Posted on 08/08/2012 11:59:43 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
I’m getting sick of the rewriting of 2008 presidential campaign history as K Street Republicans continue to assault Sarah Palin in the fear that a similarly conservative Republican will rise to the top of the VP sweepstakes.
It has been so fashionable in D.C. Republican circles to bash the Palin nomination as a mistake, ill-conceived or even disastrous, that even Dick Cheney has gotten into the act.
These self-serving attempts to change history are nothing more than a smear campaign designed to influence the Romney VP pick by obscuring the truth that the choice of Sarah Palin to be the vice presidential nominee was truly inspired.
The McCain campaign was in the doldrums. Unable to match the youth and enthusiasm of the inexperienced but expert campaigner from Illinois, McCain needed to shake up the race, and Palin accomplished just that.
Her incredible acceptance speech, delivered in spite of a faulty teleprompter (try that, Mr. President), gave the nation a new face and voice for conservative principles just when it was desperately needed.
That same energy from the convention rolled over into the 2010 election, embodied in the Tea Party movement and leading Republicans to a historic victory.
History shows that it was the McCain campaign that blew any chance at election when it suspended its efforts fully three weeks after the nomination to come back to D.C. and rubber-stamp the TARP bailout.
Having agreed upon the legislative actions that socialized losses by too-big-to-fail banks, McCain lost all ability to differentiate between himself and the big-government policies advocated by Obama.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen reported on Sept. 20, 17 days after the Palin pick, that his daily Presidential Tracking Poll “shows Barack Obama with 48 percent of the vote and John McCain with 47 percent. While Obama’s lead is statistically insignificant, it is the first time he has held even a single-point advantage in a week and a half. One week ago today, McCain was up by three points.”
For the mathematically challenged, this means that less than two months from the election, McCain and Palin were leading in the polls.
Rasmussen goes on to say, “Obama’s gains over the past week came as the focus shifted from the momentum generated at the Republican National Convention to the economic roller coaster ride that played out on Wall Street. Few agreed with McCain’s initial statement about the economy being fundamentally sound and neither candidate has yet convinced voters that he will bring the needed changes to the financial markets.”
Now, four years later, those very architects and apologists of “too big to fail” policies desperately seek to dissuade presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney from making a similarly bold conservative choice for vice president.
Let’s hope Romney remembers history, because if he does, he will know that the choice of Palin was one of the few things the McCain campaign got right. It was McCain’s and President Bush’s abandonment of limited-government, free-market principles that were the ultimate culprit in bringing us four years of Obama — not Sarah Palin.
Laws were changed in many places to forbid ticket-splitting at the top, otherwise, we'd very probably have wound up with Sarah as VP today, and Obama walking on eggs past a Republican House Speaker and VP to get to his office every day.
Sarah Palin is sitting on between 18 and 20 years executive experience. This is more than almost any other President we have ever had.
Palin’s record includes a term on the Wasilla Council, two terms as Wasilla, AK Mayor, a stint as Chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and gas Conservation Commission (which she left to almost single-handily take down the corrupt GOP Establishment in Alaska. She served as president of the Alaska mayors association and as chairman of the Republican governors. As governor she accomplished more in two years than most do in eight years. Alaska has the largest national guard and they are always on active duty with the governor briefed daily.
The Governorship of Alaska, as defined by the Alaska state Constitution, is the most powerful in the nation. This has left Sarah Palin uniquely qualified to go from being the most powerful Governor in the nation to being the most powerful national leader in the world.
No, they hate "flyover America" -- the middling values, the heterosexual moral orthodoxy, the "narrowness" (whine, whine -- Sinclair Lewis was already bitching about Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, 110 years ago, because he was a frustrated boulevardier who wanted to spend his life drinking wine and reading "French novels"), everything that separates the people in the "Finkelstein Box" of Southern and Midwestern States from the gravid mobs of the seaboard cities that ritualistically vote Democrat.
That crap has continued unabated from that day to this, and now the East Coast urbanites want to seal the deal and finish us off. They can't stand real Americans!! The secret is out! Doubt me? Read this:
Commentary dumps on Sarah Palin: What Neocons really think.
and be sure to catch the further discussion by Bushbot David Frum and others at Gawker and Frum's site. There are links here, with this blog comment page:
Sarah Palin continues to have more relevant and quality executive experience than the other three national candidates of 2008.
Wrong!
I despise the gop/e as they are the gop leaders and they stand against me... no different than the dims.
LLS
Sarah’s no dummy. She’s collecting a lot of IOU’s that she’ll cash in when the time is right.
In state legislative primary races, RINOs are falling across the country. It’s looking good for many states in 2012. In 2010, more than 700 patriots and conservatives were elected to state legislatures, giving us effective control in 26 states.
If the federal election turns to crap, we have the option of falling back and fighting the criminal fascist syndicate from the states. A thousand brushfires can be set. Federal bureaucracies and courts in states can be dismantled by harassing them out of existence through state laws and enforcement. The federal fascists have neither the logistics nor manpower to handle this.
It’s imperative that conservatives also get to work on local village and county races. Cleaning commies out of your neighborhoods will make lifre more pleasant and agreeable. It’s especially critical that you elect constitutional sheriffs in your counties. That office gives you atmed muscle to take on the federal fascists locally, espcially the EPA, FWS, Homeland Security and Interior Department.
Everyone can grow and improve, learn and hone their philosophy and how to communicate it.
I actually had in mind Reagan: his experience with SAG, the GE speeches, Goldwater, the “A Time for Choosing” speech, his extensive writings on abortion and recording for the AMA, and his two terms as Governor of California...
Over these 25+ years Reagan grew and improved greatly - to become the greatest conservative president. He first ran for President at the age of 64/65.
Sarah is 48 now. I’m not saying she should wait fifteen years; I’m saying she has many years left and if she spends them as productively as, say, Reagan, she will be that much better a candidate and a president.
In the military there is a criterion for rejection of promotion called “overage in grade.” The presidency has a similar criterion which might be called, “over experienced in grade.” Obviously Reagan got elected at an unusually high age, but he was not a national politician for a long time before being elected POTUS. From the time he was elected Governor of California (1966) to the time he was elected POTUS (1980) was a period of 14 years. And that is about the limit for attaining national office (POTUS or VP) after attaining statewide office (Governor or Senator); I read that nobody had been elected POTUS without attaining at least VPOTUS within 14 (or 16, I honestly forget) years of attaining a governorship or a Senate seat.Gov. Palin will not be overage for the presidency for a long time. But her introduction to the body politic happened in 2006; if she doesn’t run in 2016 or 2020, she will be unlikely to attain the presidency after that. IMHO she passed on her main chance (not that it would have been a cakewalk) when she didn’t go for it last year. IMHO her entry early would have kept other conservatives out of the race, and it would have been between her and Mitt (with journalism firmly on Mitt’s side).
And her correct strategy would have been to ignore calls for “debates” moderated by journalists. Run an internet/personal appearance campaign, and try to suck the oxygen out of the other campaigns with her own charisma running big events when the journalists were trying to run debates. That was always her only chance, either she could do it or she could not. I do not expect conditions to become more propitious for her to run in the future, by then others will become rising stars in their own right.
Sorry, I still don’t see where the party kept Palin from running in the primary, kept her from endorsing someone else, etc..
No, I don’t think selecting Palin was a mistake. And I supported Newt. We got Romney because of a weak field and lack of unity behind one notMitt candidate.
A lot of more conservative candidates sat it out, including Sarah. I don’t blame Repubs for this.
That’s because there’s a LOT, an iceberg-sized lot, of inside baseball that happens politically that neither you nor most of us here see.
And it’s corrupt and dirty to the core.
I’ve begun to see just what good ol’ boy crap happens at the local and state levels.
Magnify that to the national level.
It ain’t pretty.
And one of the reasons you don’t see it is so that gullible folks like you can make statements like that.
Look back at the interview Palin gave to Greta Van Susteren about a week before her announcement: It was full of protestations of I won’t be handled, shackled, and I’m not for sale.
As in her speech in Iowa a few weeks back right after her public contretemps with Karl The Demolition Man Rove: I am not for sale.
So sure, she could have run. And been Goldwatered by the Romney GOP.
Just as Goldwater was Goldwatered by the Rockefeller GOP.
She’s smarter than that.
I believe “alley cat smart” was the term that former 2-term Alaska governor, Tony Knowles, said of her after she beat him out in the 2006 gubernatorial election.
So yes, you have plausible deniability to state that the GOP did not physically or legally prevent her from running.
But they very much made it apparent that if she were to run, she’d have to do so their way. Or else.
She declined those conditions.
As she may also decline whatever assinine conditions Romney’s GOP puts on her in order to speak at the Romney Lovefest convention.
I’d see that as a pretty low opinion of Palin, the victim.
The party kept her from running in the primary, caused her to dance and tease about running, kept her from endorsing someone and attempting to unite behind one notRomney candidate...
She couldn’t run with the big dogs, they were just too powerful for little Sarah.
Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Then you are willfully blind as to what was going on at that time...the whole point of the GOP-E’s campaign against Palin and her supporters was to keep her from running by demonstrating that the party would NOT support her in 2012, even if she won the primaries.
I think that you're 100% correct about what was going on behind the scenes with the GOP-E and Palin. In this context, her comments about not being for sale or handled make perfect sense.
Well if you’re right and she just can’t beat the establishment - even if she wins the national primary - then she’s too weak a candidate.
But I think you’re wrong.
Thanks for the ping.
Yep, should have ‘selected’ Palin.
Oh wait, she didn’t run for selection.
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