You Betcha I Was Wrong About Sarah Palin

Daily Beast ^ | 01/28/2015 | Matt Lewis

[SeekAndFind]

It’s time to admit that, whatever their motivation was at the time, the Alaska governor’s critics always had a point. Has conservative genuflection at the altar of Sarah Palin finally come to a halt?

In case you missed it, her speech in Iowa this week was not well received on the right. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York called it a “long, rambling, and at times barely coherent speech” and National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke said she slipped into self-parody. And there’s more. The Examiner’s Eddie Scarry, for example, contacted several conservative bloggers who were once Palin fans, but have since moved on.

But here’s my question… what changed?

Yes, in 2008, Sarah Palin delivered one of the finest convention speeches I’ve ever heard (trust me, I was there), but she hasn’t exactly been channeling Winston Churchill ever since. Remember her big speech at CPAC a couple of years ago? You know, the one where she took a swig out of a Big Gulp and said of her husband Todd: “He’s got the rifle, I got the rack.” Not exactly a great moment in political rhetoric.

So why is anyone surprised when, this weekend, she said: “‘The Man,’ can only ride ya when your back is bent?”

Demosthenes, she is not, but there’s nothing new about Palin’s penchant for populism or lowbrow rhetoric. What does feel new is that she has finally gotten around to roundly losing conservative opinion leaders. (OK, this has been a long time coming. In 2011, Conor Friedersdorf noted that the hard right was skewering Palin, and that Kathleen Parker had been vindicated. And as recently as this past April, I wondered whether it was finally safe for conservatives to criticize her publicly.

[Boogieman]

“It’s about YOU. Your feelings got hurt, you took personal offense at a the word I used to describe the kind of person (a psychopath) who would rent a bus and get a nation’s hopes up just to fool them, and since YOU are offended by the word “psychopath,” it’s really about YOU. “

Huh? No, I am not offended by the word “psychopath”, and my feelings are not hurt.

I just think it’s a bit nuts to assume someone must think Palin is a psychopath because they said some of her actions were perplexing. That’s not a logical leap to make, it’s not something that I ever said, and I don’t want to keep going down this road since it seems you are just trying to find someone to argue with.

[Windflier]

Palin endorsed Gov. Perry in his run for governorship, and he'd sworn up and down that he was going to remain in the governorship, by golly, follow through. He won, then crawfished and ran in the presidential primaries anyway.

I think that might have been part of it.

That was a very big part of why Sarah didn't run in 2012. When Perry threw his hat in the ring, you could almost hear Sarah gasp all the way from Alaska. It was a stunning betrayal on Perry's part, and I'm sure it sucked a tremendous amount of wind out of her sails. The field was already crowded, and with Perry getting into it, the atmosphere was practically circus-like.

There was no way she was going to run after that.

It's now clear that Sarah needed to announce her intentions early in the process to keep it from getting so far out of hand like it did. By holding out as long as she did, she left the gate open for way too many hopefuls to jam the stage. I believe there was a point in time in which the nomination was hers for the taking - had she only seized the moment. Whatever caused her to hesitate, allowed that moment to slip away.

[Truthfreesus]

I for one, think that she wanted to, intended to, even. I think something happened, whether it was something the GOPe pulled or a family situation, I don’t know. If you ever go back and listen to her call to Levin right after she announced that she wouldn’t run, you can hear the emotion in her voice, as well as Levin’s. I do remember her at some point mentioning her kids, I think that maybe the flak and fallout from the Mcguiness book was too much for her family at the time (young daughters in school). There was also the daughter getting screamed at by that queer in the bar.

[Truthfreesus]

What is this”she keeps doing it” thing. She considered running in 2012 and decided against it. That is all. If you are talking about the rumors of her running for a senate seat, that was not Sarah. There was some dishonest group trying to push that notion to make money off of her name, I believe a group floated an idea of her running in AK and another has been floating the idea of her running in AZ. These groups are not affiliated with the Governor. I’m sorry if you have been taken in by them.

[lavaroise]

When some immature jerk in college was not up to the task in math, they would revert to the “I do not understand my Indian instructor”.

I never had problems with understanding them, so it was a cop out.

In the military I also had people who understood me well and other young ones who did not want to pay attention and decided they did not understand. In other words people support the “orator” requirement BS line excuse.

[lentulusgracchus]

Whatever. I’ll stick with Palin over those effete pajama-boys like Matt Lewis and Byron York, who slobber over the northeastern establishment crowd.

Don't forget the Party-line radioheads like Mike Medved, Mike Gallagher, and Hugh Hewitt.

Bill Bennett is board-certified Mid-Atlantic nobility, but I've never heard of his trashing Palin.

The new kids on the block, Redeye Radio, have been throwing elbows at Palin recently, so I regard them warily as perhaps the Rove/GOP-e's latest investment in talk radio.

[lentulusgracchus]

When Perry threw his hat in the ring, you could almost hear Sarah gasp all the way from Alaska. It was a stunning betrayal on Perry's part, and I'm sure it sucked a tremendous amount of wind out of her sails. The field was already crowded, and with Perry getting into it, the atmosphere was practically circus-like.

---

I think you are substantially correct, and I think that, when all the books are written, that it will come out that a significant political disinformation and baiting campaign was mounted by the GOP-E to pull marginal actors into the primaries, to splash all the political money out of the shallowly-funded conservative end of the pool, so to speak. Remember all the Hunters and Huckabees and Cains and Giulianis circling the race?

I think that whoever whispered in Rick Perry's ear and changed his mind, was acting maliciously on a mental cripple. His recent surgery was as yet unhealed, and he was taking powerful drugs while in therapy.

I think those drugs produced some of his debate embarrassment, and that they induced his badly thought-out decision to run.

I thought it was interesting, too, that the Chicago Smear Machine was loaded up and waiting for Perry, when he did announce.

[bayhuntr]

I’ve had the opinion all along, they ran Sarah Palin for VP because they knew she would alienate the moderates and excite the base and lose the election. There was no solution to the mess that the Republicans had made, things were only going to get much worse, the only out was to make sure the Democrats won, blame them for everything, block everything possible until they came back into power. By then the fools on the right, would’ve been fooled, and they can start with more tax breaks for rich people and continue the redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the rich. Obama getting something done, like health care reform, was their worst nightmare.

[bayhuntr]

Peeing while standing up? I haven’t heard this before is a something FOXNews is been toting? Are you under the impression that only liberals get facelifts? I’d ask you for your sources for this information, but if you did that kind of thing, listing sources that is, you wouldn’t be here commenting.