Palin Misreads Pat
What to make of Sarah Palin’s remarks yesterday on “Fox News Sunday”? Here she is sharing her wisdom about what it might take for Obama to get re-elected:
Say he played, and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today, I do not think Obama would be re-elected.
… if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies. I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he is today. And there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years –
She’s read Pat Buchanan’s column on Obama playing the war card, which is great — she’s cribbing her commentary from the best. But when she adds her own spin, it’s to hope that Obama would “do whatever he could do to support Israel” — meaning what exactly? In the context, it sounds like she thinks starting more wars in the Middle East, or taking measures that are likely to lead to more wars, is good for Israel and therefore ought to be American policy. I don’t think for her “do whatever he could do to support Israel” means hosting talks at Camp David.
Palin wants to be, simultaneously, Pitchfork Sarah and Bill Kristol’s very own Eliza Doolittle. But she’s much more the latter than the former. There’s no room for doubt here: Sarah Palin means war.
Sarah Palin’s strange comments in drawing the wrong conclusions from Pat Buchanan’s essay confirms what I long suspected. Palin is an intellectual lightweight whose ignorance and Christian Zionist predispositions will be exploited by the neocons. Remind you of a former president?
Is it really the wrong conclusion? Except insofar as Pat was being his usual cynical self and Palin, by all appearances, is a true believer in Christian Zionist eschatology. If anything Palin’s earnestness would prove Pat’s point.
Incidentally, you might have seen the very boring and predictable piece a while back by Jennifer Rubin on “Why Jews hate Palin”, in which she dwells at some length on the whole issue of her Pitchfork history. It made a perfectly convincing exculpation about 2000 but no one ever claimed she supported him in 2000, the real question I thought was always about 1996.
Her Tea Party speech, from what I saw of it, struck the same note. Criticizing Obama for being too “weak.” I hate the whole “intellectual lightweight” thing because it strikes me as elitist. (Contrary to popular belief, Bush was not dumb. He was smarter than Kerry judging by their respective military test scores. He just was just not intellectually curious.) But Palin does come off as a simpleton. Does she even understand that Buchanan represents a different perspective than the movement conservative mainstream? Does she realize that the Tea Party movement is a mixed bag on foreign policy and much more likely to be skeptical of interventionism? Her comments on foreign policy during her Tea Party speech struck me as completely oblivious to this, and more like the red meat you would throw out at a typical stump speech. And the audience didn’t seem all that enthusiastic about it, but maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
Sarah Palin isn’t an intellectual lightweight – she’s an accomplished liar who’s in over her head.
* What magazines do you read “Oh, all of them.”
* Who’s your favorite founding father? “All of them.”
Seriously? What a slap in the face to this country that she was selected to be the VP nominee for the Republican party – let me know when she actually has a press conference or does a sit-down with a real reporter.
Since when did Obama get the ability to declare war? Did we have some sort of Constitutional amendment allowing this that I happened to have slept through or something?
Matt
I agree, with you that the President doesn’t have the power to declare war. However, with a Congress that is essentially spineless and ball-less on the Democratic side of the aisle. And Pro-war/Neoconservative on the Republican side of the aisle. Well I think you see where this is going…..
Hell, I’d be surprised if we got anywhere close to 21 Democrats in the Senate voting against a War this time around.
@Dan Phillips,
Your interpretation of Palin as a “simpleton” is admittedly plausible. But another interpretation is at least as plausible: she is a canny politician who is trying to have it both ways in order to get elected and, in the meantime, to figure it all out (are the Palestinians really evil? are the Straussians all liars? are corporations overbearing?). She is an unreflective evangelical, not necessarily a doctrinaire Zionist. It’s up to independents to convince her that the world is more complicated than Mr. Wonderful with the incandescent smile–Bill Kristol–is telling her.
Well, we know what a Sarah Palin presidency would be like. She would get us in more conflicts to prove her chickenhawk credentials. I hope Obama has enough integrity to let her down.
[...] Palin Misreads Pat – American Conservative Magazine of Sarah Palin on “Fox News Sunday” ? Here she is sharing her wisdom about what it might take for Obama to get re-elected: Say he played, and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card [...]
She was wearing an Israeli flag on her lapel.
We have to thank FOX for giving Sarah Palin a forum for exposing her inner ignorama. Six months of exposure to her deep thoughts should free us from her influence.
She is also a symptom to a deeper, malevolent impulse within the Neo-conservative movement – the drive to gamble, doubling down on bad bets. The Neos got us into an unprofitable war while cheering on globalization and the Banksters looting of our national wealth. They got away with it by having a very limited leader under their influence. This strategy relies on a breathtaking belief in public gullibility. Yet they are determined to keep playing for high stakes in putting forth this transparently flawed person to get them back into power, where they intend to do it all over again. This is a strategy that can lead to national breakdown and real consequences.
My question is, apart from what happens to them, how much of our country will we have left when the smoke clears?
Since when has the president needed a declaration of war to start one? Not in our lifetimes.
Sarah Palin – the biggest loser of them all.
She cannot remember 3 words. Wow
Er, just where is the evidence that Tea Party people are anti-interventionist? Or even a little skeptical of military interventions/war? Yes Mr. Philips, I am afraid that this might in fact be wishful thinking on your part, and not just on your part.
If anyone can show me that the Tea Party crowd is against a militarized foreign policy, and wants to get out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, out of Iraq, and is against a military attack on Iran, please post a comment with lotsa links! I would love to be wrong on this one.
Honestly, paleocons’ wishful thinking about the Tea Party people’s supposed anti-interventionism looks a lot like liberals’ deluded optimism about Obama’s supposed anti-interventionism. Maybe we all need to wake up…
Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do
She’s put one uncertain clause between her and a public call for the President to declare war on Iran (leaving aside the tragic lack of necessity for a formal declaration and any misreading of Constitutional powers–which I’m sure Ms. Palin does regularly).
Perhaps she’s very canny, and truly is more alarmed by Iran’s threat to Israel than concerned with her own political prospects and has taken up Daniel Pipes’ direct appeal to Obama to start a war to improve his own political circumstances.
I know, I know, too ridiculous.
For the record, I love you guys. Listening to Palin and her supporters makes me suicidal..well not really, but it does scare the daylights out of me that a significant group of citizens think endless wars are a solution to anything. So happy for this magazine and its readers.
While cheerleading another pre-emptive war, Sarah Palin is unfit to even be considered a candidate for president. It’s like W in a dress, but even W knew enough to say no to starting another war on Iran. God Save Our Republic!
What is truly unfortunate is that the imperial mindset towards international relations dominates both major US parties. Andrew Bacevich, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and their ilk, are only isolated voices in the conservative, political wilderness. Most Republicans are tied in their foreign policy, directly or indirectly, to that of AIPAC, holding a bellicose view towards any nation in the Middle East that opposes the extremely aggressive and punitive Mideast policy of the apartheid state of Israel. This militaristic stance by the US in the Middle East is moreover made even more distressing in that it is all financed by monopoly money.
On the other side of the political fence, the Democrats are also deeply influenced by military interventionism. Whether of a neoconservative variety or an internationalist militarism that advocates wars in Darfur, Haiti, and a half dozen other places in which there are “human rights” crises, very few Democrats, (Dennis Kucinich excepted), would question the reflexively militaristic US policy of inserting ourselves in the most random and unlikely of places.
Meanwhile, for all us poor proles, the price of bread, milk, and gas continues to rise. So, I might add, does the price of rent and heat as we continue to enjoy our “jobless” recovery. But yet we have always been at war with Eurasia and when our government decides to pull the bait and switch on us and tell us that have never been at war with Eurasia, but have always been at war with Eastasia, then we poor saps, will swallow that lie too.
From an interview the other day with Indiana congressman Mike Pence:
“I think President George W. Bush got it right. The United States certainly wants to be honest, but we don’t want to be a broker. A broker doesn’t take sides. A broker negotiates between parties of equals… America’s on the side of Israel. And to send any other message than our unwavering support, that we will stand with what the sovereign government and the people of Israel decide is in their interest, I think represents a departure from where the heart of the American people are at.”
Funny: Someone oughta accuse Palin and Pence of believing we ought to unhesitatingly stand with and support whatever the people of the state of California want, or the people of New York City, and watch ‘em indignantly scream their denials.
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Look people, as much of an intellectual lightweight as Palin is, he did not *misread* Buchanan’s column. Most people have forgotten about Buchanan and obviously don’t read his columns. Palin knows that too. She exists to push populist and Bible-thumping conservatives towards neocon aggressivism.
The point is that no anti-war voice shall be given media attention, least of all by FAUX NEWS. You get the quiet warmongers or the trash-talking ones.
If Palin were to be rebaptised a Buchananite, I am sure she would publish many articles in AmConMag. But you would hardly see her again on TV…except maybe on CSPAN presenting an apologetic book.
Chespirito, the Tea Party phenomenon was originally spontaneous. So it had different character in different communities depending on who organized it. But many of the original organizers were Ron Paul supporters/Campaign for Liberty types. This is something many mainstreamers took note of and were originally skeptical about. (Note LGF’s Charles Johnson for one example.) In other communities they had more of a movement conservative/GOP feel. But anger over spending, bailouts, healthcare, etc. were common themes for them all. Foreign policy was not on the Tea Party radar screen. My impression is that in the average Tea Party crowd, non-interventionist are very much over represented compared to a typical movement conservative crowd.
Reading Mr. PJB’s columns is a step in the right direction for Palin – who evidently needs all of the help she can get. She doesn’t appear to be very knowledgeable on any subject, and I agree with a previous poster that she is talking the talk to please the most sheep, but not really offering anything of substance.
Further, her kowtow bow to AIPAC is very impressive, something one would never see Mr. PJB do. Palin ought to take a stand on something, and quit the trash talking. In other words, she ought to get her proverbial stuff together. She may look like Raquel Welch, but it’s only going to get her so far. She lacks experience, and new ideas, and most importantly she lacks the passion for this nation that people like Buchanan and Ron Paul effuse.
Take a stand and stick with it. Believe in it, or be called on the fraud. Passion (for THIS nation) cannot be faked. If you’re riding a wave, hoping to cash in on it while the getting’s good, then quit blowing sunshine up our collective skirts.
Good luck.
Dirty Harriet wrote:
“Passion (for THIS nation) cannot be faked.”
Well I dunno about that, but I also don’t know about the wisdom of embracing the overly genuinely passionate either. I don’t doubt Mr. Bush was genuinely passionate about a lot of thing for instance. So passionate that he felt he could do lots of things that were wrong. Same worry I have with Ms. Palin.
Put it this way: Nobody seems to have noted the amazing fact that via her own words Ms. Palin seemed to equate going to war with Iran as nothing *but* playing a political card. So nobody really thinks that even when she immediately thereafter said *she* favors such a war that *she* felt she would be playing that card too, although that’s one absolutely natural implication of her words.
Why? Because she does seem so … genuinely passionate. So passionate that she doesn’t even seem to know when she’s bumbling into implying that she’d go to war for mere political gain.
But no amount of passion is gonna make any war she starts smart. And given that she doesn’t even seem to be able to understand the natural implications of what she says that’s an additional reason to doubt that her war-making understandings would be smart ones too.
It might just be that Yeats was still right when he talked about the best being filled with a “passionate intensity” and the worst “lacking all conviction.” But he was talking about what makes the best *person,* not necessarily the best decision-maker.
I’d take Sarah Palin any day as a neighbor or friend. (As Homer Simpson might say … “Ummm, moose….”) But oh my God the idea of her as making Presidential decisions ….
I gave up on “Cousin Itt” Palin within 24 hours of her getting the nomination. Nothing that I have seen since has caused me to reconsider my position, although I have gone from mildly disliking her to an intense, burning loathing for her.
IMHO, she is a cunning liar, personally charming(although I don’t see the attraction myself), and an intellectual lightweight who makes my cats look like geniuses by comparison.
I’m writing a politcal/sf novel while job searching, and I am seriously considering Palin as one of the villains. It is NOT a cheerful novel…
Thanks for the input, Tom.
However, I disagree on Palin’s passion (for America’s best interests). It’s as genuine as her belief in the ‘hopey changey’ stuff. God bless her for capitalizing on her newfound fame and good looks, she has every right. She should take the ride for as long as she can.
But let’s call a spade a spade. Palin is out for #1, and she panders to the usual corners. That’s the difference between Palin, and the likes of Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul (and Philip Giraldi, Michael Scheuer, and several others).
Christion-Zionist “eschatology,” Mr Ross? I should think “hegemony” would be far more apt.
Looks like I had some company with respect to Palin vs the likes of Paul:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100221/pl_afp/uspoliticsrepublicans_20100221214528
US conservatives prefer Paul to Palin: poll
Sarah Palin should be talking about “declaring war” on the Federal Reserve, but as usual she fails to fathom precisely what the American people require, which is freedom from the chains of usury.
She never talks of a strong navy, or a massive naval build-up, which should be foremost in the mind of a president.
The woman people should be interviewing on national security matters is Devvy Kidd.
The American people do not want a “tough president” in Obama, so much as an honest admission from him that he usurped that high office and that he failed to deliver on his boast of the return of Camelot, by enforcing JFK’s Executive Order 11110, abolishing the Fed.
The American people are ruled by their intellectual inferiors.
That is the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.