Andrew Sullivan: "A Half-Term Former Governor With A TV Show" (don't dismiss her)

"A Half-Term Former Governor With A TV Show"

15 Apr 2010 10:33 am



David Brooks wants everyone to stop talking about her:



I understand why David would rather she go away; but like his dismissal of the power of the Christianist right in American conservatism and culture, this dismissal of Palin misses, I think, several critical things.

The first is the psychological appeal of the beautiful female warrior. Palin is not appealing to the Republican super-ego (in so far as one has survived the last ten years); she is directly, umbilically connected to the Republican id (and some other male organs). Her appeal is visceral not rational. And if modern post-Nixon Republicanism has always had a thread of class resentment sustaining it, Palin concentrates it into a heady brew. If Nixon was cocaine for the resentful psyche, Palin is meth.

Secondly, she fuses both Tea-Party anti-government sentiment with neocon conviction about the necessity for American empire.

snip//

Who else puts all this together for the GOP? No one. Huckabee is crippled by a record of spending and leniency. Romney is crippled by being Mitt Romney and Mormonism. Pawlenty: seriously? Santorum? Ditto. Brown? We are beginning to see the depth of his predicament. DeMint? Rubio? C'mon.

Yes, many tea-partiers do not think Palin is "qualified" to be president. But primaries are won by enthusiasm and star power. Palin has both. And she has money. And, most important, she has a media machine dedicated to promoting her outside of any real scrutiny or questions. She has never faced a real press conference and speaks to "pre-screened" questioners at debates and speeches. She is a test-case of how willfully divorced from reality a segment of America can remain, and how irrelevant reality is for today's niche-targeted media. All of this makes Palin the most potent force in American politics since Obama.

Acknowledging that requires a grasp of the depth of the crisis on the right. I think David still under-estimates how deep that crisis is. I think he still thinks the current Republican party is salvageable as a credible governing force. I don't.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/a-halfterm-former-governor-with-a-tv-show.html

It's Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusets (still amazes me to type that). He's handsome, and not saddled with much of a political history.

Kind of like Obama was.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8155490

Of course, so is Palin. :shrug:

Senate passes jobless aid package. Scott Brown votes against it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x270281

<SNIP>

Of course, none of this makes any sense, but Palin, unlike some of her rivals who feel some kind of lingering need to relate their policies to fiscal and global reality, is a thoroughly post-modern creature. She creates her own reality, and that is an incredibly important talent for a party base that desperately wants to live in another reality (a kind of souped-up version of 1950s culture and late nineteenth century economy). Her book - a fictional account of an imagined life - sold well with the GOP base because they too want a fictional account of America's current standing in the world and an imagined set of viable policy positions. She so lives and breathes this magical-realist culture she doesn't need to channel it. She knows we can keep social security and Medicare and global power for ever and balance the budget without any taxes - because that is what she wants to know. And she has never let reality get in her way. Reality is one of those doors she keeps crashing through.

<SNIP>

again and debates too. Bill Kristol would probably still try and sell her as the woman who can out neocon the neocons
for Israel, and I want to hear her talk about her plans for Social Security and Medicare.

Come on Sarah, run.

is that primaries are also won on organizational ability and hard work...hard work that continues long after the TV lights are turned off and crowds have gone home. Sarah Palin has no skill for the former and no stomach for the latter. She wants to be a celebrity..period. She is incapable of holding a political organization together and incapable of performing without cheers.

POTUS requires thinking and I don't think she wants to be involved in any part of that - but who knows.

that campaigning requires a heck of a lot of hard, unglamorous work, which is the last thing she wants. We'll have to see, but it wouldn't surprise me if she dropped out of the primaries for a while, and then staged a dramatic "comeback", declaring that she wasn't going to let the vicious attacks by the media keep her down.

very conservative voting record
6 terms of experience
anti-abortion/anti-stem cell research
for Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage
for banning gay adoptions in DC
degree in economics
appearing to speak intelligently, both on shows and in person
socially, religiously right up the wingnuts alley
appearance of youth & vitality
white
family man
voted in by a state which went for Obama

he's their dream boy - they see him as a Palin with a brain or a young Ronald Reagan type. He has said he doesn't want to run given his young family. He will change his mind, just you watch

voting record: http://ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Ryan.htm

They'll realize the only way to attack Obama is to somehow make him look the old guy in the room after 4 years, and the only way to do that is to try to grab the mantle of change from Obama, put it on a face appearing younger, whiter and more conservative fiscally, and then push him as the 2nd coming of Reagan.

They really got nothing else out there. When you got nothing, you throw long.

:puke: