Spreading my wisdom for all to enjoy. Where I do little research and pass off my opinion as fact, then close debate by reminding you, "I'm right, you're wrong."
You know what, even certain (elistist) elements of the GOP do not get Palin and why she has mass appeal. If there is going to be a 3rd party movement in this country (Libertarians, Conservatives, are you listening??), it is going to include Sarah Palin. If there is going to be a GOP rebirth, it is going to include Palin.
Unless you have been sitting under a rock this week, you may have noticed that Sarah Palin has a book, Going Rogue, out this week, and has been pretty much everywhere promoting it.
She did Oprah, Hannity, The Today Show, O'Reilly. About the only place we haven't seen Sarah this week is MSNBC. I guess that will be saved for her presidency.
I admit, I don't know what to make of Sarah Palin these days. There's a lot to like. She's been a successful governor, she says all the right conservative things, she is willing to tweak the Republican establishment (see NY-23), and she makes the right people very angry - feminists, leftists, the Legacy Media, Keith Olbermann, she has the Obama Political Arm going after her; plus, she is an attractive woman and you can't discount that fact.
So, what do I want Sarah to do before I can wholeheartedly get behind her for 2012?
First, I have to admit, there is something about the way she speaks, and people have told me it's a Midwestern thing and isn't unusual. Maybe that is part of the appeal and shouldn't be messed with. I've listened alot this week, and she is much, much, much better than she was generally in the campaign. I still chuckle because the way she says things just seems like she's often looking for the right words and sometimes will semi-misuse a phrase or use a phraseology that just doesn't quite fit. But, when she's done, her point always comes across. Someone tell me that's a good thing and is actually part of her appeal? Does anyone know what I mean and can explain it better? If so, please reply.
Now, the other thing that I like about her is that she has the atheist Sally Quinn (the ultimate DC insider for the elitist party crowd - you know, the kind who sip their champagne and look down at the hoi polloi) lecturing us on Palin's Faith.
Now, I don't know about you, but, I always find it amusing how athesists and agnostics purport to know how Christians should act. I just love it when a Sally Quinn or Christopher Hitchens lays into Christians and starts with the hypocrite and the "Jesus wouldn't do that" nonsense.
I just have to shake my head, because, they just don't get the core of Christianity, especially as practiced by most Americans. They really don't. These people need our prayers, and it was especially painful this week seeing Bill O'Reilly take poor old dumb Sally Quinn to the woodshed on this.
Read a couple of other posts about this, then watch the O'Reilly video:
Today the wife, youngest daughter, and I made it over to the big Palin/Chambliss rally at the Gwinnett Arena.
I'd estimate there were about 4000-5000 present. I guess that's not too shabby for a run-off election event. Sarah Palin is the big draw. No one would have attended without her, so it's a good idea for Chambliss to end his campaign with the biggest, most exciting attraction.
The event, for us, was only marred, because some of the more aggressive adults pushed youngest daughter out of the way to get to Sarah for an autograph, breaking a 13 year old's heart. Some old men just gotta get close to greatness, I suspect.
As for the speech by Sarah, it was a pretty vanilla stump speech. I can't really get past her diction and speaking style, but, the regular folks seem to lap it up, and she always has a few good applause lines. I just wish she had better speechwriters, and didn't seem to ramble on sometimes.
I'd say 3,000-5,000 present. The AJC was there and the report is pretty accurate. Note they said about 1000 for the Martin/Ludacris event. Otherwise, she's a great draw and worth the short trip to see her.
Here are a few action shots.
Mom and Daughter await Sarah
Some of the crowd
Saxby
Sarah! Sarah speaking The back side of the arena, with the press stand.
She has spoken glowingly of Sarah Palin before, and she does so again today, affirming:
"As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World."
Like me, she thinks the Senate is the wrong move for Palin (I think it's the kiss of death for a presidential run). Again, Paglia says:
"What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan. Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is."
Of the Media's treatment of Obama:
"In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama."
One of those controversies, Ayers/Dohrn:
"My concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign.
"Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views."
Read the whole article. Paglia should be on your must read list.
In this report, Fox's Carl Cameron spends 5 minutes telling O'Reilly that basically Sarah Palin is an idiot who is also a prima donna. I have my doubts of the truth of these rumours, but, a few thoughts:
If this is true, we are lucky this woman wasn't a heartbeat away from the button
You would think some level of intelligence was required to be such a diva as she's being made out as. To hear this, she has none.
What woman isn't a shopaholic?
What's wrong with answering your hotel room door in a bathrobe? Not like she did it nude (not that there's anything wrong with that!)
Come on, Carl, you really expect her (or anyone) to know that "American Exceptionalism" was a Wilsonian concept (maybe embodied by Wilson, but not created by him)? Now, I admit that I know what it means, but, without Wikipedia, I wouldn't know that American Exceptionalism goes back to the Revolution (and Jefferson). I was skeptical that this concept originated with Wilson. So, Carl, get YOUR facts straight.
Africa isn't a country?
My bottom line on this is until these unnamed staffers come out of the woodwork and publicly say this stuff, it's all B.S.
Now that we have seen Sarah Palin perform in 3 national interviews (Gibson, Hannity, Couric), I think I can say that I still like her, I still think she is a good thing for the GOP and Conservatism, and she has certainly provided energy to the ticket.
While I don't think Palin is an empty suit (pantsuit?), as I blogged about here, and here, in a recent article by conservative writer Kathleen Parker, at National Review Online, she calls for Palin to step aside. Like this writer, over at Redstate, I agree it is no time to get wobbly on Palin.
But, and you knew this was coming, it is time for Palin to step up her game, or risk becoming the next Dan Quayle. Palin is clearly not used to the kind of media scrutiny and "gotcha-ism" of the national press. But, even in her interview with Hannity, about as friendly as you can get, I found her, while charming, and clearly a person of some conviction, not able to really express those opinions in a way that connects.
To be effective, both in this campaign, and for her future, she needs to work on her answers to these journalists. Take this question from Couric, for example:
While the submariner in me appreciates taking a lookup, the political side of me says "No, No, No!" Submarine training also tells us that, when presented with a casualty you don't know the immediate actions to, change it to one for which you do. The same is true of these questions. Even if she knew a couple of obvious answers (he voted for Sarbanes-Oxley, and he sponsored McCain-Feingold), we wouldn't want to remind anyone in the GOP about those votes.
Regardless of whether she knew those easy answers, what McCain has done is immaterial. This was a golden opportunity to point out that John McCain and Sarah Palin were interested in solutions that worked for the American people, whether they needed new regulations or not, and that, in the current crisis, Obama was sullie by his connections with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She has got to learn how to turn the tables on these kinds of gotcha interviews. I don't chalk this up to stupidity or vapidity on her part, I chalk it up to inexperience. She has never had to deal with this kind of questioning from the Alaskan press. She has got to get better to be an effective campaigner, and to keep whiners like Kathleen Parker off her back.
She's not John McCain's biographer. There is no requirement that she know every bit of arcana about him. What she does need to know, though, is enough about the opposition to be able to attack them at will.
Continuing on the 0bama/Muslim meme, California Yankee (who I have added to my political blogroll to the right!) has a great post on this, and how 0 should address the issue head-on.
