Posted on 06/10/2010 11:38:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When Sarah Palin, in a rambling lakeside announcement last July in Wasilla, said she was quitting as governor of Alaska because of the abuse she and her family were taking from petty politicians and a feral press, she was written off as dead by the pundits.
"A quitter, can't take the heat," was the Beltway consensus.
Yet, it seems that was no more the end of Sarah than it was the end of Richard Nixon when, after losing to Gov. Pat Brown in California in 1962, he spat at the press: "Just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."
Six years later, Nixon took the oath on the Capitol steps.
And though the media have painted Palin as a ditz, no politician in memory has conducted a more brilliant pre-presidential campaign, if that is what she is about, than the lady who calls herself "the Mama Grizzly."
Consider Tuesday. Palin had gambled big by going into South Carolina to endorse Nikki Haley, a state legislator running last for the GOP nomination for governor -- against the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and a congressman.
Haley instantly vaulted into the lead, taking 49 percent on primary day, and is headed for the governor's mansion -- in a Palmetto State that holds what is often the decisive primary in presidential nomination runs.
Nikki was Sarah's kind of conservative with a populist touch.
But Terry Branstad is not. This ex-governor of Iowa, who served four terms ending in 1998, is a moderate. Yet Palin endorsed him in his comeback bid over a conservative backed by Dr. James Dobson and Mike Huckabee.
After his victory Tuesday, Branstad, too, is headed for the governor's mansion in a state that hosts the first big battle of 2012 -- the Iowa caucuses.
By bringing conservatives to Branstad's camp, Palin can claim some credit for returning him to office, though Mitt Romney backed Branstad earlier and his and Branstad's staffs are said to be wired.
The endorsement of Branstad suggests Palin, a politician of principle, has a pragmatic streak. She acts not only out of instinct but cold calculation. How else to explain the Branstad endorsement over a social conservative than a decision to befriend a future GOP governor in the first battleground state of 2012?
Other interventions this cycle reveal Palin to be far more savvy than the caricature drawn by the left.
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a colleague of Palin's in the GOP Governor's Association, was facing an uphill battle against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who had the backing of Dick Cheney -- Mr. National Security and the most visible national Republican of 2009.
Cheney went to Texas for Hutchison. Palin went in for Perry, who had scrambled to the Tea Party right, even raising the specter of secession. Perry won in a walk. Palin 1, Cheney 0.
Perry will lead the second-largest bloc of delegates to the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla. The largest will come from California, where Carly Fiorina -- another one of Palin's mama grizzlies -- won the GOP Senate nod on Tuesday. Palin had endorsed her over the more conservative Chuck DeVore.
In Kentucky, where the establishment backed Mitch McConnell's handpicked successor to Sen. Jim Bunning, Trey Grayson, and Cheney went in for Grayson, Palin endorsed Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, who has a loyal libertarian following.
With Palin and Tea Party backing, Rand won. The Pauls, too, owe a debt to Sarah. Palin 2, Cheney 0.
In Arizona, Palin, who is closer in her politics to J.D. Hayworth, came to campaign for embattled Sen. John McCain, who chose her as his running mate and made her a star.
McCain's aides have been anonymously trashing Sarah as an airhead who had caused the ticket's defeat. She repaid their disloyalty with unqualified loyalty to McCain, who is unlikely to forget what she did, at some cost to herself.
But it was Sarah's first intervention, in New York's 23rd Congressional District, where she showed a boldness that marks the better politicians.
Liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava was handpicked by the party to face Democrat Bill Owens in the Republican district. Doug Hoffman, endorsed by the Conservative Party, jumped in. Newt Gingrich urged Republicans to stand by the pro-choice, pro-gay-rights Scozzafava.
Palin went rogue and declared for Hoffman, who surged past Scozzafava, who fell to third, bowed out and endorsed Owens, who won by two. That was the first manifestation of Palin Power. Palin 1, Newt 0.
Looking over Palin's endorsements -- McCain over J.D., Fiorina over DeVore, Branstad over Bob Vander Plaats and Rod Roberts -- the lady is not running for Mrs. Conservative. The one explanation that makes the most sense of all the seeming inconsistencies in endorsements is that Mama Grizzly is thinking about moving the Wasilla brood into the big house.
Who knows? I guess it depends on how much money Mitt can shovel into his Swiss bank account. With any luck Senator McCain will be out of office, retired or no longer with us at that point.
Chuck DeVore had no chance to win in California with or without a Palin endorsement and Fiorina would have won regardless.
I agree on DeVore and you're probably right on Fiorina but according to an interesting article in the Daily Beast, of all places, the Fiorina campaign people say her endorsement was big:
How important was Palin’s support? “At least an 8" on a scale of 10, said one Fiorina aide.
Apparently the Fiorina people timed the announcement of Palin's endorsement with a mailer:
The week of May 17, a mailer touring Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina began arriving in approximately 900,000 Republican households. A nightly tracking poll that week showed a 13-point surge in Fiorina’s support on a single evening—the beginning of a surge that hasn’t stopped.Palin's California RescueThat evening, Joe Shumate, a Fiorina consultant, sent a one-word email to colleagues upon seeing the results: “Bingo.”
“I’ve never seen numbers jump like that,” Fiorina campaign manager Marty Wilson, who has been working in California politics for more than a generation, said in an interview Monday.
Brices Crossroads: I ran across this and thought you would be interested, given your posts on Palin's impact.
I think Palin’s positive effect on the base is undeniable so her endorsement in a primary is a definite plus. It’s her effect on everyone else she needs to worry about. She is a rock-star and can do no wrong with most of us, but can she connect with the indies and moderate dems that we need to pull in to win general elections?
I agree with you on the indies and moderate Dems. I believe that she will not run unless she can answer that question affirmatively for herself.
Palin chose to run for governor, and willing took upon herself the obligation to serve the term as governor. She quit to pursue other opportunities. She did not honor the obligation that she, herself, chose to take up.
Sorry, but the way I was raised is that if you say you will do something, you do it. She quit.
But I guess I was raised to honor my obligations, and that makes me an idiot now a days.
The one explanation that makes the most sense of all the seeming inconsistencies in endorsements is that Mama Grizzly is thinking about moving the Wasilla brood into the big house.
Palin is trying to WIN. She picked Fiorina because she is somewhat conservative, but has a MUCH better chance of beating the Dem. The other guy had NO CHANCE to beat the incumbent.
She is not beating the Republican party over the head with a right-wing baseball bat, she is simply like a wrecker hooking a tow-line to a wrecked car and is inexorably dragging it back to the right .
Apparently you don’t know Fiorna at all. Anyone who was anywhere NEAR the Silicon Valley while she was at HP knows that she is a global socialist, she believes transnational corporation executives are the new ‘aristocracy’ and workers are serfs who need the cheap communist style education of the communists, and are to be housed in ‘smart growth’ villages surrounded by ‘open space’ and without personal transportation of any kind.
If that sound like a worker dormitory in communist china to you, you’d be right. She said so herself in a televised conference for one of the global socialist NGOs that she is wont to support.
Sorry, but the way I was raised is that if you say you will do something, you do it. She quit.
~~~~
Balderdash! Any sensible chief executive continually
analyzes the current dynamics of the job and monitors
priorities, especially in this case where her time,
daily life, family, and her duties were increasingly
being so negatively altered by evil whims of outside
forces determined to immobilize her.
And those alterations were occurring to the detriment
of the efficient conduct of her duties to the state and
its citizens. The constant frivolous investigations,
mounting costs and time to hunt down and produce
paperwork to defend against spurious charges, the
continuing increased impingement on the time of state
employees caught in the legal webs, and many other
things we probably don’t know about comprised the
entire BIG picture.
The smart executive looks at the entire BIG picture
when it’s dramatically been altered.
Right decision, right time .. and control returned
where it belonged: to her and her family.
Carly embraces ‘change’ Obama-style
World Congress 2009 began its festivities featuring a powerful presentation from Carly Fiorina, former chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. In keeping with this year’s WC theme, Surfing the Waves of Change, she said, “People that succeed in life are the ones that embrace change and see it as an opportunity.” The favorite quote from the presentation was “Change is like heaven - everyone wants to go there, but no one wants to die.” Following the presentation, Ms. Fiorina joined NCMA President Steve Ayers and World Congress Chair Deidre Lee in cutting the ceremonial ribbon which signaled the official opening of the Exhibit Hall.
Does Carly think she’s going to be elected to “world congress” and not the US Congress? She’s campaigning for global government not Constitutional government. America, she’s every bit as bad for the country as Obama has been.
Thanks, Al. it is an interesting piece.SP has turned a major corner if even the Daily Beast is acknowledging her impact.
Oh no, that would be admirable. Chumplike, but admirable in a dimwitted way, I guess.
No, what makes you an idiot is that you looked at the situation and decided that's what it hinged on.
Most people look at it as recognizing she was fighting a war she could not, by definition, win. Her family would end up millions in debt, the money pi$$ed away on lawyers to defend bogus accusations. The state would suffer because, by law, she was required to respond. That tied up her time and staff time.
How much debt was enough? How much staff and personal time wasted was enough? Tell me, I'd really like to know what you "think."
If you dare.
Even though Sarah is the favorite here at Free Republic, Freepers have been notoriously wrong in their unqualified endorsements in the past.
Juan McNasty will of course play to the cameras and the liberal hosts, and throw her under the bus if he thinks it will make the media like him. Perhaps Sarah's political calculus has come to the conclusion that little Johnny will not be reelected.
That's the $64,000 question. Can she get past the Drive-Bys popular portrayal of her as a drooling idiot and a quitter?
A lot will depend on who the Democrats nominate in 2012. If they jump off the cliff with Obama, she'll stand a better chance as the "real change" candidate. If Soros and the ChiComms tell the Dems to nominate Hillary, the calculus will be altered dramatically; the Rats will probably be able to convince enough voters that socialism really does work - Obama was a "noble" experiment, but a mistake; you need to have the "right" woman in charge.
It's no secret, Pat:
GO SARAH!!
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