Palin-odes?
Yet Palin won’t quite go away, given her opposition to the two most unpopular institutions in America today: Big Government and High Finance.
The voters are tiring on left-wing, condescending big government. An Eric Holder, Timothy Geithner and Barack Obama are the best reflections of the contradictory urge to redistribute money, and hector the productive upper-middle classes—while at the same time indulging their rarefied tastes and desire for privilege through government administration.
Yet Wall Street elites are no more popular. They are seen as selfish, conniving, and of no political persuasion other than kowtowing to the particular powers that be in Washington. Their creed is not conservatism or liberalism, but rather statism and the marriage of the federal government and high finance. And we now know these one-eyed jacks. Federal regulators (cf. e.g., Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Hank Paulson, Franklin Raines, etc) drift in and out of Wall Street. In exchange for guaranteeing that firms don’t fail and get sweetheart attention, federal officials are promised that during their sabbaticals from Washington they are to be accorded ceremonial jobs with access to near automatic multimillion-dollar bonuses.
Again, Palin is not an inside-the-beltway hack, and has never held federal office. She is honest and won’t go to Goldman Sachs or get a government auditorship over Bank of America. She seems like a fish out of water in New York and Washington. For someone in government for nearly 20 years, she ended up, until the latest book blitz, broke. You can’t serve for two decades in local and state government and be poor—without being perceived as honest.
Her populism is anti-bailout, anti-take-over, anti-federal loan guarantees—and as anti-Wall Street as it is anti-Washington. And for many, that is found appealing: it cuts the legs from under both Rockefeller, beltway Republicans, and high-rolling Kerry-Gore-Edwards-Kenney-Pelosi multimillionaire liberal Democrats.
All of which brings us, again, back to the second question, where does Palinism lead? (It matters little that were she not so attractive, and were she not picked by John McCain, we would not now be discussing her; since were Jack Kennedy not charismatic and the son of a zillionaire, we would not have known him either.)
Palin  must have at her fingertips far more elucidating answers than offered by any liberal icon—or what she showed in the 2008 campaign. If Sarah Palin thinks FDR was President in 1929, or that he could speak on non-existent TV, she is through; if Biden says that, it’s “just old Joe again.” If Obama does not know the first thing about our most prestigious medals, the language of Austria, or diplomatic protocol about presidential bowing, it’s because he is deliberately trying to be cool; if Palin did the same, she’s a buffoon hockey mom. That is the way it is, and her supporters should accept it, deal with, and overcome it.
In other words, Palinites should assume that there is no margin of error for her at all. Like it or not, she must, like Reagan, not only communicate, but also be able to draw on abstract concepts about conservatism. It does no good to say the media is biased, or to review the talking points offered above. She must be better than, not as good as, mainstream Democratic and Republican candidates in matters of foreign policy, gottacha recall, and talking points on health care, taxes, etc. Specificity, detail, and exactness, not generalities or whines about an unfair press, will make her a serious candidate.
The best thing she can do is to go out and talk, take her licks, promote her book, fend off foes, and gain experience in the arena of ideas—while spending her evenings reading and debating wonks and politicians. The marketplace of politics then will decide her fate, not pundits or political insiders. If she swims in the next year, she’s on her way; if she sinks, she will recede from our memory.
My own views?
I am prejudiced because what I learned over years of farming—dealing with California labor, environmental, legal, and tax regulations, pruning, tractor driving, listening to my grandfather, and handling unsavory characters, understanding plant physiology and fruit-production, etc.—I think gave me a different, but in the long run as good an education as a BA/PhD in Classical languages.
I found the former harder to do than the latter, the world of the one rather brutal and existential, of the other sheltered and protected. In other words, I would trust the judgment of someone with Palin’s background on matters of Iran or Honduras or Putin far more than I would someone of Obama’s resume. I would trust my neighbor who farms 180 acres more than I would a chairman of an academic department. I know, I know, there are extreme binaries, but they are reflective of the lack of autonomy and physicality today and the undue emphasis on elite schooling as prerequisites for success. We know now that you can do nothing and still finish as the head of  Harvard Law Review, or win a Nobel Prize, but if you miss an antlered moose, or run out of gas in the tundra, or fall overboard on a salmon boat, there is no Norwegian committee or Harvard Law Dean to bail you out.
Such is not an argument for anti-intellectualism or a dismissal of in-depth scholarship and research, but rather a reminder that Palin has led a full life than can be enhanced by more formal investigation. A chatty, rarified Obama misses dearly a concrete past, where he had to succeed or fail on his own merits, in a competitive unkind environment, where the muscular world often conspires against the intellectual.
And boy, it sure shows as we are learning in just 10 months of his uninspired governance.
Dr Hanson, an outstanding article.
The insurgent populism/anti-elitism of our day is a criticallyimportant development, even if we don’t know where it will lead. By here very nature, Palin is connected to the core of it.
Thanks for the great work!
Dr. Hanson
Really enjoy, that may not be the correct term for all your PJM inputs but I’ll say there spot on.
Having heard a bit of SP interviews of late she sounds better than when giving a speech. Off the cuff she has the answers and as a listener you know these are honest and what she beleives. No, ah, dah’s required!! Just here’s what I think, never trying to gage what the end result might be before answering. Honesty, honesty, that’s what I want and I think she delivers.
Thanks for working hard to put your thoughts on PJM, always look forward to see whats on your mind next.
Dr, Hanson,
Thank you for clarifying in superb prose exactly what I have been saying for 12 months. Your comment about the feminist movement is also generic to most liberal groups. Month after month we see not only the feminists, but unions, black activists, environmentalists, “greeners” and more unmasked as liberal advocacy groups. No longer can they simply hide beneath the noble but shallow mantra of “equal rights” or “save the planet” or “workers unite.”
This is actually the silver lining of these troubled times. I do believe that the Democrats have set themselves up to be hoist by their own petard. My concern is that the Republicans currently inspire only slightly more confidence. At least they are historically stronger on national defense, and in these dangerous times, that is an important advantage.
I like her. She has time to become a stateswoman is she chooses. Every moose in Alaska must be cheering for her success in Washington.
It is very easy to fall into the trap of, “It’s all about me”, regardless of who is speaking. So, when another perspective is communicated, the least secure go defensive.
For instance, the statement, ” I am broadminded enough to accept that there are things which are real, but they cannot be defined” are seen as a threat to those who put more trust in science rather than faith. How does one reason with that?
For, a different paradigm is needed, rather than what we are getting from Washington & Wall Street, and frankly I can’t see anyone getting around the reality that a different paradigm has to start with a different starting point. So, we are stuck with the conundrum of communicating different policies
from the radically different perspective that not everything is definable. Is there enough
people to accept this? I suppose it won’t be
known until it is tried, but I guess this is one of the times of flying into the unknown.
Or else flying into the area where fallacy is preferable to what doesn’t change.
Hey – You forgot to mention that great class of “Hangers-on” that all of the annointed attract.
And she shows and probably has no sense of “annointment,” by self or by acceptance.
Like most with sufficient strenghth of character, she has no need to constantly display or rely on force of personality, which is currently the only suit (which may turn out not to be real) worn by our emperor of the shining garments.
There is some shrewdness we will come to read about. This here woman critter is making sure that no one can label her McCain II, as we heard of Bush III. She will not drag that anchor. If for no other reason the book will have a purpose in clearing a lot of brush from the path she may choose to take.
“(Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)”
Fox News was very reticent to go after Barack Obama. This is so-called conservative network sometimes goes too far out of its way to prove it is “fair and balanced.” Regrettably, Glenn Beck was not a contract employee at that time. Bill O’Reilly came across (at least to me) as a guilt tripped white dude afraid of being charged with racism. Sean Hannity was virtually the only one who clearly saw the threat of an Obama administration. I doubt, however, that he could convince Fox to have its own journalists investigate the two books. Beck claims that he spends his own money on much of the research that goes into his programs!
Always elucidating Dr. Hanson, now actually last year was one part 1976, one part 1964,
for her. We’ve seen from her speech in Hong Kong, even from her convention speech, that she is more than apt for the job. Point taken,
about Joe Biden, who’s been wrong about
virtually every issue, over the last 36 years, and yet is treated as some unsought genius.
Another irony was illustrated almost a year ago, when she was compared unfavorably with
Carolyn Kennedy, who had some malapropisms of her own, where as the latter is actually
more of an arriviste, family having come sometime around 1849, whereas she goes back to 5 ancestors on the Mayflower
Speaking of Biden – how has this clown gotten reelected for decades? I don’t get it.
I LOVE SARAH PALIN!!!! SHE IS HONEST, POISED AND IS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR…SHE SAYS WHAT SHE THINKS UNLIKE OBAMA WHO SAYS WHAT HE THINKS WE WILL BELIEVE, BUT DOES WHAT HE WANTS!!! I SAY GO GET ‘EM GIRL. YA BETCHA YOU HAVE MY SUPPORT!!!!
Dr. Hanson: Excellent post. I have thought about why the feminized established so hates Palin, and it is because the feminized establishment has so perverted itself from excellence. The castration of all things not castrated is so complete, so whacko, so bizarro, Palin is nothing so much as beautiful reality scaring a really, really bad dream.
How high and empowered females of low tricksterism have fallen to show themselves as enraged opponents (or their male lackeys who imitate shuch shenanigans) to Palin’s reintroduction of the ancient, high art… of being a true lady of charm, courage and capability.
Scary is as Scary Does
By Robert Winkler Burke
Of inthatdayteachings.com
Copyright 10/26/09
Oh daughter Diana,
Let your mother, Demeana,
Tell how to dominate,
The earth and its men, Ha!
When a man sees your evil,
Shout: He is scary!
Men will lock him up,
And of you be wary.
If any woman sees your ruse,
Shout: She’s like a scary man!
Men and women will lock her up,
And of you be wary, again!
Honestly, people are so blind-stupid,
Scary is like beating a dead horse,
Because when it stops working magic,
We’ll use another word, of course.
But for us, for now,
Scary is the word that will do,
God or else Satan,
Gave it to us to kill logic and truth.
We can do what we want,
With any gender,
With word scary in quiver,
Most all surrender!
Forget justice, forget liberty,
Forget even truth,
We’ve got scary power, daughter,
Fear’s our vermouth!
Yes, our mantra is fear,
And the delightful word scary,
Who sees our gambit?
The world is our cherry!
No Superman, no James Bond,
No Churchill can stop us,
We have all Kryptonite power,
With scary, none top us!
Scary, scary, scary!
God, I love that sound!
Oops, I’m going quite mad,
Fear has me bound!
Oh daughter, forgive me,
I was wrong,
Forgive me! Have courage,
And be strong!
Have courage and be strong,
Correct my foul deed,
Teach the world my tricksterism,
Love truth, truth redeem!
Truth beats scary,
It beats it well,
Learn that from me,
And how I fell.
VDH: Right on, so to spoke! I’m hoping Palin will be strongly in the running for 2012 and think she shall be.
Palin, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann both suffer from the slings of outraged FemiNazis who greatly distain any women with the success and background of Palin or Bachmann. Perhaps a good Headshrink will be able to explain that to the rest of us.
Dear Dr. Hanson,
A thought that occurs to me in your excellent account of Palin and ‘Palinism’, is how the pendulum has swung for academia.
My Father, upon graduating in 1959, had multiple job offers. I graduated in 1984, and all of my classmates, upon graduating, began our job search, and it was the post grads (MBA, MA, or professional degrees) that received offers, which escalated to a new level of ‘from what university’.
Your writing provides a unique perspective – balance. It is so rare to hear of a personal comparison of a complex business such as farming and academia, that it’s amazingly refreshing. The conditioning of the value of education as the be all and end all is very overdone, as compared to the value of developping an ability to learn along with a curiosity and desire, such that we’re never done, and can grow and contribute indefinitely.
As well as Sarah Palin, let’s consider other women that raise the bar and are either ignored or attacked by the entitlement feminists versus the exceptional women leader feminists – Margaret Thatcher, Cory Aquino, Carly Fiorino, Meg Whitman, Conoleeza Rice, Roberta Bondar (hey, I’m Canadian – and she is one of the few women – only/first? – that has gone into space), Queen Elizabeth because she can repair a car – learned how during WWII as part of the war effort, and happens to have reigned during the time of God knows how many British P.M.’s, and my Mother for having survived and raised three boys born in 4 years. That Sarah Palin is a Mother of 5, a former Governor, hunter, a beauty, and seems to enjoy life ought to inspire any and all – woman, man, and child.
It seems the modus operandi is too often, ‘if I prove you wrong, therefore I’m right’ gets applied to Sarah Palin. It’s a vacuous and useless way, and typifies the Democratic parties strategy. Dr. Hanson, you very accurately identify that Palin needs to just be better and handle this kind of opposition.
I hope she does – she’s a great woman.
As much as I look forward to Dr. Hansons writings, the comments section is often as interesting. In particular, Robert Winkler Burke, your poetry is terrific!
Good point Victor, why hasn’t the right dissected Obama’s books, speeches and emails with the same vigor that the left has Sarah Palin? Maybe they are just too lazy. Come on guys why don’t you all do the same to your most feared and hated enemy that his partisans are doing to your sainted Joan of Arc.
Personally I would love for Sarah to run for President, I don’t think she will. If she did and still couldn’t name a single newspaper or magazine she read probably wouldn’t vote for her but still there certainly should be a candidate for the illiterate of our broad and great country.
Sarah Palin reminds me of a dear friend’s great-great grandmother who on one notable day fired seven shots. She collected five Commanche and two horses. Six Commanche if you count the one whose horse fell on him.
Her critics? Wannabes who would like to pillage like Commanche but who lack the nerve to try, let alone challenge her aim.
But really, how could the nation’s hardest-driven elitists fail to be frightened by an attractive, accomplished woman of immense popularity who opposes them on principle, explains her convictions in plain language, and has an unblemished record that makes it plain that she “walks it like she talks it?”
The attempts to destroy or demean Sarah Heath Palin make it perfectly clear what the Establishments of both parties, and all their acolytes and hangers-on in the media, truly fear. Let’s give it to ‘em good and hard:
Palin in 2012!
I can’t help but believe that there are Democrat moles in the GOP. The evidence for that is the candidacies of McCain and Scozzafava. McCain was the bain of conservatives and Scozzafava was clearly a rubber stamp for Obama and Pelosi. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are Republicans who loathe Palin. They are the moles and should be smoked out.
VDH – I think this is your best work yet; all tied up in a nice, neat, little bow at the end.
Snobbery. This is the heart of it. It is a way to secure one’s own place in the world; a mean’s of unearned triumph. You’re the cool kids. You define who rises and falls by setting the rules. Even if someone displaces you in the very seat of power, you still belong in the halls of power and influence.
Once you have defined the rules, you can screen out those who upset the framework. Success, power, and influence comes only through you, which amplifies your own power, et cetera. It is shallow adults acting like clique-ish children, doing it not for popularity, but rather as a a means to get ahead in the world. It is institutionalized compensation for your own inadequacies.
The greatest danger to such a system of influence, is he who shall not conform; who does not belong. The person who achieves on his own, without benefit of patronage? This person is not to be tolerated. He robs from you your power, and exposes your mediocrity. Your glory is revealed to be mere glitter next to the glory of his true accomplishments. Your shallowness is also likewise exposed. The rot of your system infects also your soul, and the rot is exposed.
This rot has permeated our society. It is corruption. It is people of lesser accomplishment rising to the highest ranks. It is a caste system, of sorts. You can wedge your way in at the lowest levels. Your children can then progress higher than you, as long as they offer fealty to the patronage system. Merit is of no… well… merit.
Palin has MERIT. She has already toppled the patronage of AK. AK is stronger and better thereby. Now, her sights are set on the larger patronage system of the Lower 48. Perhaps she doesn’t even know she does this. Fish don’t know they’re wet. She merely follows her own path, her own instincts. She may be aware she is taking “them” on, although she may not know who “they” are. Her way is simply RIGHT. She can do no other.
The system’s response? “HOW DARE SHE?!?” All follows from that simple, outraged (and frightened) cry. The cornered, feral animal lashes out in desperate rage, spittle flying in all directions from its bared fangs.
The left does not fear Palin. She’s basically incompetent, and her accomplishments, as such, are in a venue that does not fit the norm: Alaska. There’s virtually no one there. The state lives on Federal subsidies. They pay people to live there.
It is 69 times larger than Vermont and has the same population. It is sure as hell not California, NY, or Ohio. It might have a little in common with Texas, but that is something to run away from, not embrace.
What the left might fear is her supporters, who have the obvious problem that they prefer image to competence, and that is dangerous to everyone. We just had a long period of time when the electorate decided that noise trumped reason, and it got us nearly destroyed. These days the complaints are like complaints about distasteful medicines, and it’s easy to overlook the fact that while chemo is nuclear war on cancer, not smoking in the first place is much smarter. Our cancer was two wars and wasteful tax cuts that destroyed the economy. The chemo is redirecting the war, fixing the crap that the last unqualified president left behind. Of course we’re having problems now, but the answer is to avoid them by insisting on minimum qualifications from our purported leaders. At the very least, completing college competently and having a consistent track record of accomplishment might be good. Getting elected chief cheerleader (literally) wasn’t much recommendation for Bush and it’s not much different than some of Palin’s high points on her resume.
Sound bites and clever little winks do not a leader make.
The risk to mainstream conservatives and Republicans is not that we won’t take her seriously, it’s that we won’t take THEM seriously. She has nothing to recommend her to high office, a thin public resume, and modest public skills which at best, seem devoid of the spontaneous thinking type that a deep understanding of a wide range of issues confers.
As Andrew Sullivan points out, even in a book that she did not write, the number of easily dispatched factual inconsistencies shows a woman that is unable to distinguish (or at least express) her wishful version of reality with the one that the record paints. And it’s not just a failing of the record in places. If it were, one would see it averaged out by ones that support her views.
I have no worthy conservative friends who think she is the answer to the woes of the right.
It’s partially true that she fires up the base, but the deeper truth is that she fires us what remains of the base, after she has chased off the desirable parts of the base. There are honest conservative (and good) folks out there who demand competence in their leaders, and who know she does not stack up well in that regard. They uniformly reject her as a party standard bearer.
So on the main issues of leadership (experience, credentials, judgment, people skills, communication, influence) she fails or scores low. Would you follow her into a burning building? No. Would you go to war with her? No. Would you trust her to negotiate a nuclear arms control agreement? How about deciding when the use of these is required? Would you take her moral advice, after considering that she has some non-traditional ideas about what constitutes child rearing and if she can’t lead her family, how is she going to lead 300,000,000 of us? Clearly, her successes there are questionable.
None of these questions even lightly touch on the steamier aspects of her personal life, ethically, sexually, and otherwise. A bad enough picture exists on stuff we know about to make it entirely unnecessary to even worry about that.
So it’s OK to admire her desire to be something of national influence. We all want that. Maybe even her soundbites appeal to some by their compact statement of viewpoints, but there are no soundbites for nuclear war. There are none when it comes to deploying the armed forces. There is no room for an experienced quitter when quitting is not an option. Leader of the free world is a full time job, 24/7/365 x 4 years x maybe 2 terms. It demands excellence and worldliness and competence at a level worthy of sitting atop 300,000,000 Americans. Can anyone really say that she is the best of that number and that there are no better?
Charitably, she’s in the top half, but not the top 1 percent.. not by any realistic measure. Even in her subculture, she’s not 100th the intellect of John McCain, whose only major failing I can identify to date is selecting her as a running mate. What was true for him is true for anyone else: Palin poisoned his chance to lead. She alone sunk a leaky boat. Bush poked it full of holes, poor McCain inherited it, and Sarah was the final load of ballast to send it to the bottom.
Wise Republican leaders would do well to lobby her to sit down and be quiet. She’s spraying black paint over an already tarnished brand.
I happen to be one of those folks who think we need a multi-party system, but one of those parties can’t be a collection of crank extremists, led by someone as clueless as Palin. The ideas of the right can compete, but they have to compete on their merits and utility, not on the packaging.
“… if she sinks, she will recede from our memory.”
Somehow, I don’t think so. Sarah Palin is already a legend in her own time. She has, I believe, already entered the realm of Annie Oakley and the Unsinkable Molly Brown. The realm of larger-than-life figures. AMERICAN figures. One way or another, her life story will become a part of our culture.
Legendary — this is an description that I think even Barack Obama will not attain.
If Sarah runs for the presidency, these are the reasons why I’d consider voting for her.
1)Experience. Not only her political experience,but her experience in running a business and raising a family.
2) Honesty. Any candidate who has fought corrution in Gov’t,especially within her own political party that has resulted in corrupt politicians going to prison for their abuse of the public trust.
Honestey enough to resign from her governourship because false ethics complaints against her were bankrupting her family and distracting from her ability to govern her state in an effective manner.
3)Strength. Her ability to maintain her dignity while being assaulted personally and professionally by political hacks who could not see fit to refrain from the worst kind of lies and innuendo against a woman,wife and mother, all the while giving a complete pass to the opposing candidate who had less experience,worse associates and a history of which we still, a year later; know little or nothing about.
4) The left wing loons HATE her.
She drives them crazy and the republican and democrat political elites fear her popularity among the everyday,working class,taxpaying kind of folks who identify so closely with her.
These are reasons enough for me to seriously consider giving Sarah Palin my vote should she seek the presidency.
Run Sarah,Run!
There’s a lot to like about Sarah – but she’s no Reagan. Despite the public perception to the contrary, Reagan was a thinker. He started as a Democrat and switched parties when he realized the problems with expanding government. He learned to connect with people through his work with GE, which took him out to talk to workers around the country.
Sarah needs to prove her competency to be President. She’ll never win over the liberals but she has a shot at Independents and moderate Republicans. Resigning from her elected position hurt a lot. She needs to either win another office or do something else noteworthy to demonstrate her intellect not just her personality.
Mr Hanson,
That is very well written. Your last paragraph sums it up rather succinctly.
Thank you.
Personally for me Mrs Palin represents the beauty of our Republican form of Government.
The prospect of Mrs Palin as President is quite simply terrifying to those who broker power and wealth through means that are not intrusted by the will of the people only.
This conviction and strength of character Mrs Palin holds is incorruptable.
These people who abuse our people and country dispise the regular folks and their rightful governence, they exist in the rarified world of wealth and power that they believe is theirs at our expence. Mrs Palin is as much or more a threat to theirs as socialism or dictatorship is to our Constitution and way of Liberty and Freedom.
This is war of hearts and minds.
It is what she represents, us!
What kind of courage and bravery do you think Mrs Palin has to go up against these power mongers and money grubbers?
It is a real question.
She is in the vanguard, she has no single like minded ally or advocate in the public forum other than people who in heart and spirit yearn and see her as a champion of them. Say what you please, there simply is no other like her with what it takes.
Man what a brave and truely principled person Mrs Palin is.
Who do you know with the grit fortitude and dignity of spirit to rise above the hate and dispicaple acts she recieves?
Not many I’ll wager, I’ll wager my right arm all we need is one.
No matter what Mrs Palin chooses, we are blessed by her and her grace of character.
#9 You don’t live in Deleware!. If you have a D after your name you can be a raving lunatic ie. Joe Biden and win. It has become as blue as Maryland.
Shout out to David Thomson, I think you may be right about Obama having a nervous break down before his term is up.
Sarah Palin is a whole lot of woman and that intimidates the living hell out of a whole lot of women; who in turn instantly lay the law down to their chick-a-fide male mates. This hate Sarah Syndrome is normally called “mother nature”.
Whereby, with Sarah Palin mother nature screams to other women, “You don’t have a chance to keep up with me”.
And to the men it simply whispers, “You don’t have a chance period”.
The hilarious thing is that an entire nation doesn’t have what it takes to deal with what comes naturally.
Excellent evaluation, Doc. I sometimes need to hear it from someone else as a reality check.
I was aware of this weeks round of Sarah Palin interviews and refused to get my hopes up too much. But, you have to admit, Fox scored a direct hit with this one. Each of the interviews I watched were devoid of the usual fluff and were actually about issues. They actually talked of those things which I’m concerned about. The economy, jobs, the national debt, the war on terror, what to do WRT Afghanistan, health care reform, etc., and, by the way, I thought Oprah blew it.
I like this woman for probably all the wrong reasons, she resonates so closely with my own gut instincts on just about everything,,, and you know what they say about things that appear too good to be true. Besides her obvious good looks, she displays a depth of character not seen lately in politics, one of simple honesty. She strikes me as someone who will tell you the hard truth of something, rather than what she thinks you might like to hear.
I’ll be watching her future talks with great interest, but so far she has not disappointed.
There is a reason to have a web log : So I can read VDH and pass it on to others.
Phew, Doc, three pages!! This one’s clearly a soapbox close to your heart. Rightly so too – thanks as always.
All I can say, from across the Pacific pond, is good luck Sarah – I hope she finds some advisors like VDH who can give her the tools to rise above the naysayers from both sides. She has authenticity – now it’s just a matter of moulding that raw material.
You watch – give it a few years and she’ll be back from the wilderness and she’ll be bagging more than moose!!
Palin slightly disappoints in her recent interviews.
She still seems fettered by Nelson Rockefeller GOP “operatives” as in the campaign.
She worries too much about what she says.
She should say:
1) sunset all Federal laws and start again with constitutional tests.
2) replace all congress members in 2010.
3) defund 80% of the Federal bureaucracy and no Federal contributions to NGOs.
Just as the defenders against jihadi terrorism must succeed 100% of the time while the jihadi need succeed only once so it is with Sarah Palin: she must be right 100% of the time for her to be perceived as “competent” while her foes need only one gotcha for her to be slurred as a boob.
Great post, doc. You stated better than anyone I’ve ever read Miss Sarah’s appeal and why her brand of feminism may yet save the Republic. Let’s see if any of her critics have the guts to link to this post.
continued . . .
4) initiate a “moon program” for mini-nuclear plants everywhere.
5) drill immediately offshore and in ANWR.
6) give the generals 150% of what they need, or bring all the troops home immediately.
7) harden the border and clamp down on felonies by illegals.
Sara Palin upsets so many, bothers both supposed liberal and alleged conservative, whether Democrat or Republican, because she is The Real Deal.
She is a throwback to the leaders of the 40’s and 50’s, who came back from the wars with an appreciation of how bad reality could be and how precious what we have in the USA really is, motivated by a fierce combination of a hard headed practical outlook and uniquely American optimism.
Her critics most resemble Gary Trudeau, ridiculing WWII Naval Aviator George Bush one day in “Doonesberry” and modeling a WWII Navy flight jacket for an upscale catalog the next.
She must look about her and see nothing but pitiful squawking pigmies.
And besides, adolescents that they actually are, it must really scare the crap out of them that she is a dead ringer for Wonder Woman’s secret identity.
Professor,
I find it ironic that the left loves to use the word “authentic” to describe people whose personas are entirely contrived. Then when real authenticity makes an appearance, leftists cringe like vampires before the sunrise. Sarah Palin is luminous in the manner of a Joan of Arc.
I’ll bet everyone reading this post has had occasion to work with or for an inveterate liar. Our natural reaction to such people is to simply turn away in disgust. We gravitate towards friends and colleagues we can trust. Today we are seeing this phenomenon manifest on a national level.
You can bet that elites of all stripes are panicking. The body politic is awake and on to the scam. What’s more, we are mobilizing from the grass roots. Our elites might denounce us as bumpkins, but they fear the power of a popular uprising. Sarah Palin is one of us. We know are own.
Go get ‘em, Sarah!
I agree that the left has Palin Derangement Syndrome.
However, Governor Palin herself doesn’t have substance on a lot of issues, particularly economics. She can parrot the mantra of lower taxes, but I don’t have the confidence in her that she really understands what/why/how or the effects of lower taxes.
There is a piece missing with her-she needs more seasoning. Perhaps she can get it by being out stumping for candidates.
I truly like her. She is likable and a great retail politician. But today she lacks the gravitas to be President. She aspires to be Reagan like, but she is not…yet.
VDH
Sarah Palin is getting the same treatment that Clarence Thomas received, that Ronald Reagan received, that Dan Quayle received, …in fact, Sarah Palin is the female Dan Quayle as a target for derision and caricaturization.
The left’s propaganda machine hurls out two main theses against any non-leftist who is garnering attention on the national stage.
The one seen above is the “he/she is stupid, nearly brain-dead, not nuanced”, …essentially someone worthy only of ridicule and scorn. And they are relentless in the pursuit of this smear campaign. NASCAR loving, tobacco chewing, uneducated or at a minimum “undereducated”, Bible as fairy tale believing, bitter clingers…who got to the top by tapping into the reservoir of “intuitive hate” and “exclusion” of a parade of “victim groups” based upon class warfare uniforms of the opposing team…or gender warfare uniforms, or race warfare uniforms.
The propagandists use Christian Evangelicals as the uniformed “other” team and then caricature the whole of Christianity, the whole of the conservative movement, the whole of the “family values” proponents…as “one opposing team”.
The not too distant cousin of the “he/she” is stupid etc., …is the Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, (and Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck)…he/she is evil, malevolent, trying to create an empire, deadly, dark, brooding, sinister.
Poor George W. Bush, he got the pleasure of being one of the only caricatures to be painted as BOTH.
Conversely, the propaganda machine will whitewash almost any faux pas, any selling of national secrets, any dalliance or depravity, any violation of “inviolate principle”…if it is done by a liberal Democrat.
The same propaganda machine will prop up a Norm Crosby-like Joe Biden, will whitewash the abuse of women…not a peep from the feminists for workplace sexual harassment, will overlook “57 states” and “he’s clean…for a black guy” type statements from folks that toe the party line and adhere to the message.
The caricature of liberal to far left adherents is someone who dons a cape and changes in a phone booth. The caricature of anyone who does not adhere to “the message” is one of stupid, evil…or in one case…both.
Sarah Palin is getting that treatment…in spades. And there are folks that buy into being embarrassed by her “caricature”…on the Republican side of the fence.
Since they own the mass information stream and have the entrenched media in their pocket, it will be this way without a modicum of doubt, for as long as we are alive, you and I. (we are the same age)
For a non-leftist to defeat this game, SOMEONE has to appear on the national stage speaking common sense, no hypocrisy at their core…AND, be eloquent, educated, compassionate and endearing,…and that personality type really doesn’t like to swim in the cesspool of politics generally.
Our problem as a society, is that the truly best and brightest…have no interest in the self-aggrandizement, grandstanding, slopping at the public trough lifestyle of national politics. There is no Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton…building a country and sacrificing years to the effort.
There are only gradations of narcissists, building power bases and making rules for their fiefdoms…while we serfs pay tribute…and in the case of party sheep…homage…to the lords of the manor.
We need a third party so badly…but it will never happen. We need to destroy the distortion that is our entrenched media, our polluted and necrotic information stream. But it will never happen.
Sarah Palin isn’t the problem. She isn’t even the issue. She’s just a nice, attractive lady being caricatured for our viewing enjoyment.
Hey! I didn’t know there are people who shoot guns, kill and eat what they shoot or catch, express heart felt ideals, love their spouse and babies unconditionaly, use help to write a book and give you the straight skinny on something.
There are people like this? Naw! Couldn’t be for real must be a wild viral rumor.
Mmmnn checked all the tv news and newspapers, nothing there, must have had a brain cramp.. or something…..would be a nice thing if it was true..naw I’m dreaming.
Don’t have much left in the freezer since I got laid off. Venison stew would be good for dinner while I surf the channels just to make sure…
Before I get to Sarah Palin and why people dislike her, I have often wondered why people like Barack Obama. Hope to see a column or two about that at some point in the future.
Why are people so bothered by Sarah? Because she’s real. She connects with people. Her words and her actions are consistent. She challenges the status quo, that a female can enjoy personal and political power without being a Democrat, elite-educated, teleprompted zombie. She found a way to have it all and no one gave it to her and because of that she isn’t beholden to oh, I dunno, a Chicago Gang.
We feminists in flyover country are different, we believed that NOW wanted progress for all women, to be treated fairly in the workplace and make choices about our lives. To have no kids, a bunch of kids, to be a workaholic, or to stay home. How rudely we were awakened by the “lefty ladies” treating Sarah like she had just tracked dog poo in on the newly shampooed carpet. Because she was a Republican? Married with kids? Governor of Alaska? Because she was not “ready for prime time?” Well, there was a lot of that going around in 2008…and in 2009…
DR. VDH – You’re spot on, and I can only echo most of the other posts here.
As for me, what I like about Palin is that she is plain spoken; reminds of Reagan. I recall that when he was elected (or thereabouts) Clark Clifford called him an amiable dunce. Well, the amiable dunce turned out to be one of the truly great presidents this great country. By contrast, our current, Columbia U/Harvard U trained president is turning out to be a total disappointment rapidly descending into the Carter-league of incompetent presidents. As someone once said, you don’t have to be a genius to be president; you just have to have a few principles and stick to them, and I think Palin will easily fit into that mold.
America, since the beginning, has been a country of brains for hire. The point of good leadership has never been to be the smartest person in the room, but to know right from wrong and to use the advise of others in order to make the best decisions.
Sara Palin, I believe, will do this. Obama, not knowing right from wrong, seeks the advise from people who also don’t know right from wrong. Therein lies the problem of the Obama administration.
The issues are usually given short shrift in just about all articles on Palin. Sure she needs to seasoned so she can quietly eviscerate the Dowds of the world should she choose but, gee, is she right on the answer to the issues. And the biggest one in the next few years is what’s being ignored, namely energy.
Did you notice the Alaskan North Slope oil companies are reducing their development there by about 25% this year. With the shelving of traditional energy sources and replaced the the green dream we are going to have enormous shortages that make CA current difficulties look like Nirvana. And it’s now too late to fix since it takes years to bring reliable sources online. In short, energy is NOT a variable cost but a necessity. The cost of everything goes up as energy costs go up. Even service industry jobs are effected because they have to pay transportation costs just to get their body to where they work. Higher energy in agriculture makes food cost more. Your pencils cost more. Your ipod. Everything. And it will be mostly from foreign sources since, as noted, the “under foot” energy is just not being developed. And it’s impact on foreign relations is just huge. No wonder Obama bowed to the Saudis. The next President will be kowtowing and crawling to them.
Energy is life.
Cheap energy is properity.
Obama and the Democrats want neither.
Palin can lead the way to both.
I was mostly disturbed about the comment about the AP supposedly hiring 11 fact checkers for Palin’s book. I thought this was more right wing fuzzy facting, but look at who has the most detailed report on this. I put the wisdom of the AP fact-checking Palin’s book right up near when CNN “fact checked” SNL.
WTF! — do mainstream news sources now choose which things to “fact check” by putting a bunch of suggestion slips into a big barrel and picking one blindfolded? The AP is easily the most dominant news wire source for the US news media and I’ve been noticing more and more randomness in their news items that show up on Google News. Also I’m not a fan of Palin, but I too have noticed that she’s been picked on in ways totally disproportionate to what she’s been saying and doing, which for the most part (aside from the Death Panels Facebook comment), have been pretty mild and balanced compared to others on the wrong side of the political spectrum. Overall she’s come off as a much less malicious character that the vast bulk of other prominent Republicans and conservatives.
For instance, contrast Palin to Michelle Malkin — earlier in the year Malkin came out with a thing that looked like a book but was actually a pile of BS squeezed between two pieces of cardboard. Malkin also did the talk show tour promoting it, but was she fact checked or called out at all for her nonsense? Nooo…..
The only thing I can think of that would account for this is that the corporate mainstream media has become seeded with more Mitt Romney-type conservatives than anyone is aware of. That’s about the last thing the news media needs right now.
Hanson’s dual life of farmer and classics professor gives him a rare perspective among academics and the bona fides to express what he has said in this article without being open to the anti intellectualism charge. Growing up in the Bronx and working summers as a bank teller during my college years led me to meet non academic people whose character and wisdom I had the opportunity to learn from-retired policemen and firefighters who were bank greeters, retired clerks or small businessmen who were safe deposit staff, and veteran tellers. They were a collection of Irish, African American, Puerto Rican, Italian and Jewish working/lower middle class men and women whose views of the world were anything but rarified. Leaving the Bronx and going to graduate school and settling in Madison Wisconsin I carried those 4 summers with me and it certainly helped to make my political views less than popular (there were other reasons for my views of course as well) in this beautiful, easy to live in town in all ways other than political-especially if your circle of colleagues and friends are academics, educators, in the helping professions or in religiously liberal denominations.
As she has said, she doesn’t know if she is running, for anything ever again. But you underestimate her support among the military,
among the people between LA and NY, and probably even in those urban enclaves. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone who has observed Obama lately and is even remotely
sympathetic to his goals, can even twitch against her. She would not abandon the troops
to the Taliban, she would not propose this ridiculous stimulus to non existent districts, responsibly open up areas for development, so we don’t need to launch expeditions into the Middle East
Forrest MacGregor,
You cite Andrew Sullivan and you expect to be taken seriously as a conservative?
No, you are not a conservative, you engage in “taqiyah” on behalf of the opposition party. Republican does not equal conservative and John McCain was not a conservative.
If the Republican party wants to become “Democrat-Lite” then let it. 40% of all American citizens self-identify as conservative, only 20% identify as Republican. It is the Republican party that needs to embrace conservatives, not vice-versa.
Forrest @22: Blah, blah, blah… Blah, blah, blah.
In 13 paragraphs you did nothing but bloviate about, well, nothing. You tried to descredit and dishonor and besmirch someone whom you have never met, or read about other than what the biased MSM wants you to read.
Had you been this critical of the Messiah first or even differeniated and contrasted the two, you might have engendered some creditbility.
“None of these questions even lightly touch on the steamier aspects of her personal life, ethically, sexually, and otherwise. A bad enough picture exists on stuff we know about to make it entirely unnecessary to even worry about that.”
Had you asked this of the Messiah, you might have fostered a shred of evidence that you were here to debate. But instead we all know you are only here as a sop to Kos or Podesto and to incite.
“I happen to be one of those folks who think we need a multi-party system, but one of those parties can’t be a collection of crank extremists, led by someone as clueless as Palin. The ideas of the right can compete, but they have to compete on their merits and utility, not on the packaging.”
This from a party of the Messiah, Edwards, Kennedy, Reid, Pelosi, McDermott, ACORN, trial lawyers, SEIU, NAACP, ELF, Soros and 527s, Socialist Democrats of America, and on and on….
In your own small, insignificant way, you tried to be a miniture and much less intelligent version of VDH. And you failed!
You are not even worthy of direct challenge or debate. I just felt sorry for you so I responded.
Forrest McGregor:
“What the left might fear is her supporters, who have the obvious problem that they prefer image to competence”
That is too, too funny coming from an Obama supporter!
Your entire essay boilds down to a lengthy exercise in snobbery, more proof that the elitists of our day simply don’t get it. Thank you for providing evidence of Dr Hansen’s thesis.
I think Sarah Palin is great in every way.
I do not think that she should run in 2012!
She needs to do what she is doing and can do more effectively than getting in campaign mode. I would like to see us get and smart guy like Romney which we will need to unwind this mess Obama and friends has made, on the ticket and her beside him not as VP but the next Energy Secy’ or other high level post where she can shine and get experience. She is young, has a great future but needs some time to develop which I am confident she can.
I hope to see her after that development be our First female president. I have raised 5 children and putting talent out there too early can flameout, she has time. Also, the nutties that hate her for “whatever” will fade away as everyone will see her and them for what they are. So Palin fans, let this wonderful cake bake and not take it out too soon and watch it fall.
The simple fact is that both parties are populated with crooks. If the FBI was turned loose on Congress, at least 520 of the 535 members would end up behind bars.
The Democrats took congress on a ‘culture of corruption’ campaign in ’06. They then prodeeded to out corrupt the Republicans.
So the crooks in both parties have a vested interest in ensuring the corruption continues.
Sara is a threat to that.
The MSM feeds off the crooked politicians. Like vultures, they need a certain percentage of the hred to die at regular intervals. Killing them all off at once will lead to famine in their future. Then there is the army of lobbyists. The government is in such bad shape that it will require Constitutional amendments to put it right. Since putting it right will put all the crooks out of work or in jail, they fear a President with the mandate to clean house.
Sara is the one that could do it.
I watched the Morning Joe show because Fox and Friends was boring. I saw them run a segment from the John Stewart Show that was aired the day before. He had a film clip running on Sarah Palin giving an explanation of how she would handle the economy. It was a pretty general answer with a lot of the same recommendations being made by many other conservative. When she was done Stewart went on a rant comparing her to an onion, “when you peal back the layers of an onion you end up with nothing – that is what Sarah Palin is like.” There is nothing there. Well there was nothing to his ludicrous analogy. Now the jackels at MSNBC showed the clip and were yukking it up treating Stewart like he was some wise sage. But in reality he is nothing but a jerk with a TV show. If he is on the top of his game, there is no one in the stadium.
There was nothing funny about Stewarts skit nor was his rant. In short the folks at MSNBC made themselves look foolish even childish. Foolish and childish best describes these media morons.
The hatred for Palin is nothing less than class warfare. She symbolizes the common woman who has not embrassed the far left. These women have children, happy marriages, go to Church on Sundays and take care of their families. Oh and they go camping and hunting, two passtimes never discussed at a New York cocktail party. How common can you be. Now she is on the world stage and they can’t stand it. She is on their turf and they don’t want her there. Sarah ahs the It Factor and they know it. She was made for TV and she is much better at it than they “the professionals”. The more they attack her the dumber they look. “Go Gal”
She is also a naturea
Go Sarah! Palin for President in 2012!
To Forrest MacGregor:
Only a weak, liberal man will cower in the strength of a conservative woman.
Oh, no…you don’t fear Palin. You only wrote an extremely long, boring and invalid portrayal of her, all the while failing at making your case.
#22 Mr. McGregor: Your comments make Professor Hanson’s points for him, you liberal twit. Keep looking down your nose at us “regular folks” and you will see change come, all right. :)
Forrest MacGregor:
A weak person will always cower in the presence of strength, which is exactly what you were doing, when you wrote this extremely long, inexplicably boring and invalid portrayal of Sarah Palin. Go back to the hole you came from.
I’m not really a Palin fan or follower, but the level of vitriol directed at a former Vice Presidential nominee is astounding. They genuinely fear her, because she shows just how incompetent most of these self annointed elites really are.
She must be destroyed, before the public realizes just how badly our government actually performs.
Gov of New Mexico, quit
Gov of Kansas, quit
Jr Senator from Illinois, quit
etcetcetc…
Your point is?
also, Sarah is part of a political movement in our country. We are tired of the politics of shaming people you dont’ agree with, lieing to the public, lieing about your opponent, cheating and still getting the job. Forcing things on the voting public that they clearly do not agree with. The people in the NE (in particular) may take this as everyday fare, the rest of us do not.
Palin says she will back “any” candidate that is worthy. Not just a “republican” .. We will consider ANY candidate that she backs. She is honest. Doesn’t fit into the Washington elite mold, and we like that.
We like that she has a family, we emphasize with her difficulties as a mother and having teenagers that run amuck. that happens in the very best of families. it is because she is a real person that most of us like her…she’s our Daniel in the lion’s den..
So write your many boring paragraphs of why she’s not qualified. they mean nothing. You elected a complete incompetent in Obama, complete with all the pitiful trimmings….
22. Forrest MacGregor:
David Frum’s pseudonym.
And the irony/hypocricy is that the vitriol is from the supposed champions of the “little people”. They’ll champion them as long as they stay in their place (flyover country, the ghetto), behave in an approved manner (the unions), or propitiate their perceived guilt (Barack Obama, or pick your PC-identity victim group).
Sarah is not from the elites(rep or dem) but, she sure has their panties in a wad and that would earn my vote.
Mr. MacGregor: sounding a little shrill there, my friend.The dem talking points aren’t cutting it. . .I suspect you don’t have any TRUE Conservative friends,but possibly some RINOs. Time will tell if Sarah is the Real Deal, but even now, I respect her much more than I ever can the mighty”o”.As the great one continues stumbling along the path to destruction, all he does is make Sarah look better and better.
…as much resistance from Republican Old Guarders
In my extensive researches into this topic (2 discussions), I’ve concluded that Sarah Palin is simply too fresh and ebullient for the old guarders and lacks the stolidness and the patina of gravitas that many Old Guarders tend to equate with reason and intelligence.
Their argument that she lacks experience & knowledge is strange when you compare her background and achievements to the individual who was actually elected POTUS in 2008.
(Palin) inherently exposes feminism as a liberal advocacy movement rather than a bipartisan effort to ensure equal opportunity for women in the workplace and society at large.
“Feminism” is narrow in its outline of what constitutes success in the world. Although describing herself as a feminist, Palin goes outside the conventionally accepted parameters. She also violates fundamental tenets of feminism, like her opposition to abortion.
As I believe you noted in a previous article, some women are simply jealous of her. On tee vee last night, Sally Quinn was stumbling around trying to diss Palin’s religious foundations, a very fashionable thing to mock in the annals of Washington DC and NYC.
(It matters little that were she not so attractive, and were she not picked by John McCain, we would not now be discussing her;
Maybe. Maybe not. Bill Kristol had been talking her up extensively on Foxnews (I think he’s still smitten) and she’d been interviewed extensively (a lot to do with her energy ideas and her very strong arguments for energy independence) by Glenn Beck while he was still at CNN, long before McCain picked her.
She was on the radar before McC picked her.
Nurse Hanson:
You ask two questions:
So what?
Why does she create hysteria?
As to “so what?” . . . You dismiss the fact-checking of her memwar as irrelevant. Let’s take one small example. In 2008 she said there was a family vote about accepting McCain’s offer to run as VP. Now she says there was no such family vote. The point? It is incredibly easy for this woman to lie, and she does so about the smallest things, with absolutely no need or reason, which reveals her pathological dishonesty.
As to “Why does she create hysteria?” . . . I’s not hysteria. We don’t believe her, nor do we respect her. It’s not hysteria. It’s disgust. Here’s why:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/19/jon-stewart-explains-to-c_n_363387.html
Now, if you prefer to hypothesize about why liberals don’t like Palin, you will, of course, have to allow liberals to tell you why conservatives like her . . . because they’re sexually repressed onanists. How’s that for analysis? Shallow? Misdirected? Self-serving? Now why would anyone indulge in such blatant moralizing? Why? Oh why?
What amuses me is that the thorough, in fact, ridiculous overdone vetting of Palin has turned up basically nothing overtly bad about her and yet most don’t even know Obama was a red diaper baby or was if not partly raised, at least, very much influenced by the likes of Frank Marshall. A truly well-vetted Barack Hussein Obama could not possibly be elected president of the USA.
Sarah has it in her power to bring them down and that is why they are in hysterics. She has the silver bullets: charisma, character, genuine good will, and truth. Moreover, America has taken note.
She loves America and its way of life. She loves the average person on the street. She believes the best is yet to come. She has genuine faith. She wants us to win. It’s not talk; she has skin in the game. She’s brave.
And anyone who believes that Sara has to be right 100% of the time are misguided. Even if she were correct 100% of the time, that will not stop them from lying about her or portraying her as a dimwit; in fact, it will only encourage them to double down. No one is perfect; be prepare to help and defend her.
The fact of the matter is that leadership requires character. It is a quality of the spirit. No university on earth can teach you character–as we see so abundantly demonstrated before us daily in the news and on the internet. Mr Obama and his crowd–with their tony educations–are marxists and utilitarians who want to steal every thing we have and enslave us. Our lives are as nothing in the face of their will to power.
Forrest MacGregor, er, Mr Emmanuel, you are a very transparent Obamabot, your sulfur is showing. What do they pay you, 10-12 bucks an hour? Go away. Go find a real job–if you still can.
Now and Then, “incredibly easy for this woman to lie, and she does so about the smallest things”, do you really want to trot that out with Obama as your icon?
Quoting Huffpuff? I appreciate that, I got a good laugh at that. Then you descend into ad homonym attacks again, no surprise there.
It still comes down to that fact that if you didn’t fear her you wouldn’t ever think about her much less spend time demonizing her. She IS Obama but with substance, with accomplishment and without condescension. Maybe it’s that last that really confuses you.
Please comment on the points in the article if you want any respect around here.
Now and Ten wrote-
“In 2008 she said there was a family vote about accepting McCain’s offer to run as VP. Now she says there was no such family vote….which reveals her pathological dishonesty”
Pathological dishonesty, you mean as compared to Barack Obama being totally honest when he stated that William Ayers was some guy in his neighborhood whose kids went to school with his kids.
As compared to Barack Obama when he said….(insert about 1,000 items that the MSM didn’t fact check).
Right!
I have come to accept the following:
SP is the leader/icon/inspiration of 9% of the American population.
She has filled the void left by Bush as a target of many jokes.
She will provide years of employment to the media following her.
She will never hold public office again.
Her life will become a bubble isolated of the realities of the world, but her millions of admirers will eat it up.
Remember the Mayan calendar . . .
@22 Forrest MacGregor
Or should I call you Houdini? How do you mange to look down your nose at someone who is so high above you in terms or real world accomplishment?
A libertarian pansy ass like you couldn’t survive one winter in Alaska.
Do you really think your liberty is free?
People connect with Sarah on a primal, basic level. It supersedes intellect. It is the animal instinct that this individual is right, true, genuine, sincere, trustworthy. With that understanding, hearts go out to her.
Sarah Palin is the real thing; therefore, the pre-fabricated media elite & the plastic Democrats & blue blood snot-nosed Republicans fear her. All of them want to destroy her because she is genuine. How dare she have beliefs & a moral compass!
Most libs I know all WANT Sarah to boost her image so she will be the nominee. They all want to change their registration to Republican to vote for her in the primaries, so they can set the GOP to lose big time in the general.
I have to say that they are probably right. I’m a moderate conservative and she bugs the heck outta me (specifically her backwards social conservatism and hostility to big cities and big business).
Harry Truman worked on his family farm in northwest Missouri for 15 years pushing a plow behind a horse before meeting his destiny. Abraham Lincoln chopped wood.
I’ve seen many people in my life who’ve come from modest rural backgrounds, moved to the city and made a lot of money.
That’s what the United States has always allowed. People fail and people succeed. People lose and people win. Some get old and some die young. And no governmental structure can change that.
You betcha. Sarah is a phenom. When her name was mentioned on a National Review cruise by John Sullivan (a Brit) to an audience of conservatives, one week after the 2008 election debacle, the room erupted in cheers. This from a usually undemonstrative group. Palin most definitely connects with people. And that scares the crap out of mainline pols on both sides of the aisle. They are afraid to lose control.
Given Fox’s propensity to fake video crowds, I thought it might serve to show the REAL Sarah Palin by showing the UNedited version of the Oprha interview . . .
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-truth-about-sarah-palin
Now there’s a woman I could get behind.
I agree with Buckley (and VDH). I’d rather be governed by normal people than a self appointed “intellectual elite”. People that live in the real world and solve real problems are much better equipped to deal with the world as it is than someone who resided in academia and rose to elected office following the playbook of Alinsky.
I believe you’ve missed a key point. The anti-Americans are so terrified of Palin because of the damage she can do to them.
Skip to next year. She does anti-commieObama fund raisers for the first six months. In September/October she does stump speeches against the 40-60 most vulnerable criminal democrats in the House. They have to be terrified, especially those who haven’t stolen enough yet.
“…of his uninspired governance.”
To the contrary, the governance of TOTUS is, in fact, inspired: by the people who pull his strings who share a self-serving anti-Americanism in their quest to run our system into the ground and impose their fascistic socialism on us.
22. Forrest MacGregor.
What do you think of Freud?
“It is 69 times larger than Vermont and has the same population. It is sure as hell not California, NY, or Ohio. It might have a little in common with Texas, but that is something to run away from, not embrace.”
Could you elaborate on the state of the economies of “California, NY, and Ohio”? If you don’t “embrace Texas”, are your chances of winning the Presidency better? Where did the number “69″ come from?
“As Andrew Sullivan points out…”
Trig is Bristol’s baby?
“None of these questions even lightly touch on the steamier aspects of her personal life, ethically, sexually, and otherwise. A bad enough picture exists on stuff we know about to make it entirely unnecessary to even worry about that.”
“…lightly touch on the steamier aspects of her personal life, ethically, sexually, and otherwise.”
Did you know that other people have… children too? Does a stork bring them? Is sex bad?
“A bad enough picture exists on stuff we know about…” “Wise Republican leaders would do well to lobby her to sit down and be quiet.”
Is a wise spanking needed too? Maybe wise rope and a gag?
“She’s spraying black paint over an already tarnished brand.”
Didn’t it all start with Eve? Or Lilith? Black spray paint? Why not pink? Spraying… What do you say Dr. Freud?
Did your Andrew Sullivan blow up doll refuse your affection this morning?
So all the repression comes forth.
Sarah fights. She stands her ground and will do what is wright for the country.
Energy independence is my case in point. After 8 years of Palin we will go along way toward energy independence. The Palin presidential library will not be built by Arabs like the Clinton library. Ex-president Palin wont be a errand-boy for some Sheik like Bill Clinton is.
Sarah Palin is a beautiful person inside and out.
Works for me.
I admire a person with traditional values and standards.
She has my vote in whatever choices she makes with her life and career.
God bless her and her family and the USofA Too.
Don’t miss the duct tape thread over at althouse. She makes a snarky post about Palin’s book and it’s off to the races. The comments really show the divide between those who’ve lived and skied in Tahoe for a season and those who’ve survived and played on a shoestring budget in the cold of Alaska.
It really contrast those who’ve eked out a living from the land and those who’ve visited nature in the comfort of their luxury vehicle (paid for by their family’s money).
prof. Hanson,
The best account of the Palin phenom. that I have read to date.
Reagan used the time between his failed bid and successful run to hone his thinking and maintain public presence with his great radio spots and speeches. I suspect Sarah will do the same.
Like you, I trust the wisdom like your grandfather much, much more than the polished and largely superficial elite. The former has a perspective based on hard knock reality that allows one to clearly see the world without the distortion of an ivy league, PC prism.
VIVO
You are an inspiration to the imbeciles of the world. They are ecstatic that there exist those even dumber than themselves. I would guess that you are in awe of the intellectual gifts of the likes of Obama, Kerry, etc. What is funny is that they regard you as a worthless turd. A prole. A dumb animal to be ordered about. And stop spending so much time in the bathroom.
#22 Forrest MacGregor puzzles me. Why does he think Sarah Palin lacks experience and has a “steamy” personal life? She has had lots of experience in governing, unlike Barack Obama, whose experience was as a “community organizer” for ACORN. Foreign affairs? She knows more than Obama and is not anti-American.
But the word “liberal” is being misused here. The word became a euphemism for “socialist,” so that even the Communist Angela Davis was called a “liberal.” The mislabelled “liberals” have nothing in common with John Stuart Mill.
You could look at Sarah Palin as sort of an economic stimulus package for people like Quinn, Dowd, Collins etc who don’t have much to write about. If Sarah didn’t exist, they’d have to invent her. When your imagination isn’t too good in the first place, that makes it hard. They might need to get actual jobs.
cfbleachers @39,
Looks like there are tectonic shifts underway in the lib’s media array: GE is selling NBC Universal (which includes MSNBC’s operations).
Consider the potential for an exciting game-changer. If the company falls into pro-American hands MSNBC could begin to outfox FOX. This push could, given the shift’s already-building momentum, nudge the nation back to its common-sense Constitutional roots.
Recent media events lend credence to this theory. Barbara Walters and Oprah have, with much fanfare, just reintroduced Sarah Palin to the industry’s ‘polite company’ (ie. the Alaskan Governor is not ‘verboten’ in elite parlors anymore). The Right’s Obama-supporters’ are slowly awakening – the debutant Peggy Noonan practiced a refreshed sobriety at the WSJ the other day. And “top-line” media figures like Andrew Sullivan have fallen queerly silent, like so many sweaty clowns with running make-up sulking and disheveled offstage.
Now, if only MSNBC’s obsessive leftist ranting suddenly broke (Keith Olberman should be selling pet-products in a mall) and the outlet took a more literal approach to Americans’ world interests and history…I think we’d have the makings of a 8.0 richter-scale quake. And Sarah Palin’s prospects will benefit from the trend.
It’s simple, her experience does NOT include the necessary exposure to the real issues facing our nation. Our next decision maker requires a better then cursory understanding of America’s various national challenges, consequences and goals. She’s a nice lady whose path to super stardom equates popularity with qualification. We must move away from this cultural obsession of adornment and fixation on concept, rather then content.
Hypothetical:
Palin and 30 Alaskans in a sinking ship with Obama and 30 czars; who would do the bailing and who would do the wailing?
The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)
There seems to be no evidence for this. Do you have a source for this?
If there’s anything the despicable treatment of Sarah Palin should have reminded us, it is that attacks on people’s private family lives, even someone as professionally personal and publicly ugly as Maureen Dowd, are inappropriate.
I know conservatives who live troubled, regret-tinged lives and extremely liberal feminists who revel in children, husbands, and motherhood — particularly middle-class ones, I have to say. I think feminism headed south mainly because it came in on the heels of the sexual revolution, and there are important historical differences there. I say this while having no respect for the current anointed leadership.
It’s too bad that the feminist leadership of today could not simply enjoy what Sarah Palin stands for — their snowballing loss, and their weakness as a compromised shadow of what they might have become. But it must be acknowledged that it would be highly unlikely that Palin would have been chosen to run for Vice President without some of the legal transformations the feminist movement brought about.
Doing so neither aligns one with the current feminist agenda, nor denies one bit of the utterly disgraceful and inappropriate treatment Palin has endured — but, again, this has as much to do with the Left’s untrammeled, creepy sexism as its feminism.
Like DVH, I’ve worked both in a manual trade and academia, and I lay blame for the current state of feminism, among other things, at the feet of the academy (and the fourth estate), where they fatally conflated elitism with justice quite a while ago.
You misunderstand. Its not Sarah Palin, its the disgusting Republican machine–itself run by elites like Kristol, who basically created the myth of Sarah Palin–that I hate. Turning her dysfunctional family into a circus, using her to mainstream bigotry and xenophobia, trumpeting her “main street” values as you dressed her up in thousand dollar fashions. There is no Sarah Palin, she is simply a product of the Republican hypocrisy.
Great article. In regards to your point about JFK being an unknown if it were not for charisma and Joe Kennedy’s fortune, the family money was about a million times more responsible for getting him elected than his personal charm.
Why do many Republicans reject Sarah Palin? Could it be they clearly see her limited ability and petty nature? Republicans love this country and realize Sarah Palin just doesn’t have the intelligence/sense to be a leader.
Sarah maybe yes, maybe no, but she does indeed cause the Left’s heads to explode. That alone is worth the price of admission.
Regarding the issue of qualifications for the Office of President, the current holder of said Office makes the issue of qualifications nice but not necessary.
Me, I like Sarah for who she is and support her.
I would like to see a ticket of Sarah Palin and Liz Chenny run for President in 2012. I know it won’t happen but it would be fun the watch the lefties.
I would think that they will not be so conflicted since the men of that Alaskan Indian tribe decided they needed to hunt a whale.
I enjoyed listening to my friend try to explain her way out of that and still remain politically correct. It was great fun.
Wow, this is the most aggressively stated articles I’ve seen from VDH, he knee-caps several groups on the left with a scathing but very accurate assessment. I’ve liked Sarah Palin from the get go despite the fact that she needed to come up to speed on some issues, even then she knew more than Obama or Biden. I think she’s definitely capable and would make a good President should she get the opportunity.
As for Old Guard Republicans…I’m not sure what VDH means there. I’ve been a registered Republican since Reagan was president and I was old enough to vote, so does 20 years make me Old Guard? Lately however going independent has been growing in appeal as the GOP seems to be going in a different direction, away from small government, balanced budgets, etc. If I’m “Old Guard” then VDH is wrong as Sarah Palin made me feel enthusiasm for a Republican candidate I haven’t had in well over a decade. McCain got my vote simply because I knew how bad Obama was going to be, which has been the case of most Republican candidates for at long time. Choosing the lesser of the two evils gets old. For me Palin was/is some one I could support and actually feel I was actually voting for the best candidate.
GREAT article.
I would take Sarah with a B.A. over a Liberal with a B.S. from Hah verd anytime.
By the way, WHY do we know everything about Sarah Palin’s life and nothing about our TOTUS?
Seems a little odd to me, anyone else concerned about this? We The People should know the truth about this Socialist in Charge.
One can always relate to a true Patriot, even if they do make gaffes. Something about that honesty thingy.
Everytime I see any of the Dems speak and some Repubs, I feel like Joe W. “YOU LIE”!
When jousting with the Ivy League and liberal elites, Sarah Palin should always remember the mock Latin phrase contained in the Harvard Fight Song’s second verse, “Illegitimum non carborundum!”—–Don’t let the bastards wear you down!
As for Old Guard Republicans…I’m not sure what VDH means there. I’ve been a registered Republican since Reagan was president and I was old enough to vote, so does 20 years make me Old Guard?
Nope. You need to singlehandedly defeat at least one hundred liberals to be admitted in the Old Guard. More seriously I think a more accurate word for what VDH had in mind is aparatchiks.
Well done article Dr. Hanson, but I can sum it up in a lot fewer words…
1. Sarah Palin isn’t a lawyer or an elitist
2. She says what she means
3. She means what she says
4. She takes responsibility for her own actions
5. She will not be intimidated (anymore)
6. She is fearless
7. She relates to regular, everyday people
8. She is the direct opposite of all that the liberals value
9. She has strong values, convictions and principles
10. She does the right things, at the right times, for the right reasons
And if I may, I would like to correct your last sentence…
You wrote:
“And boy, it sure shows as we are learning in just 10 months of his uninspired governance.”
It should read:
And boy, it sure shows as we are learning in just 10 months of his dangerous governance.
Thank you, I enjoy your posts…
A Conservative Oklahoman
These were valuable insights, Dr. Hanson. Not many today are accomplished both in the academic and in the hard-tack, practical worlds. Your circumstance reminds me somewhat of John Adams’s, who was a farmer but also a classically-educated professional. His ideas of civic republicanism could serve us well today. If I remember correctly, he was sternly opposed* to Hamilton’s expansive notions of the role of the federal government in matters of the economy.
—-
* or if not opposed, say, to the degree Jefferson was, then at least highly critical.
77: Now and Whenever my Brain Kicks In: Apparantly we agree on our distain for FOX News, but for different reasons. For my part they are not conservative. They fake it like the Republicans fake being conservative. They were not on the seen in DC 9/12 for the Tea Party rally. Had they really been conservatives they would have been there.
But you apparanetly hate them for being conservative, which they are not. To be honest and fair to them, something you are not, they do not fake crowds. I invite you to the next T party rally and you can see for yourself how big the crowd is. You can count beyond ten, can’t you? And you will get to meet some nice people, probably your only chance for contact with them.
MOHO
Please let us know what you’ve accomplished in you dismal life that might compare to Palin’s accomplishments. Impress us with your CV. Astound us with your intellectual credentials. Put us in awe of your contributions to humanity. Surely a superior ndividual with such strong convictions and opinions as yourself must be a cut above us mortals. Or are you just a leftwing poodle that has been taught to sit up an beg and fetch?
I am still wondering why Jack Cashill doesn’t get a job as facts-checker and authorship forensics with the MSM -
“She earns as much resistance from Republican Old Guarders as she does the Obamians.”
Right. Time to break away and form a new party. We can call it … I got it! – the Know-Less-Than-Nothings!
MOHO Once again you are so consistently predictable, if you can’t say anything mean spirited then you don’t say anything at all. Have you checked out the dysfunctional members of your own family?
I try to read everything Dr. Hanson writes, and have since 911. I have to say this piece is some of his finest work. Well said. Well said. I hope Sarah Palin reads this piece and follows his advice.
The President lacks just about everything he needs to be President of the United States. And daily he demonstrates that lack. He has shown nothing to demonstrate that he earned the honors he received, or the scholarships he received. His actions reveal him to be nothing more than a “ward heeler” off the streets of Chicago, filled with vanity and solutions nobody wants except the same “elite” who picked him for the scholarships and grants he received.
moho: Wow! There you go using multi-syllabic words again. I counted several in your last post.
I’d say you are a moron but that denigrates nice, innocent people with learning difficulties not of their own choosing.
#92 – Here is the evidence in the original story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091113/ap_on_el_pr/us_palin_book_fact_check_abridged
The “fact check” story has one author and ten others listed as having “contributed” to this report. 1 + 10 = 11.
On the other hand, maybe they didn’t really have 11 fact checkers, but they just want to be able to say “Our fact checkers go up to 11″.
Why is it that all the left-wing nut jobs are so hung up on sex? They seem to have some sort of weird sexual obsession when it comes to Sarah Palin. She is an attractive woman . . . well, when all they’ve got is Hillary . . . .
Could be because they ain’t getting any. Or never have. Unless it’s some kind of solo action.
Joe Biden, the Barney Rubble of politics.
Wow, that’s beautiful prose from beginning to end. Every word a necessity and to the point. You’ve made it obvious that Sarah towers head and shoulders above any her Lilliputian detractors
Republicans love this country and realize Sarah Palin just doesn’t have the intelligence/sense to be a leader.
Just how exactly did you determine her level of intelligence, do you have access to an IQ test she did? What exactly are you using to make your determination?
Of our last five Presidents four went to prestigious universities, another went to a small liberal arts college. Can you guess which one is viewed as one of the greatest American Presidents?
I just got back from standing in the cold for 3 hours to buy her book and to get a wristband. Going back to stand for HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES to get her signature in the book. I have NEVER thought so much of anyone to do this, ever before in my life. The common theme I heard from those around me this morning was that the people fear for their health, fear for their kids future, and fear for their freedom. Mrs.Palin represents what America used to be about, and should still be-honesty, hard work, and freedom to raise your family without Orwell’s pigs ready to destroy you.
And just in case the MSM doesn’t tell it right-there were over 1,000 people there by 7:30 this morning (in 40 degree temps), and others had to be turned away (limit of 1000 for the signing). We are HUNGRY for true Conservatism, not Washington butt-kissing Republicanism.
GO SARAH!
Forrest McGregor: Who else went up to bat to take on the Republicans for they being taken behind the woodshed
in 2006, when they lost the majorities in the House & Senate, and a number of governorships when Democrat? She did.
So, are you going to continue to second guess her, or go after those who didn’t step up? After all, Sarah Palin
is more than just the flavour of the nanosecond.
Which reminds me of a personal anecdote. Not that long ago, I was at an all-candidates forum, and a candidate asked me to work on his campaign team. I said, no. A couple of minutes later, the candidate was talking with his campaign manager, and said, “I am still waiting for an answer”. My reply was, “Mr. Candidate, I gave you an
answer. You just didn’t like it.”
So, keep that in mind when anyone is accused of having nothing to say.
Sarah, go with God.
As for Sarah Palin having to run again before being considered for the US Presidency, there is this matter of lawsuits filed against her. She simply cannot afford the legal fees while governor of Alaska. So, there is something to be said about her being willing to fight the lawsuits, and placing that fight ahead of being governor.
Sarah Palin is a True Believer. A true believer generally possesses an authoritarian personality that reduces everything down to either/or.
Either you agree with her or you are wrong.
It’s the scariest, most dangerous kind of thinking. It can manifest itself either ecclesiastically or ideologically. For Palin it is a particularly pernicious combination of both.
She combines The Whole Truth politically with God. Just as the Muslims do in Iran.
Take any issue. Say abortion. For Palin it is murder. But suppose a woman she knows and loves becomes pregnant because of a defective contraceptive device—in a world where abortion is murder. Suppose she is arrested, indicted, charged, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death row for having an abortion. For murder.
How black and white will the world look then?
george walton
#113 Banned… you left out transgender,bi, transsexual, bestiality,short-eyes and all the other special interest groups of the left. They really are hung up, not so much on sex but on normalcy. Palin is way too normal, and an icon of the middle class that they sneer at and despise. Her strength is that she’s one of us out here among the great unwashed who make America work. She is hated by the beady eyed lawyers, amoral political shills, government apparachiks, media vultures and the rest of the lame political class.
She is tapped into a rising discontent among the regular folks in the USA who are tired of being taxed, ridiculed, regulated by the political class and sneered at by Hollywierdos and freaks like Keith Oberdouche and Chrissie Matthews.
I was going to comment on #22 Can’t See the Forrest for the Trees, but others already have. His comment that “I can’t see anything wrong with McCain other than picking Palin” was a nominee for Dope of the Month.
Whether she will ever be President time will tell, but she is certainly a breath of fresh air in this smelly age.
Now and Then:
“Given Fox’s propensity to fake video crowds, I thought it might serve to show the REAL Sarah Palin by showing the UNedited version of the Oprha interview . . .”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-truth-about-sarah-palin
Now and Then, you insipid little twit….you reference Fox’s “propensity to fake video” and THEN you have the small-minded audacity to link to a FAKED VIDEO where some pinhead (perhaps Now and Then?) spliced together tiny snippets of conversation from the Oprah to make Palin look foolish? What ARE you? 12?
Please, everyone, take a quick look at what N&T considers to be the “REAL” Sarah Palin……
N&T – Are you intentionally TRYING to being this stupid or does it come naturally?
What fascinates me about Palin is how utterly *terrified* the left is of her – was the media all-abuzz with talk about Fritz Mondale in late 1981?
There’s an old saying; “You know you’re over the target when you start taking flak.” Palin has taken more flak from the leftie media than the 8th Air Force over Berlin.
Another spot on article by VDH who truly is an intellect worthy of admiration. I don’t know whether Sarah Palin should be the Right’s new standard bearer or not, whether she will be a viable candidate for President or not, or whether she can overcome the opprobrium of the the elitist trash in American society. But I love the comments and whining of those who decry her lack of sophistication, her deficit of intellectual credibility, and her lack of experience. I particularly delight in the vapid musings of our half-witted trolls who showcase a sense of fear and ignorance that not only amuses the rest of us but also fully justifies the deserved ridicule they receive. Sarah doesn’t have to be the country’s greatest intellect, does not need to have had more “exposure to real issues” (what is that?) be the most experienced statesman ever, or have any of the other myriad faux “qualifications” our elites list as necessary. The office is President of the United States, for crying out loud. When you consider the parade of charlatans we have elected in the past–culminating in the present affirmative action failure–Sarah would do just fine. And certainly better than anything either political party has offered up since Ronald Reagan.
Palin-odes?
Short version: She is a lioness, they are
the little foxes that spoil the vines, and
we are about to experience a circulation
of elites.
Longer version:
One of the differences between animals
and humans is that while both have memory,
only humans have foresight; It is a new
addition to the mental machinery, and not
easy to cope with, particularly when the
future looks dark.
TPTB have an unacknowledged vision of a
“Game Over” sign just down the road ahead
of them, as the endless stream of tax money
they have used to buy votes dries up, voters
refocus on needs, not wants, and look both
for someone to blame, and someone to lead
them out of Hard Times; Enter Sarah Palin,
the sum of all their fears.
a most excellent essay VDH.
we have past the tipping point on being led by sniveling elites and other useful idiots ..not useful like the can fix the plumbing or you car.
Sarah Palin would not wantonly send our troops into harms way, or disregard the counsel of her Generals once they’ve been deployed. To do so would endanger her son’s life. Now it may well be that Sarah Palin is not ready for the Presidency just yet; that’s okay. What we should then do is run Huckabee in 2012, place Palin in the Cabinet for more seasoning, and then break her out in 2020 ready to assume command.
Is there no middle ground?
I don’t hate Palin, and I might even vote for her if she was running as Senator or Governor of my state.
I have considerable misgivings about her as President. I think there are much more qualified Republicans out there. Charming, down-to-earth, and moose-slaying, while they all seem like positives, only get you so far. I think a first-rate education is not a bad thing in the leader of the free world; a B.A. is not first-rate education no matter what school it’s from. Some experience in federal government seems a fine thing too. So does some experience with a really large business.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’d vote for her over Obama, or almost any likely Democrat to be nominated, in a heartbeat. I just think there are better Republican alternatives. Also more electable, and, of course, that matters, a lot.
Sarah Palin represents a lot of conservatives in that fly-over section, the heartland, where the rural (read ‘rustic’) and thus, ‘provincial’ reside. Seemingly, an embarrassment to the first coasters and left coast cultured and liberal crowd. It isn’t just Sarah they wish to marginalize and shut up. They would like all conservatives to disappear if they aren’t going to be persuaded or enlightened to their take on things. The self-identified elite are making an example of Sarah, of what one can expect if one isn’t a member of the club that runs America’s affairs of state. They have done this with other conservative women as well. Liz Cheney or Michell Malkin are just two more examples of how they loath the right of center and how they attempt to dismess them. The irony here is they are not just patronizing but extremely bigoted, not merely snobbish, people that don’t have a clue about the millions of citizens who don’t share their views, but they have it on good authority(theirs) that they have the right or duty to disrespect them.
I think this thread has done a thorough job summing up all of the various leftist and right of center thought that has contributed to the unfair and frankly, not very civil treatment of Palin, and many will recognize that those same sentiments often extend to anyone espousing the values of the right. Recall the excessive and ridiculous stereotyping in that clinging to guns and Bibles assessment.
In part,but only in part, the above has aided the phenom that is Sarah. Sarah has actually spoken for a whole lotta people who have felt abandoned or excluded by their own representatives.
What drives anti-religious, pro-abortion feminists crazy about Sarah Palin is that a believer and pro-life woman is the benificiary of their fight.
Curtis. Now and Then is absolutely correct. This is the second time in a week and a half they’ve gotten busted doing just that. There’s no excuse for it.
The eleven reporters thing makes me laugh. How many reporters do you think work on the average half hour of Fox news?
Consider this family profile: Mom is a government employee, Dad is a union member who works seasonally in the oil patch and runs a variety of small businesses otherwise. Oldest son just graduated from high school — Harvard? Stanford? Nope, Army. Oldest daughter still in high school — knocked up. If you consider the picture without knowing the names, you’d say this is an archetypical lower or lower-middle-class family.
The conceit of the Left is that they are uniquely able to represent the interests of the lower classes, and that the lower classes owe them deference and gratitude as a result. Palin explodes this lie. She is thus anathema to the Left, and they will do anything they can to marginalize or destroy her. They despise her for the same reason, and in the same way, that they despised Clarence Thomas in 1991.
Charisma is difficult to define, but most everyone has to admit whether from the left or right, Sarah Palin has it!! Even those who hate her are pulled in my her charisma. The haters are so very worried An example was an email I recently received from an Obama supporter in which he stated that Palin was dangerous, very dangerous. Further, he pointed out, she would be traveling the country promoting her book and taking every opportunity to tell lies and to tear apart the health care bills. Therefore, he was asking for donations to fight this dangerous person.
Dr. Hanson, excellent article, right on target. You have the broad experience gained from actually producing something (a crop) while having the intellectual ability to have chosen any number of professions. As such, you are in the position to recognize the shallowness of the elite and truly their FEAR of being found out as the charlatans they are.
Sarah Palin is the elite’s worst nightmare of a real woman … the female version of the patriots who fought and defeated the same elites during the Revolution. The Elites and the Royalists are one and the same.
Women like Sarah strike terror into the elite women who stare in the mirror and recognize their physical and achievement shortcomings. They know their husbands or boyfriends would prefer her any day. And who wouldn’t?
John Edwards was mentioned in there and it reminded me of something. Every time I hear “Is she qualified” being discussed, I wonder whether or not these same people ever brought that up about Edwards (or lots of others). You only hear it about her. Those people are disingenuous and dishonest.
“Her supporters’ argument is that any woman who can have five kids, pull herself out of Wasilla to the national political scene, juggle job, husband, family, and press, and take on the old boy Republicans in Alaska while being an anathema to the liberal elite, must have brains and guts. Such experience will easily allow her, given the proper time and campaigning, to master the issues every bit as not well as do Barack Obama or Joe Biden.”
But who wants to invest the faith in all that in the wake of her case of quitting the governorship, Mr. Hanson? I certainly do not. She might be up for making stump speeches for political candidates, and that is about it. God help us all if she tries to run for POTUS in 2012. This will very likely serve to pave the way for a 2nd term for dear BO, something the country does not need, to say the very least.
I only come to this pseudo neocon website anymore for VDH’s stuff. It’s the crown jewel of the website, which otherwise is filled with a lot of confused liberals fashioning themselves conservatives. Thanks for the article, VDH, it’s great like usual, and your work is worth going anywhere to read.
#121 george walton: You mean like being forced to buy gov’t mandated health insurance or be fined and/or sent to prison?
Kinda like that right?
“But suppose a woman she knows and loves becomes pregnant because of a defective contraceptive device—in a world where abortion is murder. Suppose she is arrested, indicted, charged, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death row for having an abortion. For murder.”
Ever heard of adoption? Why in your world does every unplanned pregnancy have to end in the termination of the child?
Abortion is not the only option.
In your little scenario Mr. Walton you neglect to realize that the woman (and man) made choices, choices that they know have readily known consequences.
1) The man and woman chose to have vaginal intercourse, and despite using birth control it is a known fact that pregnancy is a result of vaginal intercourse (you can’t get pregnant from oral or anal). In fact it is basically the primary biological goal of the activity, the pleasurable nature of the act is an evolved (or intentional) “side effect” to ensure species continuation. Had they refrained from having sex or not had vaginal intercourse she would not be pregnant. There is no such thing as accidental pregnancies, just unwanted or unintentional ones.
2) The woman could have offered the child up for adoption, instead she chose to abort the child (for the sake of argument we’re assuming the child was not a product of rape, incest, a danger to the mother’s life, or severely disabled). She did not have to do so, she chose to do so rather than chose adoption or *gasp* take responsibility for her actions and actually raise the child herself.
3) We charge, convict, and sentence women all the time for tossing babies in garbage cans or dumpsters to die, or killing them after they are born. How I ask you is this any different from killing that child in the womb? Why the difference in treatment? Why do we consider charging someone with a double murder for killing a pregnant woman yet if the woman decides to kill the fetus its not murder? In either case the fetus doesn’t have much of a say.
VDH is on a roll….he has awoken to the danger the far left has put his country in and is responding as a patriot. VDH is able to see Gov. Palin from a unique perspective as an intellectual and as a blue collar/farmer. I read earlier today a post saying something like this, ‘Just what kind of person can hate someone like Sarah Palin?’
My response is the worse sort, see MOHO, NOW&THEN, Forrest McGregor, etc…these type of posters have some major issues.
moho at #92
“AP spokesman Paul Colford … He confirmed 11 people worked on the story, but not all full-time.”
Forrest McGregor – you know, if you substituted the name ‘Obama’ for ‘Palin’ in your long comment at #22, it might be more accurate.
For example; “Sound bites and clever little winks do not a leader make.” heh- that’s all that Obama does. And as Sarkozy said about Obama – he lives in a virtual rather than actual reality.And he sure can’t be trusted on the economy or in war; heck, he doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of terrorism..and it will be because of him, that Iran goes nuclear.
Palin is – as everyone comments – plain speaking. She’s not one of the regular politicians, who talk in Orwellian doublespeak, in abtract meaningless rhetoric.
Palin speaks for America and Americans. She speaks the languages, images, experiences of everyday America, of small businesses, of working families. She’s not partisan; she’s for America, not a political party.
It’s important, now, that she represent all America..and not any political party. And that’s why the political parties are so frightened of her – it’s because she speaks for the people. And they speak TO the people.
I think one of the main reasons Sarah Palin is disliked by democrats some Republicans and the majority of the MSM is because she is a reality check on life. The artsy fartsy left lives in their own little Camelotian dream world and are totally confused and bewildered by common sense and it seems anything practical. Everything they utter is ideologically driven and spoon-fed by their Pollyanna elite. My hope is that Sarah Palin will prove to be just a “stupid” as Ronald Regan for two terms.
I often wonder what it’s like for those people that never have an original thought.
I think Sarah is doing the right things for an eventual radio or t.v. talk show. She does have a folksy “girl next door shucks and gee whiz” quality about her that sells well in many parts of the country. Hey with Bachmann and Coulter included, I would only hope it would be a television talk show. Man, the right wing sure has some very good looking ladies on their side. They certainly do make the far right look alot better than it used too, in more ways than one. Dont you agree ?
I am a bit ambivalent on this topic. My impression of SP was/is that regardless of what has been played, to me she’s unremarkable.
Just a marketing experiment gone awry
Likewise with Obama. Much todo over vapor-wear. Some how he slipped thru the cracks.
Makes you wonder who controls things….Not
“…you can’t get pregnant from oral or anal…”
Oh? Where do you think politicians and lawyers come from?
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
You guys want a president who hasn’t had an original thought regarding foreign or domestic politics in her life, who is the spawn of the neo-cons who brought you the fiascos that were Iraq and Afghanistan, and someone who has only one completed job on her resume: A mayor of a town with a population less than 6000 – which she promptly drove into receivership.
Good luck with that.
As big a fan of Sarah that I am, I think this thread has sucked the life out of the more important articles posted today.
But who wants to invest the faith in all that in the wake of her case of quitting the governorship, Mr. Hanson?
Do you actually understand why she resigned?
She was having lawsuits filed against her repeatedly by Leftist proxies, this was bankrupting her family as she had to pay for the majority of fees herself and it interfered with her ability to do her job as governor. She did what she had to do, which is what the Left wanted, resign. However instead of destroying her like they hoped it made her stronger. That you believe her resignation was “quitting” shows your lack of depth of understanding.
Had she persisted in being Alaska’s Governor she would have been fighting on the field of their choosing against a billionaire funded series of lawsuits. There was no possibility of victory, not even winning every lawsuit or having it thrown out of court would have been a victory. If counted one it would have been a Pyrrhic victory at best, and she would have emerged from it bankrupt financially and politically. Her career would have been finished completely, like a boxer that stays in the ring WAY too long after being beaten to a pulp.
She made a strategic withdrawal and chose to fight elsewhere on her terms, and so far it seems to be working for her. Only a fool fights a losing battle with absolutely no gain. Stop playing checkers and start playing chess, read some Sun Tzu, and maybe you’ll understand.
I’m normally a fan of VDH, but this assessment is ridiculous. First, Palin’s loudest critics are not feminists – not by a long shot. Most feminists (except the fake, Obama-worshipping feminists) have a great deal of respect for Palin. They just can’t see eye to eye with her on the abortion issue (much of which has to do with the still out-of-control rape statistics, which conservatives (like Palin) don’t seem to understand.) Otherwise, there is a lot of respect for Palin in feminist circles. And VDH’s impression of who represents feminism is grossly outdated and out of touch. Most feminists are much like your esteemed Phyllis Chesler. They just don’t get enough press by the media and the likes of Andrea Mitchell. Anyway – Palin’s worst critics are male lefties who are filled with such hate and misogyny, it leaves one quite speechless when you take a good look at it (Malkin, Coulter and many other conservative women get the same stuff). That’s the issue here and that should be the focus group. Someone needs to do a psychological study on male, leftist, hatred of conservative women. Why don’t you focus on that, VDH?
Excellent column, but “Palin does not have Audrey Hepburn/Jackie Kennedy boney look” – don’t you mean Katherine Hepburn, not Audrey Hepburn?
Oh? Where do you think politicians and lawyers come from?
Touche sir, touche.
147. Gavin:You guys have a president who hasn’t had an original thought regarding foreign or domestic politics in his life, who is the spawn of anti american turds who is bringing you the fiasco that is Afghanistan, and someone who has only one completed job on her resume: A trick turner for a slumlord in a district whose crime rates shot through the roof on his watch.
I am one of many Americans who grow fonder of Palin with every fevered musing we read from one of her moronic detractors.
This response section has filled me with a lot of love for Sarah Palin.
Palin’s stance on abortion is one of the most misunderstood things about her, IMO. She does not support criminalizing abortion. Read her interviews, she has said repeatedly that she would not support putting any woman in jail for having an abortion. (I imagine she’d prefer to go after the doctors, but I have not read anything from her suggesting this.) She says she favors contraception. She says *she* would choose life, and she would *counsel* others to choose life as well. I am sure a Palin presidency would institute executive policies to discourage the practice, particularly overseas, but there is a practical limit to what the Executive can do about abortion in the US. The Executive certainly cannot overturn Roe v. Wade, and 3 of the 5 current “conservative” justices have stated that Roe is settled law. All she would be able to do is preach and set an example, which is exactly what she is doing today.
Now, were she in the Senate or House, she could start actually making laws. So maybe it would be safer to have her as the Executive, eh?
What do you mean she does not know foreign affairs? This woman as Governor negotiated treaties for pipelines that are the biggest agreements since NAFTA. She does know less about diplomats than the receptionist at NBC but as America’s most successful Governor that does not count against her. She did not waist time with the UN goof offs. That is a virtue.
The Left isn’t afraid of her – she creates this gigantic anti-Republican symbol with which to beat conservatism to death. Don’t you people know how to play this propaganda game?
You fools. If Sarah Palin wasn’t hot, none of you would give two sh_ts about her. Wake up! We all love the moosehunting cheerleader but she is an airhead and the higher you elevate her the more everyone will hate each other. That is reality.
Just try – try – to listen to what she says, but imagine she looks like Nancy Pelosi. I promise you you’ll see what those of us who do not want Palin to run for President are talking about. If you want “suburban mom” to run this government at this point in its history you are seriously an idiot. She is a burden to conservatism; Sarah Palin is precisely not what conservatism needs right now (it already *has* and *is* her).
147. Gavin:
You guys want a president who hasn’t had an original thought regarding foreign or domestic politics in
herhis life, who is the spawn of the neo-cons who brought you the fiasco that is delay Afghanistan, and someone who has only one completed job onherhis resume: Community Organizer.A senator from Chicago which could never get the Olympics in 2016 or any other future year.
perfect description of our present Bambie present.
“137. bobbcat:
But who wants to invest the faith in all that in the wake of her case of quitting the governorship…”
Yeah, bobb, that’s just like you lying leftists. First, smear her with everything but the kitchen sink, including making things up, endless disgusting and despicable attackes on her children and even on her uterus, then orchestrate your supporters to level one frivolous “ethics” complaint after another, to try to bankrupt her, and then say, see, she’s a quitter.
What slimebuckets.
In Alaska, any nitwit can file an ethics complaint over absolutely nothing, at zero cost to themselves, and the state is obligated to take it seriously and investigate, even when the accuser is clearly partisan and deranged. And the state will NOT pay for the defense costs of the accused. She had half a million dollars in legal bills just from this spurious tripe, as planned all along by the left.
This is called “lawfare”, war by legal costs, and is also one of the favorite tactics of one of your number one allies, Islam. But it’s all OK by the left, who have a severe lack of honor, morals, principles and ethics. The end justifies the means, of course, just like your demi-god Alinsky tells you.
The only thing Orwell got wrong was the year.
The vital thing about Palin is that she doesn’t speak ‘political blather’. It’s remarkable; she speaks openly, honestly and down-to-earth.
Obama, for example, speaks in abstract rhetoric, in platitudes, in terms that have no connection to actual reality, to specific policies, to specific costs. Obama lives in ‘virtual reality’, the world of words and images disconnected from the real world.
Palin is grounded; her comments, her actions, her policies, are very specific, focused, attached to real and actual agendas, policies, programs.
Palin doesn’t represent any political party. She represents the American people – in a way that few politicians have done in the past several decades. She’s not promoting a political bias or agenda. She’s only talking sense…and as such, the American people feel that she represents them.
She’s speaking for Americans,for small businesses, for the average town. And the left is terrified of giving the people a voice.
Remember what the left thinks of the American voices; how Obama himself has tried to ignore the Tea Parties, how he’s contemptuously called them ‘teabaggers’. How the left calls any dissent ‘unAmerican’. The Town Halls are called ‘mobs’, astroturf’.
And here we have someone, very public, who is speaking..not for any political party..but for America and Americns. Incredible. More power to her.
Seriously folks, does anyone here really believe SP can win a national election in 2012? I’m not beefing against Mrs Palin. I’m just saying that strategically, politically, the numbers just aren’t there. The question is: Do you care? If you don’t care, then you’re going to be awfully disapointed when the GOP does not endorse her, because the GOP does care about numbers. Then what? The right wing in the USA is headed for a split, real conservatives vs the Republican Party. Would you favor such a split? Is it inevitable? I hope not. The same thing happened in Canada and it handed the country over to corrupt liberal governments election after election. Don’t make the same mistakes we made. Support the GOP. Do not support SP for president in 2012.
“How does one, then, assess the Palin
phenomenon?” – by dissecting the Obama phenomenon.
Palin and Obama, Obama and Palin – is this really the best that the world’s superpower can do?
Thus passes the glory of the world.
I think people see Sarah as one who is real.Not so packaged as Obama.he is so phony,who could trust him-Has he ever had blistered hands from working a real job,no.Obama is detached from most Americans,Sarah has known worry and the possibily of real hardship,how to pay the bills etc. What has Obama ever done besides lying to get elected to office in a country he obviously dislikes? Who paid for Obamas Harvard education? Not Obama. I trust SARAH PALIN.
#74 Jamie Binks,
IF libs actually wanted Sarah to lead and get a nomination, they’d stop insulting and attacking her and wasting everyone’s time trying to make her unpopular.
They’d compliment her and brag about what a great republican leader she’d make.
THey are NOT doing that. ergo, ipso facto, nolo contendre, my friend, they are afraid of her and are continuing their year-long effort to marginalize her and bring her down..
and they are terrified because they have FAILED to do it.
THis is just the plain, obvious truth. The left beat up Bush for several years until they got Obama in, and now they’re putting their best efforts into destroying SP instead. It isn’t working as it did with Bush. And they have NO idea what to do about it, and are scared stiff.
grow up and face reality. :-)
I am married to a strong, intelligent woman who immigrated from Japan with only an associates degree. Since coming to the US, she has managed three successful companies, and has esatablished herself as a dominate figure in marketing and advertising. She is also from a small town in Japan.
It makes me laugh when I see the folks on the left denegrate Sarah for her lack “of a good education”. My wife could, and does, run circles around professionals with degree from ‘elite’ schools. And she is doing it all in her second language.
One thing that has set my wife apart in her industry is that she is an amazing judge of character. I’ll never forget my wife’s reactions when she first heard Hillary Clinton speak. She turned to me, and said, “I don’t trust her”. She didn’t know anyting about Hillary’s politics, and she knew from the start that Hillary could not be trusted. By the way, she had a very similar reaction to Obama.
#22 Forrest McGregor:
Thank you for your cogent analysis of the phenomenon known as Barack Obama. I realized early on that it was satire when you disguised it as an ‘analysis’ of Sarah Palin. I’m sure I’m not the only one who recognized your clever ploy.
Commenter ETAB nailed it.#160 good article PJM.
158. no Obama:
147. Gavin:
You guys want a president who hasn’t had an original thought regarding foreign or domestic politics in her his life, who is the spawn of the neo-cons who brought you the fiasco that is delay Afghanistan, and someone who has only one completed job on her his resume: Community Organizer.
A senator from Chicago which could never get the Olympics in 2016 or any other future year.
perfect description of our present Bambie present.
There we go again. First ‘McGregor’ and now ‘Gavin.’ Both engaging in clever inverted satire about Obama.
Good catch ‘no Obama’!
#146 Porretto – Brutally funny!
#149 NMSC – No study is needed. Leftist men hate ALL women. They can only get away with publicly hating the Right-wing women. Leftist women are off limits… and are the very reason the Lefty men hate women.
When Lib women start defending ALL women, the sexist vitriol against Palin (and Clinton) will stop. (Just think about Obama flipping off Clinton in schoolyard fashion, and Palin, as well.)
don’tsplit- I don’t think the agenda is to develop a third political party as in Canada.
The agenda is to, at the moment, move outside ofthe to parties, who mistakenly think they each speak for a part of the American people, and yet, who are increasingly isolated from those same American people.
The agenda is to provide a voice for the American people. At the moment, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are talking to themselves. They are both alienated from the American people.
This is particularly obvious in the Democratic disdain and contempt for Americans who disagree with their agenda, their contempt for the Tea Parties, the Town Halls.
And it is less obvious but just as real inthe Republican movement towards the left with their support of big government and big spending.
Both are ignoring their duty to the people, for it is the people who are the real government. Not the Washington crowd.
So, Palin is enabling the voice of the people to be heard, because she is saying, in public, what they are saying in their homes, their work, online.
Washington had better wake up and listen to the people. Stop sneering at the Tea Parties, Town Halls and Palin; they are all representing America.
Some of you need to get your head out of dark unsanitary places like Huffington…really, get a life.
Sarah Palin is here to stay. The men on the left don’t have the b@!!$ to support a real live honest woman. Look at what they have to choose from! Sarah has their panties in a wad and we’re loving it all. Keep on posting, some of them are actually funny.
It means nothing for you to speak against Sarah, we know where you head has been.
It’s mostly about abortion. Most republicans are not religious, and the elite ones have daughters or friends, or daughters of friends, who’ve had an abortion. And they think that Sarah Palin is a chillbilly who should not be allowed into their clubs. I mean, what kind of accent is that?
Don’t forget that Yale and Dartmouth are not just for liberals. The republicans who went there are almost as terrible.
Marc Malone:
“leftist men hate all women”
That explains the popularity of Rush Limbaugh. Oh wait…
172. moho:
You clearly hate women even though you technically are one. You hate women because you weigh 400 lbs. This is obvious.
Moho you are a Muslim, they just naturally hate women.
that explains a lot.
“Oh? Where do you think politicians and lawyers come from?”
We should send them back…..
Gavin, you have this assignment: Find an original idea after Abraham broke the mold of life only being cyclical. Because, if you looked at some of Thomas Cahill’s books, you will find that in “The Gifts of the Jews”, another narrative was introduced with “Lech Lecha”. Namely that the final word has yet to be spoken.
As for those who conclude that all will be set to right when President Palin’s policies take effect, try this on for size: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6599281/Societe-Generale-tells-clients-how-to-prepare-for-global-collapse.html The rest of the world will not wait for the US to
correct itself. Because as noted in earlier comments, the shenanigans on Wall Street with
the Wall Street barons making money hand over fist thanks to obscene bonuses, and the working stiffs getting stiffed, is due, in large part, to what was allowed by Republicans
and Democrats on Capital Hill, and in the White House.
Therefore, in the mean time an alternative government needs to be formed, because these batch of deformed souls, zombies and other assorted ilk in the White House, and on Capital Hill, are are capable as change as a leopard is known for changing its spots.
Gavin, you have this assignment: Find an original idea after Abraham broke the mold of life only being cyclical. Because, if you looked at some of Thomas Cahill’s books, you will find that in “The Gifts of the Jews”, another narrative was introduced with “Lech Lecha”. Namely that the final word has yet to be spoken.
As for those who conclude that all will be set to right when President Palin’s policies take effect, try this on for size: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6599281/Societe-Generale-tells-clients-how-to-prepare-for-global-collapse.html The rest of the world will not wait for the US to
correct itself. Because as noted in earlier comments, the shenanigans on Wall Street with
the Wall Street barons making money hand over fist thanks to obscene bonuses, and the working stiffs getting stiffed, is due, in large part, to what was allowed by Republicans
and Democrats on Capital Hill, and in the White House.
Therefore, in the mean time an alternative government needs to be formed, because these batch of deformed souls, zombies and other assorted ilk in the White House, and on Capital Hill, are are capable of change as a leopard is known for changing its spots.
Janeway: I completely agree with you. I like Sarah P. very much too, but I don’t think she should run in 2012. I wish she had Steele’s job as RNC chair.
But as for running – no the numbers aren’t there. And she doesn’t have enough experience. (Yes, she has more governing experience than bambi, but is bambi going to be our gold standard? Obama illustrates every single day that he’s in way over his head.)
I think she’s doing a great job as gadfly right now. And I love how crazy she makes the lefties. But that in and of itself does not qualify her for the job – not yet, folks.
My instincts are usually good..so I trust them. The left hates Palin because they know she resonates with the people. This hate/fear is what drives the attacks and my enthusiasm for her increases as their hatred/fear increases. We shall see but Obama is making his defeat easier with every decision his clown administation makes.
The more of Sarah I see, the more impressed I am by her. Just the fact that she sends the left into paroxysms of drooling insanity is enough to make her okey dokey in my book. Like Rush says just listen to the left and they will tell us who we need to get behind and support. You betcha!! She is real she is honest and she is comfortable is her own skin. I believe she can even function without a teleprompter. I would vote for her any day. She has more going for her than the empty suit piece of crap America destroyer we have now. I would trust her with America and know that her decisions would be guided with actual LOVE for our country. Not contempt. She operates from the idea that America is great as is. Sure we have issues and problems but she is not going to try and turn America into Venezuela. She is one of us. The hatred shown to her is directed at all of us who live in the fly over areas and make this country work. All of us who are REAL are scorned. Stupid tea baggers.bumpkins who just don’t have the intellect and the depth to “get it”. We have to be forced to the liberal way and their truth. I am so tired of this administration that I don’t know if I can take 3 more years and retain my sanity. I will be watching Sarah and will do everything I can to support her
Why does the left hate Sarah Palin?
Here it is in a nutshell:
You’re going to vote in a presidential election in the inner city. The “New Black Panther Party” has some thugs in black outfits and nun-chucks blocking the entrance to the polls.
You can pick MoDo, Hillary, or Sarah to try and get you past them.
Who do you choose?
End of story.
There are a lot of solid points in this commentary. The way the media handles Palin, the way the Liberal Elites view the world, and some other items.
However, I don’t think Palin is the one I want sitting across the table from Putin. jmho.
I just think she is a narcissist, and kind of a joke. she blames everyone else for her problems/faults. she quit as Governor, She has extreme ideology and makes outrageous false statements, and she really reminds me of a goofy cable TV celebrity type of person who should have her own “reality TV” show.
As far as politicians hated by the left and the right with no chance of ever being president I prefer Rudy Giuliani. He is truly bipartisan, liberal or moderate on many areas, a sharp mind, and a record of excellent accomplishments as U.S. Attorney, and mayor (includes putting away organized crooks and wall street crooks.) His presidential campaign was derailed by bad strategy, and an inability to overcome the stench of NY times slander. I would prefer him on Iran and other important issues before Sarah or many others, also I think he has shown real leadership under fire. I loved it when he told the Saudis to take their $10 million check for the Twin Towers Fund and shove it after the Saudi prince singled out U.S. policy toward Israel as a justification for the Sept. 11 attacks. Also I have to love anyone whom ordered Yasser Arafat barred from a Lincoln Center concert marking the UN’s 50th anniversary!
38. jeff:
she lacks the gravitas to be President.
Quantify this, please.
GOP fossils, get out the way….fools!
112. Paul from Hamburg: “. . . maybe they didn’t really have 11 fact checkers, but they just want to be able to say “Our fact checkers go up to 11″
LOL!
155. alwaysfiredup:
What YOU don’t seem to understand is that virtually lawmakers aiming to (re)criminalize abortion never target the mother. The providers are the only ones targeted. Sarah’s views are not one bit exceptional in this regard. If she wants to prosecute the providers, then her position is standard anti-choice.
Here is a link to Mrs palin’s speech in Hong kong if you haven’t read it.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=139069028434
It is a pretty fine piece of policy for “a moose shootin bimbo” from Alaska. Well worth reading.
I’d give my right arm for a Senator from my state who could write something like this.
A lot of liberals in the media treat Sarah Palin much differently than almost any other high profile political figure, even more so than Newt Gingrich. Why? Because they are scared to death of her – they know that unless they try and smear her at every given opportunity, a majority of the country is quite likely to embrace her.
Regardless of political affiliation, she seems to always have a knack for getting people to pay attention. Which, interestingly, is likely another cause of her so easily able to get under the skin of liberals. Think of it this way: most liberals LOVE the spotlight in the media. It’s Hollywood, mainstream media, Barack Obama… something about being viewed as a super star… so the fact that Sarah Palin seems to get a lot of attention in the media (record ratings for live interviews) that’s just one more reason for liberals to dislike her. The loyalty she has from her followers is tremendous, and liberals can’t stand that fact.
Why does the left fear and loath her?
The left thinks the only way you can learn anything is in the classroom. She isn’t Ivy League material. The elitist snobs cannot comprehend how a woman living in Alaska could possibly be admired on the supreme political stage. What the left always lacks is common sense, the one thing you cannot learn in the classroom. It is a virtue learned through the struggles of life. I have spent the last ten years unlearning everything I was taught in college. People with PHDs in social sciences scare me. I am tired of the Bush/Obama Ivy league Presidents. Palin would make a great President
this is what we need…somebody that has done physical labor…more education could benefit with some of that healthy stuff our parents and grandparents and great parents did to just ………put food and make shelter ….or die from starvation or freeze hard like a board………they were up against the wall and learned to push…today we just get in line………..we is soft
“not enough gravitas to be president”? maybe not, maybe so. but that’s not the point.
the point is that some people DESPISE this woman viscerally, and it has nothing to do with whether she should be president or not.
and that’s what Dr. Hanson was talking about.
I like Palin very much. but I personally hope she doesn’t run in 2012. I hope the Republicans find someone with wide appeal who can get Obama out of the White House before he does any more damage to the country.
but if she does run in 2012…will I vote for her? you betcha!
I went to high school in the fifties. One of the first things the townie wags in my high-school Latin class learned to say was “Salve, agricola!” Translation: “Howdy, farmer!” This was not a big town, but by gum, they sure weren’t farmers. Same with the people who held themselves superior to Lincoln and Truman and Bush – what a bunch of hicks! Likewise Sarah.
We’ll see, won’t we?
#114 Butters Dad,
You owe Barney Rubble an apology.
XiaoMei,
Jeff can’t quantify the word gravitas. It’s a subjective term made popular in the election of 2000 by the fatuous popinjays of the formerly mainstream media. It was used to berate candidate Bush.
Palin has all the gravitas and poise and competence that the Presidency requires, unlike the poseur who holds the office now.
Read the book! When you see how she has lived her life, governed and what she believes in, you will understand why she is uniquely qualified. You will also learn how she won the Governership of Alaska. She ran unsuccessfully for Lt. Gov (which got her name in front of people), then quit her job as the oil regulator, giving her time to organize a grass roots run for the top job, blowing both the entrenched Dem’s and Repub’s out of the water. She’s repeating a winning pattern now.
I just got back from waiting 6 hours in line in Fort Wayne (damp, breezy, 42 degrees), getting my copy of “Going Rogue” signed. You would not believe the political intensity of the people in line. Everybody just plain pissed off about the coming taxes,the borrowing, the printing of money and most of all the reckless spending that drives it all.
As they say, politicans are worse than thieves, at least when thieves take your money, they don’t expect you to thank them for it.
The water is quietly rushing out, receding from the store line, as the pundits all discuss their views of what it means. There is a tsunami coming ashore – named Palin.
No other candidate could get that many people to stand out in that weather for that long. She is recruiting an Army, they aren’t just dedicated, they’re pissed off.
Anyone who thinks Obama or Biden have ‘gravitas’ is an idiot.
In 1998 Simon & Schuster published a book by liberal sociologist, Elinor Burkett called “RIGHT WOMEN: Journey Through The Heart of Conservative America”. It’s balanced and insightful…. and, unfortunately, out of print. However, used copies are available on Amazon. Get a copy and send it to some nitwit liberal MSM who just “doesn’t get it”. They’ll appreciate Burkett’s feminist credentials. And there’s a dynamite chapter the encapsulates Sarah’s appeal, ” A Digression into the Strong Arms and Stronger Spirits of Frontierswomen”.
My grandmother was born in a covered wagon, raised on a ranch on an Idaho high prairie and drove a cook wagon on cattle drives. Sarah, totally “gets it”. The strident sisterhood on their broomsticks, just don’t get it!
It seems that the attacks against Sarah Palin are motivated as much by what she IS as by what she DOES. In that sense, Palin derangement syndome bears an uncanny and disturbing resemblance to anti-semitism. And as with antisemitism, the key to understanding anti-Palin sentiment lies with those who hate Palin, not necessarily with anything Palin says or does.
Essential vdh
159.geokster: “yeah, bobb, that’s just like you lying leftists.”
Making assumptions based on knowing nothing whatsoever about me. Try arguing the merits of what I posted above instead of throwing a trash can full of crap I did not say.
I am probably more conservative than you are. Bonehead.
VDH article is deeply insightful and thought provoking, but let’s not overlook one of the core beliefs of liberals – they think that they are way cool. Now if you are way cool then isn’t it just natural that all the hot babes are on your side? It’s kind of a clique thing.
Now all of a sudden they see an attractive woman and she’s not only not in their clique, she disagrees with them. It makes them rabid. They don’t want to debate, they need to destroy.
What do the following people have in common?
Anita Byrant
Ann Coulter
Sarah Palin
Carrie Prejean
Hannah Giles
They are attractive conservative targets – Liberals just can’t deal with their inner emotions very well. Witness the posters above who don’t care about Sarah Palin at all, so much they are driven to read everything about her and then take the time to post!
Hilarious!
196. HoosierHawk: “No other candidate could get that many people to stand out in that weather for that long. She is recruiting an Army, they aren’t just dedicated, they’re pissed off.”
Is this (voting for someone because they are ‘anybody but….’) what the American people really want? I can appreciate everything you point out above with your quote above:
“When you see how she has lived her life, governed and what she believes in, you will understand why she is uniquely qualified. You will also learn how she won the Governership of Alaska. She ran unsuccessfully for Lt. Gov (which got her name in front of people), then quit her job as the oil regulator, giving her time to organize a grass roots run for the top job, blowing both the entrenched Dem’s and Repub’s out of the water. She’s repeating a winning pattern now.”
But does she have what it takes to be a real leader? When I take the time to listen to what she has to say in all these interviews, I find myself thinking along the lines (more or less) of what 184 arthur had to say above: “I just think she is a narcissist, and kind of a joke. she blames everyone else for her problems/faults. she quit as Governor, She has extreme ideology and makes outrageous false statements, and she really reminds me of a goofy cable TV celebrity type of person who should have her own “reality TV” show.”
Quitting the governorship of Alaska was a huge mistake on her part, IMHO. I can imagine her having a similar ready-to-quit moment as POTUS. What then? I guess we can all hope and pray she makes a really good pick for her Veep. Yikes.
I’d much rather see her stick to what she is really good at: Rallying the base and bringing attention to the conservative values the moderate Pubs (read RINOs) should be paying attention to. She should be out there scouting for and standing behind the potential dark horse candidate who can hopefully wrest away from BO a second term. If she tries to make a run for it though, a second term is assured for BO. I don’t know of anyone in their right mind who wants that.
Think about it……..
You’re going to vote in a presidential election in the inner city. The “New Black Panther Party” has some thugs in black outfits and nun-chucks blocking the entrance to the polls.
You can pick MoDo, Hillary, or Sarah to try and get you past them.
Who do you choose?
End of story.
In the future, they will use this question to determine sanity in cognitive tests. If you don’t laugh your ass off at this question, then you need serious help.
It makes me laugh when I see the folks on the left denegrate Sarah for her lack “of a good education”.
Well, I think you certainly wish this is why they were denigrating her. But the truth is that she looked like a complete boob on national television more than once. She read off a speech one time and you people wet your pants. And she ran the smallest state in the union, much like another non college graduate, Gavin Newsom, who runs a city about the same size as Alaska. Its not her education. Its the stupidity, stupid.
What most sickens the Democratic Party, not so much its rank and file, but more so its elitist power brokers isn’t the
fact that the American people are on to them; their money grubbing schemes, their ACORN vote stealing; their willingness
to destroy the ideals on which this country was founded rather than lose the Presidency.
What most sickens them is their unhealthy dislike for a woman who doesn’t march to the progressive beat.
Who’s not a plastic, knee jerk reactive wife of a former President. In fact, this other woman is real; she’s us; she has imperfect babies even when elitist women would treat them like a lamb best butchered.
What’s killing the Democrat power people is a little ole’thing called Sarahphobia.
Their contempt is for what she stands for: honest, efficient, effective government; peace through strength; her punch a bully in the nose
mentality.
The American people’s distaste for Obama’s socialist redistribution-of-wealth speak, his dis-our-military, Neo-Com policies is finally catching up in polls to his approval ratings.
The polls are beginning to uncover a building repudiation of the brown eyed handsome man, himself.
His approval rating, which had been holding at 50%, is starting to singe the 40′s. Today, in a Fox poll, it smashed through the upper 40′s and hit a low of 46.
Obama, is your shtik starting to wear thin. Is the soaring rhetoric in your speeches (a la Ft. Hood) starting to fall boringly flat?
Golly gee, even the leftstream media seem to be starting to tire of it. Are your cheerleaders losing their enthusiasm? Maybe the tingle still goes up Chris Matthews leg, but others in the media appear to be listening to their brains a touch more.
Of course, the Tina Feys of the world will still try to ridicule her; pick Palin apart. But there just might come a day when Tina Fey is the one ending up with the egg on her face.
Sarahphobia. Lies don’t even work against it. Talk shows like the View aren’t even aware it’s there. Lettermen seems to be simmering in his own vile ways.
Sarah Palin. If Obamamania’s the disease, cross your fingers, America. She just might be the cure.
“You guys want a president who hasn’t had an original thought regarding foreign or domestic politics in her life, who is the spawn of the neo-cons who brought you the fiascos that were Iraq and Afghanistan…”
Yeah, I’d rather have that then an America-hating socialist who’s religous affiliation was the church of “God Damn America”, and is the spawn of the liberal Democrats who got 600,000 Americans killed in two world wars, Korea and Vietnam.
I suspect Ms. Palin would make a very good president, and for sure she’d be better than ANY Democrat president. At least we’ve never had a Republican president that was as bad as the best Democrat president…so the odds are definitely in her favor.
ahhh, there is nothing like the smell of liberal fear in the morning…It cracks me up to hear the vitriol of childish comments from the regular crowd of useful idiots. Reagan had to go through the wilderness in 1976 just as Palin will this year. All it took was four years of the emipirically proven worst POTUS in American history to propel Reagan to landslide city. Thirty odd years later, with our radical MArxist affirmative action do-nothing freaking idiot of a POTUS lapping Carter in his first year alone, a damn rock with an elephant painted on its side should carry the election, much less an authentic REAL American spitfire like Sarah. 12% unemployment tends to piss people off; couple that with tax increases on anyone making 50k+ a year; couple that with six-month wait times to see your Medicare-approved gatekeeper MD, throw in another half-dozen man-caused domestic disasters…and so long Commies!
Now and Then, Moho, MacGregor, et al,
If I was as big a pu@@y as you guys sound, I guess I would envy and hate SP, too. You sound like a pleasant group of metro-sexual sniveling brats who got picked on in grade school and now must take out your bitter twisted life on anyone that is happy, grounded, and content with life. Even-odds that at least half of you still live at home and your parents can’t stand you. I’d also wager that most of you dopers are still in school finding yourselves; that you have no meaningful relationships in your life; and that most of you are medicated 24-7 on Prozac or the like. Now, go draw a warm bath, get out your pop’s straighty and do us all a favor…
I speak naught for others, only myself. Having spent more years that I care to count on contracts around the world, as an independent contractor, I have a profound respect for two critical elements of staying alive: situational awareness and situational trust.
These two attributes do not require a complete resume nor attendence at elite schools; but it does require someone who has been in the “Tall Weeds” of life, suffered failure and success while retaining the core beliefs of integrity, honesty, steadfastness, and resolutness.
Should Sarah Palin ever decide to take point and go downrange, I would not hesitate to pull drag for her–fiquratively and literally. Without question, she would know how to put rounds on target and accomplish the mission.
One additional comment: Not all the “gentlemen of dubious purpose”, as T.E. Lawrence called them, are out and about in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen…many of them right here and some are in our government, as politicians and bureaucrats.
Go Slow and Stay Low…
Palin!! YOU BETCHA!!!
The left cannot stand the fact that her book is selling like hotcakes, the public loves her, she’s honest, and above all…
they’re angry that she’s not a Democrat!!
The left also hates FOX because they give us facts that we can go and check .
There is no rational thought as to why the trolls here are so mired in the mud of hatred…except they’re a couple of old ladies with their panties in a wad…YOU BETCHA!!!
Palin appears to have enough balls to share with the eunuchs of the left and right. Palin is coming to our town next week and we’re all going!!!
When you vote for “color” of a person’s skin and not the “content of their character”…you get Obama…
The PJM title for this thread was “What Drives the Fear and Loathing of Sarah Palin?”
Clearly the army of the Obamanauts who keep an eye on this site got very excited. This was due to an understandable confusion as to what tense was being used. Does the word “of” indicate that the qualities of Fear and Loathing are the subject that is possessed by Sarah Palin or is she the herself the subject? Perhaps a trained Philologist could help out here or train the headline writer. If the poo-flingers came here for evidence that Palin and Cheney really do chew on raw baby seal meat together they are disappointed in that desire. Under the circumstances they turn sulky.
# 175 Annie I think you will find the MOHO the Mohammedan gets his misogyny from the Koran, where it is writ large and which was invented by the violent, thieving, misogynistic, paedophile Mohammad and thus reflects his character.
123. Curtis M:
“Now and Then, you insipid little twit….you reference Fox’s “propensity to fake video” and THEN you have the small-minded audacity to link to a FAKED VIDEO . . . ”
Curtis . . . Curtis, Curtis, Curtis, the difference, now stay with me on this one, the difference is that one is a “news” network intentionally using unrelated footage to misrepresent the facts of an event. The other is a comedy video. There are plenty of opportunities to play the victim for real in this life, you don’t need to make them up as you go along.
208. donttreadonme
209. donttreadonme
Didn’t get it all out the first time, eh? Had a few more strokes to go before you grabbed the towel? I understand, you’ve been seeing a lot of Sarah lately and, well, you’re excited. You feel a warm tingle go up your leg when you glimpse her healthy haunches. One wink from her disingenuous face and you’re tight against the seam. Throw in the thought of Tod’s manly touch and you simply must find release. Unable to reinflate your usual weekend paramour, you devolve into the stunted adolescent character we know as treadonmeplease. It’s OK Señor Treadonme, the other conservatives won’t hold your libidinous angst against you. They too are pitching tents in the wilderness, deep in Sarah’s own Alaskan forest. You should make a sound like a wood chuck. That can be your secret call to one another. And you can gather in safety around the fire and trade outrage about seeing Sarah in her pantyhose and running shorts. It’s just like the ’50s all over again.
Hail Rush. Go Sarah.
Excellent post. You, VDH,and Krauthammer are required reading. The explanation of why feminists hate her had me rolling on the floor! Priceless! Remember, Plain really connects with WOMEN. This is why the left fears her. She can easily lead millions of reliable Dem voting sheep right off of the reservation. Much like Justice Thomas, or Condi Rice. Got to destroy them!
206. rachel peepers:
“Today, in a Fox poll, (Obama’s ratings) smashed through the upper 40’s and hit a low of 46.”
Wow, a Fox poll critical of Obama. That’s quite a scoop, Ms Peepers. Here’s one for you, a Gallup poll in October showed that the politician with the second lowest favorability ratings in the country was . . . Sarah Palin. Who was #1? John Edwards.
Now why in the world do you think that so many people have so little regard for Sarah Palin?
Hey, Curtis M, look! Another one! What ARE the chances?
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911190020
What if Sarah runs in 2012 and Dick Cheney endorses her? What will the anti-Palin Republican elites do?
The root of the matter is about representation. Ask yourself as a regular person, outside of what Mrs Palin represents who represents your values and hopes?
From where I’m at it looks like a waste land.
Regardless of how anyone is attempting to devalue and demean a person of Mrs Palins credentials, I see a really pissed off majority and they are coming for the staus quo with a bone in their teeth.
If you understand this you understand the horror and fear the left has over Mrs Palin.
She is the 1000lb gorilla with a 10ft monkey wrench of their nightmares.
Why do you always cite your grandfather instead of your father?
207. Dave Surls
Obama “…is the spawn of the liberal Democrats who got 600,000 Americans killed in two world wars, Korea and Vietnam.”
Do you think we shouldn’t have fought those wars or do you think they were badly run (of course most think Vietnam was either a mistake or very badly run). If you think WWI, WWII and Korea were mistakes or were run badly please explain your position. If you won’t do that then please take your broad brush and paint your home don’t use it to support a questionable point.
I was just a kid when they had The House Committee on Un-American Activities looking to destroy communists.
Funny how kids look at things.
It always reminded me of the Wizard of Oz house that fell on the wicked witch of the east.
Anyway….
Times really do changed.
Now we have a House Full of Un-American Active Communist trying to destroy Americans.
Sarah you hang in there and make your family rich writing books and giving speech for the small business owners.
It drives the left leaning communists liberals Chiclets-
*wink* *wink*
Don’t worry about these little communists bitch dog ankle bitters,
November 2010 we are going to put them on a leash.
Sorry, if others took Jeff@38 to task afore me.
As one Geoff to another, you are a pompous a** – get thee over to Kos.
Ms. Palin was CEO of Alaska, one of only 50 in the USA. And, it’s the most resource rich. Think crabs’ legs – salmon – timber – minerals – oil – gas – diamonds – gold – moose. She managed revenues and budgets larger than half the countries on earth.
But I’ll agree; it’ll be a conversation about the value differential between the mantel of gravitas (as defined by the Left, which means that no one you/they don’t like can ever have it), or authenticity.
Given the fast approaching “last-stand” opportunity in 2010, US conservatives might want to champion Palin, and give her the overriding mandate to git’r done.
Drill Baby Drill. Think Marathon Man, since we’ve outlawed waterboarding.
One of the more predictable denigrations of Sarah Heath Palin has moved into high gear. Watch for it, and appreciate its power and significance.
Sarah P. (and any others we hope elect in 2010/12) will need a clear mission and STRONG mandate to dismantle and overhaul. Not only Obama’s socialist takeover; but the entire FedGov structure.
It needs to be an apolitical/party-neutral message; ie, valid for any reasonable person, if we hope to enlist enough of the cowards (moderates).
Emergency measures are/will be necessary. Are we, the remaining conseratives (productive class) intellectually prepared? Perchance as the majority, it’s not like we won’t have to play the same games the “I WON” crowd has played, using the same tactics re: refounding our Republic.
- Put US on a war footing against radical Islam
- Tort Reform, cap defense fees in criminal court to whatever the prosecution is paid & Loser Pays in civil court!
- No new laws – 80% recinding of Federal laws and regulations by 2016.
- Term limits
- No Czars!
- No “earmarks”!
- Aggressive criminal prosecution of elected grifters
- De-unionize Fed workers
- Expand Gitmo, reinstate waterboarding, erect more scaffolds
- United Nations – withdraw, defund, evict
- Close the borders to illegal immigration
- Open the borders wide to the best and brightest worldover – US citizenship is obviously priceless
- Target/limit foreign aid and trade to only outspoken allies
- Cease all trade with dictatorships, inflict democracy
- Enhance FISA
- Etc.
Of course in any refounding effort, we face a court system that is no longer interested in the Constitutionality of any decision, and which has shown it can be easily persuaded to fight US every step of the way forward. So, our newly-electeds must be prepared to immediately “override” by voice vote thousands of judicial decisions designed to slow the process.
Also, I’d like Sarah to have the Cabinet selected and vetted from the gitgo. Think of the slate…
Bolton – SecState
Petraeus – SecDef
Guiliani – HomelandSecurity
Jim Woolsey – CIA
VP – Bobby Jindal
Dick Cheney – National Security Advisor
Meg Whitman – Sec Commerce
Tony Snow – WH spokesman (damn he’s missed)
Dick Morris – WH CommDir
Plus, many other great personnel we have at hand.
Or, we can continue to assist the gov’t to transform US into kulaks. It’s all gotta start in under 6 mos, with a HUGE tax revolt 4/15/2010. 30+ million delayed filings should send the proper opening shot.
BTW, if this fiasco called a “healthcare overhaul” bill passes, then we’ve probably lost any chance at refounding the republic. Just sayin’
Jack@42&oldguy@43,
Please stop with the “incompetence” bit. It’s a form of denial. The current admin has accomplished more of their “plan” in under a year, than any predecessor.
Face it – they are really good at doing evil – and their motivations for destroying US are either irrelevant, or a hanging offense.
Good Article Professor~
Lots of trolls for this posting. The left is genuinely terrified of her, resorting to purely personal attacks (# 22 “She’s basically incompetent”) sans any iota of truth.
If you were in a foxhole under fire, who would you want to be in the hole with you? Palin or Obama?
I am an independent and hope that Palin will run for President in 2012. As a small business owner there are very few politicians who are in my corner. Palin is one of the few that will stand up for us. It is a disgrace that Goldman Sachs can earn record profits and small business cannot even have access to capital.
Actually “President Palin” has a nice cadence to it. For all you Palin haters, click your heels three times and say “President Palin, President Palin, President Palin”, and maybe she will go back to Wasila.
Janeway@51,
You obviously don’t think our current predicament is an emergency. If we don’t win big in 2010 and gain a majority in 2012, we’ve surely lost all opportunity to stop the trainwreck.
At this point we urgently need honesty and integrity over recipes.
Breaking: Societe Generale (French Bank) announces a program to inform their wealthiest clients on how to best invest in the face of a GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN by 2012. I don’t think they’re referring to the Mayan calander event.
We who fear the President do it because of what he is doing (or not doing) and those who shaped his thinking. I’m presuming Professor Hanson, most of us here, and myself especially would never associate with somebody who said ‘G-d damn America’.
Sarah Palin promotes the concept of freedom and energy independence. That’s all. And people deride her for reasons I can’t understand unless they just don’t want to promote freedom or they truely want to give tons of money to Hugo Chavez, Putin, and the House of Saud instead of keeping our cash in the USA.
Palin’s detractors remind me of a kid coming out of a horror movie saying, ‘That didn’t scare me. I knew it was fake.’ while knowing all along that they were very scared. They’re scared of Palin but they shouldn’t be. Unlike Wright, Ayres, Davis, et al, her mentors were patriotic.
Palin’s detractors remind me of Moslem radicals who must subjugate their women because it’s the woman who is fundamentally able to make a man feel less than a man.
By the way, thank you Professor for your insights.
VDH:
As always, valuable insights.
They hate her because she’s authentic, the real deal.
@ #164 Dave:
“IF libs actually wanted Sarah to lead and get a nomination, they’d stop insulting and attacking her and wasting everyone’s time trying to make her unpopular.”
Actually your analysis does not empathize with her critics and her supporters enough. Rather, by insulting and attacking her, the libs humanize her and make people defend her more. The effect is that she is defended as their main target of hatred and scorn, which puts in the mind of the conservative movement that she is the leader for 2012.
Again, I’m a moderate who is turned off by her social conservatism and anti-business populism, so I can empathize with a lot of libs who are genuinely scared by her and the sort of thing she represents. But the libs I have talked to and listened to all say that yes they are scared of the social conservatism and the parochialism, but they say they want her to be the nominee because she will be much easier to beat than Romney or Huckabee.
For Now and Then:
“Now and Then, you insipid little twit….you reference Fox’s “propensity to fake video” and THEN you have the small-minded audacity to link to a FAKED VIDEO . . . ”
Curtis . . . Curtis, Curtis, Curtis, the difference, now stay with me on this one, the difference is that one is a “news” network intentionally using unrelated footage to misrepresent the facts of an event. The other is a comedy video.
Newsflash for Now and Then – the TOPIC of this thread is the Pavlovian need for Lefties to bash Sarah Palin (and the reasons behind this need) – not your issues with FOX News. And by using your issues with FOX News as a lame pathetic excuse to post a Comedy Video for the sole purpose of…..wait for it…..BASHING SARAH PALIN, you kinda make VDH’s point for him.
Thanks.
Your problem Now and Then, is not a lack of ammunition. It’s your fetish for using the wrong ammunition in the wrong gun – which is why occasionally it’ll blow up in your face.
Now, when we get a topic going involving FOX News (they occur on a fairly regular basis), THEN why don’t you bring up…….oh, I dunno, purported cases involving inventive video production by FOX News. See, that would be an example of using the right ammo in the right gun.
As an unabashed Conservative, I know that Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. That’s fine by me, there could only be one Ronald Reagan. He was a great man, but he is gone now, and Conservatives must look to the future for their next champion. Their next champion is a Stat U. grad, mother of 5, happily married to her first husband, who honestly speaks her mind on things. If Sarah Palin is impossible to elect, then every American President since Andrew Jackson, who came from the middle 2/3 of the nation and who wasn’t born into privilege can be called impossible to elect.
Sarah Palin is basically, the nice Conservative mom in your neighborhood. She is a 100% genuine American success story, and walks the talk on her Conservative principles, unlike too many Republican politicos who say one thing at home, and do the other in the state or national capital. As Dr. Hanson has masterfully laid out, a lot of the criticism aimed at her, from both Liberal Democrat and mainstream Republican sources, is that Mrs Palin is not a member of the Club. Given the way the Members of the Club have been running things, I’ll take Mrs Palin for a blessed change of pace, thanks very much. Besides, compare Obama and Palin, and the lady from Alaska comes across as more genuine & more empathic with the average American, than the shielded Leftist ideologue currently ensconsed in the White House. Obama likes to play President on TV, but he is already ducking the hard decisions that the POTUS has to make, every day of the year for at least 4 years. I’d look more to Mrs Palin to be the sort of President who will make those difficult decisions, and then tell us all why, and then stick by them, come hell, high water, or the next election.
Besides her many, obvious leadership qualities, fearless character and instinctive moral compass, lefties also fear Palin because she represents a genuine groundswell of political re-awakening among Americans, not a delusional messianic fervor as was the case with Obama. Try as they might, they cannot fathom this because sincerity is alien to them, since they are driven only by resentment and cynicism. The lame critiques they post here and elsewhere amply demonstrate that. They are panicking.
For instance Andrew Sullivan has created an enitre parralel universe for himself from which to assail his nemeis-Palin. She senses it too, and knows how to play on their fears. The good news is the moer the Left assails Palin, the more power they give her, and the more disconnected from average, mentally grounded Americans they become. On the other hand, if they just ignore her (and the ideas she represents), they concede the battle and that will also be obvious to all.
Sarah Palin is a sign that Conservatives (in large part thanks to the thuggery, thievery, craven hostility to average Americans, and plain incompetence of Obama and his clown posse) have regained the initiative in the ideas war.
Sarah Palin is merely the latest in the long line of ANTI COMMUNIST threats to the far lefts control of Americas institutions. LAW, ACADEMIA,MEDIA AND POLITICS have been dominated by the far left since the 60s. Joe Mccarthy had the correct message, but was a poor messanger. Nixon was no more guilty than what every president since Wilson had done. The left tried to destroy Reagan, but Reagan had a long career in radio and TV and was well known to the public long before he entered politics. Bush 41(“read my lips, no news taxes”) . Congress is the one who deals with taxes. Bush 43 biggest problem was simple-he was too nice. He didnt want any “meanness” in politics. Consequently, he suffered at the polls and America got hoodwinked by a communist shyster. The Arctic Fox is not the next Reagan, she doesnt have Reagans media saavy or communications skills. What she does have is a refreshing honestly and down home middle America style that should reasonate well with Real America. All she needs is the seasoning and experience.
The left was terrified of Sarah the DAY she was announced as McCain’s VP. I listened to her very first speech and was instantaneously overjoyed.
Within hours, I received telephone calls and emails from irate Obama-supporters (friends & family) describing how awful she was. By the next afternoon, I began receiving all the emails alleging that Sarah was really the mother of Bristol’s baby, that Sarah caused Trig’s Down Syndrome and many other hideous accusations about Sarah Palin within mere HOURS after she first appeared on the national stage.
Sarah “had me at Hello” . . .and she terrified the left also “at Hello.”
The Left/Obama-Supporters were terrified the DAY Sarah was first presented. They know what we know — Sarah is the REAL DEAL . .and THAT is why they hate her . . .b/c they know Obama is not.
A critique of Sarah Palin’s record of being the Governor of Alaska:
http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3865&Itemid=89&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email
The will not to see, or believe, has rendered hordes blind.
Another insightful and wonderful article! I have said the same thing about SP over the last year-she literally repudiates the entire feminist platform. What do liberals and feminists have to fall back on if someone actually makes it on their own, with no government assistance? Although I support her wholeheartedly (and I am an Ivy League educated, married 20 years, conservative Catholic…..) she does need to keep speaking out on the specifics and fundamentals of our conservative ideology. As for your comments on Wall Street, (full disclosure I am married to an investment banker) I find it interesting or rather so hypocritical that the men involved and part of this administration, particularly Rubin, were the very people who dismantled the Glass-Steagull act which specifically limited the risks involved with personal investment for both the individual and the investment bank. And we are supposed to trust these men? They all made fortunes on Wall Street but will now dictate our pay and raise our taxes. As someone who lives in LA we can ill afford any of this.
Some of us pity her, because she isn’t very good at wife, mother or governor. Which leads us to suspect that she may not be the best qualified to become the most powerful person in the world.
Geoffgo has some fine notions, but “ain’t all that sharp” at casting. (Wide receiver types do not do well in the interior line).
Just for drill, lets find the BEST QUALIFIED man we can, and try our best to get him elected. And lets require him to fully document his resume. And lets elect a congress supportive of him; a cadre of the virtuous and talented; not a choir of thieves and liars.
Most recent Gallup Poll numbers confirm that the brown eyed handsome man’s poll numbers are in a free fall.
No other President in history has dropped so far so fast.
Other polls have President big ears approval rating as low as 46%.
Let’s face it, President Obama’s poll numbers are falling like a blind roofer. His ObamaCare approval numbers are hovering around 40% with
the latest PEW poll catching his plummet at 39%.
About the only thing falling faster than Obama’s poll numbers are, when he’s alone with a female staff member, Letterman’s pants.
Outstanding article on the “prissy” president (not on this site). Our current state lacks masculinity….we have become effeminate, or, said differently, lack the willingness to do what we know is in our interest.
Apeasing Iran, Russia, Islamists, etc. is not in our interest.
This is eerily reminiscent of Gibbon’s description of Rome in its decay. Thoughts?
The lefties hate her with as much contempt and disdain as a lefty zealot can muster. That fact alone would be enough for me to give Palin my support. But there is definitely something about her that draws Americans toward her. I think it’s about her down to earth approach to government and not being an elitist. Whatever it is, I’m hoping that she runs in 2012.
I do love Sarah very much, but I have to be honest that because I do I want her to do well. The only way she will do well is to find good traction with independent voters. It’s not enough that BHO doesn’t know what he’s doing and the Drive-By Media quite obviously fights his battles for him. She will have to make a compelling case to the large body of independent voters out there as to why she’s better for the job. Simply saying “The Media hates me so I must be OK” is not enough. Going on Oprah and Barbara is a good start, actually, but she’s still got a very long road ahead of her.
To MacGregor, Comment 22
Does Obama fit any of the criteria you deem necessary for a president when it comes to making decisions about Iran, Putin, the Israelis/Palestinians?
The pendulum swings as far right as it does left. At every crisis in American history an incongruous individual appears to tap into popular discontent—Jackson, Lincoln, TR, Truman, and Reagan and a few others. Is Sarah the one? Well, she is incongruous, and, as was said about another incongruous person, Grover Cleveland, we love her because of those who hate her.
Glenn Beck, Leftist Prey of the Day
Dave Letterman likes to spread out his venom.
His tiresome, vengeful attacks on Sarah Palin, his defense against her reaction to his calling her and her daughter virtual sluts and a reflection of his cockiness after skating through his own sex scandals, were getting old and his writers were getting stale in their digs.
They were rescued by the publication of her best seller, Going Rogue, which at once became an ancillary target with Letterman’s brief nightly skit, “Things Better than Reading Sarah Palin’s Book.”
Those film attacks show cars crashing into trees, having one’s head explode in a microvave, and other inane, tasteless disasters as preferable to reading Palin’s book.
They’re getting old as well so last night’s “Top 10″ list on Obama’s interview on FNC branched out by attacking another conservative subject: Coming in at Number One was, “Agreeing that Glenn Beck is a dump.”
Not much better can be expected from crass, dirty Dave and his foul abuse of Beck was not unanticipated given the obsession liberals have with destroying him.
Still, it reinforces an interesting phenomenon, namely that when conservatives becomes too threatening, Leftists like Letterman and others go into spasms in their efforts to bring them down into their own muck and mire.
Mrs. Palin, with her incredible popularity and crowd appeal still tops the Leftist Attack Charts. However, Glenn Beck has gotten way up in their craws, too.
Polls showing Beck’s topping Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, and Chris Matthews’ combined scores just may be playing a factor in the Left’s angst and venom.
Dirty Dave’s lies and insinuations about Palin–he dare not abuse her daughters again– . . .
(Read the rest at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1336)
Forrest@22: “What the left might fear is her supporters, who have the obvious problem that they prefer image to competence, and that is dangerous to everyone.”
Oh, that’s rich, Forrest… it really is. What you are doing is known in medical-psychological circles as “projection,” the unconscious denial of one’s thoughts and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world. Deluded leftists engage in it all the time.
The Democrats ran and elected a man of whom – to this very day – very little is known, of his origins, allegiances, how his expensive education was paid for, personal/legal/medical history, and more. The man is a cipher, a fraud, but the party of “Hope and Change” elected him because he looks nice in a suit, and says all the politically-correct things at the right times and places. Obama has never run so much as a lemonade stand, yet you have the nerve to say Palin is inexperienced and unqualified by comparison? At least she served part of a term as governor, and has significant legislative and executive accomplishments to her credit. All Obama did in the IL state senate, and then the U.S. Senate, was vote “present” over and over again. Obama will be remembered as one of the most incompetent Presidents in US history, unless of course you count destroying our national institutions as worthy attainments, in which I would have to agree, he is very accomplished.
I have supported the Palins politically and financially and will continue to do so. I have never seen such a vicious hatchet job done on a person, as the MSM and leftist operatives did to her in Alaska, and continue to do now. She has handled herself magnificently throughout this sordid episode, and her decision to resign the governorship was admirable as a defense of her family, not to mention voters in her state.
“Do you think we shouldn’t have fought those wars or do you think they were badly run (of course most think Vietnam was either a mistake or very badly run). If you think WWI, WWII and Korea were mistakes or were run badly please explain your position. If you won’t do that then please take your broad brush and paint your home don’t use it to support a questionable point.”
I think that those wars were both a mistake AND badly run. However, my point was to mock the abusrdity of liberal Democrat types attacking the Republicans because of the “fiascos” in Iraq and Afghanistan, since their real fiascos dwarf in both number and magnitude the imagined fiasco in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Them what bungled us into a series of pointless bloodbaths in Europe and Asia over the last hundred years or so, at an enormous cost in American blood and treasure, are in a mighty poor position to be whining about the low level miltary campaigns being carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are largely the result of fallout from various liberal Democrat initiated policies, anyway.
Or to put it in more simplistic terms, I would much prefer to live under Republican governance and lose a few thousand men to war, than live under liberal Democrat governance and lose hundreds of thousands.
We can’t allow Lady Politicians, protected by an omnipresent force field of children, to lie and manipulate and deploy their sexuality, as Ms. Palin does, only to cry “sexism!” when this inevitably colours their media coverage.
The press is being rough with her. It’s a Taming of the Shrew moment.
Shrew is my favourite Shakespeare play. It’s a quintessential feminist work: “My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break, and rather than it shall, I will be free,” Kate says, centuries before, yet light-years beyond, Ibsen.
We’re now at the moment when Petruchio, who is being hit by Kate (hitting people is one of the appalling and unethical behaviours she indulges in), tells her, essentially, “If you hit me, I’ll hit you back.”
Mrs. Palin is very lucky to have someone like Victor Davis Hanson in her corner – taking the time and space to defend her and sometimes even champion her. I think anyone on here would love to have Dr. Hanson championing us for just about anything.
233. Curtis M:
” . . . the TOPIC of this thread is the Pavlovian need for Lefties to bash Sarah Palin (and the reasons behind this need) – not your issues with FOX News . . . your fetish for using the wrong ammunition in the wrong gun – which is why occasionally it’ll blow up in your face.”
This post is replete with opinion about media and their relation with Palin The lede of the article focuses on the AP. My posts relate to, wait for it, the media and Palin. It’s exactly the right ammo in exactly the right gun. You just don’t like taking a gut shot. Fox is a lying ideological mouthpiece for right wing extremism. As such they are largely responsible for the packaging of Palin. Is it a coincidence that in two weeks two episodes of fake video promoted/misrepresented Palin’s book crowd and Bachmann’s House Call crowd?
Yes, it’s relevant. So man up.
Geoffgo: I prefer they hang but let true justice prevail.
Now and Then: We don’t want to read about your experiences in front of your pc.
VDH: Nice work as usual. Sarah Palin is an interesting phenomenon. She represents more Americans in who she is, where she comes from and how she got here than any other individual on the scene today.
What all who appreciate her must consider is that while Sarah Palin is being pushed to the front of the crowd for the American she represents she must not made into an Obama like messiah who is supposed to have all the answers and all of the ability to pull us together and make us into something we are not. If this happens it will lead only to tremendous disappointment.
Let’s not forget she is loved because she represents real people with real conservative values and she is hated and feared for the exact same reasons.
The haters on the left in this country and the rest of the world fear the conservative bible clinging gun toting values because the left is the minority here, has been and always will be. The lefts evil is becoming well understood and their schemes are receiving more exposure everyday. The fear on the left is palpable and their extreme ranting and behavior are proof.
Sarah Palin is just one object of their fear but it is all conservative Americans that those on the left fear.
So conservative Americans, let Sarah Palin be an example for you. Stand up like she did and fight for the truth, take positions and do something to make a difference. We can’t all be President and none of us are God but we can be God like and stand for truth, righteousness and justice in our streets and in our governments. Only a big “WE” can make it happen. Sarah Palin is just one person. Unless there are 170 million Sarah Palins we won’t escape the course we are on.
Sarah Palin has been palling around with terrorists and secessionists.
Her direct contacts and involvement with members of the Alaskan Independence Party, an Anti-American secessionist group whose leader was
actively working together with the Iranian government, is much worse and damning than that of Obama’s supposed ties with William Ayers.
MSNBC has turned Orwell’s “two minute hate” exercise into a two-hour one with Olbermann and Maddow’s Left-wing extremism.
That does it. I’m buying her book.
I’ll vote for Palin. She’s authentic. She’s grounded. She’s courageous. She’s one of us.
The Democrap Party is a demographic party. They seperate everyone into tribal-like “victim” groups and promise to always protect them against the boogeymen – whites, conservatives, men, Christians, heterosexuals, etc. And when conservatives “steal” people from these victim groups – in this case women – the left goes absolutely insane and does everything they can to trash their good name. Afterall, without identity based politics the Democrap Party would cease to exist and they know it.
I found the quote about things that are real but undefined a thought provoker. I think one of those is, when the constitution says we all have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, doesn’t that include me , at 83, even if I am a bit senile? Or a baby in the womb? Why do we sidestep that one?
I liked the incongruous reference. Jackson, Lincoln, TA, Truman, Reagan, are incongruous because they had Guts and Wisdom. The rest left any they had outside the White House door. Now the question is, does Palin have those two qualities, essential to dealing with Putin. So far, she seems to maybe have them. I’m watching, listening, and hoping.
Dr. Hanson,
Thank you for addressing this topic and I agree with your analysis. I would like to chip in also on this matter. For me, I believe the vitriol primarily and ultimately is rooted in the fact that Sarah Palin is a professing Christian. This is hatred pure and simple. She holds and lives out the Christian worldview. That is enough to draw the wrath of secular-humanists (a religion in its’ own right) every time. They (secular-humanists) don’t believe in God, they don’t believe that is, until they look in a mirror.
While I do not disagree that the liberals sometimes dislike Palin for all the wrong reasons, we cannot discount her inability to answer the most basic of questions competently. Yes, her spunk is admirable, but it hardly qualifies her to lead. Assuming she is disliked by some women simply because she is not childless demeans the intelligence of your female readership. Perhaps they simply dislike her incompetence and penchant for blaming everyone but herself and resent these faults being overlooked simply because she is an attractive female, where they never would be overlooked were she male.
In my community many residents are now undecided about Sarah Palin because she is supporting John McCain. Since they do not share the same values and McCain is a moderate, we think she has harmed her chances for a political career.