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A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven — and sometimes downright awkward — performances in her limited media appearances. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.” Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.” “I have not been blown away by the interviews from her,...

<p>WASHINGTON–A conservative columnist who welcomed Sarah Palin's entry in national politics says she's proven to be a dud and should step aside as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate.</p> <p>Kathleen Parker, writing in the National Review Online, says her "cringe reflex is exhausted" after watching the Alaska governor stumble through TV interviews and it's become clear to her that Palin is out of her league.</p>

Are certain conservatives setting Sarah Palin up to fail? With the recent news that conservative commentator Kathleen Parker has joined the ranks of anti-Palin conservatives George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum and Ross Douthat (as well as moderate-conservative David Brooks), one has to wonder how these folks will respond if McCain and Palin lose to Barack Obama and Joseph Biden on November 4. It’s likely that Parker, Will, Krauthammer, Frum, Douthat and Brooks will attempt to blame Palin for a GOP loss, arguing that she was not ready for prime time and that her supposed lack of knowledge drove away...

If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself. Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

(CNN) – Prominent conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, an early supporter of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, said Friday recent interviews have shown the Alaska governor is "out of her league" and should leave the GOP presidential ticket for the good of the party.

WASHINGTON -- If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream -- away from Sarah Palin. To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president -- and possibly president -- is to risk being labeled anti-woman. Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick...

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- If conventions are supposed to be about message discipline and stagecraft, Republicans have been improv street theater to the Democrats' Broadway. Every day has brought a brand new buzz -- and that was before the convention got started. Republicans euphoric about vice presidential pick Sarah Palin hardly got to enjoy a news cycle before Hurricane Gustav stole headlines and resurrected the ghosts of Katrina. Then came the news that Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant. To say that this convention has gotten off to a jaw-dropping start would not be hyperbolic. While Democrats chant,...

From The Sunday Times August 3, 2008 Where have all the real men gone? Top American columnist Kathleen Parker is causing a furore with her new book Save the Males, in which she argues that feminism has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society I know. Saving the males is an unlikely vocation for a 21st-century woman. Most men don’t know they need saving; most women consider the idea absurd. When I tell my women friends that I want to save the males, they look at me as if noticing for the first time that...

Sometimes the answers to our most perplexing questions can be found on the playground. Take Scott McClellan. Is he dishonest? Dishonorable? Disloyal? Is he telling the truth that the Bush administration conducted an organized propaganda campaign in order to lead the country to war? Did McClellan know it all along and, if so, why did he hang so long with those guys? Curious Americans want to know. At the White House, former colleagues wonder what happened to the Scott they thought they knew? What caused that sweet guy to betray his former boss and friends with a tell-all memoir --...

Chivalry is still charming, as Barack Obama proved when he recently warned Tennessee Republicans to leave his wife alone. He was commenting on a GOP Web ad that highlights Michelle Obama's comment, made at a rally in February, that she was proud of America for the first time in her adult life. When asked about the ad Monday during an interview on "Good Morning America," Obama said Republicans were welcome to pick on him and his track record, but not his wife. "If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should...

Anger is a tough emotion to conceal and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's simmered barely beneath the surface during his Monday performance at the National Press Club. Oh, he was funny and entertaining. He's got the gift of gab and knows how to bring an audience to its feet. "Amens" rolled easily off the tongues of his supporters. But make no mistake: Barack Obama's "former pastor," by virtue only of Wright's recent retirement, is a righteously angry man. And he's mad principally at white folks -- descendants of slaveholders, authors of Jim Crow laws and alleged conspirators to genocide. Whites, he...

BARACK OBAMA SEEMED to have survived the blasphemous rants of his preacher and remained relatively untarnished by the perceived dissatisfactions of his privileged wife. But he may be less lucky with remarks he made recently about embittered, small-town Americans, who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Those words now cling to Obama like Styrofoam packing peanuts. The more he tries to brush them away, the more they seem to burrow into the American psyche. Being effete comes naturally to Democrats...

WASHINGTON -- If Iraqis could elect America's next president, chances are good that the next occupant of the Oval Office would be Gen. David Petraeus. Barring that unlikely development, John McCain will do. Or so I hear from an Iraqi journalist with whom I've corresponded the past couple of years, a woman whose family was once courted by Saddam Hussein but who later became a victim of his torturers. Mayada al-Askari, about whom I've written previously, is today a reporter for the Gulf News. Although she lives in Dubai, she visits and writes extensively about Iraq and has regular access...

Yesterday the Florida legislature unanimously passed a resolution that apologized to African-Americans for slavery. While I do not object to that, I must confess that I feel absolutely no more guilt for the practice of slavery by people 150 years ago than I do for their burning of witches in Colonial times. Since I am the product of Italian and British immigrants who settled in New England, it is also very unlikely that any of my actual ancestors ever practiced this abominable custom, anyway. What I am, though, is proud that my ancestors in the United States and in Great...

Barack Obama is the tipping-point man, the meme of the moment, the miracle cure for that chronic American malady: feelin' bad about things. Obama may be "all that," as they say, but let's be clear: Americans are in thrall not with Obama, but with the idea of Obama. His supporters have endowed him with near-mystical powers, not unlike the old Hollywood stereotype of the wise and mystical black person who materializes as a deus ex machina to save the white protagonist. Think Bagger Vance. As one who swooned early over Obama -- the handsome bi-man of unity -- and wrote...

Will women vote for Hillary Clinton only because she's a woman? That question keeps getting bounced around and I've recently revised my answer from "no" to "yes." That is, yes, women will vote for Clinton because she's a woman — if men target her as a woman. Translation: Gentlemen, if you don't want another Clinton in the White House, do not say unkind things about her persona, demeanor, appearance — even if bull's-eye true. Not even in your own kitchen with your own wife. Women have radar for anti-woman sentiments — and all guys have them to some degree. Blame...

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates -- First lady Laura Bush came to the Middle East this week to raise breast cancer awareness, but her mission has been couched in a gracious plea for mutual understanding and world peace. At each stop along her journey, which by week's end will have included the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, Bush has managed a quiet coup of diplomacy. The topic may be breast cancer, but the message is healing in a broader sense. In a world that at times seems impossibly at odds, what could be more unifying than shared...

Kathleen Parker, Washington Post Writers Group Friday, October 5, 2007 Evangelical Christians never had it so good, but they seem not to know it. Instead of supporting the candidate who most shares their values - Mitt Romney - they seem hell-bent for the proverbial cliff. Meeting recently in Salt Lake City, conservative Christian leaders almost unanimously approved a resolution to support a third-party candidate if neither major party nominates someone who is anti-abortion. --snip-- James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, explained in a New York Times op-ed Thursday that Christian leaders believe any presidential candidate has...

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In a stunning move that caught no one by surprise, Fred Thompson announced that ... he's ... running ... for ... president. Time to step up to the plate, he said. And everybody hit their snooze buttons. That Thompson is running for the highest office was a foregone anti-climax after months of testing, consulting, pondering, considering and, most important, letting the other candidates spend their money and exhaust Americans' interest with endless debates in which little new is said or learned. The debates have become so boilerplate, in fact, that Thompson himself became one of the topics at Wednesday's forum...