Frank Rich thinks Sarah Palin has a real chance to be the Republican nominee:
Revealingly, Sarah Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 nomination have not joined the party establishment in publicly criticizing her. They are afraid of crossing Palin and the 80 percent of the party that admires her. So how do they stop her? Not by feeding their contempt in blind quotes to the press — as a Romney aide did by telling Time’s Mark Halperin she isn’t “a serious human being.” Not by hoping against hope that Murdoch might turn off the media oxygen that feeds both Palin’s viability and News Corporation’s bottom line. Sooner or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up — as Palin might say — and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.
Short of that, there’s little reason to believe now that she cannot dance to the top of the Republican ticket when and if she wants to.
I think that is probably bullshit and agree with this from Gin and Tacos:
We know that Palin is an attention whore. All politicians are. But there are unspoken limits. One must “look presidential”, which is defined as Potter Stewart defined obscenity – no one can explain it but we know it when we see it. This ain’t it. This is the 15th minute of fame for a flavor-of-the-minute singer. It is the last grasp at a paycheck from a washed-up soap opera star. It is KISS on its 10th reunion tour too many. It is Police Academy 6. It is Jerry Rice trying out for the Broncos when everyone on the planet except him could tell he was finished.
When Braceras asks in her column, “Isn’t such low-brow exhibitionism beneath the dignity of a former governor and potential presidential candidate?” she misses the point by a wide margin. Palin is a potential presidential candidate only in her own mind at this point. She and Snooki are equally likely to be living in the White House in the near future. After willingly suspending herself over (and her family) over the dunk tank full of sewage at the reality TV carnival, everyone except Palin herself realizes that her next gig is more likely to involve hawking fishing gear on QVC than delivering State of the Union addresses.
Personally, I’m starting to get tired of the Palins, mostly because as one commenter put it the other day (I can’t remember who), I can’t keep track of which one is calling people faggots on Facebook, which one got pregnant, which one David Letterman made fun of, and which one is on Dancing With The Stars. But when I talk about politics with people in real life, all they want to talk about is Sarah Palin. And when I talk to people who have met her, they tell me I shouldn’t ignore and/or laugh about her, that she really might get elected and essentially end our civilization.
So let me pose this question: is Sarah Palin’s political future an interesting topic of conversation or is it all just mental masturbation? Should everyone STFU about her or should we all start hoarding gold, ammo, and Four Loko for the possible coming apocalypse?
mai naem
I am f@#king sick and tired of Sarah F#$ing Palin. This Snowbilly Snooki Grifter Mama Grizzly Bear or whatever f@#k term one uses for the maroon needs to STFU and go back home and spend time with her special needs kid who I bet is not even getting all the therapy he needs. And, BTW, yes Americans are very capable of voting for this hemorrhoid on American’s ass.
Allan
You left out the domestic terrorist who tampered with the brakes of school buses and the one who was part of a gang of wild teens who trashed someone else’s home to the tune of $30K in damages and may already be pregnant as well (although that’s also the one who likes to call people faggots, so she’s in your list, just not for all the reasons she is famous).
Oh, and my vote is for masturbation. But then masturbation always gets my vote.
Bruce Baugh
On the one hand, all that stuff about Palin not conforming to norms for presidential candidates is quite true.
On the other hand, we have MERS as the most recent demonstration that industrial-scale lawlessness won’t get punished and might well get rewarded, and won’t be fairly discussed in the leading press because it’d be embarrassing to their patrons. And of course we always have the example of press collusion to keep Bush Jr. from looking like the disaster he was and is.
I can’t see any reason that our actually existing press would see a Palin presidency as a problem, or wish to do anything to get in the way of its happening. This horrifies and depresses me.
retz
I predict something even the most die-hard Palinites will find beyond the pale will occur between now and the primaries; either something that will come up about her past (and there’s gold in them hills for the opposition researchers), or she will do something fresh and incredibly stupid.
She is never going to run for president.
The Dangerman
Sarah Palin’s political future is interesting only insomuch as how much money she can sucker from the Rubes and I can see her winning the nomination; she has all but called the President (and Michelle) the N word, therefore, the Right adores her.
There is a better chance of Kate Middleton dumping Prince William for me then there is of Palin being President; one way or another, she’s going to get her spunky little ass kicked in either the Primary or the General, whereupon she has another Palin Pity Party to suck yet more money from the Rubes.
ruemara
I could care less about her. They bore me and are too stupid to be important.
Jim in Chicago
The people who vote in Republican primaries are whacked enough to nominate her. She wouldn’t get 40% in the general election. We should all be rooting for her and working to elect progressives in Democratic primaries.
If she gets the nomination and real progressives win the races we’re bound to win with her as the face of the Republican Party, we might actually get a Congress that DOES something this time (and isn’t afraid to talk about what it did in the next election).
BR
I ignore her and almost every post about her.
One rule in investing that I too seldom have kept to is that when everyone’s bearish, that’s time to buy, and when everyone’s bullish, that’s time to sell.
Almost everyone is bullish on Palin (with regards to the GOP nomination) – a sign that she, like Giuliani, will flame out. The question is whether it’ll happen before or after the primaries really get going. If it’s before, no damage done to the GOP. If it’s after, whoever wins – probably one of the corporate conservatives like Romney – will have a hard time winning over the teatard brigade that loves Palin. And Palin’s a sore loser, so I can’t imagine her going down without making a mess.
MattF
Does the Republican party have a death wish? I doubt it, but we shall see. Note that there are various other ‘Republican death wish’ slates for 2012, e.g., Gingrich/Bachmann.
MikeJ
@Allan: Please just type “fuck” rather than throwing in ampersands which confuse poor widdle WP. Balloon-juice’s readers probably won’t faint. And for the ones who will, fuck ’em.
FYWP.
J
But where can we stock up with Four Loko? Aren’t the Feds taking it away from us?
Get the Gubmint out of my Four Loko and Medicare!
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
I’m maxing out and donating the full limit to Palin.
I love kaos.
BR
@Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter):
I’m not sure that’s a wise investment: she’ll probably spend the money on expensive clothing as she did in 2008, so it won’t achieve the goal you want.
Mark S.
Because Palin is a lot more interesting to talk about than Jim Thune.
The media is dying for her to run, not because they like her but because she sells. They’ll flay her alive when she tries to run a campaign without giving any interviews with non-Fox media and doesn’t participate in any debates.
Oh, and the diva act isn’t going to work very well in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Facebones
I wrote the following on Gawker a few days ago:
Sarah Palin does not want to be president.
She wants to be flown around the country on a private jet, stay in five star hotels, and eat at fancy restaurants. She wants to speak only to adoring fans and not to the pesky media.
In other words, she wants to campaign. This is the experience she had when McCain nominated her for VP, and everything she has done since then has been an effort to maintain that lifestyle.
She has no interest in governing. If she really wanted to be a leader, she wouldn’t have quit as governor. She would have stuck it out and then ran for Don Young’s seat in congress or Mark Begich’s senate seat and establish herself as a credible politician.
As it is, she gets to be on TV, put her name on books she didn’t write, make sweeping statements on Fox News and never have to vote on any tough issues or be held accountable by an electorate, all while making millions.
Who’d want to give that up?
RinaX
I absolutely believe that the type of voters who turn out in a Republican primary would give her the nomination, and the more the mainstream Republicans dump on her the more likely it is. One of the strengths, and yet many times the fatal flaw, of a lot of Democrats is that we think in terms of reason, and continue to believe that if others could just be “shown” the truth then they would get it. Nope. They just see a pretty lady getting picked on, and see us blowing her quotes out of proportion.
pjcamp
Palin could conceivably secure the Republican nomination, but I don’t think she will run. She’s making far too much money with her current gig, which was, after all, the reason she quit being a governor. If you’re elected, you have to actually do things and not get paid well. Right now, she has to do nothing and is paid obscenely well, and I don’t see her giving that up.
But on the off chance that she did, it would make Obama a shoo-in for a second term. As much as she is liked by the GOP base, she is held in contempt by swing voters.
Cathie from Canada
I cannot believe that there are 65 million US voters stupid enough to vote for Sarah Palin.
Then again, George Bush got elected. Twice. Sort-of.
BR
@Facebones:
The thing is, the only option to her now is to run, and the only way to keep the gravy train going is to actually make it look like she’s serious. Her handlers will do the hard work, sure, but her name will appear on some primary ballots. The question is what she does when she has her first Obama in NH moment. Obama rose to the challenge the night he lost NH.
RinaX
@Mark S.:
No they won’t. The media in general has collapsed, and it’s not coming back.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
sadly, I don’t think palin will run. I’m thinking she’ll wait until 2016 which will give her time to learn how to ear with a knife and a fork.
Comrade Luke, Ombudsman
Christine O’Donnell got 40% of the vote.
Sarah Palin can not only get the nomination but get close enough to winning to scare us all to death.
I think the only thing preventing her from pursuing the nomination would be the prospect of a pay cut and getting less attention as president.
The Dangerman
@RinaX:
Must be the same ones buying Bush’s book; on his book tour, he seems to have a segment of the population (a.k.a. dumbshits) that idolize him for reasons I can’t possibly fathom.
BR
@The Dangerman:
My last two trips to Texas have taught me a lot. The first was in 2006, and when driving in via some road in the middle of nowhere in West Texas, I was greeted by a massive sign saying “Texas, proud home of President George W. Bush.” The more recent trip, last year, was to Houston – and when I got out of the airport and was at the curb, I saw more than one car with a curious McCain/Palin sticker – one where the McCain part had been cut off.
RinaX
@The Dangerman:
Well, hey, he’s the type of guy people want to have a beer with, remember? As much as we like to laugh when the press spits out crap like this, there is unfortunately a very real basis in reality for this. They’re the types who just dig into their positions even further when you try to point out the truth to them. They’ve bought what was being sold to them, and pointing out that the milk ain’t clean, so to speak, is an insult to them personally because they see that as you calling their judgment into question, and can’t have that!
Dennis SGMM
Palin is sufficiently full of herself and beyond sufficiently egotistical enough to run. Our media is now supine enough to allow her a FOX-only press run. She’ll blow in any debate (I’d be surprised if she agreed to more than one) but, that will only cement the loyalty of the the idiocracy. Should she become the nominee the GOP will joyfully fall in line behind her. Outside money will flow like water because she’s more stupid than Bush and the corporations will get anything that they want from her for the price of non-job jobs for her family and friends. By the time that she leaves the White House at the end of her second term, several states will have seceded and America’s run as a first-world nation will be over.
Lolis
The more people talking about Palin winning the Republican nomination the less chance she probably has. It’ll be hard to keep the momentum up for two years. It would be a gift to Dems if she did win.
Keep in mind, all of you who mention Bush. Bush had family connections, was really a blue blood elite, and had very saavy political advisers. Bush listened to his advisers. Palin has no shot because she actually believes her populism act and won’t hire anyone decent. Palin has zero chance of beating Obama, I don’t care what the economy is like. Look at how Reid beat Angle by a decent margin even though Reid was despised in Nevada.
ChrisNYC
I don’t think she could win their primary and, even if she could, my bet is she’ll drop out with some nonsense victimy excuse and take the kingmaker spot. Doesn’t that sound like her? She’s way too chaotic and lazy to campaign for, essentially, 2 years. And as kingmaker she can take all sorts of nasty revenge on her “enemies” in the party and make them pay homage to her.
Skippy-san
“Starting to get sick of her”? I’ve been sick of her ever since Bill Kristol started touting her name two + years ago.
The woman may be a total fraud-but it takes a better electorate than we have now to recognize that-and Democrats should not underestimate just how dangerous she really is. Nobody likes a snake either-but they can bite you and most people keep their distance because of that-or shoot them quickly on first sight.
Since none of her obvious lies seem to matter to her deluded followers-and she herself takes pride in dumbing down the tone of discussion, I think she will run and possibly win the nomination.
In which case I will give every second of time I have to volunteering to anyone who opposes her-as well as planning my emigration to Thailand if she wins.
MikeJ
@Lolis:
I’m not convinced. The media will bend over backwards to prove that they don’t think she’s a fucking retard.
Citizen Alan
I think it’s quite possible that Palin could get the Repuke nomination. The party is essentially a delusional cult at this point and whoever spouts Teabagger dogma most convincingly will likely win the nomination. The only thing that would stop her is if she really is such a grifter that she declines to run because it would cut into her money-raking. It’s a tricky needle for her to thread, because if she refuses to run, she’ll lose her base, but if she runs and wins the nomination, she’ll either lose badly or become president and finally face genuine media scrutiny. It’s really hard to make $12 mill a year on the side when you’re President.
In the general, I think it’s unlikely that she could beat Obama, but if the Republicans succeed in keeping the economy in the crapper for two more years and Obama is stupid enough to dismantle Social Security in pursuit of bipartisan kumbayas, I think any Republican with white skin and a mainstream church membership could beat him.
As I’ve said all along, my biggest fear about Palin is that she will make Huckaby seem reasonable. They believe pretty much the same things, but Huckaby is (a) a preacher, and more importantly, a man, so he won’t freak the religious loons, and (b) he doesn’t sound like a gibbering moron. Since 30-40% of the country wants a fascist dictatorship governed by End Times theology, he already starts with a huge advantage over any other candidate.
wasabi gasp
Palin must win the nomination, if only to announce via twitter that McCain failed her VP vetting.
Comrade Luke, Ombudsman
@Dennis SGMM: It’s really surprising to me how many Republican candidates get away with having one debate, or not having any debates at all.
And from what I’ve seen it’s always the Republican candidate. Dave Reichert here in the Seattle area has been renominated TWICE (maybe three times, I can’t remember) even though he’s refused to have even one debate.
And of course the media let’s them get away with it. On the other hand, that governor from Arizona had a debate, make a complete fool of herself, and still won by double digits.
I’m not sure WTF is going on anymore.
BethanyAnne
@BR: Yea, I’m stuck in Houston for the next few years. It’s a *lovely* place; I can’t wait to be missing it. I just bought a car, tho, and I already have ordered a bumper sticker that reads “When Jesus said to love your enemies, he probably meant don’t kill them”. Texas – it’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.
Comrade Luke, Ombudsman
@ChrisNYC:
Great call. Probably the most likely scenario.
BethanyAnne
@Lolis: That’s a good point. Nevada is practically in a depression, and still Reid won. I can hope she never rises above Facebook.
rikyrah
I love your titles…hilarious.
I’ll say it again…a majority of Democrats and Independents and damn near a majority of Republicans believe she’s unqualified to be President.
A majority of women in this country believe she’s unqualified.
when the women numbers change, get back to me.
Women know Palin…they have the knife wounds in their backs from their own Palin…they know her. They’re not voting for her for the highest office in the land.
When her poll numbers with women change, I’ll begin to panic.
Hawes
Any discussion of the 2012 presidential race is mental masturbation at this point.
When you talk about Palin, you just get additional starbursts.
BethanyAnne
@Hawes: My God, it’s full of stars!
Mark S.
When did Miami start wearing the ugliest uniforms in college football? They almost make Oregon look good.
Dennis SGMM
@Citizen Alan:
“…or become president and finally face genuine media scrutiny.”
Would that be the same media scrutiny that was applied to G.W. Bush? Even if the media did miraculously remember what its job is, any scrutinizing would be spun as baseless attacks by the liberal emessem.
Jay in Oregon
Is it just me, or is unleashing Palin on the country the most mavericky thing that McCain ever did or ever will do?
And his payment for that is to be forever overshadowed by her in the minds of those who revere her, and despised by those who don’t.
General Stuck
If Palin gets the GOP nomination, it will be the first American Idol presidential campaign in our history.
And yes, I can see her getting the nomination, if she wants it. She will be able to dodge the press and the pesky questions they ask, and flit from one stump speech to the next. And stir the fading passions of glory for white people in this country. In most of them, especially the dimmer bulbs, there is I think a largely unconscience realization, that they are on a one way track to a minority, against the natural tides of a melting pot society.
It makes them crazier than usual, and desperate, and not willing to think through a Palin candidacy of this woman actually becoming leader of the free world. It is pure tribal passion at the perceived 11th hour. She is willing to tell them what they need to hear, some of it outright notions of white supremacy, but most in barely hidden code talk. She is a very dangerous person in this regard, for this country, and the world. And it’s sort of like getting indicted, even though you are innocent, and though your attorney raises reasonable doubt, a trial demands a verdict, and anything can happen when there is only two choices.
But I don’t think she would win a GE, it is just too hard of work for a quitter from Wasilla. And I do think the old guard republicans are likely as scared as we are at the prospect of a President Palin.
Jay in Oregon
@wasabi gasp:
That’s beautiful, man. *wipes tear*
EDIT: Oh FFS, WordPress! God forbid that someone might want to use an asterisk as an actual character!
Yutsano
@Mark S.: That’s not a uniform. That’s a moving traffic cone.
@Comrade Luke, Ombudsman: Sort of. The real test of will she or won’t she is in the behind the scenes backers that either encourage her or some other face to run. Whoever feels they can make the most cash off a Palin presidency, that’s who will ultimately be the arbiters of her running. I still think she could go independent just cuz and Obama cakewalks back into a second term. I kinda like that scenario too.
BTW love the nym alteration. :) Can I direct all my blog bitches to you now?
ChrisNYC
@pjcamp: The thing about her quitting is — she did that same thing before she became governor. She quit that oil and gas (or whatever) commission, with all this big to do about how it was horrible and too unethical for her (hahahaha), got loads of media and then rolled that into her “exploring a run for governor” time. I think it’s her tried-and-true strategy. Granted, quitting gov is different BUT she avoided having to deal with running for Prez as an unpopular governor.
Mnemosyne
@Lolis:
Not only that, but he had experience at running for president — he helped with both of his father’s campaigns.
W had a hell of a lot of flaws, but he knew how to run a campaign and he was a great dirty trickster. It’s probably his only real skill.
Palin is the Fred Thompson of 2012 — she’ll make an announcement, do a few campaign stops, and then drop out. Because she is just too fucking lazy to do the work it takes to become president.
Dennis SGMM
The recent return of the House to the Republicans after they knocked up the dog, scattered trash all over the yard, shat on the carpet and wiped their asses on the drapes suggests to me that the electorate is no longer rational. Palin can win now, and with the Democrats defending 23 Senate seats in ’12 she’ll probably have a Republican Congress as well.
Comrade Luke
@Yutsano: No, you may not :)
Lolis
Also consider how fired up the left will be if she wins the nomination. The only ways I think Republicans have a chance to win is if they choose someone mild mannered, who can hide the crazy. If Dems are still demoralized and the economy is worse than now maybe a Republican could win.
cleter
Look, the GOP nominee is always* a prior vp candidate and /or somebody who ran before and did ok. That makes the short-list Palin, Huckabee, Romney. The analagous 2008 candidate isn’t upstart Guliani, it’s John McCain, the guy with name recognition, prior running experience, and who was pretty much assumed to be the likely nominee way before the primaries even started. I think she’ll run, and I think she’ll get nominated. I think she wants to be President. She doesn’t want to actually govern, but she wants to be President. Ride on Airforce One. Settle scores. Have everybody stand when she enters a room. That sort of thing.
*always, unless your dad was president
Judas Escargot
@ChrisNYC:
my bet is she’ll drop out with some nonsense victimy excuse and take the kingmaker spot.
Isn’t this basically what Perot did in 1992?
(Well, kinda.)
Davis X. Machina
Two years out, Palin’s got 100% name recognition — but 50%-plus unfavorables. Before the first primary. Before the first negative ad.
Where’s the upside potential? Where are the persuadables? The convertables?
She peaks the week she announces. She’s gone the day after Super Tuesday.
Ana Gama
Can she win the nomination? Yes.
The Presidency? No.
In a GE, I think she would have a hard time carrying Alaska.
ChrisNYC
@rikyrah: I’m with you. Even on Redstate, they are all — posters and commenters alike — pretty much on board with, “She’d be great on her own tv show and a hell of a fundraiser but not really ‘right’ for Pres.”
They got badly embarrassed by O’Donnell and Angle — and, among media people, by that Keystone Kops McCain campaign. They seem to want a new non-dufus/non-whack job candidate. Thune is the only one that I’ve seen that even comes close to fitting that bill. But Thune will prob think that he’s got a better 2016 shot. I wouldn’t put it past DeMint getting in — he’s apparently hated by his Senate colleagues so if he’s got ambitions, he’s gonna have to find a new arena.
Rommie
Remember how difficult it was for Rush and his wanna-be’s to choke down McCain as the 2008 nominee and carry water for him? If Palin gets enough support to have a real shot at the nomination, Limbaugh will either have an on-air stroke, or offer up support so twisted in logic that it’ll extend into the fourth dimension.
Comrade Luke
The other thing that worries me about Palin is the Harriet Miers scenario, where Palin’s existence in the race result in what would normally be considered a maniac getting the nomination and actually winning.
ChrisNYC
@Judas Escargot: Well, Perot stayed in in 1992. I think he got like 20% of the pop vote.
I’m thinking more like Edwards in 2008. ‘Member how Obama had to drag ass down to SC, get yammered at by John and Elizabeth for hours and then wait on tenter hooks for the endorsement that never came? Sarah would love that shit.
El Cid
On the one hand, on the right you have this:
But… but… BILL AYERS!
However, on the other hand, you have MSNBC and Code Pink and those rude people who don’t think we need to cut Social Security expenditures because of talk about ‘the deficit’, so there really are two extremes which just need to calm down.
Triassic Sands
Palin is physically attractive.
Palin is not especially bright.
Palin has no fundamental understanding of issues, but is willing and able to utter simplistic sound bites designed to appeal to people’s prejudices and ignorance.
Palin is willing to lie shamelessly for trivial and important ends.
Palin is willing to pander, again shamelessly.
Palin is a Republican.
Therefore, Palin has a real chance of being a presidential nominee.
(Description of the qualities of the Republican Party and the American people simply reinforce this possibility. Add to these an analysis of our MSM and the stars seem pretty well aligned.)
Outside of Wonderland, we would expect that being a lying moron would disqualify someone from a nomination for high office (like the presidency or supreme court). But we aren’t outside of Wonderland.
I suspect the biggest thing working against Palin’s nomination are some very serious character flaws — she’s prone to whining endlessly about being a victim, the absence of the kind of work ethic needed, etc. Being a thin-skinned, lazy, diva could work against her.
Dennis SGMM
@Ana Gama:
She can limit her press exposure to friendly venues. There are any number of firms that can produce commercials that will make her appear to be the Sage of the Tundra. Finally, thanks to the SCOTUS, the Republican nominee will have a shit-ton of corporate money behind them.
electricgrendel
I honestly don’t know if her political future is something to consider, or if it is mental masturbation. I would like to say the latter, but who living in the first decade of the 20th century can say that the merger of politics, infotainment and information technologies (and their vast power to send a lie around the world ten times before the truth even remembers it needs to find its boots) doesn’t open the door for truly horrible things? And while I don’t know if Palin has a future in politics, I know that if she happens to then it will be a truly horrible thing.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
everyone has to change their registration so we can influence nomination.
BR
@ChrisNYC:
Yeah, Palin losing the nomination could be way worse for the GOP than her winning it.
If she even makes a half-hearted attempt, Romney will have to attack her, and she’ll go defensive. If she loses, there’ll be bad blood between her camp and Romney’s, of a sort far worse than with Clinton-Obama since Palin’s supporters aren’t really logical types…
Triassic Sands
PS Getting elected is another thing altogether.
Violet
@rikyrah:
Women in general hate her. But evangelical Christian women love her. LOVE her. And conservative white men love her. Right there, that’s the Republican base. So she can win the nomination.
Can she win the general? Who knows. If the economy sucks, maybe.
Will she run? Probably. She’s lazy, but she also covets the trappings that come with power and the ability to do what she wants to people. She has zero interest in governing, just like she has zero interest in doing any kind of work. But she loves titles and the perks that come with them. I think she’ll have a hard time resisting their siren call.
She scares he hell out of me. She’s everything that is wrong with politics. Which is why she can win.
M. Bouffant
It is worth paying attention, if only because S.P. may be the fault-line the GOP fractures along.
The 2012 campaign is officially underway; two wks. after the election we’re already hearing from Babs Bush & others about how Sarah is just wonderful, just not for Prez.
After another yr. or so of hearing “Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah,” from the country club, pro-business, “fiscal conservative” elite establishment, the social cons/religious right may take their marbles & go home. Whether they don’t vote at all, write Palin in, or go for a third party, it’s all good to me.
Dennis SGMM
@M. Bouffant:
The GOP would fall in line behind a ham sandwich if it was their nominee.
Edit: I wouldn’t discount the PUMA vote either. There are still plenty of them out there. Enough, perhaps, to give the election to Palin if the economy is still in the dumper.
ChrisNYC
@BR: Yeah, I agree. There’s also a weird jihad between her people and Huckabee people. It was all the rage during the midterms on Redstate, et al. How Huckabee staffers were supposedly moles in Joe Miller’s campaign and were the people who were sending signals that Miller was pushing Palin away — of course JUST to hurt Sarah! Best I could tell, they thought Huckabee was a johnny-come-lately to the Tea Party and was trying to steal SP’s “base” for 2012. But he really has noooo shot at all.
Ana Gama
@Dennis SGMM:
Yeah, all that gets her is an energized base, but no indies and no Dems. It’s not enough.
And as bad as the SCOTUS decision was, unlimited dollars didn’t help Whitman, Fiorina, or Angle.
Dennis SGMM
@Ana Gama:
I disagree about the unlimited dollar aspect. This was the first election held under the new rules and the corps learned from it. They’ll be much more effective next time and even more effective the time after that. The Republicans’ energized base was enough to take back the House. Unless there’s a dramatic turnaround in the economy an energized base might be sufficient to carry the day.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Yes.
Comrade Luke
@Dennis SGMM:
And no one should forget that even if the “establishment” hates her, if she gets the nomination everyone will fall in lockstep and David Brooks will be talking about how great she is.
They play to win, period.
General Stuck
OT
This should be interesting
low-tech cyclist
Put me in the “Palin can’t get elected, but she could certainly win the GOP nomination” camp.
The real question is, who’s going to stop her? Romney? Huckabee? Thune? Pawlenty? Gingrich?
This group is to primary fields what the 1962 Mets were to major-league baseball teams. If there were a way for nobody to win the 2012 GOP nomination, you’d have to put your money on nobody winning it.
And that’s why Palin can win the nomination: there’s really nobody running that has much more credibility than she does, and nobody with half the following, either.
morzer
The old money wing of the GOP have made their preference clear. They’ll use Palin as the attack dog, let her bloody Obama and damage herself, and then make sure someone else gets the nomination. If Huntsman hadn’t gone to Beijing, maybe he might have had a shot. My guess would be Mitch Daniels, or some other governor with a half decent record. I’d guess Daniels, because he has a good strategic position in Indiana, hasn’t made a total fool of himself, and has done the things the GOP base loves.
cleter
The GOP ticket is usually a) some establishment hack + b)somebody with right-wing cred. If the person at the top is a establishment hack like Bob Dole, you get a supply-side true-believer like Jack Kemp as his running mate. If the person at the top is a righty, like Reagan, you get a hack like Bush as vp. In 2012, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Palin/Barbour, or Romney with right-wing pretty boy Marco Rubio. I’m more scared of Romney/Rubio.
Allan
@Dennis SGMM:
Thanks for that. I haven’t laughed that hard all week.
Dennis SGMM
@Comrade Luke:
Exactly. Should she win the nomination the unanimous voices of the right will suddenly discover her hidden virtues. Newt Gingrich and John McCain will be on every bobblehead show there is explaining how it’s time for a simple woman of the people to bring some common sense to the White House.
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.
MikeJ
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1968/laughter
Remember who won in ’68.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Speaking as a resident of a state that just elected a crooked-or-epic-stupid bizillionaire for Guv, (Rick Scott-(tm) plus assorted WeeklyWorldNews- level crackpots to Congress (hey, lookem up– I’m already tired of ’em), I’d just like to say that while Sarah P. may be a joke to most BJ’ers, be aware that a disturbingly large part of the electorate isn’t in on that joke.
Doug (and friends), please consider the possibility that the belch of blind, inchoate anger and ignorance that is the Tea Party will still be a factor in 2011. By all means, think of Christine O’D. and Sharron Angle, but don’t forget all the lower-profile wackos that actually won their races. Also, too: think about how close Angle actually got to winning a Senate seat. I don’t think it’s a good idea to rest too much faith in the good sense of the Electorate.
Just like with Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Joe Miller, the Republign establishment will hold their noses and back Sarah all the way.
I hope to Gawd that the majority of voters (like the majority of Balloonistas) realize how truly awful Palin is, but the reality is that money and production values will trump any facts that might leak out.
Which the lamestream media will then apologize for revealing.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Speaking as a resident of a state that just elected a crooked-or-epic-stupid bizillionaire for Guv, (Rick Scott-(tm) plus assorted WeeklyWorldNews- level crackpots to Congress (hey, lookem up– I’m already tired of ’em), I’d just like to say that while Sarah P. may be a joke to most BJ’ers, be aware that a disturbingly large part of the electorate isn’t in on that joke.
Doug (and friends), please consider the possibility that the belch of blind, inchoate anger and ignorance that is the Tea Party will still be a factor in 2011. By all means, think of Christine O’D. and Sharron Angle, but don’t forget all the lower-profile wackos that actually won their races. Also, too: think about how close Angle actually got to winning a Senate seat. I don’t think it’s a good idea to rest too much faith in the good sense of the Electorate.
Just like with Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Joe Miller, the Republign establishment will hold their noses and back Sarah all the way.
I hope to Gawd that the majority of voters (like the majority of Balloonistas) realize how truly awful Palin is, but the reality is that money and production values will trump any facts that might leak out.
Which the lamestream media will then apologize for revealing.
curious
anyone else wondering why her interview with robert draper was over the phone? i mean, isn’t she at fox’s studio in nyc enough to meet with him in person (assuming that’s his base)? and he would presumably have traveled to meet her elsewhere. i thought it was odd, like she was trying to put the ny times in its place or terrified to get caught live without access to google/her advisers. baby steps, i guess.
Dennis SGMM
@MikeJ:
That would be the guy who lost the race for California governor in ’62 – right?
Bernard
Just hope Huckabee doesn’t get involved. Or Haley Barbour, or anybody from the South. or Texas. Crazy is another word for these politicians, snake charmers, all. their gift of gab is what would make Sarah Palin really dangerous. Sarah just can’t talk as well as Huckabee or Barbour
Huckabee’s just as crazy as Palin, but much smarter in how he sells his words. the language of how to say nothing is just second nature to these grifters. some are better at it than others. And, mostly hope Texas secedes.
Elizabelle
Palin’s overexposed and underqualified.
I wish I could get a restraining order so that I did not have to hear so much about her.
She will not wear well. Maybe this is peak wingnut.
And Frank Rich should take a long vacation. Hike or whatever, but no internet or cable.
General Stuck
Interesting article up on Wapo on how stark the divide between minorities mostly living in urban areas, especially along the coasts, and less educated whites (morans) in the midwest and south.
robertdsc-PowerBook & 27 titles
@General Stuck:
Good, though as always my preference is for every cut to expire without extension.
I think she can win both the nom and the Presidency for one simple reason: she runs a noise machine that can turn people off to the truth. Case in point: Obama saved the state of Michigan with the auto bailout and what happened? The GOP rolled the state over in the last election.
Brachiator
Some people seem obsessed with wanting to be able to predict exactly what Palin might do in 2012 or 2016. Others are equally obsessed with finding ways to dismiss her, as though being an attention whore and intellectually lazy is incompatible with having a ruthless political ambition.
If Palin were male, I don’t think that people would so easily underestimate her.
Palin continues to be a political force because Rupert Murdoch and others want her to be a player in Republican politics. And because she wants it as well. She pushes the party further to the right; she does not set any political agenda, but she does set the tone, one of belligerent conservative anti intellectualism. In this, she is neither naive nor simply being manipulated.
ChrisNYC
Speaking of ads, did people see this new “Daisy” ad pushing for START?
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/new-daisy-ad-warns-against-delay-in-arms-treaty/
Doesn’t come close to LBJ’s yelling, “THESE are the STAKES!” though.
Balz di Pena
Clean-up crew to John McCain’s boxers for a wet spill. Clean-up crew to John McCain’s boxers.
The Dangerman
@Bernard:
Barbour will run. Could win nomination, too.
Huckabee is DOA; he pardoned a cop killer (more correctly, a 4 cop killer). That toast is well beyond burnt.
Little Boots
I may be fooling myself, but the Palins have passed their sell by date, by a long shot. America is bored already, and Sarah will never be President. Stay on Fox News, bitch. In fact, become a scientologist. They might give a damn in two years.
ChrisNYC
@curious: I think she actually does most of her Fox stuff from the studio they set up in her house.
Comrade Luke
The other thing to keep in mind is that no matter who gets the Republican nomination, you can be sure the media does its damndest to make it a close race.
It’s in their best interest.
Yutsano
@The Dangerman:
I can see Barbour running. Winning the nomination is another matter. He’ll have a pretty difficult time with the Mormon Wall in the West, plus he’s an old Trent Lott money establishment type. He also took in a ton of federal money after Katrina with little noise about state’s rights and such, and pretty much the same deal after the BP blow-up. He’ll lose, but no one big thing will kill him, more like death of a thousand cuts. Plus he has almost zip name recognition, so Obama would roll him in the general.
Comrade Luke
@ChrisNYC: Probably. I heard an interview with Buster Olney of ESPN, and he has a similar setup. Apparently all they need is a green screen and a decent A/V setup.
Most of the time he’s being interviewed he’s wearing a suit up top and jeans/shorts/sweats down below :)
curious
@El Cid: wow. try to imagine having not seen this story on fox daily for the past two years had they been new black panthers and the president, a republican.
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
@Yutsano: It’s more like Barbour will waddle.
that fucker is soooo fat he’s gonna keel over.
mclaren
No one has ever looked less presidential than Ronald Reagan…with the possible exception of two-time president Richard Nixon.
Reagan always used to crack me up when he gave a speech because I had to stifle a giggle and push down the expectation that he was going to start by announcing “You just can’t beat the G-men, Legsy.”
Richard Nixon looked like a cheap hood caught in a lineup and looking for a place to stash the shiv in his pocket he’d used to knife an old granny for her purse money. Yet he got elected twice.
So this crap of having to “look presidential” is nonsense. If looking and sounding “presidential” was what mattered, Mitt Romney would’ve blown McCain away and he’d be in the White House today. If looking and sounding presidential was what counted, Dewey would’ve whipped Truman’s ass.
People slither into the White House depending on the unique specific circumstances surrounding an election. A person judged unelectable (example: Jimmy Carter) one year out can suddenly sweep into office because of changed circumstances, and someone considered a shoo-in (for example: Hillary) can watch their prospects disintegrate within a very short timespan.
The key is the economy. A presidential election is essentially a referendum on the economy, and we don’t know yet what’s going to happen to the economy by late 2012.
We have a few indicators, but they’re peculiar and mixed. States revenues are up but only because of substantial tax hikes. Next year looks worse than 2009 for state tax revenues. Median unemployment still remains far above historical norms but has come down somewhat what the peak of 26 weeks to about 22 weeks — but the historical norm is around 6 weeks. Housing prices are not continuing to plunge, but they’re not rising either to any meaningful extent. The affordability of housing remains shockingly poor in big cities and the ratio of minimum wage income to rent in big cities remains at an all-time low. In fact, no one who makes minimum wage can afford to rent an apartment in any big city in America, which is something new.
Most troubling: these two graphs.
Job growth in America by decade, 1940s to 2000s.
Anomalous capacity shrinkage.
Job growth has steadily declined in America from 1946 to 2010. Now, after this most recent recession, instead of bouncing back, it’s gone negative. Manufacturing has collapsed in America and during the last two recessions (2001 and 2008) emploiyers have taken the opportunity to permanently eliminate millions of jobs. These jobs aren’t coming back. Right now, it looks as though American businesses are shipping jobs overseas as fast as they can, and the pay and skills of those jobs keeps rising. Now the outsourcing is starting to hit high-skill high-wage jobs, and it’s destroying the middle class in America and eroding our tax base. Without a tax base, we can’t afford to pay for the society we’ve got. No more giant military, no more health care, no more decent housing, and eventually no more indoor plumbing or paved roads or street lighting or functioning sewage systems or municipal water systems.
At present, American cities and towns and states are selling off their public highways and parking meters and airports and municipal water systems to overseas sovereign wealth funds as fast as they can, just to meet next year’s budget shortfall. What happens if this continues into late 2012 remains anybody’s guess.
Unemployment isn’t going down significantly. In fact, the federal stimulus funds are due to run out soon, and when they do, unemployment may go back up. If unemployment creeps back up to 11% or 12% by late 2012 and American cities keep selling off basic assets like their dams and the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which was up for sale to a mideast consortium until the state legislature vetoed it), there’s going to be real rage and genuine panic in this country.
The last time this kind of economic chaos and destruction came down, the swamp creatures crawled out of the ooze and wound up in control of Germany and Japan and Italy. Oswald Mosely nearly won an election in Great Britain.
If the destruction of the middle class in America continues courtesy of ever-increasing offshoring and if the fire sale of our basic assets like our dams and highways and airports keeps up, don’t count Sarah Palin out. 2012 may be the year of the swamp creature again.
Ana Gama
@Dennis SGMM:
They didn’t all do that when she was the VP candidate. Matter of fact, there were several defections from the GOP establishment from McCain because of Palin. I don’t see those people changing their minds if she is the top of the ticket, but instead, bringing more of the establishment with them.
As someone else mentioned, Palin loses the women’s vote, and that is a big important loss. And there is a projected 1.5 million new eligible (mostly young) Hispanic voters by 2012. She needs a big increase over what McCain got of that demographic, too, but I don’t see her making any strides there, either.
jcricket
@Elizabelle:
Peak wingnut is a limit function – you can only approach it, never reach it.
Anyhoo – she’s only running like Gingrich is running. Helps get her attention, speaking gigs, media play, etc. I bet she keeps the speculation open well into campaign season 2012, but never announces – some BS about how the country is better served by her grifting money out of social conservatives but not in elected office.
I truly feared her for the first week or so – but watching those CNN (?) insta-polls during the debates showing that even without all we know now, people really hate her, made me fear a lot less.
Let’s put it another way. We would have lost seats and probably the House this 2010 election no matter what. But easily 1/2 the losses were due to the changed electorate, from excited conservatives and depressed turnout from liberals/left-leaning independents.
But if Sarah Palin is the nominee – she’ll re-engage people on the left like 2006/2008 no problem. I’d fully expect her to get O’Donnell like numbers, but 40% ain’t enough, and the negative down-ticket impact for the GOP will be significant.
ChrisNYC
@Comrade Luke: The weird thing to me in the Draper piece was how he said that she’s got no one in her ‘inner circle’ that she’s known more than 2 years. I mean, governor of a state and she doesn’t have consigliere types other than newbies and her husband? That’s weird.
Little Boots
there are no virtues to discover. dumb, mean, and ridiculous are not virtues. bitch is doomed. sorry.
Elizabelle
@Little Boots:
your comment: “I may be fooling myself, but the Palins have passed their sell by date, by a long shot. America is bored already…”
I agree.
If you scan the reader comments appended to Draper’s NYT magazine profile by phone, you will see pages of readers begging the NYT and other media to cut off the oxygen to celebrity Palin.
The Times needs to take the advice.
The lamestream media has helped create this monster.
It’s ridiculous to cover her tweets and putdowns fullbore.
They’re elevating her and simultaneously destroying their own credibility, such as it is.
Redshift
@cleter:
Sounds disturbingly like W…
Mike Kay (Hippie Hunter)
@morzer:
ya gotta stop saying that. Daniels is arabic. Romney/Newt/Palin will never allow an arab to win the repug nomination. Once it become well known that he’s arab, he’s toast.
Plus daniels is a midget. If will be funny as hell, when Daniels has trouble seeing over the podium during debates.
Xenos
@General Stuck: I think you miss the most likely wrinkle – Palin will win the nomination, and a couple weeks after the convention, once her people have completely embarrassed themselves at the convention and put her presidential campaign completely in the crapper in record speed, she will quit.
She will trump up some lame excuse explaining why she can’t take part in a campaign that is doomed because the MSM has rigged it against her. Or that her little baby sociopaths are being victimized, or whatever. Just so long as she does not have to be president, because even this grifter knows she can’t handle the job. It would not even be necessary, because her fame and martyrdom would be assured by whatever spin she puts on her flameout.
Little Boots
And I shouldn’t say “bitch.”
That’s obnoxious. But everything else is true. She has no business even running.
Elizabelle
@jcricket:
I so hope you are right.
Although you are reasonable.
What we all fear here is unreason.
Bmaccnm
@El Cid:
I’d like to say I’m amazed that this story isn’t getting more national play. Why not?
Dennis SGMM
There will be no shortage of GOPers with presidential ambitions. Others have already pointed out that it isn’t necessary, for Republicans anyway, to be attractive, presidential, intelligent, decent, or even to speak fluent English. By Republican standards, any one of the crop of hopefuls could be a viable candidate. Once nominated, the party, its mouthpieces and its backers will make that person a viable candidate. And if close to 20% of the electorate is still unemployed or underemployed then the only candidate whose viability will be questionable is Barack Obama. It won’t matter who’s actually to blame, it won’t matter that he’s likely to be stymied by Congress: people who are shit scared and facing a bleak future aren’t going to be thinking clearly and they’ll definitely want to punish someone.
Little Boots
the question is whether anything can happen in the next two years. probably not, but I hope they are tapping into ever Clintonista, including the Clinton in the cabinet, before they give up on this. there is precedent for dealing with a Republican Congress, after all.
tkogrumpy
Well the apocalypse is coming with or without Sarah the grifter, so ya, canned food, ammo, the whole nine yards.
MikeJ
@Bmaccnm: IOKIYAR
Little Boots
And a fight is what we want, and what Obama wants, if only he would get his fucking act together and realize it.
Dennis SGMM
@tkogrumpy:
That’s way too much trouble. I’m counting on a Louisville Slugger and my collection of recipes for poodle.
mclaren
@Little Boots:
“Dumb, mean, and ridiculous” perfectly describes a pair of two-term Republican presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, who both won by landslides.
Little Boots
We need a plan. And now that I think about it, I don’t have the slightest idea what that plan would be.
Cause we just can’t say no. We actually give a damn about the unemployed, and the poors, and the Afghans, and the olds, and I don’t really know where I’m going with this.
But we need a plan.
Mike G
Repigs bring on the bigotry — plan to end birthright citizenship:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/house-republicans-aim-birthright-citizenship/
First it will be illegal immigrants’ kids, how long before you think they’ll go after the babies of legal resident aliens?
Little Boots
@mclaren:
ridiculous actually doesn’t describe Reagan or Nixon. But Palin, yeah, hopeless, I’m convinced.
freelancer
@Little Boots:
Uhm, I don’t give a damn about Afghans. I mean there’s a difference between not wanting to drop our bombs on them anymore and not giving a damn. If we gave a damn, we’d be there forever. It’s not worth it.
JenJen
@Redshift: I can see this angle, too, and agree with cleter. If you’d asked me a year ago if I thought she’d ever run, I would’ve guffawed. I probably did right here on this blog. But now, I’m not so sure.
Thing is, I don’t believe the pundits who buy the 80% approval hype and the power of her alleged rock-star celebrity status. If the 2012 nomination is worth having, and by that, I mean, Obama is beatable, then Palin will be destroyed by the likes of Karl Rove on behalf of the person the Establishment GOP anoints as the most viable candidate against Obama. All it’s going to take is an organized smear campaign that nobody does better than the old Atwater School boys, coupled with some phony intellectual digs from jackasses like Noonan and Mark McKinnon to get the chattering tongues off the Palin Train. She’s never really faced scrutiny; she was forced upon the American people with only 8 weeks to spare in 2008 Election, and since then, has avoided the political microscope because she’s not running for anything. I think she and her enablers might be caught in the bubble and they’re believing their own bullshit, but that can, and will, turn on a dime when the time is right.
Unless she can be molded, contained and controlled (she can’t), there is just no f’n way in hell the GOP will let Sarah Palin from Wasilla, Alaska stand between them and power. No way. Not buyin’ it.
Little Boots
@freelancer:
Yeah, the Afghans is probably the least of it. You’re right.
curious
@Little Boots: two candidates. two blackboards. two pieces of chalk. two copies of fy2011. two hours to balance the federal budget within a decade. a cnn focus group with heart monitors. at-home scorecards to see if your favorite programs get cut. an electorate on the edge of their seats….
Little Boots
@curious:
that would be very, very interesting. Yeah, that might actually make people notice.
mclaren
@Ana Gama:
Actually, they did just fine until the global economy suddenly melted down two months before election day in 2008. Everyone here seems to have forgotten that McCain-Palin were neck and neck with Obama until the entire economy disintegrated, at which point, reality started to dawn on people.
Right now the pundits and most of the foolish commenters on this forum think that “this is just another recession” and “as soon as the economy bounces back and job creation picks up again, everything will be fine.” The evidence points to the conclusion that this is not just another recession. All the data shows that the economy is not bouncing back, and we might get a double dip. Job creation is not picking up and net job growth for the previous decade is now negative. These are structural problems. They’re baked into our economic system. Obama can’t fix ’em between now and November 2012. At the current rate of job creation, it will take…forever to get unemployment back to what it was in 2005. Literally: forever. Job growth is not high enough right now to cover the jobs that are going away, let alone produce net employment gains for the U.S. economy.
When millions of people lose their homes and their jobs and their cars and their bank accounts and drop into the underclass, they panic. And panicky people do crazy things.
Bill Clinton didn’t poll well until the economy collapsed in early 1992. Citing faux stats like “Palin doesn’t poll well among women” belongs to the same category of fantasy as “Rudy Giuliani polls better than any other Republican candidate” in late 2006.
We’re as far away from election day now as Giuliaii and HIllary were in 2006 when they both sat at the top of the polls and the pundits declared it a done deal, a foregone conclusion, a lock that Hillary would face off against Giuliani in the fall in 2008.
If we get a double-dip recession all bets are off. Anything can happen. We don’t know if that will happen yet. It’s too early to say anything about Palin’s chances in the fall of 2008.
Little Boots
I still think we operate at a bit of a disadvantage. The right truly does not care if anyone gets anything from this government. The rich are happy, always. It’s everyone else that Democrats care about. That is our disadvantage.
FlipYrWhig
Palin will win some primaries, then drop out saying she has to make Trig’s health her family’s chief priority, for which she’ll be sainted forever by the megachurch evangelical set. It’ll be like the way Celtics fans used to talk about Len Bias, or Red Sox fans about Tony Conigliaro: something special, if only.
Eventually she’ll probably put out a Christmas album.
Dennis SGMM
@Mike G:
Ya’ know, with almost any other SCOTUS I would say that the effort to make an end run around the 14th amendment was doomed to failure on constitutional grounds. Lamentably, I’m afraid that these people have a shot.
Little Boots
And I haven’t mentioned it, but since I’m me, I must:
Do all the regular posters hate each other here? I MUST KNOW, okay.
Dennis SGMM
@Little Boots:
It isn’t so much hate as the fact that every one of us knows that we’re the smartest person in the room.
Little Boots
@Dennis SGMM:
I noticed that.
mclaren
@Little Boots:
The single word that sums up Ronald Reagan’s entire existence is “ridiculous.”
People seem to forget the insane crap that came out of Reagan’s mouth. “Forest fires have created more pollution than all the smokestacks in America.” “The Russian language has no word for`freedom.'” “People talk about a choice between left and right, but I say we face a choice between up and down. Up towards freedom, or down to the anthill of totalitarianism” (speaking about the passage of Medicare in 1965! The “anthill of totalitarianism”! Medicare!) “Facts are stupid things.”
In fact…can you think of a single phrase that better sums up Sarah Palin’s entire modus operandi than “Facts are stupid things”?
And the American people loved it when Ronald Reagan said that. They rose to their feet and cheered themselves hoarse. They applauded until their hands were raw.
“Ridiculous” doesn’t begin to cover the grotesque absurdity and stupidity of Ronald Reagan — the single most popular president of the modern era.
Little Boots
Can I be Ombudsman of the commentariat? Or is that taken?
mclaren
@Little Boots:
I don’t hate anyone. Speaking only for myself, of course.
jl
@Little Boots: You are one insane dude for that thought to even cross your obviously addled brain.
Edit: said without hate or rancor, or even with any conscious intent to imply, suggest or insinuate that I am smarter, better, gooder looking, than you. Said with sincere concern for your state of mind for expressing an intent to do yourself great harm.
Little Boots
@mclaren:
yes, Reagan sucked, in so many ways. But he had been governor of California, twice, and very nearly won a primary against a sitting President. Palin has done, what? Been a ridiculous clown? Really, she has absolutely no reason to be running at all.
CaseyL
Palin will get the GOP nomination if she really wants it.
I think people forget the effect she had on the McCain campaign: she brought it back from the dead. Remember his pre-Palin campaign appearances? The green screen background? The fact that the McCain campaign practically had to stage the appearances at old age homes, and they *still* couldn’t fill the room?
Palin acquired a red-hot fan base more quickly than any other politician I can remember, and she did it from a standing start; i.e., hardly anyone had ever heard of her before.
And that was before the Tea Party proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that 40% of the American electorate is insane, stupid, and filled with seething hatred for everything the USA stands for.
Remember the first few months after Election Night 2008, when we all wondered if the GOP would become a rump party, with a few seats in the South and nothing else? Remember when we thought the GOP would just up and die, and good riddance?
It came back. Big time. And Sarah Palin’s legions of fans are the reason why.
The nomination is hers if she wants it. The only question is whether she wants it, or just wants to tease people long enough to milk a few more millions of dollars out of them.
Personally? I think she’ll go for it.
Anyone who thinks she won’t be able to keep raking in the bucks as the nominee – or as the President – has not been paying attention to what politics has become, or how completely solipsistic the GOP has become. No laws apply to them. They just ignore what’s legal, never mind ethical, and do what they want to do. And they pay no penalty at all for it.
Sarah Palin will be the GOP nominee in 2012.
She could very well win, too.
Little Boots
@jl:
I know. I’m being annoying, but I thought you all would get it, at least.
jl
@Little Boots: Oh, OK. I thought it had become time for some variations on the theme.
I guess it is too soon.
Dennis SGMM
@Little Boots:
Only if you’re unmoved by the phrase “Fuck you with a rusty chainsaw.” I can only conclude that you’re working on a method for turning vitriol into electricity.
Ghost Snake
When Palin wins in 2012 and your Four Loko stores have run out may I suggest you come get to know your soon-to-be overlords here in China? Any native speaker of English with a BA degree can get very comfortable (if not always rewarding) teaching gigs here…
For those of you missing Four Loko, China offers a fantastic substitute. The local liquor here, baijiu, ranges between 42 and 56% alcohol. You can’t buy it ready-made, but we’ve invented a drink called “Ghost Snake” that is one part baijiu two parts Red Bull. Makes you climb the walls. I had to give it up
Little Boots
Okay, too soon. I apologize. I was just trying to be funny. But no go.
Hunter Gathers
Palin will become the modern Barry Goldwater – a bat-shit crazy POTUS nominee who gets absolutely destroyed in the general election, and goes on to be a high profile martyr for her party. And she’ll make more money off of her ‘books’ than Goldwater ever dreamed of. She’ll run, and win, the nomination. Because that’s where the real money is.
Ana Gama
@mclaren: I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, except that Palin’s numbers started tanking after the Katie Couric interview, followed closely by the economic downturn which tanked them both. But yeah, we have some systemic economic problems that have not been dealt with yet, particularly in the banks where the toxins are still poisoning the well. Personally, I think it’s going to take a decade to clean everything up, and get back on a decent trajectory.
That said, the smart thing to do for the GOP would be to nominate Romney (or even smarter, Mitch Daniels, smartest still…beg Bloomberg to rejoin the GOP). But Palin’s ego has to be factored in here.
Even if the economy is still poor (which I expect it to be), I don’t see Palin having enough to offer voters…even scared voters…to win the GE. She’s pissed away two years that she could have been building credibility rather than playing a role on reality teevee and Prima Donna In Chief.
mclaren
@Dennis SGMM:
The 14th amendment, like all the other amendments to the constitution, proves vulnerable to redefinition of its terms. Even the plainest law can be reinterpreted to mean the exact opposite of its obvious intent merely by redefining its language.
For example, the eighth amendment (prohibit cruel and unusual punishment) disappears when we redefine torture as “enhanced interrogation.” The fourth amendment disppeared a long time ago when the supremes held that it was legal to arrest property. Since property has no citizenship rights, due process need not apply when arresting (read: confiscating) property. And so we get asset forfeiture.
More recently, the fifth amendment and sixth amendments disappeared when Obama and company redefined the meaning of the term “person” to exclude anyone declared an “enemy combatant.” Presto! Change-o! No more fifth or sixth amendment rights (habeas corpus, right to an arraignment, right to a jury trial) for you.
By redefining the meaning of the term “person” it’s trivial to deprive newborns of birth citizenship. They’re not legally persons, ipso facto no birth citizenship for them.
The real goal for the conservative judiciary remains the redefinition of personhood to the point where liberals get declared unpersons without civil rights, without right to trial, etc. Look for that sometime in the foreseeable future. 10 years? 15 years? Don’t know, but it’s coming.
“What are the charges against me, officer?”
“Charges?” (Cop laughs incredulously.) “There are no charges, you’ve been accused of insulting the dignity of the state.” (Tases the accused liberal to death and then writes down on the police incident report NHI — “No humans involved.”)
Little Boots
@Hunter Gathers:
I’d accept martyr.
No actually, I’d accept nominee, and then everyone dealing with the crazy that is the modern Republican Party.
jl
@Little Boots: No, it was funny. I am sure many readers are laughing right now, but at one of several possible, and different, BJ ombudsman jokes ratting around in their heads.
Little Boots
@jl:
thanks, jl. but also, a little obnoxious. I gotta admit. and I do feel bad about that. there are things a regular can say, and a newbie can’t. just how it is.
Citizen Alan
@Dennis SGMM:
The scrutiny Shrub got, pathetic as it was, was of laser-like intensity compared to what Caribou Barbie has had to face.
jl
@Ana Gama: How much time does it take for the GOP bigshots to jigger their nomination process to get the person or persons they feel comfortable with?
Or are there several camps of GOP bigshots doing battle, which would explain the public attacks on Palin starting so early?
I exempt Murkowski. I heard a short interview with her, and it sounds like it is personal, because Palin supported the atrocious Miller.
Dennis SGMM
@Hunter Gathers:
I surely hope that you’re right. In other times I’d have said that you are. We’re dealing with an electorate that has the attention span of a chipmunk, a monolithic media, the potential of enough corporate money to swamp an election and heartbreaking levels of unemployment. The potential for successful demagoguery hasn’t been this high since the days of Huey “Kingfish” Long.
jl
@Little Boots: You are taking things too seriously. I believe that if you take the ‘events’ (assuming comments on blogs are ‘events’ are real in any meaningful sense of the world) of BJ too seriously, you will go mad. And will become one of us.
Unless by ‘obnoxious’ you were referring to me. If so, then I am outraged! Outraged! and in a snit. And, in the grand tradition of BJ, will soon need a strong drink.
Little Boots
you are not obnoxious, jl.
and I assure you, i do not take things too serious. but every so often, i have to back off and think, stop that, bitch, you are a guest here.
Hunter Gathers
@Little Boots: Romney has a little problem by the name of RomneyCare to deal with, Huckabee is going to get Willie Hortoned, and Daniels, Gingrich, Barbour, and Thune have no power base within the party to speak of. The teabaggers that rule the GOP want Palin, because Palin will be able to ‘articulate’ their anger at the Kenyan Usurper in ways that the rest of the pack just can’t compete with. And the so-called GOP establishment will line up behind her about 2 seconds after she wraps up the nom. Sure, they may not exactly trust her, or be able to control her, but all of those concerns are meaningless. All that matters, in the words of my grandmother the other day, is ‘That nigger must be destroyed at all costs.’
Citizen Alan
@Dennis SGMM:
For all the hysteria they generate in some circles, I would be very surprised if the number of PUMA voters in this country exceeded the number of people who believe the moon landing was faked. With a few, loud-mouthed exceptions, I have always thought the PUMAs were mainly conservative women who flirted with voting for Hillary and who took the occasion of her loss to Obama to badmouth the party they never gave a shit about anyway.
Little Boots
@Hunter Gathers:
please don’t tell me that stupid cow has a chance.
please don’t tell me that.
mclaren
@Ana Gama:
I agree with you in general, and with Little Boots (hi, Caligula!). Romney would make a much better nominee than Palin, and as Little Boots pointed out, she has no qualifications and no real reason to run.
But these logical concusions presuppose some level of sanity in the general electorate, and we can’t be sure of that by fall 2012. If we do get a double dip, the entire world economy could melt down again. What happens if California defaults on its debt between now and November 2012? It’s the seventh largest economy in the world.
Chaos and frenzy don’t make for rational calculations. We don’t know what the economy will do over the next two years and right now it’s balanced on a razor’s edge at the brink of Niagara Falls. If it tips over and goes spinning into the abyss, all bets are off. The sheer number of things that could send the American economy spinning down into the abyss are shocking: oil prices could shoot up again, California could default, the U.S. army could suffer a Dien-Bien-Phu-like or Tet-Offensive-style setback, a major terror attack could plunge the electorate off the edge into a far-right frenzy, the commercial real estate market could implode…the list goes on.
Only if everything goes perfectly for the next two years will Palin be unelectable. That’s possible. Want to bet on it?
As for taking another 10 years to clean up the U.S. economy…Japan was in the same position we are, back in 1990, and it’s been 20 years and the Japanese economy continues to shrink. It’s getting worse. There’s no reason to believe that America will be in a better position than Japan is today, when America is 20 years down the road. In fact, Japan managed to contain their unemployment at 3%, so we’re already doing much worse than Japan in similar economic circumstances.
As regards Romney: you guys don’t seem to understand the Republican Party. Today’s GOP is a fundamentalist Christian cabal. These are people who say global warming isn’t real because God assured Noah he wouldn’t wipe out the earth.
Romney is a Mormon, which makes him 100% completely totally utterly un-nominatable. The fundamentalist Christians who make up the base of the Republican Party would rather nominate Cthulhu than Mitt Romney. To modern Republicans, Mormonism is worse than Dianetics. They view Mormonism as a satanic cult. Romney will never get anywhere in his quest for the presidential nomination. Ever. Period. Forget about Romney. He’s toast. No Republican will touch him with a barge pole.
Dennis SGMM
@Little Boots:
No worries. John has, to my knowledge, only banned (Temporarily at that ) one commenter. The flaming gets pretty intense at times and yet there isn’t one BJ commenter with whom I wouldn’t raise a glass.
Hunter Gathers
@Dennis SGMM: You’re reading too much into the results of a low-turnout mid-term election. The average positive approval rating (including Rassmussen) has Obama at 45%. Which means he’s about 8 points off of his vote total. I’ve seen other polls with him at 48-50%. The sky isn’t falling. But the MSM would like you to think it is. And the GOP has yet to have it’s civil war. Which will begin 10 seconds after DADT and START get passed in the lame duck. That will be some prime popcorn time, I tell you what.
gocart mozart
@Bruce Baugh:
veiled masturbation reference?
Dennis SGMM
@Citizen Alan:
Again, I hope that you’re right and that I’m wrong. The number of stupid things that are believed by my fellow citizens never ceases to astonish me.
Little Boots
@Dennis SGMM:
I don’t think John loves me, but I agree. I don’t think he bans people just for being annoying. But that is not why I backed off up there. I was obnoxious, and I really don’t want to be.
well not usually.
Citizen Alan
@The Dangerman:
Not to nitpick, but he didn’t pardon a cop killer, he pardoned a rapist who went on to kill cops after being pardoned. And the rapist’s victim was a distant relative of Bill Clinton, so it was really all Clinton’s fault if you think about (you know, like Republican voters will).
patrick II
@mclaren: just wondering what you think of Mormon Glenn Beck’s inroads into the religious right’s Mormon anathema.
Citizen Alan
@Yutsano:
The biggest problem with Barbour is just that he’s governor of Mississippi. I live here. No one really likes him even in this state. He just knows where the bodies are buried, politically speaking. He narrowly beat Musgrove who was already mired in the Beef Plant scandal and who was reduced to mau-mauing over Alabama’s 10 Commandments idol. Four years later, he ran against an ambulance chaser from Jackson who ran for office just to get free advertising for his law practice.
Also, there is the little matter of what Molly Ivins called “the cherished national myth” that every single person who lives in the South is borderline retarded. Clinton and Carter had diction and charm. When Barbour opens his jowly mouth and starts talking in his corn pone Yazoo City patois about family values, I think two-thirds of the country will just recoil in horror.
Little Boots
@patrick II:
It will be very interesting how that plays out.
morzer
@mclaren:
Oswald Mosley never got anywhere near winning an election in his Fascist years. Please don’t mislead people with this sort of melodramatic nonsense.
Little Boots
people are weird.
not here, but on another site, its just… weird.
patrick II
Of the three main lines of discussion here: Does Palin want to run? can she win the election?, and can she win the general?, for the last two I don’t have anything to add. But on the first, for those of you who think that she is just in it for the money, I think you underestimate her narcicissim. She will run until it becomes too harmful to her ego to continue. I think that will happen fairly early in the process, but her personal resentment, popular (and deliberatly misguided) resentment, the truly dangerous economic times, and the media’s complicity may carry her farther than I hope.
MikeJ
@Citizen Alan: You’re confusing two different cases. The rapist killed another person after being pardoned by Hackabee, but it was a civilian in Missouri.
The cop kill was on parole, was never pardoned. He killed four cops in a coffee shop in Lakewood, WA (basically across the street from joint base Lewis-Mcchord.) The controversy is that there was no provision in the law to send him back to Arkansas after he violated parole in Washington.
Little Boots
Palin’s a novelty act. She is crazy enough to run, constantly, but enough people see through her that I don’t think she’ll get very far. she is much more hated that we give her credit for.
NobodySpecial
Haven’t read the whole thread, but no way Palin is the nominee, simply because she’ll have been pushing this campaign for over three years by the time 2012 rolls around.
People who get sick of campaigns two weeks into commercials will have absolutely tuned her out like they do Britney or Paris now.
gocart mozart
An insane woman almost defeated a sitting Senate majority leader.
A deranged opthamologist is now a U.S. Senator.
A war criminal is now a congressman from FLA.
A pathologically incompetant dry drunk was re-elected as POTUS.
Can Palin win? You betcha! (‘scuse me while I lick this electric socket while standing in a bucket of water.)
mclaren
@patrick II:
Glenn Beck is welcome among the GOP faithful as an entertainer or a demagogue or a rabble-rouser. The Repubs don’t apply litmus tests for that.
But as a nominee for high political office? Nope. Glenn Beck would never get the nod as Vice President or President. Ever.
Mormons get treated by the Republicans like niggers: useful as servants, excellent onstage, but never to be considered “one of us” and never ever eligible for a presidential nomination.
Hunter Gathers: you make excellent points. To counterbalance Obama’s upside, though, remember that the vile Darrell Issa will start the shitstorm of supbpoenas and investigations and House Repubs now intend to go after Obama more ferociously than the 1994 Republicans went after Clinton with the phoney Whitewater investigation.
How long will it take Obama’s numbers to drop with 12% unemployment and witnesses in House hearings accusing him of everything from necromancy to barratry on the high seas?
MikeJ
@gocart mozart: That’s deranged self-certified ophthalmologist.
GregB
I’m waiting for the Palin’s to change their name to the Aristocrats.
Citizen Alan
@CaseyL:
Yeah, I mean, no one would have batted an eye if First Lady Cindy McCain had run Annheuser-Busch out of the White House for four years. They were literally talking about that, and no one was raising any serious concerns. Why on earth would anyone expect the Palins to refrain from trying to make scratch on the side from within the White House? I imagine Bristol would set up cameras and run a reality show out of the Lincoln Bedroom.
mclaren
@morzer:
I stand corrected. I thought Mosley had a substantial following in Britain. Apparently I was wrong. Thanks for setting me straight.
gocart mozart
@low-tech cyclist:
This.
LosGatosCA
Not to burst the bubble about Palin not getting elected, but here are two folks to consider.
Vice President Dan Quayle
President George Bush
Can Palin be nominated, elected, and run America into a bigger ditch than we are now?
Fuck yeah! I think the collective IQ of America has been declining for awhile, it’s just ripe for the picking. 6 year, 5 school program to graduate and half term governor seems like a well-qualified Republican to me. They just elected over 60 new nitwits to Congress a few weeks ago.
Occasional Reader
To dismiss Palin’s chances is extremely dangerous. With a good chance of 9%+ unemployment in 2012, anything is possible.
Citizen Alan
@mclaren:
This is not an exaggeration. In the spring of 2008, when Romney was still in the running, I went to my mom’s fairly mainstream Baptist Church for Mother’s Day, and in the middle of a sermon about the virtues of motherhood, the preacher basically stopped and said “and by the way, Mormonism is a cult” before going back to the completely unrelated topic he was discussing. I had to ask my mom later if I had hallucinated it because it just came veering out of nowhere.
I remain convinced that if McCain had picked Romney as his running mate, Obama could have carried Mississippi.
The Dangerman
@gocart mozart:
Doesn’t everyone use two hands?
@Citizen Alan:
Clinton and Obama, two incredibly bright people, have really fucked this country up. We need stupid and stupid STAT, dammit.
Maybe Palin does have a chance.
Citizen Alan
@patrick II:
Personally, I think they just don’t know it. To my knowledge, Beck doesn’t make a big deal of his Mormonism on the show. Perhaps they think he’s “one of the good ones.” I do wonder how the religious right would respond if he went into politics, though.
Citizen Alan
@MikeJ:
Aha. Got it.
Nylund
Trip Trig Todd Willow Piper and Bristol. You hear about them, but what about Track? Poor Track.
Citizen Alan
Is Track the one serving in the military or Bristol’s kid? I can’t remember. A consequence, I suppose, of the boys having nonsense names.
Sloegin
She is easily the female equivalent to any establishment GOP figure. Try putting Gov. “Goodhair” Perry in a dress, glasses, and a wig and try to distinguish between their ideologies and policies. Can’t be done.
You can’t tell one whit of difference between all the GOP lunatics residing in Bedlam. They’re all equally bonkers, they all get their marching orders from the same place.
Doesn’t matter if it’s Palin or ‘sensible’ looking GOP candidate. Both will lead us one step closer to Brawndo world.
If she wants it, the nomination is hers.
ulee
Track was in the military. He is currently in Hell. But with backing.
Midnight Marauder
@CaseyL:
Ha.Ha.Ha.
No. She will not. The GOP is the big money party now. And moreso than anyone else, big money is fully aware of the disaster that would be a Sarahgeddon presidency.
There is no legitimate way for her to win the nomination.
None.
freelancer
@Citizen Alan:
Yes, cause all the women have names that are indicative of good parental judgement. And I say this, putting odds down on the next female member of the clan being named “Rake”.
Anne Laurie
@ChrisNYC:
Narcissists have a high burn rate for human capital (associates). Two alternatives: the poor bustards realize what the narcissist is actually capable of, and run screaming. Or, once they’ve witnessed the complete run-through of the narcissist in question’s Big Dramas… and most of the narcissists I’ve know have only a handful of scenarios, which they insist on re-enacting over & over & over (they’re never bored, as long as they’re at center stage)… the associates think they can manage the narcissist. Which gets them expelled from the Sacred Circle soonest, cuz there’s nobody like a narcissist to spot when other people are trying to be manipulative.
The “weirdness” you highlight struck me as one of Draper’s extremely subtle little jabs. Not only did he make the point that the people Palin feels closest to (“trust” does not seem to be a verb in the Palin vocabulary) are all relative newcomers, i.e. easy targets for more experienced operatives and/or with no longstanding ties to Candidate Sarah, but he signalled that Sarah either can’t or won’t keep the usual political “team” in place. There’s many reasons why most politicians make such a big deal about all their excellent aides who’ve been with them since forever, and one of the reasons is that our primate brains tell us not to trust would-be alphas who can’t hold onto a “family” to watch their backs.
JGabriel
Sheesh. Got to this conversation a bit late in thread.
Anyway, DougJ, here’s my take:
Palin could definitely win the Republican nomination. She may flame out before then for any of the above mentioned reasons, but if Palin doesn’t flame out she could win it.
Why? Look at the rest of the field. The only remotely serious contender is Romney, and Huckabee, but Huck probably won’t run. Romney looks the part, but his Mormon faith doesn’t play well among Christian conservatives. Romney also comes across as the kind of politician who will say anything to get elected and, worse, sounds insincere and slimy while doing it.
So the question is, can Palin win enough plurality votes in the early primaries — among the basest of the GOP base that votes in primaries — to stay in long enough for the field to narrow down to two candidates, and can she then win it?
We’re talking about the right wing here. Of course she can win it.
Midnight Marauder:
The problem is that none of her opponents seem capable of winning it either. That provides quite an opening for her.
.
.
MikeJ
@Midnight Marauder:
Karl Rove went on TV and called Palin’s hand picked candidate in Delaware insane and the insane woman beat a former governor and 9 term congressman for the GOP nomination.
Anne Laurie
@patrick II:
__
Right now, the only Americans who know Beck’s a Mormon are the other Mormons and moonbat blog-readers like us who weren’t on his side anyway. If he were to run for actual office, his opponent would be honor-bound to mention Beck’s conversion to the Magic Underwear Cult at least 17 times a day, but as long as Beck’s just “entertainment” the hardcore Christianists will graciously pretend they’ve never heard that vile slander. Remember how nobody seemed to remember that Tom Cruise was a Scientologist until he went Full Metal Paranoid at Oprah, and suddenly it was wall-to-wall “ha ha nutso hollyweird cultist sissypants Tommy-Boy”? The selective memory of the Real American Heartlanders(tm) and their mass-media enablers is a mighty mighty fortress…
The Sheriff's A Ni-
Palin can win the nomination. The base adores her and they’re the ones that make or break you in the primaries.
Palin stands no chance in hell in winning the general. The independents are just as scared shitless of her now as they were in November of 2008 and they’re the ones that will make or break you in the general. If she had re-invented herself as a kinder gentler Sarah in the intervening four years like ol’ Tricky Dick did, she may have had a shot. She didn’t, she’s toast.
morzer
@freelancer:
I suggest Matoko. For the extra crazy value she would bring to the Palinbillies.
daveNYC
It’s like Fermi’s paradox for me. If Sarah Palin is such an amazing combination of stupid, psycho, and shallow that the slightest anything should cause her to self-combust, then why hasn’t it happened yet?
With the economy on it’s current course, there’s no reason to think that any Republican nominee for president couldn’t win.
morzer
@daveNYC:
She already has combusted. Tina Fey made her a figure of national ridicule. There just happens to be money to be made in whoring herself and spawn out to the wingnuts.
cmorenc
@retz:
She already has done a whole string of things “fresh and incredibly stupid” that haven’t killed her off yet. The Katie Couric interview alone, for example, should have been enough right there to banish her eternally, the moment the 2008 election was over, to the realm of fringe cult candidates doomed to struggle breaking out of single digits in even the lowest-turnout primary elections within her party. The real problem is that the “fresh and incredibly stupid” demographic of the american electorate, particularly on the GOP side, is much, much, larger than we ever even feared. Even if the media deliberately tries to turn on her to “expose” her, Sarah’s base will actually take this as further confirmation of her worth as the country’s savior. That certainly seems to be the way it’s worked out so far. Both the media and McCain, in nominating her in the first place, have created a monster they are finding extraordinarily difficult to control or kill, just like the Kochs and GOP establishment are already beginning to find out that the Tea Party monster they fostered is going to be much harder to contain and control to their own ends and interests than they ever dreamed.
Odie Hugh Manatee
She is a grifter who thrives on the adoration (and cash) her friends and fans shower her with. I think she will make a halfhearted attempt to run, rake in the cash then quit and blame liberals for her failure. That or the moneybags behind the Republican party are going buy her out by making her an offer so rich that she can’t refuse it.
One way or the other, she is going to profit from 2012 and give her rubes nothing in return. You know they will love her for it. Too. Also.
jak
Don’t underestimate the right wing hatred of the ‘black guy in the whitehouse’. They will get a lot of mileage out of ‘taking our country back’. I wouldn’t bet against her getting the repub nomination or her getting elected. If her negatives are higher and the economy improves then maybe increased turnout will save the day.
newhavenguy
Love the title.
Cheers!
Anyone else out there scared yet? Put on your seatbelts, it’s gonna be one hell of a ride. Hope y’all enjoyed our little Weimar era the last couple of years. And I know we’re all going to love what comes next.
Steve Benen said it better and far less fucking profanely than I could the other day (go read him at washington monthly dot com, he’s our Murrow)— 9% unemployment in ’12 = President Romney or worse (you betcha!).
Plainly put, the GOP is committed to sabotaging the economy and foreign policy of “our” country for the next two years, and better yet, the media is way too scared to even think about calling them out on it.
Th rest of us? We are but collateral damage, at best. The important thing for the people who matter is to neuter the Federal government, the only entity with enough juice to conceivably act as a speed bump against corporate power.
If it takes a deep recession, permanent 10% unemployment, a lost decade or more? Boo hoo, I’m sure Steve Forbes and Dave Koch feel your pain. Not!
They’re doing just fine— profits are way up, wages are down, anyone who bitches can be told sternly YOU HAVE A JOB PEASANT BE GRATEFUL OR ELSE. Win-win.
It really is working out great for the people who matter here in our America.
We are the flowers in the dustbin.
Cheers,
steviez314
Why run for President when you’re already the Queen? Does Queen Elizabeth want to become Prime Minister?
Running for and being President is hard work. Who needs it? Sarah Palin already has something BETTER than the Republican nomination. She has veto power over who gets it.
Anyone who wants it has to genuflect to her. She can get anything she wants. Todd for Secretary of Interior? No problem. Bristol to HHS? Ok.
Lysana
Could Palin win the GOP nomination?
Let’s be blunt. Who ELSE do they have?
Could she win the general election?
I can’t possibly be the only left-winger who didn’t volunteer in 2008 for my own reasons (though I did donate) who’d move heaven and earth to GOTV against that bitch. I hate phones with the passion only someone else with ADHD understands. I’d staff one for Obama against her.
Triscula
Honestly, I don’t fear Sarah Palin. Maybe I’m foolish to think this way but I just don’t see why she’d even WANT to run for president. She’s got such a sweet deal right now. She can say whatever she wants, she’s making money and she’s got loads of adoring fans. She doesn’t have to accomplish anything or serve any interests but her own. Why give that up? She quit as governor of Alaska so that she could be free to make piles of money and become a useless celebrity. She’s right where she wants to be already. She’s the Paris Hilton of partisan politics. I don’t see her walking away from that for a job that pays less and requires actual WORK.
pattonbt
Never say never. So be scared, to a degree.
I believe Palin can win the nomination if she can do it swiftly. If she gets a quick knockout punch, it can be hers. But she simply doesn’t have what it takes to run a prolonged campaign. The patience, the organization, the ability to not take offense at every barb, etc. If the primary fight drags, she won’t survive.
But is she wins the nomination quickly, then she has a long general and faces the same problems as with a long primary.
So do I think she can win. No.
But again, with blackity, back, New Black Panther in the white house hanging with Mao, Hitler, Stalin and Chamerlain ruinin the economy and rapin white women, who knows what will happen.
If the economy is bad in 2012, anything can happen. Please economy, be OK to fine (or better would be nice).
pattonbt
Never say never. So be scared, to a degree.
I believe Palin can win the nomination if she can do it swiftly. If she gets a quick knockout punch, it can be hers. But she simply doesn’t have what it takes to run a prolonged campaign. The patience, the organization, the ability to not take offense at every barb, etc. If the primary fight drags, she won’t survive.
But is she wins the nomination quickly, then she has a long general and faces the same problems as with a long primary.
So do I think she can win. No.
But again, with blackity, back, New Black Panther in the white house hanging with Mao, Hitler, Stalin and Chamerlain ruinin the economy and rapin white women, who knows what will happen.
If the economy is bad in 2012, anything can happen. Please economy, be OK to fine (or better would be nice).
Jean
@Lysana: What if, as Rich suggests in his NYT column, Bloomberg runs as an independent 2012?
HRA
I really think there will be another candidate who can stop all of the above mentioned possibilities from getting the nomination and make history in doing it. No one mentions him as a possibility. I an referring to Jeb Bush.
pattonbt
@Triscula:
Im with you on this one. Why would Palin want to run? She has the perfect job for her right now. She can be an unaccountable bomb thrower (a la Rush) and get PAID! Campaigning in hard, hard work for little money. She has a great gig right now fleecing the rubes and getting big money and accolades for doing so. Why ruin the gravy train?
Joey Maloney
All I wonder is, if she runs for nom, how the other candidates will exploit her overwhelming negatives, given that anything bad they say about her will stir the Teatards to a fine, frothy santorum of outrage.
aimai
@ChrisNYC:
I think its not weird at all. Its clear from her political history in Alaska that she was incredibly arrogant and bitchy to her close associates. Also, AK isn’t a huge talent pool–not like Texas for Bush or Illinois for Obama. There just aren’t that many ready for prime time advisors out there. I thought the strangest thing in that article was the insistence that Fred Malek be described, unironically, as “a friend” when he must have met her about five minutes before the meeting described which happened at the end of the McCain campaign. Fred, of course, ought to always be called “Nixon’s Jew Counter” and he was essentiallyg iving her the same advice Nixon gave him which was “when bloodied, remove yourself from Washington and work on your foreign policy cred.”
aimai
Svensker
@mclaren:
Nixon was not dumb. Paranoid as hell, yes, but a very smart guy.
myiq2xu
You just can’t quit her
Svensker
@Little Boots:
I thought it was funny.
Comrade Baron Elmo
@mclaren:
One huge difference: both Nixon and Reagan spent years paying dues, working overtime for the GOP and stacking up IOU’s like cordwood before their successful White House runs.
Sarah only really works for Sarah, and the Republican powers that be know it. Hell, she more or less blew off the Chuck Grassley campaign just weeks ago… not a smart move if you give a damn about willing the Iowa primary.
Plus, I’m betting the Repub kingmakers will see Palin as much too much of a loose cannon (worse, a moral crusader who just might mean it). They want a flagrant whore like Romney, who’ll march in time to the corporate drum.
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
Then why didn’t he get the nomination?
Twice the religious right has tried to get their own man in the White House (1988 and 2008) and both times, their man ended up third in the primary – behind Bush and Dole the first time, McCain and Romney the second time.
And my suspicion is it’s because the silent majority among Republican voters doesn’t trust the religious right either. Christianity matters to them as a label, much more than as a set of values. I think they want a president who’s going to gush endlessly about what a wonderful Christian nation and people they are, but would get really uncomfortable with a president who actually wanted them to act Christian (however you conceive that word).
Which would make Palin perfect, and Huckabee not.
Michael Bersin
@RinaX:
That is a classic non sequitur. There would have to be some tiny portion of substance within those quotes for any “blowing out of proportion”. The latter requires the former.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@myiq2xu:
Ain’t you that guy who is called Goatboy? Yeah, that’s right. You’re that goatfucking PUMA deadender from the primary wars. Decided to drop in for some more self-abuse? Goats get away and trying to round them up?
Let me guess, you’re a Palin supporter now?
El Tiburon
Says somethin that over 224 comments have been posted on this topic, which is a very high number for BJ. A quick perusal indicates most are sick and tired of discussing this attention whore.
Yet, DougJ’s post immediately preceeding this one on rising inequality got a meager 20 comments.
So now you know why she is all inside ur TV Toobz.
Shalimar
I used to think there was no way she would give up her lifestyle and actually run, for two reasons cited above. One, she is demonstratively lazy and incurious about anything, and two, why would she give up her lucrative grifting career for a job that costs a fortune to get and doesn’t pay much.
Having thought about it more though, I really don’t think she has decided yet. And I don’t see her weaknesses as weaknesses that would prevent her from wanting to run anymore.
Yes, she is lazy. But, like George W. Bush, she really seems to thrive on the adulation and attention of a permanent campaign. Her life since 2008 has basically been an extension of her VP run. She loves this shit, and a run for President wouldn’t be much different from what she is doing now by choice.
As for giving up her income for 8 years, I really don’t think she cares about money. This isn’t Scrooge McDuck in his money vault trying to become the richest of the rich. She loves the perks and privileges money is giving her, and no one in the world has more perks and privileges than the President of the United States.
The only reason she won’t run is if she can’t convince herself that she is guaranteed to win. Nothing shatters a narcissist like continuing failure.
me
Alaska, über alles.
Shalimar
@Triscula: How is running for president any different from what she’s doing now, except that you get to be president at the end and really have power to strike back at your enemies? She is already in permanent campaign mode, she makes her money at public events from the same adoring fans who will appear at her campaign rallies. And running for president will give her at least one more book that she can make millions from.
Michael Bersin
@Citizen Alan:
Be afraid. Be very afraid. From June 2008:
Mike Huckabee at Missouri Boys State: Q and A, part 1
Mike Huckabee at Missouri Boys State: Q and A, part 2
twoseventwo
This is all really about the future accuracy of conventional wisdom, isn’t it?
Conventional wisdom says the Republican establishment would be able to crush her in the primaries. Conventional wisdom says Obama would be able to trounce her in the general. The question is whether we’re now in such a different era (vis a vis the economy, celebrity culture, the media, etc.) that conventional wisdom doesn’t apply. I don’t feel able to get off the fence on this one, and I’m not at all sure anyone should feel particularly confident in their calls.
Bella Q
I’m tired of her too. I was tired of her in October 2008 (ahead of the curve, whenever I can manage it!), but I am nonetheless alarmed. To the extent that I have purchased a domain name with which to launch a site about thoughts just like this. More when it’s up and running, should anyone wish to swing by for discussions.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
She wants to be flown around the country on a private jet, stay in five star hotels, and eat at fancy restaurants. She wants to speak only to adoring fans and not to the pesky media.
Let’s hope she never speculates about knocking off Kate Middleton and taking her place then…
Mr. Prosser
@BR: Very true, check out the actions of her protege, Miller, in the Alaska senate recount.
myiq2xu
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
There is a limpdick here who calls me that because I remind him of the goat that popped his ass-cherry.
I keep telling him my door don’t swing that way be he keeps calling. Maybe you can help him fulfill his fantasies. You sound like a baa-ad boy.
Andrew Dabrowski
Someone like Palin is bound to be elected president eventually. Whether 2012 is too soon for that is an open question, but the Mayans seem to have thought not.
4jkb4ia
a) Sarah Palin is getting too much attention relative to the Republicans in Congress. Michelle Bachmann is included in “the Republicans in Congress” even though she has many of the same fans and all the cable exposure she could want.
b) Karl Rove is smart enough that if the economy is looking halfway decent enough that Palin could not possibly win, there will be a genuine alternative to Sarah Palin.
c) Sarah Palin may be smart enough that if there is someone who has Tea Party-type beliefs but does not have the polarizing reputation that she does, Palin will make known to her fans that this is the person. That is the plain meaning of all her public statements this fall.
Pongo
@Facebones: Yep, yep and yep. She likes to win contests (has to, in fact, since her personality disorder requires constant validation of her superiority), but hates the prize–especially if it’s an actual job. Problem is, she is narcissistic enough to not care that she couldn’t even govern a state that has fewer people and more money than most other states, let alone a country in chronic crisis mode.
If we could all be observers, not impacted by the fallout, it might actually be interesting to see her win. We have yet to have a president whose popularity numbers dip into negative digits and that in itself would be an exciting phenomenon. Plus, every president since TV was invented has aged dramatically before our eyes. It would make for high drama to watch Palin struggle with whether to resign at the first sign of excess wrinkling and gray hair or to stick it out so she can hold on to a forum that provides chronic adulation and luxury perks. Oh the dramatic tension!!
Adlai Stevenson once said (paraphrasing): ‘In a democracy, anyone can be president. That’s one of the risks you take.’ Sadly, if we have devolved as a culture to the point where the majority actually believes someone like Sarah Palin is a legitimate candidate for this office (which, thankfully, does not appear to be the case–at least for now), we deserve what we get. The rest of us will just have to figure out how to function under our Brawndo overlords.
celticdragonchick
@Dennis SGMM:
That about sums it up.
We underestimate her threat at our peril.
4jkb4ia
@mclaren:
No, Nixon was smart. Nixon could have gone to Harvard, but had no money.
4jkb4ia
@MikeJ:
Wasn’t that after O’Donnell won the primary?
O’Donnell is a different case anyway because the people running against Palin are all going to be more conservative than Castle.
Scott Stiefel
Personally, I wouldn’t downplay her chances of getting the Republican nomination in 2012. However, if she does, my only question is whether (barring some bizarreness on the order of an alien invasion or a meteor strike) she’ll lose to Obama as hard as the loser in 1996, 1988, or 1972/36/84.
4jkb4ia
Via Political Wire, one Obama-favorable economic forecast
bago
Right. So, as a developer working with nascent technologies, my lifestyle is somewhat predictive. I don’t have “cable TV” in the “cable TV” sense of the word. I haven’t subscribed to a “cable tv you watch these shows at these times” for almost a decade. So much political control resides in the calcification of old ways. As in preying upon that a “newshour” exists, that a “channel” is required because we are utilizing a synchronous data model.
What I’m getting at is that people grew up with a synchronous messaging model, and have to adapt to an asynchronous messaging model.
Boiled down even further, we all text each other, before we decide we need to call each other. At least the non-olds.
Ann Rynd
Who is this Sarah Palin?
Fang
First before I go into MY analysis let me note the comment chain here has been pretty fascinating and informative.
And now to the question of Sarah Palin getting nominated for Repub president, running winning, etc. . . .
I think the first thing to consider is Sarah Palin herself, who is a narcissistic grifter and manipulator who is high on adoration from fans, and has a dedicated, almost fanatic following. There’s no way she’s going to give that up.
That means, however, she has to keep the Sarah Engine going, which means playing to her fanbase. There’s no way she can’t run for President at this rate unless she A) comes up with some massive super-victim sob story to explain why someone is STOPPING her (and making that group/individual a target for her fan’s rage), or B) She gets to be a kind of kingmaker and very visible power behind the throne.
So first of all, yes she’ll make a stab at being president, because she thrives on attention and needs to keep that going. If anyone tries to stop her or brings up any scandals, she’ll unleash holy hell on them with her fans. If she gets tired of it she’ll pick a target and blame them. If she gets to be the One Who Anoints she’d probably be reasonably happy – that’s your real danger there that she basically gets her ego stroked enough by some group or candidate that she basically boosts them as president while coming up with some B.S. statement about how she can do more good unelected.
I’d give her chance of making a run for president in the 60-75% range. She’s delusional enough to think she can win. If she decides to be the anointer she will keep sticking her nose in the Republican campaign ad nauseum, but they’ll eventually sideline her if possible.
Now if she does run for the nomination, prepare for a treat, and by treat I mean a kind of demolition derby meets wrestling match at a rave. She’s highly divisive and doesn’t listen to others, which means her managers will either have high burnout/turnover, or basically use her as a kind of political WMD that they hope does more damage to opponents than herself. She will gladly turn on other Republicans no questions asked.
So the Republican establishment will have a choice – to beat her or to use her. She’s easily manipulated by flattery, obviously, but also has a lot of ambition and is self-deluding. There’s your next point of unsurety – how the establishment will handle her, and my bet is they’ll try to co-opt her, manipulate her, or kiss up to her.
The problem is Palin is so egotistical and unpredictable, she’s not going to be reliable even when co-opted or manipulable. Unless she has a major flame-out or a scandal emerges that is SO massive it can’t be ignored, she’ll make it to the primaries. This will doubtlessly include a lot of bad blood and made enemies. It’ll be a bloodbath unless she sells out – and even then she’ll be turning on other candidates in the Republican party.
In the end my guess is that the Republican establishment will realize she’s way too unpredictable, try to get her to be a VP or get a cabinet position. She may say yes to VP, but not to cabinet. It all depends on how the establishment handles her – and I’m betting the Republican establishment is DEEPLY divided on how to deal with her. She might end up getting to primaries as everyone else is fighting over what to do.
Will she get the nomination? I’d say it’s possible. She’ll energize the hell out of the base. If she doesn’t back off I’d give her a decent chance, though not above 50/50.
Could she win against Obama? Probably not. Whatever she does she’s going to be disruptive and make a hell of a lot of enemies and make a lot of people mad at her. The presidential campaign will be grueling and she’s also facing deep unpopularity ratings. But she’ll make the campaign a complete scorched-earth affair and do further damage to the country.
fuyura
I think Palin is going to wind up as the right’s equivalent of Oprah. She’s already a media celebrity with almost no effort on her own part, and she can stand aside and act as king-maker (no rival queens;princesses like Christine what’s-her-name are okay, but no actual rival mama grizzlies). She can keep saying absolutely anything she wants with absolutely no negative reactions, resent whoever and whatever she wants, and watch the rubes fall all over themselves for her approval. She may dabble a toe in primary waters, but I think she’ll soon thereafter anoint whichever candidate kow-tows most effectively.
RinaX
@Michael Bersin:
Doesn’t matter to her base. Us nitpicking things that she actually, you know, said is just beyond the pale.
Andre
Wait, so the idea is that she can’t win because A) she’s too stupid and sounds too stupid and B) she has a crazy family? Really?
Because I don’t think you have to go too many presidents back to find a counterexample to that.
weichi
She’s *easily* beatable in the primaries by going negative – all you really have to do is hammer home that she fucking quit half-way through her term as governor. The problem is that if you don’t make those attacks in just the right way, and if you don’t handle the inevitable crazy counter-attacks just the right way, you end up sinking your own candidacy along with hers.
So all republican candidates will know she can be beat, but will much prefer that someone else administer the beating. So it should be interesting. If they’re smart, they’ll band together on this – maybe designate someone as the Sarah-killer, in return for cushy job later on.
I continue to think that the risk to Obama is that if someone *does* turn up with the killer instinct to go after her, and the savy to do it without hurting himself in the process, that person will also be very effective against Obama.
daveinboca
“At that point our fearless heroine had just completed a perilous rock climb, and if she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a spa instead, don’t expect her fans to question the reality. For them, Palin’s perception is the only reality that counts.”
When a faggot Broadway critic-dropout who never goes outdoors during the day implies that the TLC rock-climbing video was faked, that’s when Rich becomes a comedian funnier than Maher and Olbermann combined….! I’d never vote for her for POTUS, but I LOVE the way she gets shitheads’ knickers in a knot almost by magic. You pack of fools here just keep wanking away, Murdoch is having the time of his life making the WSJ bury the NYT in paid circulation and making Soros look even stupider than he is…
rikyrah
I’m with JenJen. if they believe Obama is beatable in 2012, and it won’t be a sacrificial election, they will come down on her like the hammer they are.
Chuck Butcher
I don’t think she can not run. She isn’t a Beck or Hannity, she has a fan base as a politician not a “personality” and that base will go away and I’m sure she knows that. You put too much credence in the electorate to dismiss her, think about the GOP’s alternative to Hillarycare now being soshalizm.
I’m way tired of her and her family, that doesn’t mean shit as to whether she’s going to run or win all the chips. You’ve watched the Democratic show for the last two years and think they know how to play rough and win?
rickstersherpa
@mclaren: I am afraid you are right. Its likely that the all of the Bush tax cuts, as well as Obama’s temporary stimulus cuts will expire next month. States will have cut back more to make up for continuing flat revenues and no more Federal stimulus. Unemployment compensation will not be extended by the Republicans after January, even if a short extension goes through during the lameduck. Immediately in January will come the “Government debt extension” votes, and I expect a series of short extensions to set up games of chicken with the administration on repeal of ARRA, and cuts on Education, general health care, scientific research, Medicaid, and food stamps. Finally, housing prices will be renewing their decline, with all that does to both bank solvency and the average American home owner’s disposition. Meanwhile, austerity will be rullig in Europe and India and China will be trying to slow growth to arrest inflation. Yet, most establishment economists, the ones who did not predict the last recession or notice the housing bubble, think the most serious problem is the Federal deficit. I think there is a substantial chance of a double dip recession next year, with higher unemployment in 2012 then in 2010. Since Martin Van Buren, no President has won reelection where unemployment was higher at the end of his term then it had been at the beginning. In 2012 there will be lots of resentment and anger, and Sarah Palin will be the perfect vehicle for it.
danelison
Let me set the record straight on Texas, having been raised in Houston, attended college in West Texas and now live near DC. Texas is largely conservative, friends, but make no mistake, there are a lot of smart progressives there. And, encouragingly, OF the conservatives I know quite a few who aren’t blindly ideological and they’ll call a spade a spade, even if it comes from the Republican Party. All of them? Certainly not? Half of them? I don’t think so. But a LOT of them will. I went to a 20th college reunion not long ago and when I mentioned Palin to different people, only one person out of a group of about 24 people who I know are conservative actually liked her. Everybody else either laughed, quickly changed the subject or talked about how many better candidates there are out there and God-I-hope-they-don’t-nominate-her.