Posted on 12/13/2009 10:20:05 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Sarah Palin. Need I say more?
Buoyed by a ubiquitous autumn, she has cemented her status as a brand that excites and exasperates, titillates and polarizes. Sort of like Madonna.
Jackson Browne, the singer-songwriter, once penned the lyric, "I don't care about Madonna/ Or the next thing she might do." The Republicans don't have that luxury. In the early jockeying for the 2012 presidential race, everything Palin does is potentially consequential. Nobody else in the GOP can touch her skills as a performance artist who plucks the requisite populist chords. The big question is whether it would be wise or ruinous to nominate her.
This is a new kind of dilemma for the Republicans, who are hierarchal by nature. They typically choose nominees who have paid their dues. John McCain was hardly a consensus party figure, but he was next in line. Bob Dole in 1996 was next in line. The senior George Bush in 1988 was next in line. So was Ronald Reagan in 1980, given his close loss in the '76 primaries. The younger George Bush in 2000 was deemed next in line because of his party establishment connections and pedigree.
Palin is something else entirely; establishment Republicans haven't quite figured out how to deal with her. They respect her gift for connecting with what she calls "regular Americans," but there are millions of hostile "irregular" Americans roaming the land, enough to make her a landslide loser. And there's something a tad weird about her newfangled habit of posting simplicities on Facebook.
Still, who else in the wide-open Republican field can generate so much buzz? Who else inspires such visceral, inchoate devotion? Among her fans - the kind of folks who would flood the Iowa caucuses in the winter of 2012 - she is essentially critic-proof, much like a badly written best-selling pulp novel. The more she is attacked for lack of substance, the more they love her. The more she is successfully fact-checked by the "elite," the tighter the ties with those who feel similarly aggrieved.
She has said some ludicrous things lately, at least by conventional standards. On a conservative radio show, she bonded with the wing nuts on the phony issue about President Obama's place of birth, declaring that "it's a fair question" to wonder whether he was born on American soil. And in a guest newspaper column, she bonded with the global-warming-denial crowd, insisting that "we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes."
It's probably futile to point out that, during the '08 campaign, Palin said the opposite, that man does cause weather changes. As she explained it (English students, do not attempt to diagram this sentence): "You know there are, there are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts." But all attempts to hold her accountable are routinely dismissed by her fan base as persecution.
She is impervious to the rules that bind her more conventional rivals, and Republicans do find that intriguing. For evidence, look no further than the Gallup poll. Last month, 58 percent of Republicans nationwide said that Palin was qualified to be president. And yet, in the same poll, 65 percent of Republicans said they would "seriously consider" supporting her for president.
Think about that one: A sizable share of Republicans might actually support a prospective nominee whom they recognize to be fundamentally deficient. Perhaps this is easily explained. Many conservatives are congenitally hostile to government, so perhaps it's a logical next step to "seriously consider" someone who is ill-suited to perform the onerous, complex tasks of governance.
Indeed, within the "tea party" movement, Palin is lauded not for her credentials but for who she is perceived to be. She is regular folks. She shares their resentments, gives voice to their grievances. In this sense, she is eerily reminiscent of Richard Nixon, the scrappy kid born of humble origins who made a career of politicizing resentments, inveighing against the elite Eastern establishment that sought (in his telling) to keep him down. Today, none of Palin's rivals can match her Nixonesque ties to the "tea party" voters who will be crucial to the GOP's prospects in 2012.
The Nixon simile, however, is imperfect. Unlike Palin, who quit her day job two years before completion, Nixon logged 14 years in Washington before he ever ran for president, and by the time he was finally elected, he was already fluent in the nuances of foreign policy. And as skilled as he was at wooing the aggrieved members of the Republican base, he won two national races by capturing the swing voters in the center.
Today, Republican leaders are reluctant to publicly voice their private concerns about Palin's low ceiling; in the aforementioned Gallup poll, only 28 percent of independents deem her qualified to govern. Her birther remarks certainly won't boost that number. Nor will her remarks on global warming. And I doubt that independents will be charmed by her father's recollection of why she quit the first of her four colleges, in Hawaii. He recently told the New Yorker that the Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority-type thing and it wasn't glamorous."
The typical GOP tactic these days is to treat Palin with infinite care, as one would a live grenade. When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour - a former national chairman, Washington lobbyist, establishment fixture, and possible '12 hopeful - was recently asked on MSNBC whether he thought she was qualified to be president, he replied with the utmost caution: "Well, constitutionally, she sure is."
That was hardly a raving endorsement; rather, Barbour's remark reflected the party's unease about the tough task ahead, its crying need to tap into Palin's grassroots energy - without necessarily putting her in charge. This will be a long and delicate mission, all while waiting breathlessly for the next thing she might do.
*******
E-mail Dick Polman at dpolman@phillynews.com.
blah blah blah blah....
the “simplicities” she posts on FaceBook are more sophisticated than anything this person has ever written.
Jackass journalist cherry picked. The bold is what he cut off.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/eveningnews/main4490618.shtml
Comparing her to Maddonna - the celebrity ho’ and then unfavorably to Nixon shows they have reached the end of their ammo.
I suspect too, that Haley Barbour’s cagey *constitution* comment was a reference to Sarah having been being born in the US.
All that elite fact-checking-——tsk tsk.
American Citizens are THE PEOPLE!
Not regular, not irregular, we are THE PEOPLE!!!!!
Any person who speaks extemporaneously has patterns like this. Especially Obama. Sentence fragments, losses of trains of thought, restarts mid-sentence.
You are right — it’s assassination attempt to cherry pick a fragment like this in an otherwise coherent pattern of thought. Thanks for looking up the original quotation to show what a jackass he is.
The "party"?!?!?!? You mean the Beltway fossils who look down their noses at Palin? Ya, sure, they want her to do all the work, then they think they're going to step in and take over? Get out of our way!!!
Dudes...I think it already exploded and you need a medic.
Dick Pohman is an IDIOT.
He must be one of those poor olde hack writers bitterly clinging to their typewriters and hackneyed phrases.
How excrutiatingly pathetic, just sheer pathos.
I really hope that Governor Sarah Palin does not get one of those BORING ol' official political websites that are merely an exercise in narcissistic aggrandizement.
And, furthermore, so very easy to hack.
On Twitter & Facebook, it is so very wide open and public, there's really no way to sabotage her, there.
Hey Dick0, olde boy -- those "simplicities" posted by YOUR next president cause the current one no end of wee-weed-uPness.
It’s way way too much for the Stupid Party to deal with.
bookmark
Compared to an authentic person like Sarah Palin, he's a parody of a cartoon character: the checked jacket Southern Huckster, uttering simplistic platitudes to rule the rubes in rural Mississippi. Even Trent Lott's hairpiece wasn't as stupid.
Yeah. She's a challenge to these clowns: a hip chick mommy who's probably put more than one self-infatuated guy down in ways he didn't think possible. And the fact that she knows how to market herself organically rather then their bland, dimwitted D.C. lobbying/marketing firm style is undoubtedly mystifying to them.
She's gonna blow them away, and they know it. They're the Dweebs and she's the Prom Queen. They gotta be spending tens of millions on opposition research. Something, anything...some guy she did in Idaho who wants to talk now. More dirt on her kids....
Won't work. Regular people see themselves in that stuff: everyone has those problems. All it will do is endear her to them. I mean, relate to Romney? A cardboard character, too perfect, too blow dried, too tan? George Hamilton without the fun?
They are gone, gone, gone.
They are already blind. Those in Washington think they are chosen. They think their riches, their birth lineage, etc entitles them to power. Even those who claim to support “We the people” often in private voice their disdain for those who elect them as “kooks”. And why are those that elect them kooks? It is because they dare to question them, dare to ask them to defend and follow the constitution and respect the values on which this country was founded. That is why they dislike Palin, because if they were held to the standard that she has been held there would be nothing left of them but ashes. Their precious idiotic carbon footprint.
They can employ illegal aliens, pardon murderers,associate openly with unrepentant terrorists and racists, and propose plans that will by force remove more and more of the hard earned wealth of those who elect them. Give me a government run by uncommon common men and women like Palin and I have no doubt they would do a far better honest job than all the Harvard educated self important flack lawyers that hold office now.
>>>Think about that one: A sizable share of Republicans might actually support a prospective nominee whom they recognize to be fundamentally deficient. Perhaps this is easily explained. Many conservatives are congenitally hostile to government, so perhaps it’s a logical next step to “seriously consider” someone who is ill-suited to perform the onerous, complex tasks of governance.<<<
Here’s my thinking for the elitist snot down there in the lower 48: those of us up here in Alaska who have actually seen and talked with Sarah Palin know something that many others miss. With Sarah Palin, you’ve got integrity and intelligence. This guy seems to think that the only certain types of people - e.g., Ivy League, prep school, liberal - can possibly understand the “complexities” of government. It’s another way of saying that all issues have degrees of gray and Sarah’s too black-and-white for the man’s taste.
I’m old enough to remember almost the exact same things being said about Reagan, although in that case he was portrayed as a movie cowboy dunce who could speak well in public. It was said that Reagan didn’t have the intellect to govern a complex government, either.
What the writer neglects is that a solid moral and intellectual foundation often clarifies complexity. Science provides a good example of utter complexity that is often easily reducable to understandable core concepts. There’s a joke about this with my own people, in which the punch line is, “But is it good for the Jews?” In this case, coming to the table with an understanding of the Constitution’s core values and an appreciation of individual liberty seems to cut through the crap effectively.
Too bad that guy in Philly doesn’t have a clue.
Many decades ago, I earned a couple of Journalism degrees (advertising major) from what is still regarded as the finest J school in the country.
I wound up there because I was too lazy to work for a more meaningful degree from another school at the University. As a J student, I was free to use my time for more amusing pursuits.
Because I’m bright, I still graduated with honors.
My fellow J students were at the bottom of the University’s student body pecking order in terms of social skills. And only education majors displayed fewer intellectual gifts.
Hence, I’m always amused by the pretenses of journos who now feel qualified to judge and comment on Palin’s intellect.
I’ve owned fish that were brighter than this writer, for example.
Snark.
This column is nothing but. Assuming these political “experts” want us to read their stuff...and learn from it...well, forget it.
Why not write a serious piece on SP?
“And there’s something a tad weird about her newfangled habit of posting simplicities on Facebook.”
Thus sayeth (in authentic redneck dialect) the great Dick Polman, the “national political columnist” of the Phila. Inquirer, who paints himself up in blackface to discourse on racial issues. /fba
(fba=false but accurate)
“Dick Polman”—need I say more?
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