palin. Your arm must be getting tired by now.
Michelle Bachmann is worth ten Sarah Palins.
She is feisty and courageous to go out there and hold her own against all those male blowhards.
Palin is dishonest. What is she going to do with the millions raised by her PAC?
Sorry, FReepers, you were pwned.
She wrote some wonderful books that were well-received and she earned money on them just as any other author would. Etc.
What is wrong with that?
I saw her at an event and you could tell she was working her fingers to the bone on that McCain campaign. I thought at the time, if they don’t win, at least I hope Palin can get remunerated for the years this has taken off her life and the fact that she’ll have to put up with crappola the rest of her life because she said “yes” to the VP run.
It was obvious (and I said so) that we were dealing with the political version of the Claymates. (Not all Palin supporters were in the club, of course.)
At that point there is nothing to say. When someone swears up and down that he/she KNOWS 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt double pinkie-cross that Sarah Palin is running, will win and will save the country and the world . . . with not even an "of course a lot can happen between now and then" thrown in as a bow to reality . . . well, I'll try to politely engage here and there and just move on.
Reality is the great equalizer.
I was, however, very disappointed at how some of the Palin supporters treated anyone who even raised an eyebrow that maybe, just maybe, things wouldn't work out for Palin to run. I've been here a long time and if people have been that rude and vulgar, I don't recall it.
Moreover, it was obvious that the people that were so sure of themselves that they would call names and make sarcastic magical thinking remarks to anyone who civilly disagreed with them in the tiniest degree would be the first to turn on Sarah Palin if she didn't run!
I used to think: WOW, I'd hate to be Sarah Palin. Now I really think I'd hate to be Sarah Palin, because even a lot of the people that "loved" her hate her. Some of the first posts I saw on FR were "what the hell is wrong with her, I thought she loved America." Think about it.
I do feel she was getting lots of book money, maybe lots of speaking engagement money along the way.
IMO she must have banked over ten million since leaving her Alaska job. I think she believes it will come in the same way over the next few years or more, but I don’t think so.
I think she knows she is polarizing due to the media, but had she gone in, expressed her views and done more interviews I think she would have done well.
At this point I think she will see her star fall and probably 6 months after the election she will IMO be lucky to be doing seminars with Bill Cosby and Mrs. Bush in Temecula.
She has IMO just left the world stage to become a bit player IMO.
This guy is a psychopath. Palin needs to get a restraining order against him.
I don’t know how many ‘real’ supporters are bitter. Probably some that were too solely invested in the notion of a presidential run. Personally, I support her because her specific ‘mix/brand’ of conservatism fits my ideology to a “t.” I wanted her to run, but the obstacles were just too monumental. I believe she had indeed tentatively decided to run (it was pretty obvious), but this month all the negative factors grew and settled in to a grim reality. She made the smart move.
I am upset, as well. You are right; the country really needs her.
I did post for a couple of months before she bailed out that though I’d like her to run I think she likes the money for the family that recently flowed in, believes that will continue and doesn’t think a campaign is worth it.
She says the right stuff but actions speak louder than words.
She could have been a contender...
I actually think she was headed toward an announcement that weekend in Iowa and Rick Perry stepped in her lunch with his surprise entrance to the race (after having told her personally that he would not run).
That upset the applecart irretrievably. She never recovered after that and couldn’t find her footing. Looking back over those events, it looks like Perry cut her off at the knees (intentionally or not).
However, it went down, Perry’s surprise announcement seemed to have shifted the ground under Team Palin, not in a good way.
Yes.
It was creepy.
Especially one thread claiming everyone not supporting Palin was “just jealous.”
Ugh.
That was creepy.
Anyway. I hope FR gets back to being a productive place for real analysis and discussion of politics.
I did the same and finally just stopped going on most Palin threads at all.
That’s sad.
But I’m glad the rest of us tried to handle it as decently as we could. Sorry it often took remaining silent to keep the peace “around the table at Thanksgiving.”
I’m glad it’s over and I do hope lessons were learned by all as we drive deeper into a most important primary season.
I commend everyone who managed to stay civil!
What do you think is the import of the timing?
It’s amazing to me the number of people who claim to have faith enough in her to make the decisions as the most powerful person in the world that are required when President of the United States but don’t have faith that she could make the right decision about entering the race to become that person. I think they are either selfish, lying or really stupid when it comes to deciding which person should be entrusted with the responsibility to make those decisions.
I agree. I think she milked a lot of dollars from folks who in good faith backed her. Additionally, there may be a really bad documented scandle floating around out there. She looks like a money grubber.
Maybe she’s okay with that?
One thing I want to disagree with. Initially I thought if she got in, and even if not winning, she could at least sell her ‘message’ of anti-corruption/free-market/common-sense conservatism, and that would be a big positive, for both her and the race.
But, seeing the rabid media in full force this month with all those smears, I realized it would be like back in 2008, when her ‘record’ as governor never got out, due to all the nonsense. She almost certainly would ‘not’ have gotten her message out this time, it would have been totally drowned out. Which would have been terrible. By staying on the outside, even with a lessened megaphone (thanks to not being a candidate), and the lucky absense of media insanity, she might actually be able to promote her message MORE effectively.
I wish I could have recovered all the money I gave to Fred Thompson, too.
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