Please, Tell Me Where To Go
I saw the Republican Party today, standing in line to see Palin at Shippensburg University. ~Robert Stacy McCain
At the rate the McCain campaign is going, pretty soon I wouldn’t be surprised if you could fit the entire party into a single auditorium for one of her rallies.
McCain continues:
Let the cynics attend a Palin event and try to imagine those crowds turning out for, inter alia, Tim Pawlenty.
Of course, no one in the general public knows who Tim Pawlenty is today anymore than they knew who Palin was two months ago, and when they were told how wonderful and fantastic Palin was they responded by concluding that she was wonderful and fantastic. They would have done much the same for Pawlenty. I’d be willing to bet that they would have responded to Pawlenty’s working-class evangelical reformer shtick with more or less the same enthusiasm that they greeted Palin’s, because it is has ultimately never been about the VP candidate as such and has been entirely about McCain choosing someone who validated rank-and-file conservative views and lifestyle. The difference would have been that he might have deserved some of the praise that has been heaped on her, and he would have been able to hold his own in articulating the reasons why the campaign’s policies are worth supporting. More to the point, if the same crowds had not turned out for Pawlenty, a perfectly credible alternative with a better record and qualifications, it would show how much the Palin enthusiasm is driven entirely by sentiment and irrational identitarianism.
P.S. McCain was right about this much when he said, “if Sarah Palin is enough to make you decide you’re not a Republican, you’re not a Republican.” Indeed, I am not, never have been and, if Palin is the future of the GOP, I never will be.
Update: McCain does have some remarkable footage of the impressive turnout for a Palin rally in awful conditions.
15 Responses to “Please, Tell Me Where To Go”
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I have to agree.
But there is hope:
http://www.politicalbyline.com/2008/10/28/gopbadlyneeded/
P.S. McCain was right about this much when he said, “if Sarah Palin is enough to make you decide you’re not a Republican, you’re not a Republican.†Indeed, I am not, never have been and, if Palin is the future of the GOP, I never will be.
Maybe McCain’s statement is the equivalent of a Goldwater supporter in ’64 saying, “If Goldwater is enough to make you decide you’re not a Republican, you’re not a Republican,” which in retrospect is a debatable but at least defensible sentiment.
More likely this is the equivalent of a McGovern supporter in ’72 saying, “If Thomas Eagleton is enough to make you decide you’re not a Democrat, you’re not a Democrat.” Works for me! McCain’s more than welcome to lash himself to a candidate who currently is, and will enter history as, a national laughingstock. Personally I’m glad I gave up on the GOP a few years ago, and am in no way associated with this cretinous circular firing squad.
And, to be clear, Palin’s not a laughingstock because she’s pro-life, because she hunts, because she didn’t go to an Ivy League school, because her executive experience is in a state (and before that a town) with a small population, etc. When I heard her biography the day McCain picked her I thought she was a great pick.
It’s only when she revealed herself as a) Ignorant; b) Proud of it; c) Contemptuous of people who know things that I started rolling my eyes. Stupidity is hard to get around, but ignorance can be remedied if you care to make the effort. Palin’s no genius, but she clearly has the mental capacity to learn things and has chosen not to do so. To the extent that Palin is a symbol for elements within the GOP that have contempt for knowledge and expertise, she does, as McCain says, illustrate why I’m not a Republican.
Same here, Charlie. Hearing her unvetted bio, she sounds great on paper. I thought she was a shrewd pick, and even used the word “excellent.” But after delving deep into her record, and seeing her complete inability to articulate any platform, I am left cold and McCain’s judgment is clearly impugned. He insulted our collective intelligence by picking her, and eliminated any question that he had the judgment to be president.
What if McCain had chosen Bloomberg?
When the financial crisis hit, McCain could realistically have said that his vp offered a solid moderate alternative to both the distributionist Democratic tax policies and the Bush/Cheney enrich the rich policies.
The choice would have angered a number of evangelical voters, but on the other hand probably have a good chance at a much better showing than Palin among moderates, independents, and non-partisans.
Ultimately, he could have run on a pragmatic, post-partisan platform, reestablished the genuineness of his maverick nature, but at the same time offered a solid competence to compete with Obama’s inexperience and the Bush administration cronyism.
Of course, that would mean abandoning the Rove divide-to-conquer playbook. Plus, Bloomberg isn’t as good-looking as Palin, and might pressure McCain to oppose the Bush tax cuts. If McCain came to his senses and agreed, that would anger the dittoheads.
Can’t have that.
Actually I’d argue that Palin was a pretty weak choice, even on paper.
Like Obama, she has extremely limited political experience. And (arguably) what experience does have does not generalize as well as his. Wasilla may be a nice town, but it’s no Western Hemisphere.
Meanwhile, the selection of Palin as McCain’s understudy completely undermined the only effective attack on Obama, namely that he was a naive greenhorn.
And as an aside, the selection of a relatively inexperienced beauty queen was a laughably tone-deaf attempt to snag Hillary Clinton supporters which was obviously going to insult the intended audience.
So: an inexperienced selection who neutralized your main vector of attack, selected as part of a inept, cynical electoral ploy who will be of no help at all governing in the midst of multiple crises.
To win a news cycle, the McCain campaign threw away the campaign.
I share Daniel’s concerns about what Palin doesn’t know yet, and who’s been helping her cram.
Daniel, however, underestimates the woman. She’s a very charismatic figure, very ambitious, and a quick study. She’s going to be an important figure, like her or not, and will be picking her own coterie.
If Obama turns out to be more Carter than FDR, palinology may become an important field of study.
You may someday look back on Palinism as a kind of Golden Age of rationality. The line at Ace Of Spades is to draft Joe The Plumber as a candidate. I’m not kidding. It really has to be read to be believed. I do not detect even a whiff of irony.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/276774.php
Although I continue to be amazed (or flabberghasted) at the fervent support for Palin, I think it is more a result a the distaste for McCain and the contempt for Obama. A talking head from the New Yorker was on CNN this morning and said — although Sarah Palin is a Washington outsider, she has wowed many of the washington establishment, including Bill Kristol. Of course, what was left undsaid was why and how Palin has wowed those individuals. Rather than focus on her knowledge, experience and understanding, those Beltway love-ins came about by avoiding looking at those characteristics.
Palin is a big, shiny new toy that looked great in the box, unscrutinized. However, the toy was made in China, contained lead, which poisened your child, and the wheels fell off after two days.
lol Surly.
She was an excellent choice because of the twofold prong of picking up PUMAs and thrilling the religious right. Not because of what she actually did, but on paper she was good enough. Her social conservative creds and female genes are what made it excellent.
Daniel, however, underestimates the woman. She’s a very charismatic figure, very ambitious, and a quick study. She’s going to be an important figure, like her or not, and will be picking her own coterie.
Serious question: Is Palin genuinely charismatic? I find her painful to listen to and the things that some male pundits respond to as “sexy” (winking, etc.) come off to me as phony and/or embarrassing. Aside from her off-putting demeanor there’s the fact that she sometimes spouts entire paragraphs of gibberish (even Bush usually only forgets how to speak standard English for a sentence or two at a time).
Now, the obvious rejoinder is. “Charlie, witness the crowds at Palin’s rallies and hang your head in shame–that is the real America, and you are an out-of-touch elitist.” But it seems possible that the base and some Republican pundits would respond similarly to a cardboard cutout with “Average American” written on it. In fact, they recently have responded similarly to a cardboard cutout with “Average American” written on it: witness the popularity of Joe the Plumber.
I think that if Palin makes it to the 2012 primaries she’ll have her clock cleaned by any competent politician who can appeal to the demographic that’s currently going wild for her (Jindal and Huckabee leap to mind).
I too continue to be amazed by the support for Palin….considering nobody can claim to really know much about her…she seems to be the perfect GOP tabula rosa to project onto…she looks and sounds just like me, so she must believe the same things I do!!….once the new car smell wears off, I think some buyers remorse will set in.
My liberal friends and family (especially women) get outraged at Palin and her selection, and an awful lot of GOP types find her exciting.
The number of comments on blogs when she is mentioned and the attendance at her rallies point to her as a figure who evokes a great deal of emotion, pro and con. She can be a polarizing figure; very few people are indifferent to her.
What she’ll do with the emotional wallop she packs, how long it will last, and where she will go on policy if, as seems likely, Obama wins, are all open questions. But for now, she’s very powerful.
quote: “Robert Stacy McCain — I’ve got news for the Christopher Buckleys of the world — if Sarah Palin is enough to make you decide you’re not a Republican, you’re not a Republican. ”
as the party is imploding, it strikes me as the wrong moment to be proposing litmus tests….
not the best way to increase the size of the big tent or make the pie higher……
I don’t think she has charisma as much as she has sex appeal to a certain kind of male conservatism. She delivers her speeches in a sing-songy voice, and her winks and nods indicate that she’s gotten by in this world largely based on her ability to use her good looks to win favor from men. There’s a reason 60 percent of women under 50 look at her with disfavor.
Huckabee would have been a much better choice to rally the base. He was proven, he gives a good speech, uses humor effectively, and the press loves him. Even liberals like Bill Maher enjoy bantering with him.
If Palin is the future of the Republican party, it’s doomed.
Palin wildly overestimates her in-party support.
Also, she faces a genuine problem in 2010– her gubernatorial term is up then. If she runs for re-election, Alaskans will know that she has no plans to finish the term, which is likely to erase much of her local goodwill (if she has any remaining by then). If she chooses not to run, she has a really hard time making a case for her Presidential aspirations to donors and national party leadership.
She is worse off than Huckabee, because she hasn’t shown signs of garnering the same level of social-conservative evangelical volunteer support. She has only energised part of the Christian-conservative portion of the base– possibly a majority of it, but still not an overwhelming majority. And since that part of the party is less than 40%, she has at best maybe 25% support within the party– and this is at best, assuming she can stay in office her full term and continues to hold national interest (a very large assumption).
Six months or a year is a very long time in politics, and Palin has set herself up in Alaska for local disaster and national forgetfulness by then.