I am reminded of the attempt by Nelson Rockefeller to stand against the "dangerous" Goldwaterites during the 1964 GOP convention. I think what you are seeing here is a replaying out of that battle, with the Brooks of the world standing in for Rockefeller. Brooks really is a later day country club East Coast Republican, which helps explain why he can get on so famously at the Times. This crowd was advocating for a McCain-Romney ticket because they would have viewed that as the perfect repudiation of the Goldwater-GOP and a belated vindication of their own Rockefellerian tendencies.

From such a perspective Palin would have to be seen as a "cancer." She represents (accurately or not) the wing of the GOP that denies the "noblese oblige" tradition that Brooks & co. prefer. Brooks only really believes in "government for the people." HE thinks of those who also believe in "government of the people" and "government by the people" as dangerous know-nothings, thus the claims of anti-intellectualism.

It's right here, from Peggy Noonan

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics [emphasis added]

Social class is the driver. Palin is not one of them. Conversely, you can look at why people like Brooks like Obama - he reads Niebuhr. The complaints about Palin are filled with such class markers. Watch Caddy Shack again and picture Palin as Al Czervik and the pundits cited as Judge Elihu Smails.

"Why are conservative pundits acting in a way they didn't in the past, even when the Republican candidate for vice-president was performing badly?"

Sexism, plain and simple. If the identical VP candidate was named Jerry Palin you would hardly here a word about it. Women, like it or not, are going to be held to a stricter scrutiny by the political class. The left is always hysterical about identity politics traitors, and the right is deeply paranoid of anything that hints of affirmative action.

Just look at how Joe Biden has been ignored, and he is probably the most vulnerable VP candidate i've ever seen based purely on his voting record. But nobody is paying him any attention.

On one hand, I don't think these "intellectuals" are where the party is at. Brooks represents a brand of neoconservatism that favors policy wonkerism, whereas the party has traditionally favored the CEO-style leadership of men (or women) that share basic principles.

Palin exacerbates this problem because it points the party in an increasingly Jacksonian, anti-elite, direction. (Let me guess Brooks wanted Lieberman as VP?)

The third thing is that Obama is a cypher. If I squint through one eye, I see a classic un-nuanced liberal, but if I squint through the other eye, I see ambition. The appeal of Obama as a creature of ambition is that he will do what it takes to succeed, regardless of ideology. Here is a guy who listened and argued carefully with a Constitutional scholar about the propriety and need to spy on foreign communications and said, I would like that power as President. If this represents the type of President he will be, some types of conservative will be pleased.

From the POV of the political class, Palin is a 'commoner' who has not compromised her entire life to run for office. Noonan has been in politics her entire career. In that regard, she has more common ground with a Hillary than with Palin, and that counts more than her party. Palin is a walk-on player who's shaken up those who've compromised their whole lives to be on the field.

Palin also comes across as genuine. I don't agree with all of her social views, but I'll give her that she and her family have visibly walked the talk of their beliefs. A contrast to a political class that trims and blows with the wind, to make sure not to offend the poll of the week. And hence the need to scour all the dumpsters of Alaska to pull her down into the mutual tar pit.

"Vulgarization in politics"? Why do I suspect that decodes as "the bloggerization of politics"? Doesn't this give you the same feeling as the horror of the media that the great unwashed have invaded, and are speaking from their own experience rather than from the authority of their J-school degrees?

Journalism and politics have in common that many of the watching throng say to themselves: 'These guys aren't very smart'. 'I know the field he's talking about, and he's wrong', and 'I could do this better'. Blogging has shown that a lot of that was correct with respect to the media. If Palin can walk-in from the PTA, and end up as VP in three hops, it might be true of politicians as well.

First, let me disagree with Mr. Buehner. I don't see sexism as having much play here. The only Republicans who oppose Gov. Palin because of her sex are, to use a C.S. Lewis phrase, "men without chests."

I think the opposition comes from:

1. The intellectuals in the GOP, many of whom are the above-mentioned MWoC. They are products of the Ivy League and Ivy League wannabe schools. These people put a premium on intellect and learning. They see Gov. Palin as not being their equal and therefore unworthy.

2. The "governing class" Republicans who have been building their resumes since high school with hopes of a Congressional seat or a Cabinet post. They see Gov. Palin as someone who didn't make electoral politics her life's aim and yet vaults over them.

3. The "chattering class" Republicans. They want to be accepted as, if not intellectuals, then as members of the same club as the liberal media heavyweights. They see Gov. Palin as one who must be shunned. Otherwise, they lose their (second-class) membership in the media club.

Aristocracy of intellectualism.

I guess I should expand on that. I am an Anglophile — or at least very fond of the England that produced America, and its continuation up through the 1930s or so. But there's something really wrong about that England, and it's something that Americans decisively rejected in the 1770s: the idea that a hereditary class can be citizens first and people with their own needs second; that they would set aside not only their own comfort and preferences, but if necessary their very life and wealth, in service to the idea of their nation. There were times when that really worked. The British peerage produced some fine, fine leaders for their institutions and advocates for their culture. It also produced some real stinkers. It produced both Winston Churchill and Charles I, for example. And it's crap; the concept of self-sacrificing citizenship is simply not hereditary, so having it in one generation does not mean that the following generations will maintain it. More often the reverse is true. This is the age-old conceit of monarchies, that only they and their kind are fit to rule, because only they and their kind are fit to lead.

But then, how do you find the class of people that will sacrifice themselves in defense of their country and culture? Some countries have simply let people fight it out, assuming that the thugs who rise to the top are able, and thus should justly lead; consider Soviet Russia. Some have used a technocracy where those who are best at following the rules rise to the top; consider Japan. There are other methods, but they all come down to attempts to determine who is right to lead and thus to rule.

Let's be clear, because what we're talking about here is legitimacy. And in the US, legitimacy comes from popular election. Originally, the franchise was limited (too limited) in an attempt to ensure that anyone who voted was both unlikely to be pressured into voting against his own interests, and that his personal interests were in the long-term stability, prosperity and liberty of the country. This group was justly expanded, then unjustly expanded to the point where the cultural assumption is that a crack whore living in the gutter has as much of an interest in the future stability, prosperity and liberty of the country as a farmer (with immovable land) or a small business owner or a parent of dependent children. But that assumption is demonstrably false, and it's why buying votes with other people's money and the progressive tax scheme (that maximizes the money taken from a minimum number of people) work so well at perpetuating themselves even while destroying liberty, prosperity and stability.

Everyone has their own idea of what kind of person should be in charge, and remarkably it's usually someone just like them. Populists are successful because they portray themselves as ordinary people who just got angry about the system and decided to fix it. The wealthy make their claim that their personal financial success means that they know what's best for the rest of us. The bureaucrats and technocrats make the claim that their expertise and experience are vital in this complex world (that they've largely created, and much of which is not primary). The intellectuals claim that good leadership is all about ideas, and reading Niebuhr is therefore ipso facto qualification for office.

In a nutshell, then, the intellectuals are like everyone else: they think that they and their kind should be in charge. And that transcends partisanship.

Sarah Palin has put a new face and voice to the long-standing, powerful, but inchoate movement in US political life that one might see as a mutant variety of Poujadism, inflected with a modern American accent. [snip] In 1980, Ronald Reagan profitably tapped the movement with his promises of states’ rights, low taxes and a shrunken government in Washington; the ‘Reagan Democrats’ who crossed party lines to vote for him are still the most targeted demographic in the country. In 1992, Ross ‘Clean out the Barn’ Perot and his United We Stand America followers looked for a while as if they were going to up-end the two-party system, with Perot leading George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the midsummer polls. In 1996, Pat Buchanan (‘The peasants are coming with pitchforks’) appealed to the same bloc of voters with a programme that was militantly Christian, white, nativist, provincial, protectionist and anti-Washington. In 2000, Karl Rove cleverly enrolled this quasi-Poujadist faction in his grand alliance of libertarians, born-agains and corporate interests. It’s worth remembering that in 2004 every American city with a population of more than 500,000 voted for Kerry, and that the election was won for Bush in the outer suburbs, exurbia and the countryside – peasants with pitchforks territory. For an organisation so wedded to its big-city corporate clients, the Republican Party has been hugely successful in mopping up the votes of low-income, lightly educated rural and exurban residents. [snip]

Until now, the political leaders who’ve used the movement to their electoral advantage have come to it as outsiders. Reagan the Hollywood actor, Perot the data-processing billionaire, Buchanan the DC journalist, and George W. Bush the energy-industry scion and owner of a merely recreational ranch in Crawford, Texas, have had very little in common with their rural and exurban constituents, and their gestures at farmyard, strip-mall or cowboy-boot cred have tended to come across as phoney and embarrassing. Photographed inside J.C. Penney’s or Costco or Safeway, they’ve looked hardly less exotic than poor Michael Dukakis did on board his ill-advised tank. But the moment that Sarah Palin stepped up to the mike at the Republican Convention in St Paul, and began talking in her homely, mezzo-soprano, Far Western twang, she showed herself to be incontestably the real thing. Americans, starved of völkisch authenticity in their national politicians, thrilled to her presence on the stage. [snip]

But as politicians of both parties in Alaska have discovered, underestimating Palin nearly always turns out to be a fatal error. For – when on form – she has the ability to connect with that surly mass of occasional, floating voters who feel themselves to have been disenfranchised by more orthodox politicians and who respond to her as a paragon of domestic good sense and decency in a world rendered ever more incomprehensible by the dark arts of the elites.

She belongs to no elite. After drifting through five colleges in six years, she eventually secured a degree in journalism at the University of Idaho, less ivy than sagebrush league. Short of majoring in chiropractic, she could hardly have had a higher education less offensive to the Limbaughites. As Obama stands tarred in their eyes by his Columbia and Harvard connections, so Palin represents the healthy values of the church and the outdoors against those of the deeply suspect East Coast universities.

[snip]

[In the network interviews there] was a new and startling Sarah Palin, the dim student, flustered by more teaching than her poor head could bear. Molecules! Fungible! Commodity! She flung the words like bean bags at a blackboard. She never talked this way in Alaska, and would never have done so in Michigan, if her new tutors hadn’t succeeded in temporarily addling her brains. More, much more, of the same gibberish was on display in her recent extended interview on CBS with Katie Couric.

The American hinterland has given us autodidacts like Lincoln and Truman, and until she opened her mouth to Katie Couric, these pundits could have some legitimate hope that Palin was in the same mold. She isn't. The pundits cited, unlike Limbaugh, see conservatism as a philosophy, with creeds and beliefs. Scorn for knowledge is not one of them. Palin, like Limbaugh, merely feeds on vague resentment of those who see their preferred way of life (Protestant church-centered, heteronormal, nominally and hypocritically pro-chastity, etc.) under attack. Every one of those pundits, and every commenter at WoC (except maybe… ah, skip it) knows more about both the facts and theory of world history, geography, culture, and so on than Sarah Palin.

All movements need some balance in antithesis. I would never recommend a liberal Obama-led one-party state. The conservative movement as represented by Brooks and Buckley has some possibility of being right on the merits, over against the received liberal view. The Palinesque lumpenproletariat? No, consumed in their own anger, they may get lucky on the blind squirrel principle, but to my mind, an educational renaissance that diminished them permanently would be a good idea.

"George W. Bush has loved ideas too. I think he's wrong about which ideas to love, but the man is a steady reader of books. . . ."

"The Left is eagerly making an example of any hick from the sticks who dares speak a word out of place. (Just ask "Joe the plumber".). . . "

It appears that Mr. Blue has, (in a phrase I'll borrow from the right) "drunk the Kool-Aid".

GWB as a man of ideas. S.P. as NOT fundamentally anti-intellectual. The "Joe the Plumber" mantra as a creation of the Left (Were you WATCHING the debate, D.B.? Would you like a COUNT of who invoked Joe most frequently?)

Much of S.P.'s appeal is astro-turf populism, "Joe Six Pack" politiking, the branding (and that's what it is) that you're somehow more "genuine" if it looks sounds or claims to be "from middle America", if you drink Bud instead of Heineken, like Merle and and Waylon, and not Wynton, that you don't care about your grammar, you don't eat no arugula, and you don't hang around with no pointy-headed perfessers. This is the only available counter-weight to the prospect of a black guy, from relatively humble beginnings, who was so "ambitious" that he's gotten to run for President.

Ms. Palin has memorized one good stump speech, about the one issue (note that singular noun there) she really cares about. Given time and practice, she could whomp up a stump-speech on Creationism and why we need to reinstate mandatory school prayer, . . .ummm. . . better make that "why Intelligent Design should be taught as an alternative theory, and the freedom to practice religion without government intrusion". . .

This is going to be an interesting election...

I wanted to weigh in on this excellent essay, and after reading the comments, my points are already made (save the allegation of sexism).

Academic Elitism, and plain old elitism combined. Old Media hostility, echoing the same disdain for the blogosphere. But besides all that,

David Brooks is a faux Conservative, not least because he writes for the NYT consistently anti-conservative (and invariably anti-GOP) pieces. Peggy Noonan is a terrific essayist, but she drips with condescension towards most anybody that doesn't get her panties in a swoon like her mythic Ronnie. (I think she thinks of herself as the primary means of Reagan being the Great Communicator.)

Sarah Palin could represent an archtype of a new politician: normal, everyday Americans who could be given the opporunity to govern when called upon to do so, minimally.

Sweep away incumbency protection mechanisms, lobbyism, career politicking, and let an "only when and what is necessary" ethic reign in centralized Government (Federal or State).

I know intellectuals of all stripes greatly fear a "tyranny of the masses," but should we be any less repulsed by our current tyranny of the elites? In all speheres of influence?

I want to clarify- i don't think this is conscious sexism. However there is no way Palin would be getting this much criticism if she was a man. I agree with the rifts in the Republican party and basically how they break down philosophically, however in the past outsiders were more co-opted, not attacked. The Republican Party has long been famous for closing ranks, particularly in public. The last time i recall this sort of open door mutiny was when Bush 41 broke his tax pledge, and that was a very specific disagreement.

Can anyone imagine Mike Huckabee being attacked by fellow republicans with this sort of volume and vitriol had he been pegged? I don't buy it. Palin is getting the business because of the perception that she was picked because she is a woman.

Just 'cause you're a "skin" in a game of touch football, doesn't mean you're a nudist. An awful lot of professional "conservatives" are conservatives only in the sense that there are two sides, and you can't have a game without both sides being represented.

Look, if the record of utter, and unnecessary failure in the years after '94 told us anything, it's that there are a lot of fights nominally conservative politicians didn't WANT to win. That's what's crippling the GOP today, the widespread understanding that they don't actually MEAN most of this stuff. That's why they made sure they got a candidate who made no secret of not meaning any of that stuff.

Palin's sin is that she really believes this stuff, and might pursue it even after the election was past. Instead of just using it to bait and switch the rubes.

I have consistently made these points as a conservative Republican since I have started contributing to this sight.

1. The party began its current rise with the election of Reagan. It had a very strong "intellectual" (which in the republican Party now seems to be a bad word) basis to form an ideology, especially on the economics side. Nobel Laureates, Paul Volker (who, by the way is now one of Obama's main advisors).

2. Building on this base, the Party continued to prosper under Gingrich and the contract with America.

3. By the time, Rove took over the helm of Republican politics, he was riding the crest of a 20 year Republican wave.

4. What did he do with it? He played the anti-intellectual card. what happenned, the party went into decline. the party no longer promulgated ideas, it spread propaganda.

5. Hence, the utter collapse the party will experience.

The republican Party can not possibly win without a strong philosophy. As of today, it doesn't have one.

Sarah Palin, I am sure is a nice enough women and probably a capable mother of Alaska. As a vice Presidential candidate representing my party, she is an insult.

One other thing, in early 2005,just after the 2004 election, the president of the Association of American Businesses or some such, mentioned that their members had given a bundle to the Bush campaign, hoping that they would focus on business issues, instead, all they heard was the Administration playing to social conservatives, and business leaders weren't poaticularly happy about that.

Then there are the neo-conservatives, who seem to play a monotonous one note song in response to foreign policy issues, be belligerent and don't engage with you friends.

Add Palin and he qualifications to the Foreign Policy equation and all I can say is you must be kidding.

The crushing defeat that we Republicans will suffer this election season will be deserved and hopefully will have us rethink the prominent position social conservatives have been playing in the party recently.

Sara Palin, the millstone around this ticket along with Steve Schmitt and his dumbing down of Republican Philosophy will hopefully sink below the waves forever.

The key to the failure of Rovianism is that he failed to realize the strength of the party in that people looked at the party for leadership, ideas and inspiration. He had a rock solid belief in pandering. And pandering to the lesser angels of our nature.

Face the facts. This GOP heresy, along with Neo-Conservatism is dead. Thank God.

As a companion piece to liberal Seattleite Jonathan Raban's (AJL's #8), here are remarks on Palin by pseudonymous Asia Times regular Spengler.

What does America have that Asia doesn't have? The answer is, Sarah Palin - not Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin the "hockey mom" turned small-town mayor and reforming Alaska governor. All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can't make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America's political system the world's most reliable.

America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition.

[snip]

Provincial America depends on the initiative of ordinary people to get through the day. America has something like an Education Ministry, but it has little money to dispense. Americans pay for most of their school costs out of local taxes, and levy those taxes on themselves. In small towns, many public agencies, including fire protection and emergency medical assistance, depend almost entirely on volunteers. People who tax themselves, and give their own time and money for services on which communities depend, are not easily cowed by the federal government or by large corporations.

[snip]

Palin really did take on the American oil companies and turn the scoundrels out of office. Her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to the state oil and gas commission in the apparent belief that a small-town mayor and former beauty queen would rubber-stamp corrupt deals between the state and the Big Oil companies.

Shades of Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin ran against Murkowski and took his job. That does not qualify her to be president, to be sure, but it does show cunning and strength of character. Palin is qualified for high office by temperament if not by education, and is preferable to candidates whose education has made no improvement on their characters.

[snip]

At the capillary level, school boards, the Parent Teachers' Association, self-administered religious organizations and volunteer organizations incubate a political class entirely different from anything to be found in Asia. There are tens of thousands of Sarah Palins lurking in the minor leagues of American politics, and they are the guarantors of market probity.

"Hockey Moms," to be sure, may not be the optimal promoters of America's future. One for one, the "Piano Moms" of China are cleverer people and produce smarter offspring. China's 30 million students of classical piano are one of the two great popular movements in the world today: the other is the House Church movement in Chinese Christianity. Children who play hockey will grow up to get coffee for children who study piano. As a pool of talent, nothing compares with the educated segment of the East Asian population that has embraced and mastered Western culture.

For myself and I suspect others, Spengler's hit on something that left-coaster Raban missed. No, in my opinion, Palin is not qualified to be V.P. There's too much important material that she doesn't know, and little evidence that she has the makings of a quick study. McCain put campaign over country by choosing her for the role.

But, that said, Palin has done well as Governor, certainly by the not-very-high standards of Alaska and many other states. And she doesn't stack up altogether badly against Joe Biden, who knows all the facts and explains them smoothly and with confidence. Despite being grievously mistaken on many key points.

Further, Palin was elected governer because she's risked her career to do the right thing: fight the entrenched corruption and cronyism of her own party.

Taking a stand against corruption and resisting the special-interest supporters of one's own party. Two traits that, I suspect, America will sorely miss. To an even greater extent than in the past 8 years.

Commenters #1-7 have pretty much covered the waterfront, so not a lot to add. #8's analysis is well thought out, but where he errs, I think is in his concluding prescription. The conceit that an "educational renaissance" would "diminish them permanently" assumes that said educational renaissance would not also improve the quality of the analytical powers of the Palinites. Is not it also just as likely that even with improved analytical powers thanks to said educational renaissance the Palinites would still hew to their original world-views, only now argued with greater sophistication, and therefore fueling the expansion,appeal and influence of their (Palinites) POV?

Finally, #9 has the kernel of an idea that I had given little credence to,i.e., that it's difficult to run against a "black guy" from humble beginnings without affecting humble beginnings one's self. Now, the log cabin syndrome has been a staple of politics since Lincoln's days (but not previously, people forget) but I have perhaps underestimated the extent to which people have trouble seeing Obama as a member in good standing of an "elite" that is not only out of touch with average Americans, but which harbors some truly dangerous ideas.

I sure wish we Democrats had more of the failure of the GOP 1994-2004 that Brent Bellmore mentions. Didn't you keep the House for that entire period and the Senate for almost all? Won two of the three presidential elections?

So, what happened? Well, take John Cole at Balloon Juice for a start. Then a Republican, now a conservative Democrat. He went ballistic over the Terri Schiavo cause celebre of the Republican Social Radical Wing. Nor was he excited about torture of detainees, and the Republican's desire to define patriotism as the willingness to commit or authorize war crimes. (Cole, BTW, is a vet.)

By 2006, the Republicans walked into the first election in American history where one party didn't wrest a single House, Senate, or Governor position from the other and they did it on the Palin Social "Conservative" Platform. They looked set for a repeat performance until former Republican turned Blue Dog Democrat Tim Maloney was caught in obvious sexual harrassment.

I was truly deeply worried about Sarah Palin when I first worried about her. But the more I read, the more I see flash and the less I see substance. I look back to the RNC speech and see that she really says nothing, proposes nothing, demonstrates 0 command over anything except hurling insults.

That speech SHOULD have been a warning bells, she cannot even explain the skills she has to manage a major post (even if the post is a formality). She switches sides on convience, and provides no reasoning for doing so (see Bridges to nowhere, both of them). She puts plans in motion before planning them resulting in large problems (ie paving roads to hockey rink that doesn't exist, claiming success in an oil pipeline that does not have a basic agreement). She seems massively unaware of even the basic history of national movements she believes in... such as pro-life.

To give an imperfect example: McCain has been saying today that because her youngest daughter has down-syndrome "she knows what it's like to deal with Autism". That is a blazingly ridiculous statement (my wife works with Autistic kids, the differences are massive), up there with "Palin knows more about oil than anyone since..." or "Palin knows russia since....". But I get the feeling that it's all Palin has.

Which is why they've locker her in a closet, only parroting soundbytes about 'Obama', saying nothing about McCain, and indicating that she contains even less. Even her best soundbytes are both vague and contradictory. That's a fantastically odd combination, and that's what I would expect she would bring to the VP post.

I don't understand this new pattern. So I'm throwing this out to Winds of Change readers: what do you think is going on? Why are conservative pundits acting in a way they didn't in the past, even when the Republican candidate for vice-president was performing badly?

Two factors:

1) We talk about emergent networks in social relationships in counterinsurgency, but it applies to all sorts of such networks, good, bad, and sideways. The people around you exert an influence on you, pulling you into their networks. When multiple networks are pulling on the same figure, you can see them trying to straddle the demands being made.

So, you take someone who is in the gravity well of the "conservative" network, but also the "elite" network. They're experiencing pull from both directions. The social attitudes of the two networks are at strong variance, so they negotiate for themselves a middle position.

Once you have that concept, you can proceed to:

2) In the pre-New Media period, these folks served a highly important function -- because they were nodes shared by two networks, they were one of the places where information could be exchanged by the networks. We accept ideas on moral questions from people in our network much more readily than from other sources. Here, then, were people who could pass information to both networks. They could explain to those from the elite networks why conservatives felt as they did; and they could explain to conservatives something about how the elites saw them, and why.

As such, they were valued by both spheres.

In the New Media period, however, conservatives have a voice that they haven't had in the past. The elite have always had a voice. Conservatives -- the small town folks like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin -- might write an op-ed for their local paper, or speak at their church or city council meeting, but they didn't have a way of being part of the national debate. Now they do.

As a result, the conservative network doesn't need these 'joint nodes' to pass their ideas into the major press to nearly the same degree. As a result, the conservative network is less willing to accept the middle positions these 'joint nodes' have negotiated for themselves. They are being rejected as inauthentic members of the network.

As they are pushed further from the gravity well of the conservative network, its gravity pulls on them less. The gravity from the elite network is therefore felt as stronger, and begins to draw them further in.

Thus, the things that this means for them is both (a) that they feel rejected by the mass of conservatives, that their special place of honor has been rejected as no longer wanted and that they personally have been rejected as inauthentic. Also, (b) the elites still want them. So, they are renegotiating on terms that will make them more acceptable to the elite network, and no longer interested in what conservatives actually think.

They will be fine, because the elites will continue to accept them as the authentic voice of conservatives, and the elites are the ones paying their bills. Now, you ask a broader question, so I'll treat that separately.

Cats (TOC, #13) and dogs (AJL, #17), lying down together.

But yes, she sounds genuine. She sounds like a real "American" to a lot of republicans. And for many people, that's enough. If you walk they're walk, and talk they're talk, that's good enough to represent them in the white house.

And so, the political professionals (who know what's needed) split from those who know what they want to see.

#16 from virgil xenophon at 7:09 pm on Oct 17, 2008

I have perhaps underestimated the extent to which people have trouble seeing Obama as a member in good standing of an "elite"

You might be missing the point, entirely. Have you considered that the public might want the elite at this point. The Republican Party was always thought of as the Party of the elite, and they won many more elections in the from 1860 to 2008 than did the Democrats. Five to two since 1980.

that is not only out of tough with average Americans

I cannot see how you can say that Obama is out of touch with the American people. This is exactly the "I know better than they do" whine that the Democrats have been bleating for the past 8 years. It didn't work for them and it doesn't work for you.

Did you ever think that the American People may be out of touch with you?

Of course it goes back to John Stewart's point about the candidate you want to have a beer with- look at the guy sitting next to you at the bar, does that look like a President?

And what if anything does it imply about the present state of the GOP and its likely leadership, ideology and prospects in the years to come?

The important factor at work described above is the fact that small-town conservatives are beginning to have direct access to the national debate, without needing 'joint nodes' or other transitional figures. This is part of a wave redefining the GOP.

The GOP's leadership has been demonstrated in recent years to be corrupt, lying politicians -- and for whatever reason, that seems to matter to conservative voters. It's a truism that the GOP will throw a Senator or a Representative out of politics for things like trolling for sex in bathrooms, taking bribes, or whatever; so they are being purged of people like this.

That has led to a generalized distrust of people with experience at the top of the Republican foodchain among GOP voters. (I mean here people who normally or occasionally vote for the GOP, not necessarily self-identified Republicans. Reagan Democrats count as "GOP voters" here because they are people who can be convinced to vote for the GOP, and sometimes do.)

Those people now distrusted, though, are the ones who know how to organize and run a campaign at the Federal level. That implies difficulty for Republicans at the Presidential level, even past this election year. That is, they'll likely do better in Congress, because they'll have fresh blood and new faces obviously not connected to the old party leadership. Yet even when you get rid of the majority of corrupt politicians at the top, it's still going to be hard to run for President because you'll have gotten rid of the people who know how.

On the other hand, the President is unique in requiring an actual nationwide campaign. Senators require only a state-level campaign, and Representatives a very localized campaign. There are plenty of people who know how to do this out there in the states. Finally, w.r.t. Representatives, you have to take into account gerrymandering.

I think you'll see a lot more new faces in the GOP's Senate prospects in coming years. The Representatives have gerrymandered themselves into nearly perfect security, so there won't be much change there, except as they step up to try to become Senators. We can hope that some will face primary challenges next time. I think, though, that a lot of the new Senate prospects will come from state-level offices -- state senators, governors, even mayors of small towns.

Most likely the new GOP will feature more dentists and MBAs, small businessmen and the like. Most likely it will feature fewer Ph.D.'s.

Finally, I think there will be a lot of room created by the casting out of the current Republican leadership for military officers and NCOs who will be leaving the service in coming years. I hope the Democratic party will also see a spike in the membership of this class in their party, but the fact that the Republican incumbents are going to do badly means that there will be room for them.

If we are lucky, the Democrats will continue to spur recruiting efforts among such men and women so as to avoid the military becoming strongly aligned with the Republican party. I think that would be unhealthy; and meanwhile, it would be healthy for the country to have as many of these veterans as possible in the leadership.

If that happens, I think the future looks good. The GOP will be a much better and healthier party. The Democratic Party will also get better.

That's good, because the real problems looming on the horizon will require improvements. We've got the collapse of underfunded public pensions and entitlements, the potential for Iranian nuclear weapons, the danger of a collapsing nuclear Pakistan, global food and energy problems, and so forth. We are very lucky to be starting that transfusion of new blood into politics now, rather than waiting for those problems to manifest.

Palin is who she is. The issue is not whether she appeals to any one individual or not --or for whatever set of reasons; the issue being raised by Brooks, Noonan et al is whether or not Palin's brand of politics is helpful to the GOP's cause. If polls are to be believed, the answer is not. As much as she energizes and speaks to a sizeable group of Americans, she appears to turn off a great many more. Her appeal is limited and, as such, is not likely to broaden the appeal of the GOP.

I think if it were otherwise, we wouldn't be hearing from Brooks & bros. If she were a winner, they'd have kept their elitist opinions to themselves. Their advice to not go down the Palin road is sound, if you ask me. But as a good decent leftie, I hope you all ignore their advice and stampede down it.

Boy, everyone jumped in as I was composing between other things. BB@#12 is oh so right--she really does believe "this stuff" which is a double-edged sword being a source of strnght in appeal to her base, but brings on the heaping criticism from her social and intellectual "bettors" from both sides of the aisle who stand aghast at the mere sight and sound of her.

AMac@#15 foolishly errs when he criticizes McCain for putting "campaign over country" by choosing Palin. As one grizzled city hall pol once told NYC GOP Dudley Do-Rite reformer Mayor John Lindsay, who had protested shifting snow removal budget money to fix pot-holes in time for the up-coming Sept councilmanic elections, which, if lost to the Demos, would have neutered Lindsay: "Mr Mayor, you just don't even understand, there can't be no December if there ain't no September." One is hardly in a position to "do right" by America unless one gets elected. "First things First."

#20 from AMac at 7:18 pm on Oct 17, 2008
Cats (TOC, #13) and dogs (AJL, #17), lying down together.

Neither will get fleas. I like AJL. He does his homework!

Virgil Xenophon #16, Thanks for that. I'm so g-d-m sick of the "smart people are Democrats, and only idiots vote Republican" schtick I could puke. I had a professor once, a good man and an excellent teacher but a typical arrogant academic leftist. He compared the ideas, customs, mores, politics etc. that we grow up with to the water a fish grows up with. The fish never notices the water. He simply lives in it. His point was that we need to become aware of our "water" in order to examine it, question it, change it. Problem with that analogy is that water is good. Water is necessary. Without water, fish die. So why wouldn't a fish who managed to become aware of the water surrounding it (to carry on the metaphor) come to the conclusion that water is good, needs to be defended, and that changes that threaten to dry up or pollute the water threaten our very lives? Likewise, why would an educated, well-read conservative not come to the conclusion that our traditions, customs, values, etc., even if they are not always or entirely rational by liberal standards, are nonetheless, our "water." Drain or pollute it and we die. None of that is to say that nothing should ever be changed, just that we should always have a presumption in favor of order and stability and a respect, rather than a chronocentric contempt, for what has been accomplished in the past and how.

Well, this is an intra-party dispute, which I shouldn't comment on. Suffice to say though, those who are defending Palin (since Winds of Change, though it has a conservative bent, is somewhat intellectual), are conflating a myth with merit.

I tend to think about these things in terms of a system of meritocracy and competence.

We have a few different types of meritocracies in the U.S. We have the "get good grades" meritocracy, which is a very important one, actually, showing intelligence, and contributing to the bottom line of both education and research in the United States.

But that is a very narrow band of competence, the intelligence associates with "book learning". Necessary to a degree, but not sufficient for the world.

But other types of meritocracies exist, as other types of intelligence exist, and are needed in the world.

Moral intelligence/capacity
Emotional intelligence/capacity.
Will intelligence/capacity.
Social intelligence/capacity.
Experience/wisdom intelligence/capacity

Those who are competent - exhibit a lot of capacity in other intelligences - tend to do very well in their lives.

The myth of the "real American" is that they, by their very nature, have a strong grounding in all 6 of the intelligences listed above (the 5 plus symbolic intelligence/capacity).

What is true about that myth is, that any leader of our country - and any leader in general - needs to have elevated levels of competency is EACH of the areas above. In that sense, Ronald Reagan, though his symbolic intelligence/capacity isn't as much as most "east coast elites", clearly had a perfectly acceptable symbolic intelligence - and EXCELLED in many of the other capacities listed above. And only having a "smart" person, in their symbolic intelligence capacity, is NOT what is expected or wanted or needed for our leaders.

It seems to me the true point that the critics point out is - based on the base levels of competence expected by our president, is that Sarah Palin fails in one or more of the other areas above.

Specifically, at this point, failing in the experience/wisdom intelligence.

Fallows had something about this, soon after she was picked. He mentioned that 3 months before an election, is simply not enough experience for ANYONE - no matter how bright or capable - to be considered for the post of the United States Vice-President or President.

Again - she hasn't even had a press conference. Quayle had his first press conference a couple of days after he was picked. It REALLY is bad, that she hasn't.

Isn't it?

Almost everyone here gets it wrong.

First, "ideas" do not matter in politics, and the resentment of Palin is not based on "ideas" or anti-intellectualism but the foundation of politics, i.e. who has power, to say what resources go to which people.

From the beginning, and by that I mean both the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies, on into the Whiskey Rebellion, and Andrew Jackson, politics in the US has been dominated by the struggle between Easterners, who own land and are mercantile interests, who wanted cheap labor and expensive land, since they owned the latter and bought the former, and Westerners, mostly small holders, who wanted cheap land and expensive labor, since they sought to purchase the former and sell (their own) of the latter.

This has been the fundamental conflict of America since it's founding.

Other matters can complicate this issue -- Lincoln's backers wanted the abolishment of Slavery not for moral but economic reasons -- to give Western small-holders an edge over Southern/Eastern Plantations with slave labor. Railroad interests were aligned for a time with Western Smallholders, later they were not and were aligned with Eastern mercantile interests. But for the most part this pattern has held.

Let's be honest -- the people who like Palin the most are the small-holder class -- small business owners, guys like "Joe the Plumber" who have ambitions (that Democrats and Media people find "beyond their station") and so on. Palin's background, not part of the Eastern Elite, which includes pet minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics and Gays, but hard-scrabble, non-scholarship (out of reach of most Whites), Mountain West state schools, is a plus to this Jacksonian crowd and a mark of shame to Eastern Elites.

There are of course complications. Single women, being status obsessed and driven, find Palin defined as "trashy" for her marriage, kids, blue collar husband, lack of fashion, lack of fawning by elite media, while men, particularly blue collar and white collar lower-status single men, love her precisely for those reasons. But for the most part this model (East-West) explains most of the Conservative pundit disdain.

Conservative Pundits are really just East Coast elites, who went to the same Ivy Schools, share the same assumptions as Dems do, which is a debased Calvinist view that there exists a pre-destined "saved" elite and "damned" mass, and that the elite should RULE the damned masses. Affirmative Action is just another form of WASPY Calvinism from the Ivy League where "enlightened" and "superior" Preppies demonstrate how superior they are to the unwashed.

By contrast, when Palin says she is proud of America and offers no apologies for it, she speaks to the Jacksonian Westerner tradition of wanting America to be for the ordinary guy, who can move up in income and power. Which in turn threatens the monopoly by the Eastern Elites.

Which is EXACTLY why she is hated.

Long term, the Democratic Party is going to be the Party of "So Long White Boy," i.e. it will be the Black-Hispanic-White Elite party, and Republicans the White ordinary party. Harold Myerson is already writing about eliminating "whiteness" for "our multicultural future" which is possibly the most perfect expression of the debased, Volk-Calvinism that runs the Democratic Party and the East Coast elites (including Peggy Noonan) that I have ever seen.

I truly find it extraordinary that "virgil xenophon" praises as authentic candidate who almost surely could not identify either component of his nom de blog. What does that make vx?

Whiskey,

I'm curious - what would your response be to my above post?

I think you fall into it - you are confusing "readiness/unpreparedness" with "east coast elite intelligence".

It's not about that. It's a much more practical issue of preparedness.

This election would be very different if McCain had any values. I have no idea why he wants to be President. His promises vary from week to week and seem motivated more by gaining votes than articulating any underlying set of values or principles.

Sarah Palin's speeches center on expressing not her own philosophy but rather John McCain's philosophy. If she comes off as an airhead it is because McCain has no philosophy other than "find the promise that wins votes, drop the promise that scares votes away".

Are commentators too stupid to realize this? No. They have their own game.

Sarah Palin hopes to emerge from this election as a person who loyally supported her commander-in-chief. When he loses she is very likely to be the leading candidate for 2012 (assuming there are presidential elections in 2012). So Noonan et al, who have their own favorites for 2012, are just trying to eliminate a potentially dangerous rival using the argument de jour.

Everybody agrees McCain will never win. Everybody agrees that we must not allow the catastrophe that is 2008 happen again in 2012.

So. If Obama is really popular in 2011 then Noonan et al will support Palin. If Obama is weak, Noonan et al will support the hunk de jour.

#28 from Fred at 8:32 pm on Oct 17, 2008
Virgil Xenophon #16, Thanks for that. I'm so g-d-m sick of the "smart people are Democrats, and only idiots vote Republican" schtick I could puke.

What I am sick of is the Rovian idea that the Republicans had to be dumb to win elections.

There is no philosophy in Rovianism.
There is no intellectual construct or backing.
We have taken on a "Joe the Plumber" type pandering.
From 1980, until the rise of Rove. It was the Republican's who set the tone for the political philosophy. So much so that the Democrats had to form the New Democratic Coalition, or whatever it was called that brought Clinto to the forefront.

Clinton ended welfare, introduced free Trade policies like NAFTA, shifted the Democrats away from the Welfare state and Protectionism. All because of the strength of Republican Thought.

What happened? In a nutshell? Rove. He absolutely killed the Intellectual wing of the party and you are now hearing them scream about it. And they should be screaming about it. We are getting our asses roundly kicked and we don't have anyone to blame but ourselves. All the whining in the world is not going to change that.

I was quite happy being a Republican when they were in the Intellectual Vanguard. We won elections! I did not mind being elitist, either.

Somewhere along the line, this dummy Rove, decided to dive for the least common denominator. the outcome, as you can clearly see was not beneficial to the party.

As things look right now we will lose and lose big. Get over it and look to the future. Face what is wrong and fix it. Produce some bright leaders who are not suspect of people who are better equipped intellectually than they are. The people will respond.

They seem to want leadership and not negativity, which leaves no room for Rove, Schmitt and their ilk.

hr #29 --

(since Winds of Change, though it has a conservative bent, is somewhat intellectual)

Hey, praise is praise.

#33 from sol vason at 8:54 pm on Oct 17, 2008

Sarah Palin hopes to emerge from this election as a person who loyally supported her commander-in-chief. When he loses she is very likely to be the leading candidate for 2012 (assuming there are presidential elections in 2012).

Mercifully for Sarah and the rest of us, after this election, Sarah Palin's name will only come up in tandem with that of Geraldine Ferraro's. A clear field will open up for a new generation of Republicans, these young Turks will overrun the old guard and Palin will be remembered as a curiosity.

What does that make me #31?

Someone who has lived long enough on this spheroid to realize that the "pointy-headed" intellectuals REALLY CAN'T "park their bicycles straight."
(which is one of the reasons I chose Xenophon--a man of action who knew how to cope in the real world, but a man of letters also. As for Virgil? It's my middle name, so a double play there)

And I don't know who Whisky is, but if he's not my long-lost blood brother, the least he could do is let me be his drinkin' buddy.
Amen, brother.

Now lets get history straight. Bush has been one of our best presidents. Better than FDR who prolonged the depression and gave us Hitler.

George Bush's foreign policy has been driven by the desire to protect existing democracies and to bring democracy to the Middle East. Strangely enough, his most effective opponent has not been Putin in Russia or the Chinese or the mullahs. The Democrats in Washington have been very effective in undermining his every effort. They have prolonged the war in Iraq, destroyed the alliance with Pakistan by driving Musharrif from power, isolated both Taiwan and Israel, supported Castro's continued dictatorship, weakened pro-democracy forces in Columbia, Mexico, Guiatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela and helped Chavez in his quest for hegemony over the Carribean and South America.

Bush has increased the number of democracies in the world. When the Democrats take over, they will no nothing but moan as many democracies are replaced by dictators.

Domestically, Bush has produced enormous prosperity in the US. GM and Ford may go bankrupt but that will happen because the Democrats have been designing their cars since 1970 and staffing their plants. The current crisis will be over by the election and the DOW will be 2000 points higher.

sol@#33 is right about McCain, which is why so many Republicans had/have so many reservations about the man. He seems to be the polar opposite of Churchill, who famously said that: "I will not be neutral as between the fire and the fire brigade!" McCain is a MOR "neutralist" if there ever was one. The only reason I and so many of the those having the same temperamental bent as myself support McCain, is Obama--it's the old "far lesser of the two weaviles" game, I guess,

Except for Peggy Noonan, none of these people are known to anyone at all. David Brooks is not a conservative.

Who even read anything from Kathleen Parker or Chris Buckley before this?

They are just trying to cash in and get 15 minutes of fame from a media that will elevate them based on this, and nothing else. They also want to curry favor with the Obama regime, that will tirelessly try to ruin conservatives who opposed him before power.

During personal appearances, Palin out-draws McCain, Biden, and sometimes even Obama. That matters far more than what a no-name like Chris Buckley or Kathleen Parker thinks.

#39, me too. I do not support McCain. I oppose Obama.

"Mercifully for Sarah and the rest of us, after this election, Sarah Palin's name will only come up in tandem with that of Geraldine Ferraro's. "

er... she is still Governor of Alaska, with a high approval rating. Why can't she run for President after a few more years of experience and a longer executive track record?

At age 44, she has achieved more than Obama, Hillary, McCain, Biden, Bush, and Kerry had by that age.

Only a fool would jump to the conclusion that her poltical career arc has ended.

Then again, the rampant sexism of Obama supporters is apparent yet again (first against Hillary and now against Palin).

Except for Peggy Noonan, none of these people are known to anyone at all. David Brooks is not a conservative.

My assumption is that except for Noonan, they are all neocons. Noonan is a Reagan Democrat.

I don't mind GM and Ford going bankrupt. Honda/Toyota/Nissam simply make better cars. Both of the cars I have bought in the last 10 years were Hondas (manufactured in the US).

I am as loud an "America is Great" trumpeter as anyone here. But I am a free-marketeer first and foremoast.

America should dominate the world economy only as long as it can do so via free-market means. If GM and Ford cannot compete, they should shrink in size, or even fold up.

"I do not support McCain. I oppose Obama."

That is how most elections are decided.

I oppose Obama, in fact the ferocity of my dislike has intesified in the last 30 days over both ACORN and the 'Joe the Plumber' episode.

Now, I dislike Obama even more than I ever disapproved of Kerry, Hillary, or Gore. My 4 least favorite politicians in America are Obama, Edwards, Reid, and Kucinnich. Of these 4, only two still have importance, and only one has high importance.

Whisky,

Are you sure you didn't name yourself after Kirk Douglas' cantankerous, mind-of-his-own
horse who almost stole the show in the 1979 movie "The Villain" ?

#45, maybe, but this will be the first election in which I am not casting an affirmative vote for President. I've voted for third-party candidates more often than not, plus President Bush (the younger) in his second run for office.

Better than FDR who prolonged the depression and gave us Hitler.

FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933. How he gave us Hitler before he was even in office boggles the mind. Who knew the Governor of New York was so powerful?

Where does the right wing find these people?

"I do not support McCain. I oppose Obama."

Hell, I don't even oppose Obama. I oppose Democratic rule. My guess is that Obama could be a very good, possibly even great, president if he faced a Republican Congress, but he will be a horrible president with a Democratic Congress.

"Hitler was inaugurated on January 30, 1933. It is true, he did not assume dictatorial powers until late March. "

For once, I am going to agree with Lazarus that this is historically wrong, in terms of timeline.

It is the Versailes Treaty from Britain and France that 'gave us Hitler'.

PS to my #47

If you don't know what I mean, rent out the movie--it's a comedic Western spoof that's a hoot! Whiskey the horse is the smartest one of the bunch......

Can any fair-minded person* honestly say with a straight face that Barack Obama is being held to the same standard as Sarah Palin (even though Obama is at the top of the ticket and Palin is at the bottom)?

Heck, Obama isn't even being held to the same scrutiny as Joe the Plumber.

*Armed Lieberman is the only fair-minded Obama supporter I have come across to date.

GK: exactly what has Palin accomplished?

She's the Governor of Alaska, which has a population roughly that of Long Beach, California, a land-mass the size of a medium-sized country, (88%+ of which is government land of one sort or another) has, and was built with, a huge per capita Federal subsidy, and an economy overwhelmingly built on extractive industries (I think John McPhee noted that someone had once proposed that a revised State Seal for the state, under Don Young's congressional leadership, that should bear quadrants with the mottoes "Dig It Up/Cut It Down/Pump It Out/Fish it out and Kill It") which will bring it down, once those extractions are over, like the economy of Louisiana, without the charm.

The governorship? Well the people of Alaska have done the Grover Cleveland thing twice, booting someone out, and then bringing them back later on, when it turns out that the devil they knew, etc. etc.

Sexism? I call "BS B1NG0"! Without her gender, and "Middle American Conservative Values"-branding value to the McCain campaign, her chances of a further national career woulda been pretty slim.

Can you name me a two-years-into-his-first-term MALE governor of Alaska, or Wyoming, for that matter, who was a likely presidential or VP candidate in the last 50 years?

I think most of these comments are bit opportunistic. I think alot of you are making it far more complicated just because you have an axe to grind. Torture, social conservatives,neoconservatives, Rove, Joe the plumber, intelectual, anti-intellectual...none of this matters. The simple fact is our Republican congress let us down. They overspent and abused their power like Democrats. End of story. I don't care what kind of philosophy you have, if there is no integrity it won't matter. I do not understand the talk of Rove appealing to the ingnorant. Rove and Bush were big government Republicans just like alot of Northeastern Republicans like Noonan, Brooks, and Chrotopher Buckley. Once the size of Government is no longer disputed, it just becomes a fight over the spoils. What do you expect?

#45 I was listening to John Lott a couple of days on the radio and he related a story about meeting Obama about 10 years ago at the University of Illinois. When Obama realized who he was, he totally ignored him and disassociated himself from John. Up until now, I have taken comfort in the fact that Obama was just an opportunistic politician and would have to move to the center and not be as far left as he has been described. But when I heard Lotts story, I realized that Obama's associations were not only for political convenience, but were idealogical also. This concerns me especially with a Democratic Congress and the inability to criticize him in any meaningful way without being labeled a racist. If he is elected, it will be a long 4 years.

[ Duplicate posts removed. -- M.F. ]

John Lott is a known liar and academic fraudster, and the fact he remains prominent and well-paid in the conservative movement is evidence just how unserious even its ‘intellectual’ wing is at the moment. You know, it took a while, but eventually Ward Churchill and Michael Bellesiles were forced out of their universities, while Lott is still at his think tank.

I would say Obama giving him the deep-freeze is more likely moral than ideological.

Yeah, John Lott is no paragon of probity. FWIW, he doesn't seem too popular around here. Google finds his name on ~13 WoC threads, most often mentioned by...

But I didn't search for "Mary Rosh".

"GK: exactly what has Palin accomplished? "

R-Gould-Saltzman has proven my point spectacularly, even via his clumsy attempt to do the opposite.

He bashes Palin at great lenght, but not once explains what Obama has accomplished.

Palin has accomplished relatively little, and is running for VP.

OBAMA has accomplished EVEN LESS, and is running for President (which is a more demanding post than VP, you know).

You avoided this by a mile, proving my point perfectly.

"Can you name me a two-years-into-his-first-term MALE governor...."

Can you name a 4-yrs-into-his-first-term WHITE, PRO-US Senator, who was a likely PRESIDENTIAL candidate? Again, President is a higher post than VP, you know.

"John Lott is a known liar and academic fraudster, and the fact he remains prominent and well-paid in the conservative movement is evidence just how unserious even its ‘intellectual’ wing is at the moment"

As opposed to self-admitted, unrepentant terrorists teaching at UIC? That launch the political careers of Democrat presidential contenders from their living room?

I'll stick with the fraud.

#49: That makes (at least) two of us.

As for Sarah Palin, it seems to me the explanation for her sudden falling out of favor with GOP elites may be simpler than anyone here realizes. Notice that all three links in David's original post go to material posted in late September or early October. That is, after the entire campaign was turned upside down by the meltdown on Wall Street and the ensuing bailouts.

Whatever else can be said of McCain's choice of Palin as his VP, that decision served its purpose - it lit a big, roaring fire underneath a Republican base that had been pretty apathetic toward McCain. As recently as six weeks ago McCain-Palin looked poised to blow the doors off the Obama-Biden campaign. Where were those GOP elites back then, and would they have turned against her so gleefully now had there not been a financial crisis to transform Palin's "hockey mom" persona from an asset into so much political deadweight almost overnight? Alas, we will never know.

#59: "Vote for the crook - it's important."

[ minor edit per #61 -- M.F. ]

Clarification: ...all three links in David's original post...
[ #60 so modified -- M.F. ]

#42 from GK at 9:54 pm on Oct 17, 2008
"Mercifully for Sarah and the rest of us, after this election, Sarah Palin's name will only come up in tandem with that of Geraldine Ferraro's. "

er... she is still Governor of Alaska, with a high approval rating. Why can't she run for President after a few more years of experience and a longer executive track record?

Well, that is nice. I doubt that you will ever see her again on the national stage, which was why I mentioned the young Turks that will soon take over the party.

At age 44, she has achieved more than Obama, Hillary, McCain, Biden, Bush, and Kerry had by that age.

Not that it matters, but at 44 Biden was in the Middle of his third term in the Senate. I Would think that would be taken as a more significant career to that point. Don't you?

Only a fool would jump to the conclusion that her poltical career arc has ended.

_ Well, I guess I must be a Fool?

Then again, the rampant sexism of Obama supporters is apparent yet again (first against Hillary and now against Palin).

Please, I am a Republican, very much of the Bill Buckley, Ronald Reagan ilk. My problem in not that Palin is a woman, it is that she is out of her depth and I will offer no apologies as to demanding more of a Vice-Presidential candidate than Governor Palin brings to the table.

Obviously a lot of other republicans feel the same way.

This is offtopic for this thread, apologies, but in one of the comment threads earlier this month some folks, I believe AL included, were upset by a video of some McCain marchers in New York getting booed by passersby.

Came across this today, and I thought I'd just submit it for those same peoples' consideration. I'm sure a case could be made that they're not equivalent... in one direction or another. Alas, I don't really have a point to make on this. :)

"And so, the political professionals (who know what's needed) split from those who know what they want to see."

Ah, what political professionals know is that everyone needs more political professionals.

Palin made her career in Alaska by skewering the Republican establishment, and now to claim she represents party before all else is simply ludicrous. No, she's not Ivy League, and I'd bet she doesn't know Niebuhr from Flounder (as opposed to flounder, which as an outdoorsman I'm sure she could spot instantly). What I don't understand is how a lot of people don't see that that plays as a benefit to the mom-and-pop core that must be the foundation of a re-emergent Republican Party.

For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr's thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

I'd have less of a shiver going down my spine if Brooks had explained why Obama rejected Niebuhr's thesis, frankly, but as someone with passing familiarity with Darwin's work I recognize that species recognition signaling mechanisms (not to mention mating behaviors, which the whole tingly thing evokes) are often idiosyncratic and illogical. Once Brooks felt that tingle, the whole "using power and being corrupted" thing probably became secondary.

Here's the state of play in Washington: the outgoing Administration is deeply unpopular. Congress is less popular, and controlled by the opposition. The economy has taken a huge hit that main street didn't see coming. Everyone knows there's a ton of corruption in Washington that was at least a factor in getting us to points A, B, and C. As the outsider, Palin is the only part of either ticket relatively clean of that taint. To repeat myself, her reputation is as a gunslinger who comes in and cleans up.

If the people who are the drivers of A, B, and C are your "peers" (at least if you're a New York Times or Wall Street Journalist columnist) how popular is that bitch with the itchy trigger finger?

On the other hand, she draws mom-and-pop crowds by the busloads, who inhabit point D.

TOC, I'm old enough to remember that in 1980, the "smart" Republicans were all for Bush Sr., and that the level heads were sure that the idiot actor was going to get us all killed. (At the time, I was one of them.) Revisionism is tempting, but it the long term it makes fools of those who practice it.

TOC,

What you have not said is more powerful than what you have said.

You are just the latest person who cannot point to any actual accomplishments from Obama. Palin looks unqualifed as long as no one compares her to Obama.

Yes, Palin has a thin resume for a VP candidate. OBAMA has even less of a resume, and is running for PRESIDENT. President is a higher positon than VP, you know.

Once again, any knock against Palin gives a mile-wide berth to any mention of Obama. This speaks volumes of what even his own worshippers quietly think of his qualifications.

Mark Steyn has another view. (link)

"Yet, in contrast to other industries, our chattering classes are uniquely concentrated in Ross Douthat's DC/NY corridor. Isn't this a little odd? And doesn't it pose particular problems for Republicans? Conservative elites live in liberal jurisdictions - and, way out back in the "conservative cocoon", it gives them the whiff of absentee landlords, who enrich themselves on the strength of various holdings in ramshackle colonies but have no desire to spend much time there."

It's a very good comment, well worth following the link to read in full.

But it doesn't address the question "why now and not previously?" People in this thread are doing a better job of going at that.

#60 from Joshua:

"As recently as six weeks ago McCain-Palin looked poised to blow the doors off the Obama-Biden campaign. Where were those GOP elites back then, and would they have turned against her so gleefully now had there not been a financial crisis to transform Palin's "hockey mom" persona from an asset into so much political deadweight almost overnight? Alas, we will never know."

That's a good and simple point.

Compared to the recent converts to anti-Palin rage, who generally shut up or praised her extravagantly when she first appeared on the national scene, conservative pundits who disparaged her from the first have been more moderate.

Charles Krauthammer's reaction to her great speech was that it didn't compensate adequately for weakening the argument that Barack Obama was too inexperienced to be president. (link). Since then he's lightened up on her, recognizing that the enthusiasm she spurs in the conservative bases is an asset, but basically he has not budged. He's never come close to joining in the liberal frenzy, and when Palin was severely criticized for not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is, he offered a partial defense of her igorance, pointing out that Charlie Gibson and her other detractors didn't know either. (link). Obviously this is not a man who jumps on trends and shapes his opinions to fit polls.

David Frum scorned her immediately, and was at one with Barack Obama in disparaging her as a small-town mayor, ignoring the fact that she was and is a hugely successful governor. (link)

"If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?"

He's grown sourer and wearier since then. But he hasn't really joined the blood hunt.

Peggy Noonan, on the other hand, started out trumpeting Sarah Palin as "a real and present danger to the American left" - then said more or less the opposite when she thought the microphone was off, and now damns her unreservedly since the economic bad news is killing the McCain - Palin campaign. Paul Mirengoff at Powerline Blog gives the chapter and verse on Peggy Noonan's self contradictions on Sarah Palin. (link) I find it impossible to be other than totally cynical about Peggy Noonan's different opinions when she thinks the microphone is on or off, and the timing of how she's changed what she claims is her opinion.

I guess what I'm saying here is that fair-weather friends and hypocrites are the meanest back-biters when misfortune strikes.

That addresses some of the "why now?" on a week by week basis. On the larger time scale - wow, thanks Grim! I think the main value of my essay will be that it provoked your thoughts.

But many people are contributing really good, convincingly supported ideas. Thanks!

I love this blog. If you ask a straight question clearly, quite a few people will take a little time to think, and then give you a genuine straight answer. There should be more of this in the blogsphere, and less of the talking points and trash talk.

#64 from Mark Poling at 6:50 am on Oct 18, 2008

TOC, I'm old enough to remember that in 1980, the "smart" Republicans were all for Bush Sr., and that the level heads were sure that the idiot actor was going to get us all killed. (At the time, I was one of them.) Revisionism is tempting, but it the long term it makes fools of those who practice it.

Mark, there is nothing in anything I have posted that has anything to do with this statement. I said that Reagan philosophy was backed by an intellectual Foundation that allowed it to be successful. There is no revisionism there.

I supported Reagan, Not Bush, because of the political and economic philosophy he was expounding, smaller government, Supply side economics, etc.

So, it appears that your criticism is of your views in 1980, not mine. I haven't revised my opinion, you have. I have no problem with that.

My point is clearly that Republicans need a strong philosophy and base to win. One that they had from Reagan through Bush senior. It was strong enough to pull the Democrats right and have them renounce the welfare state and embrace free trade.

Rove destroyed that.

The comment you made to me as quoted above has nothing to do with anything I have said. If it does, please be clearer in how you feel it relates to anything I have posted. For the life of me, I can't see how it does

#65 from GK at 7:00 am on Oct 18, 2008
TOC,

What you have not said is more powerful than what you have said.

You are just the latest person who cannot point to any actual accomplishments from Obama. Palin looks unqualifed as long as no one compares her to Obama.

Look, I essentially do not care whether or not Obama has any experience at all. He is completely irrelevant to me. He could be the most experienced person on earth and I wouldn't vote for him, because I am fundamentally against his philosophy. I am what is called a conservative Republican and I don't really spend much time thinking about any Democrats.

I do think about Republicans and the Republican Party quite a bit. And I like a lot of Republicans are very unhappy about the choice of Palin and for good reasons which have been expounded throughout this thread._

Yes, Palin has a thin resume for a VP candidate.

This bothers me because she represents me

OBAMA has even less of a resume, and is running for PRESIDENT. President is a higher positon than VP, you know.

I don't care because he does not represent me and I would not vote for him. So, it would be a total waste of my time to expound on why he is unqualified. I disagree with him on fundamental philosophy, the fact that he is qualified or unqualified doesn't really matter if I disagree with him on a much more profound level.

How about reading what I have written and commenting on that

How about returning to the topic of the thread?

Some views from an outsider with no influence on the outcome either way:

Sarah Palin may well represent the majority of Americans - and if that is true, the USA is in trouble either way.

Why is that? In no particular order:

Sarah Palin believes in banning books she disagrees with from libraries. 'Nuff said. What happened to free speech?

Sarah Palin believes in the teaching of creationism. Since all the sciences are linked, and because the concept of evolution and the enormous timescale involved are fundamental to biology, this undermines the teaching of ALL of science - and the USA is short of scientists and engineers already. What's going to be next on the dogma list - Aristotlean physics?

Sarah Palin is a fairly extreme pro-lifer. Taken to the extreme, this means that women pregnant as a result of rape - and those carrying severely defective foetuses incapable of anything resembling a fully human existence - will be forced to carry such foetuses to term. If you think that this won't happen - that the rules will be bent in such cases - then consider the relatively recent case of the young Irishwoman who was told that she had no choice but to carry a foetus to term, despite the fact that there was something severely wrong with it. What was wrong? Anencephaly - which means that the foetus had NO BRAIN. In a theocracy, this sort of vicious doctrinairism becomes routine.

Sarah Palin is anti-gay. I have no prejudices one way or the other; I consider that which bits of whom come into contact with which bits of yours, in private, is no business of anyone else's. I also believe that if doing it is legal then watching it should be too. I seriously doubt that Mrs. Palin would agree with that.

And lastly, and possibly most importantly, does the USA really want a potential Commander-in-Chief who is bound by oath and faith to take orders from the Pope?

And despite all this, Sarah Palin is the best of the four in the Presidential/Vice-Presidential elections. God help America, and the rest of us too; for no-one else can.

You're welcome, Mr. Blue. Always a pleasure to talk with you.

Although elitism is much more common on the Left, they have no monopoly on it.

For my Liberal friends:
When we look at things academically, we often create extreme models to more clearly delineate the issue under examination. In the real, non-linear, chaotic world however, things tend to blend into one another. That which we isolate into a single facet for study in a lab is often part of a multi-facted truth in reality. Complexity is real.

For my Conservative friends:
Some Republicans are snobs, too.

For all Americans:
This country was designed by inspired men who were of great intellect, foresight, and wisdom, to be run by ordinary folks and not need a professional political class to function or even prosper. Finally, and this is a point that applies to us all right now more than at anytime since 1860, FAILURE of the system under certain circumstances is a design FEATURE, and it most certainly is a possible outcome.

#30 - Whiskey rules! Do you have your own blog? If not, why not?

#70 - I don't know that SP is all that conservative in the policies she has actually enacted. She certainly lives those values in her personal life, but I find that a feature not a bug - its a bug when she tries to force me to live her values in my life.

The anti-gay charges seem a little overblown, given the apparent tolerance she has shown to her lesbian best-friend and her decisions as Gov. re the DP benefits for state employees - whether she liked it or not, her official actions were what I would have hoped for.

#70 Flecher Christian asks:

And lastly, and possibly most importantly, does the USA really want a potential Commander-in-Chief who is bound by oath and faith to take orders from the Pope?

Was that supposed to be a joke? Because if you're serious, you'd probably have to believe (a) Palin is still a Catholic and (b) JFK didn't already answer that question.

Bonus question: How is being bound by oath and faith to [try to listen] to "orders" from God any less scary? ( 1/2 :) ) Somehow the US has survived that for a loonng time (or else, the big-league politicians who profess Christianity are fibbing... Shocka!).

And lastly, and possibly most importantly, does the USA really want a potential Commander-in-Chief who is bound by oath and faith to take orders from the Pope?

I guess you didn't know that Joe Biden is a Catholic.

Wait, it gets worse - Catholic Democrats think the pope is Nancy Pelosi. Are you scared now? You should be.

It's an interesting thing; Palin is judged by her critics on what the echo chamber says she believes, and not on her actual (very Libertarian) record as governor is ignored.

Obama is judged on the platitudes he mouths, and not on his actual voting and professional (such at it is) record.

From the Left, I could understand this. From the Noonan/Brooks/C.Buckley set, the only way I can grok it is BoWash corridor elitism, with which this expat redneck is all-to-familiar.

#75 Glen: Good rejoinder. I am less than the dust beneath your chariot wheels. I abase myself in the radiant light of your puissant eminence.

Err... Does that mean I think you're the Pope? Ruh roh.

The Mainstream Media Illuminati are at it again. They’re convincing not only liberals, but some conservatives that Sarah Palin is not good enough. Just because she’s not one of the elitist, doesn’t mean she isn’t skilled and smart enough to be in the position she’s running for.

The worst danger has already passed. The Vatican had an agent on the brink of seizing supreme state power and papalizing the means of production, in 2004. Codename: Choirboy.

Back on topic, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline is himself one of the early and plain-spoken Palin skeptics who never became a hater or started doing Agent Smith-like rants about Palin being a disease.

It's the conservative pundits who judged their words tactically who've turned against Sarah Palin with the greatest venom.

I think this is consistent with Grim's theory that it's people who have defined themselves by negotiating space between the NY/DC elite and the un-elite conservative masses, and who are finding themselves redundant to and seen as inauthentic by real conservatives while the elite still values them, who, in moving towards their (elite metropolitan) friends, have turned with fury against Sarah Palin.

Besides the chance to curry favor with their patrons by endorsing the mass hate of the left, they may see Sarah Palin as the young rube who many real conservatives see as authentic. That must rankle.

The tactical positioners are acting out Grim's script.

A relatively plain pundit like Paul from Powerline or a massively arrogant intellectual like Charles Krauthammer isn't acting out Grim's script for superfluous elite/conservative pundits because he isn't trying to negotiate a space for himself. Charles Krauthammer isn't trying to negotiate his right to anything. He just thinks he's correct, so he says whatever he thinks, whether it is welcome or not. (I'm laughing gently at him a little here, but I think his attitude is still a healthy one for a pundit to take. It beats Hades out of being a phony.)

I hope this is all correct (while of course not excluding other issues such as sexism), because I'd like Grim's vision of the future of the GOP to be correct too, with a successful great housecleaning picking up just about all the scum who aren't protected by lower house gerrymanders, and a flood of new faces and more authentic candidates, including as many recent veterans as possible.

Sarah Palin does seem to have ideas that are not universally and credibly held in the Republican Party. Here she is, expressing her pro-life views with clarity, in "one of the most red-meat social con speeches you’ll ever read": (link)

(This is not pandering, which is what Republicans often do, and which need not involve really holding any ideas at all. "Pandering" is what some Republicans are doing when they oppose gay marriage, but only in even-numbered years. Actual opinions on the topic at hand don't enter into that kind of behavior. What Sarah Palin is doing in this clip is completely different: someone who both talks the talk and walks the walk is explaining exactly where they stand and why.)

I disagree, it was the usual pandering and flim-flamming the pro-lifers, with the added element of exploiting Palin's own personal choices and politicizing them, in the feminist MacKinnon-esque way of "the personal is political."

There were no ideas in that speech, only slogans and appeals to personal experience and sentimentalism.

A speech on abortion with "ideas" would have outlined a way to stop abortion. How Republicans get away with saying they are "pro-life" without proposing an ultimate policy goal, I never understand.

Overturn Roe v. Wade? Fine, what then? Do you replace Roe v. Wade with a case, constitutional amendment or law that bans abortion in the same federalized way? Or does it go back to the states? Because if that is the case, you might have 4 or 5 states which might outlaw abortion in any significant way, the rest would keep things pretty much as they are. That is because you could not find a jury in most places who would convict a woman for having an abortion.

Palin did say that she didn't want to jail women who had abortions. What does that mean? Jail the doctors, or do something else?

Without specific policy proposals, her cant about being pro-life is more of the same pandering to the committed but deluded minority of pro-life voters.

Aside from that, thoughtful conservative commentators might have misgivings about her obvious lack of knowledge, her arbitrary use of power, and cronyism in Wasilla and Juneau.

I think some of this was missed upthread: It's mostly about result-mongering.

Palin v. Quayle: The scorn for Palin doesn't rise to that expressed for Quayle largely because Bush-Quayle won and the pundits are looking at McCain-Palin losing. We are also probably forgetting how much disdain there was for Quayle, and he didn't have 24/7 cable and the blogosphere to contend with.

I'm not a Republican even though I've been voting that way of late out of greater distaste for the Dems, so I don't know how the internecine lines are being drawn, but I suspect the split on Palin in the GOP punditocracy (GOPP for short) reflects the struggle in the GOP over its future. McCain is sui generis and he's old - I don't see anyone in the GOPP seeing a political philosophy to rebuild on in McCain. I'm not sure that Palin represents her supporters the way they think she does, but perhaps the advocacy of her selection from Bill Kristol affects the shape of the conflict?

As to Palin herself, her Gibson-Couric interviews were dreadful. I continue to believe that those were less reflective of her actual abilities than the material available about her from before her selection. I think she's less qualified than her most ardent defenders claimed post-pick, and more qualified than her harshest critics claim. Her strongest qualification is not in experience or expertise, but in the act of principle she performed in taking on the Alaska GOP establishment from her Oil and Gas Commission position. That's a character qualification, not a philosophy or policy qualification, and it is similar in some ways to McCain's stongest qualification.

A few weeks ago, I blogged how I wish the McCain camp had handled her on the qualifications issue.

David Blue,

So if the question comes down to, would I rather have a Republican Party w/o David Brooks, or one w/o Sarah Palin, the question is laughably easy to answer.

"Her strongest qualification is not in experience or expertise, but in the act of principle she performed in taking on the Alaska GOP establishment from her Oil and Gas Commission position. That's a character qualification, not a philosophy or policy qualification, and it is similar in some ways to McCain's stongest qualification."

Yes, exactly. The thing I love most about Palin is she has made all the right enemies. (And a select few of the wrong ones; I agree with David Blue that Krauthammer is one of the best pundits out there. In the case of Palin I think he's wrong, but at least he's wrong for intelligent, as opposed to tingly, reasons.)

Palin's media performance is a function of two things, I think. First, she was over-coached by the same "political professionals" who've done such a swell job packaging McCain. Second, the media really is out to get her; she'd on enemy turf where her opponents not only set the rules, they get to edit the gametape before it goes on the air.

Personally, I would love to see her do real press conferences. (And I'll probably watch Saturday Night Live tonight for the first time this millennium). I'm looking forward to a future in which Palin doesn't have Team McCain hanging around her neck.

Personally, I would love to see her do real press conferences. Me too, but we have different expectations.

"God help America, and the rest of us too; for no-one else can."

America is the worst country in the world, except when compared to any other country.

I think Sarah Palin mirrors almost all of Canada's population outside of the 3 big cities, given her geographical location and way of life. She has more similarities to rural Canada than to the lower 48.

TOC,

You are a rather weird dude, I must say. You insist that you are a Republican, yet keep railing on the evils of Rove and the inadequacy of Palin.

At the same time, you glibly dismiss the impending Obama Presidency as 'he does not represent you'. He will still be your President, you know. His decisions will affect your life.

You seem to be unaware that there is a broader world beyond the intra-party conflict within the GOP.

You sound like those leftists who for 8 years kept screaming that 'Bush does not represent me!'.

Everyone here should read Thomas Sowell's latest column on Palin which pretty much reflects my view and what many here are beating around the bush to parse out.I don't want to reinvent the wheel, so everyone hit Drudge and click on Sowell--it's a good read.

#86 from GK at 11:34 pm on Oct 18, 2008
TOC,

You are a rather weird dude, I must say. You insist that you are a Republican, yet keep railing on the evils of Rove and the inadequacy of Palin.

At the same time, you glibly dismiss the impending Obama Presidency as 'he does not represent you'. He will still be your President, you know. His decisions will affect your life.

You seem to be unaware that there is a broader world beyond the intra-party conflict within the GOP.

You sound like those leftists who for 8 years kept screaming that 'Bush does not represent me!'.

GK, you're free to have any opinion of me that you would like. I think what you want to say is that my political ideas seem incongruent to you. Well, let me tell you how I see them as fitting together perfectly.

1. I have watched the utter collapse of the party under Rove. if you need any proof look at the direct downturn in Republican power on every level of Government under his watch, culminating in the debacle we are about to witness on Nov. 4th. What adds to the gall I feel about this is that he expounded no philosophy and embraced a completely Lowest Common Denominator view of communicating with the electorate. That was traditionally what the Democrats did. Remember?

2. If you are a National League fan of my era. You don't follow the American League. Since they introduced the Designated hitter rule, we do not consider them to even play baseball. I feel the same way about the Democrats.

There is nothing that I can do about the Democrats other than vote against them. Besides, I have better things to do than following whatever policies they come up with because, more likely than not, they spring from a basic tenets that I rejected years ago.

3. _I do not think I am being glib in dismissing Obama. He just doen't interest me much other than that he has proven to be a formidable opponent, something I noticed when many people were calling him an empty suit. He will, if elected, effect my life, but I have seen a lot of presidents come and go and have heard every election since 1952 called the most important in history. I am still here.

I am mortal and have a limited amount of time on the planet. Forgive me if I have become more stoic in my old age._

4. "You seem to be unaware that there is a broader world beyond the intra-party conflict within the GOP."

You may be right there. but, I think that this is the most important thing to focus on at this time in history. Without a strong, philosophically based Republican party in the United States, all these problems in the broader world get a lot worse, fast. So this is where the battle that Republicans have now is so critical and, in a sense makes this election pale in insignificance. Imagine Democratic Administrations for 8, 12 or 16 years

I think that anyone that doesn't think this way is the weirdo. A weirdo fighting the last war. Unless the Party retieves its Political theology, it is lost. I think the Neo-Cons and the Rovians have proved themselves to be mutton heads. I do not see any reason why I should not continue to rail against them.

I think you will be doing the same thing, hopefully, six months into an Obama Administration.

I'd like to thank Jeff Medcalf (#7) for a very illuminating and interesting comment...

#75 Mr. Wishard:

Actually, no I didn't know that Mr. Biden is Catholic. It doesn't really make any difference. ALL the candidates, with the possible exception of Obama (who is borderline communist, possibly worse) are more theocratic than any politician just about anywhere in the rest of the Western world.

And if Palin no longer takes orders from the Pope she takes orders from some American chiliastic lunatic instead; not much of an improvement.

The points about creationism, book-banning and anti-choice politics still stand.

I have said this before, but the master of SF came up with an all-too-plausible scenario set in the 23rd century, but possibly applicable to the 21st. Take a quick look at Heinlein's "If This Goes On". A just about perfect slice of life under the "Moral Majority". (Of course, as they always have been for the last ten thousand years, they are actually a small minority.)

My morality? "An it harm none, do what ye will."

To Kirk #82

"the question is laughably easy to answer."

Thanks. That made me laugh. And feel a whole lot better.

Virgil xenophon,

Is this the Sowell article you are referring to?

Stoaty Weasel weighs in on this as well.

Follow the link and RTWT, it's short and worth it. Here's an excerpt near the close:

You know what I really hate about our elites? YOU GUYS ARE NOT ELITE. You’re ruthlessly average. You’re second-raters who went to good schools, and you know it. You’re desperately insecure about your gifts and social position....Feh. I went to prep school too, my fellow @$$holes. Alma mater is no guarantor of smarts or ability. Or success.

Bowdlerization mine.

Ties in to Fussell's 1983 book Class, too, obviously.

Class + Religion = High Church vs. Low Church, or more complexly, Methodists [liberals] + Episcoplians [Brooksians] vs. Pentacostals [Palin].

Thanks for introducing me to The Weasel.

Dude rocks!

Fletcher Christian -

Yeah, I read "If This Goes On ...", but I think Heinlein would tell you to lighten up a little bit.

And as for that darned old "rest of the Western world." Much of it has much stricter abortion laws than the United States does, especially after 12 weeks of pregnancy. And in Europe they do ban books. Like, for real.

And not to get pedantic, but as a Protestant I have to say it's very unfair to call the Pope a "chiliastic lunatic", because Catholic doctrine actually considers chiliasm to be heresy.

#80 from metrico:

"I disagree, it was the usual pandering and flim-flamming the pro-lifers, with the added element of exploiting Palin's own personal choices and politicizing them, in the feminist MacKinnon-esque way of "the personal is political.""

But choices are everything. And "ideas" are meaningless unless you believe them and will act that way.

Let me illustrate. George W. Bush recently gave a speech on judges and judicial philosophy. I ignored it.

Because when George W. Bush had to pick judges for the Supreme Court, his first preference according to National Review's rumors from the White House - pretty credible rumors in my opinion - was Alberto Gonzales. And when at length, he got talked out of that because nobody was up for a second qualification battle so the same old buddy of the president could have another good job, his next internally driven pick for ultimate judicial power was Harriet Miers. And he never backed off on her, no matter how conservatives, the Republican legal establishment and pro-lifers howled, till it turned out she simply couldn't be trained up to a level of knowledge that would let her get through a Senate hearing respectably. Only then did he capitulate to conservatives, the Republican legal establishment etc. and nominate a great judge.

So George W. Bush is in no position to be telling anyone the right way to choose judges. Anything he says in that regard is empty talk, and won't even touch on his own choice if a Supreme Court vacancy opens up unexpectedly before he leaves office. Given his choices, which are all-important, at least 90% of what George W. Bush knows about judicial philosophy can be summed up as: give your cronies the best jobs.

The Republican Party's main problem on life issues is like that. When the party was in every position to pursue life issues, it didn't.

Bertrand Russell said that philosophy generally came in two parts. One was a set of basic propositions that generally could be understood by anyone (though the full implications of them might be hard to follow), and the other part was a wrapper of justifications and replies to objections.

The Republican Party, currently, doesn't have the kernel propositions credibly in place, never mind the wrapper or detailed legislative proposals. It doesn't need legislative proposals any more anyway, as it is in no position to act on them. What it needs to be able to do is set out the basics, much as Ronald Reagan did.

Henry Kissinger, a real intellectual unlike most of the pundits who are on Sarah Palin's case, said that Ronald Reagan was the most unintellectual of presidents, and he, Kissinger, wanted the university experts to explain why Reagan was being so successful. (In other words, since he knows nothing of what you intellectuals teach and could not care less about what you think, if you are right, why is he getting results?)

For David Brooks to be calling Ronald Reagan a great man of ideas, and saying Sarah Palin and George W. Bush are scornful of all ideas is a bad joke. What Sarah Palin is doing now is what Ronald Reagan did way back when, only her ideas aren't as well thought through as Ronald Reagan's were when in his vigorous old age he finally took office. (And of course, it's not her job now to argue for detailed proposals to end abortion, in contradiction to the election agenda of her boss.)

#80 from metrico:

"Without specific policy proposals, her cant about being pro-life is more of the same pandering to the committed but deluded minority of pro-life voters."

"Cant" is when you lecture hypocritically on matters of morals or religion.

It's not "cant" if you're genuine. And Sarah Palin is genuine.

Her ideas are actual ideas, things that could guide the development of policy (depending on the state of play in the legislature and the Supreme Court at the time, as everything will depend on circumstances) and not mere decorative rhetoric.

It's a bad joke for people who are reversing their emphatic opinions in time with shifts in the polls to be damning Sarah Palin for lack of intellectual seriousness.

#80 from metrico:

"Aside from that, thoughtful conservative commentators might have misgivings about her obvious lack of knowledge, her arbitrary use of power, and cronyism in Wasilla and Juneau."

Not really, except to some extent on the lack of knowledge, and in any case I'm not asking about what conservative pundits "might have" attacked her on, rather my starting point is the odd new pattern of behavior they've shown in the actual charges they made.

And these charges are bizarre, like her standing against all ideas and only for party, when in Alaska she stood literally against party and for clean government, which she largely delivered. Her fierce new conservative critics have been hitting her with any stick that came to hand, no matter how unsuitable it was when you really think about that attack. Which raises again the question I asked: why, when conservative pundits have fallen in line in the past, even when a Republican candidate for vice-president was floundering a bit, are they doing this now?

It's an interesting question, and we've had a lot of good thoughts on it in this thread; not only from Grim.

[Long, foul-mouthed drive-by; deleted. Please check the WoC Comments Policy for more information.

M Mir, you are invited to come by again and post something substantive and on topic. The post I've deleted does not constitute such. Further posts of similar quality will be cause for a ban.

--NM]

Andrewdb -- yes I have my own blog. Whiskeys-place at b-l-o-g-s-p-o-t dot com. What can I say, the Blogger interface is easy and free. I like free. I have some things about Obama there, please check them out.

Fletcher --

Sarah Palin represents a significant amount of Americans. More than Obama although she will lose along with McCain. Palin represents the White Middle/Working Class, which is about 60% of the population. Blacks are 12%, Mexicans (the overwhelming majority of Hispanics are Mexican) are 13%. White Yuppies are about 10% of the population or so.

However, single women hate Palin because of her marriage, blue collar ways, husband (not powerful/rich/high-status enough), and kids (instead of one/two designer yuppie babies or figure-friendly and fashionable adopted ones). Single women are the most desperate, status-driven demographic group in America, and are fundamentally at odds with single men (who are not). A perusal of say, Sports Illustrated vs. Cosmo will show you the difference.

The lies about Palin are just that, class-status based lies designed to show how lumpen-proletariat she is to the single women (and increasingly married women) who form Obama's status-JFK-hip/cool Cult-Religion.

**Palin NEVER banned books. She, after complaints about "Daddy's Roomate" asked the Librarian what the process would be to make the book request only. That was it.

**Palin does NOT believe in Creationism, she said in a debate it could be discussed if brought up by students but should NOT be in the curriculum.

**Palin DOES believe in Pro-Life, her record in office as Governor includes support for sex education and contraception teaching in schools, but at age-appropriate levels (not Kindergarten) and without explicit sex. YES, she supported contraception education in schools and argued that it was important for kids who did not get it at home -- just that it should not be explicit.

**Palin is not anti-gay, vetoed a Legislative effort to overturn gay partnership benefits, and argued that VOTERS should instead make that decision by plebiscite.

The sum of these arguments is to paint Palin as a "hillbilly" which was exactly the arguments used against Andrew Jackson. And Lincoln for that matter.

Palin's governing philosophy is simple: clean, efficient government rooted in doing a few things well, returning as much money and power to the people as possible. It is intuitively a household manager's conception, easily grasped and effective to implement at the local level. It is after all the people's money, they ought to have a say in how it's spent, instead of the Big Man and his subordinates who dole out patronage money.

In fact, the Democratic Party is in direct opposition to Palinism. Instead of local control you have State and Federal Bureaucracies. Instead of power returned to the people, you have over-weening, unelected, permanent bureaucracies who decide what happens. Instead of returning money to the people, you have patronage money to minorities and elites.

#81 from Jim Hu:

"I think some of this was missed upthread: It's mostly about result-mongering."

That's got to be part of it.

"Palin v. Quayle: The scorn for Palin doesn't rise to that expressed for Quayle largely because Bush-Quayle won and the pundits are looking at McCain-Palin losing. We are also probably forgetting how much disdain there was for Quayle, and he didn't have 24/7 cable and the blogosphere to contend with."

Fair enough, but winning and losing have a lot of results, and which and the most important? Is it that after losing, the GOP will be less able to deliver rewards and sanctions, while the democratic establishment will be more able to do so, so the more tactical conservative pundits are getting with the strength now? Is it that a Democrat win will strongly vindicate the NY/DC conservative pundits' metropolitan liberal elite friends, thus putting more pressure on the conservative big media pundits to prove that they are respectable, reasonable conservatives? Is it something else? What is the main draw?

#81 from Jim Hu:

"I'm not a Republican even though I've been voting that way of late out of greater distaste for the Dems, so I don't know how the internecine lines are being drawn, but I suspect the split on Palin in the GOP punditocracy (GOPP for short) reflects the struggle in the GOP over its future."

In this case, Mark Steyn is simply right. Sarah Palin represents a kind of conservatism that can win elections and govern. The GOP big media pundits represent an absentee landlord establishment that takes as foundational the manners and sensibilities of cities where Republicanism exists only on Democrat terms. A Republican Party that decided it didn't need Sarah Palin but it did need David Brooks would be going out of the business of government.

#81 from Jim Hu:

"McCain is sui generis and he's old - I don't see anyone in the GOPP seeing a political philosophy to rebuild on in McCain."

I agree. Well, McCain might.

#81 from Jim Hu:

"I'm not sure that Palin represents her supporters the way they think she does, but perhaps the advocacy of her selection from Bill Kristol affects the shape of the conflict?"

I don't know how much Bill Kristol's blessing is worth. That's not snark. Does anyone have an answer, and something solid to support it?

I stopped paying attention to Bill Kristol because he said - as something all real experts on the matter would know - that religion was not an issue for Iraqis, and unlike in Afghanistan it was not going to be a problem for us. After that, I marked him down as a bluffer.

But from the point of view of figuring out what the GOPP is doing, my bad reaction to Bill Kristol's mistake is unimportant. Lots of people on the right didn't have the reaction I did.

#81 from Jim Hu:

"As to Palin herself, her Gibson-Couric interviews were dreadful."

Yes. And the second one was much worse, because after the first it was possible to hope that she would never let herself be that ill-prepared again. Not after the Couric interview. Not only didn't she know her topic information, but she didn't know how to do an interview of this character. She was as clueless as a rabbit stunned by a searchlight. I found it really painful to watch.

#81 from Jim Hu:

"A few weeks ago, I blogged how I wish the McCain camp had handled her on the qualifications issue."

Good blog post. And yes, your way would have been an improvement.

The Palin rollout was bungled in many ways. For one thing, she was put in the care of unnamed Bush staffers, according to report, who coached her intensely on the right way to express herself. Assuming that Bush was successfully communicating anything to anybody, which at this point he isn't, there's still the problem that running for office as an outsider requires a different style, and the other problem that if the Left took hold of that story it exactly conforms to the Democrat narrative about McCain being just more of George W. Bush. Here's a real fresh Republican face, and what does McCain do with her? Have her coached as a Bush clone. That's not good.

I think the other biggest mistake in the Palin rollout was isolating her from friendly or at least open-minded voices who could have spoken for her if they had not been cut out of the loop in favor of the hostile big media establishment. Had she been talking online with Glen and Helen, and with Rush and so on, she would have had a chance to put her best foot forward. Cutting her potential supporters and open-minded listeners out of the action practically silenced them, because you can't talk credibly without access, and so the war of screams and vomiting that the left initiated as soon as Sarah Palin came on to the national stage was successful. You can't beat something with nothing, and even vitriolic hate, if there is enough of it, beats embarrassed silence.

I think the one-sidedness of the screaming contest over Sarah Palin may have made joining the hostile throng seem more attractive and safer to conservative who were considering it.

Though again, Dan Quayle was hidden away too. So I do think issues of class, rural versus metropolitan orientation, generational change in the Republican Party and sexism must be relevant. Maybe religion too, though I doubt it.

"I think the other biggest mistake in the Palin rollout was isolating her from friendly or at least open-minded voices who could have spoken for her if they had not been cut out of the loop in favor of the hostile big media establishment."

Great point. Why not talk with Rush, Hugh Hewitt, Pajamas Media, etc? Afraid she'll be cast as a right-wing ideologue if she does?

Wow, glad Team McCain avoided that pothole.

I'm surprised no one has addressed this, but each & every allegation in Fletcher Christian's #70 is an absolute lie (except for being pro-life, but I wouldn't tag that as an "extreme" position)-- vile smears circulated about Palin, all debunked, unfortunately still propagated by those who are either uninformed, without scruple, or hate her. I'm tired of it.

She never banned books.

She does not advocate teaching creationism in schools. (Her position was a libertarian one, against outlawing free discussion of the matter if it were to come up, e.g. raised by students, in class.)

She is a pro-lifer... but I wouldn't qualify her position as "extreme"-- unless you believe all pro-lifers qualify as extreme. (NB I personally am pro-choice.)

She is not anti-gay. In fact, as governor she did much that was pro-gay (re benefits for domestic partners). Unless you believe that anyone who opposes the institution of gay marriage (by judicial fiat) is anti-gay... in which case Obama & Biden are anti-gay too.

The ridiculous Pope thing's been disposed of above.

This unchecked dissemination of smears, complete falsehoods (even in the might NY Times, cf. Dowd) is disgusting. Of course, these have all come to form part of her "image" among all those well-informed bien-pensants (e.g. geniuses like Matt Damon). Ugh.

And I have to say, TOC fits all too perfectly the profile of a Moby. But whatever.

#83 from Mark Poling:

"I'm looking forward to a future in which Palin doesn't have Team McCain hanging around her neck."

What you said.

She can also get by without key endorsements from Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker etc..

But she needs to get her act together. She can't continue to give interviews like she gave Katie Couric, or everything else is irrelevant.

One of the things good pundits can do is supply politicians with usable ideas - and I don't just mean shots, like the line Sarah Palin lifted from Jim Geraghty for her great speech. (The one about "mayor" being like a "community organizer" but with responsibilities.) I'd like Sarah Palin to talk to her serious critics in the Republican punditocracy, not now in the election while everyone's busy and everything would be seized on by the media, but after the election, and listen.

I wish Sarah Palin would go to Charles Krauthammer after the election is over and say to him: "this isn't about co-opting. Continue to damn me as much as you like in public. But teach me your take on or foreign policy problems now, because I don't think Bush staffers have all the answers."

-

She couldn't do that with the pundits who've been defining her as a disease and themselves as the cure. They don't want access and influence with people like her, they want people like her out of the party or at least any position of influence within it.

They don't seem to think they are the kind of people Sarah Palin would ever take guidance anyway, and I hope and believe they are right about that.

"He's phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team," Brooks said. "I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he's chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes."

Think about the history of Obama's associates, and then reflect that to meet with Brooks' approval you don't have to support any policies he expresses approval of, you just have pick the people that his social reference group, his "most of us", would pick for important jobs. And presumably exclude the people "most of us" wouldn't think of giving a big job.

There's not a lot of middle ground to be had there.

And these establishment pundits don't seem to have much to say that's valuable anyway. What would Chris Buckley tell her if Sarah Palin went to him to listen? "Here's everything I know about how to be a good family man, and vote Obama!"?

The nexus between conservatives and the NY/DC corridor metropolitan liberal elite is seriously decrepit. I don't think the argument that the rubes need an elite to gude them holds up very well in the face of the weakness of the non-elite "elite" they've got and have had for a long time now.

(You can argue whether an "elite" is needed at all, from a philosophical point of view, but I think the case that this "elite" is no longer needed, and that with the rise of the Internet and one hopes the rise of a new generation of military veterans something better is emerging and has to develop further, is much more to the point in practical politics.)

#102 from danielle:

"I'm surprised no one has addressed this, but each & every allegation in Fletcher Christian's #70 is an absolute lie (except for being pro-life, but I wouldn't tag that as an "extreme" position)-- vile smears circulated about Palin, all debunked, unfortunately still propagated by those who are either uninformed, without scruple, or hate her. I'm tired of it."

danielle, the reason I didn't say anything, and I suspect the main reason other people didn't speak, is that you are not alone in being weary over this.

The same empty smears get repeated over and over, whether you debunk them or not. So I've hit my mental "ignore" button.

Only, it's curious when a bunch of top conservatives is saying similarly silly things.

Like David Brooks, who on his own account above is wowed by Obama and comforted by his "fantastic" ability to hire teams of the same people "most of us" would wish to pick, and isn't entirely put off that the man who gives him that knee-tingling feeling opposes all his policy positions. And in this context, Sarah Palin is the one who is not taking ideas seriously??

What's going on here? Is this mere snobbery, or sexism, or an urban vs. rural thing, or what? And why is it happening now?

#99 from whiskey:

"Sarah Palin represents a significant amount of Americans."

Here are some people she represents (link):

"I would estimate the crowd was at least 60% - 40% female to male, if not higher. There were a lot of little babies and a lot of special needs kids. It was very obvious from watching the crowd that Sarah Palin has connected with women, the pro-life movement, and special needs communities in a very deep and personal way."

"There were also a lot of vets in attendance and they were repeatedly honored both formerly and informally. For example, before the rally began and people were still finding seats, there were several times that the crowd broke out in spontaneous applause because a vet was crossing the stage to get to his seat. These were heartfelt and enthusiastic demonstrations of gratitude from people who truly love and support the troops."

You'd think serious conservative pundits would recognize that these people need and deserve a place at the GOP table.

Mr. Wishard; "And if Palin no longer takes orders from the Pope she takes orders from some American chiliastic lunatic instead; not much of an improvement."

Sorry for quoting myself - but in what way is that calling the Pope chiliastic?

On the pro-life/pro-choice issue; I, and I suspect quite a few others, are somewhere in the middle on this subject, leaning towards pro-life. The extreme ends of the spectrum seem to be those who believe that a single-cell zygote is fully human and a pregnancy should not be terminated under any circumstances whatsoever, and those who believe that termination should be allowed at any time up to full term. Neither of those positions is acceptable to me and I think to many others. However, the Pope is hard over towards one end, and so are the evangelist churches - so whatever Palin says in public...

Anyway; the USA - and the rest of the world - can survive a term, maybe even two, of Obama presidency. It can't survive Nehemiah Scudder. Him,or someone like him, we'd be stuck with for a century or more. There are too many things to do, before the world runs out of just about all the necessities of technological civilisation - quite apart from AGW if you believe in that.

None of the candidates are even thinking about the real problems coming up in maybe twenty years' time, and maybe that is inevitable in a democratic state with four-year terms. What problems? Resource (including energy resource) depletion, overpopulation and possibly climate change are already obvious. Less obvious are the possibly lethal problems posed by advances towards nanotech and bioengineering. The answers to many of those problems start less than a thousand miles away. The only problem is that those thousand miles are straight up.

Fletcher Christian #106 --

And if Palin no longer takes orders from the Pope

No Roman Catholic I, but I thought this one dead-ended 48 years ago?

she takes orders from some American chiliastic lunatic instead

I needed some online help.

chiliasm - The doctrine stating that Jesus will reign on earth for 1,000 years.

Possible interpretation: "(1) Many beliefs that are deeply held as matters of faith appear strange and ill-founded to me; (2) translating them into public policy leads us down some darned strange roads; thus (3) people with strange ideas like that ought to be kept far away from the levers of government."

Well, as a skeptic and agnostic, I can sympathize with that point of view. But it comes with its own problems, to my mind an instance of the cure being worse than the disease. For one, it makes democracy well-nigh impossible. Are the particular Papism-free, non-chiliastic set of ideas that Fletcher Christian holds at this stage of his life the soundest basis for public policy? Really? Oughtn't we similarly declare Orthodox Jews, Shi'ites, Mormons, Fabianists, Pagans, Greens, Global Warmenists, Methodists, Global-Warming-Deniers, Club-of-Rome-Growthists, Unitarians, Freemasons, and a whole bevy of other Believers to be unfit for office?

We haven't even begun to think about the implications of these ideas for the (wretched) dogma of Multiculturalism.

Paul Graham's essay What You Can't Say is also relevant to the fervor with which Palin's being rubbished (and recall my opinion in #15 supra that she isn't qualified to be V.P.):

...What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

[snip]

It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.

Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right.

At this point, Sarah Palin isn't really running to be McCain's Vice President. As brought up at multiple points, McCain/Palin is going to lose, badly. When the dust of November 2008 clears, Republican ranks in the Congress and state capitals are going to be noticeably thinned.

Dismayed, discredited, cast out into the wilderness--the question for the pro-mixed-market, non-nanny-state Loyal Opposition will shortly be, What Now?

The Democrats look set to have a long run. A hard recession is likely to set the stage for further consolidation in the 2010 midterm elections. Ultimately, though, the pendulum will swing back towards the middle.

One backlash will come as the fruits of single-party statist rule ripen over the next few years. Consider the levels of cronyism and corruption that will infest the Paulson Plan alone. Hundreds of billions of dollars to be doled out to semi-nationalized financial institutions to relieve them of the burden of complex financial instruments of unknowable value. Using novel procedures administered by a bureaucracy that the Obama Administration has yet to invent, much less staff.

Palin is imperfect, but she put her political career at risk to stand up against corrupt individuals who were entrenched in her state's and party's power structures. And she won her fight. That's not a bad place to start.

I hope that Palin, and others in similar positions, have occasion to read through this thread for the ideas that are discussed.

#108 from AMac at 2:16 pm on Oct 19, 2008

Forget Palin. She is a creature of the political past. The Reagan coalition has been irreparably smashed. A new coaliton will have to be built from the wreckage. In my opinion one that does not include the Neo-Cons and the Rovians.

The dead wood at the top of the party will be cleared. New ideas will flow into the GOP discussion. We will return to Paleo-Con political, economic and Foreign policy bedrock and we will mold a positive vision for the future.

Obama now has Warren Buffet, Paul Volker and Colin Powell in his pocket. you would think he was a Republican.

I always say you must listen to your market and adapt. The Market is telling us that they are not buying what we are selling. What should we do? Easy. Improve the product.

Expect the next nominee to be no older than 55. The party is going to go through a generational change, which is good. We will pass through a time of creative destruction. How long will it last? It depends upon how serious we are about creating a new vision for the electorate, from the ground up.

Again, nobody is buying Rove or Neo-Conservatism any more. As a start we should dump them. Their will be a severe vacuum at the top of the party after this election. I expect the newer generation to hearken back to Bush 41 and Snowcroft and the like for their philosophical base, which always looked pretty solid for me.

#109 from TOC:

"I expect the newer generation to hearken back to Bush 41 and Snowcroft and the like for their philosophical base, which always looked pretty solid for me."

With that line, I think you did better than the conservative pundits I quoted and later criticized above, and all the others like them, because unlike them you defined your alternative to Sarah Palin.

It seems you want Bush 41 and Brett Scowcroft back, only each 55 years old, and with no neo-cons and no Karl Rove and no religious types and social conservatives like Sarah Palin allowed anywhere near the White House from now on.

That may not be available but it's imaginable. It's a vision, and that's more than any of the pundits above were offering.

TOC:

Yeah, sure, she's finished, yadda yadda yadda.

I don't want to bust on you too much, even though you are repeating yourself while pushing the conversation to matters that are much on your mind -- heck, I've been known to do that :) -- so let me ask you this, specifically. Mr Blue writes, in this thread's entry:

Sarah Palin's critics seem in many cases (but not in Charles Krauthammer's case) to be warmly attracted to Barack Obama, and quite uninterested in who takes second spot on the Republican ticket, as long as it's not Sarah Palin.

Do you agree? Disagree?

Is this thing Mr Blue is talking about, regarding the conservative pundits he mentions, entirely explainable in terms of Anti-Rovianism / anti-neoconism?

'Cause I'm not sure it is.

Every one agrees that Obama has been elected. Acorn gaurantees it.

Whenever a white men has been elected President he has apponinted an all White cabinet. Lately, white presiodents have appointed a token black and a token woman to the cabinet. Newsweek, the NY Times, and WaPo assume Obama will have an all white cabinet with a token black and a token woman.

Balderdash!!!

It is only fair and just that Obama will appoint an all black cabinet, with maybe a token white and a token woman. It would be utterly racist to say that it is impossible to find 15 black people who are just as good as the current 15 people currently in the cabinet.

The question is -- who are these 15 blacks?

Also we need a replacement for head of the FBI, DEA, ICE, and Federal Reserve.

#112 Sol:

I notice that your post is 100% off topic. Are you looking to get banned on this thread, or would you care to try for our Troll Grand Prize?

--Marshal Nortius "Big Tuna" Maximus, acting in official capacity.

Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air. The intellectual establishment, or at least part of it, has aged and can no longer understand a change of climate.

#111 from Nortius Maximus at 6:47 pm on Oct 19, 2008
TOC:

Yeah, sure, she's finished, yadda yadda yadda.

Great summation of my thoughts!! :)

I don't want to bust on you too much, even though you are repeating yourself while pushing the conversation to matters that are much on your mind -- heck, I've been known to do that :) -- so let me ask you this, specifically. Mr Blue writes, in this thread's entry:

Sarah Palin's critics seem in many cases (but not in Charles Krauthammer's case) to be warmly attracted to Barack Obama, and quite uninterested in who takes second spot on the Republican ticket, as long as it's not Sarah Palin.

Do you agree? Disagree?

I do not think that anyone can deny that their is a lot of truth to that, but it is not everything. There are real problems with Sarah Palin and the mindset of the McCain team that set that nomination in motion. I will spare you the list, because you already know my views on the mindset of the political honchos on the McCain team. (by the wasy, you owe me big time for sparing you that screed. :)

Is this thing Mr Blue is talking about, regarding the conservative pundits he mentions, entirely explainable in terms of Anti-Rovianism / anti-neoconism?

'Cause I'm not sure it is.

No, ruptures in a party cannot be so easily explainable. A lot of things are happening. Generational splits. Changing geopolitical conditions. Over reaching financial models. etc., etc.

But the direction of the party is what we, as individuals, have the most direct effect upon in order to tackle the above mentioned problems.

I really don't care much what pundits say. I have known a lot of journalists in my time and have not been overly impressed with them. the are good to give an indication of how wide the fissure has become in the party.

It has to be addressed. addressing it will lead to people taking sides. This election will be a catalyst for an incredible amount of finger pointing. the only think that heal that fissure is vision which the party now lacks. That vision and philosophy is what has to be worked on immediately. this election is a disaster for us even if McCain wins!

I hate to keep coming back to this, but I saw this coming and I identified the culprits.

There is one other very visceral thing, I really was appalled how the NeoCons washed their hands of the Administration the minute things started to get tough in Iraq. Even though I was against our invasion, I felt the NeoCons behavior could be charitably described as bare faced cowardice and blame shifting. The majority of these fools had never even been in a fist fight. I would not even honor them by calling them courtiers.

Rove strikes me as being cut of the same smug cloth.

Scowcroft? You have got to be kidding me!

But laughter is healthful, they say, so I'll just extend my statement above: the assertion that the Republican Party would be better off with the likes of Scowcroft than with the likes of, say, John Bolton, is so laughable that just thinking about it means I'll probably live to be 100.

Unless by "better off" you mean "going out of business as quickly as possible", that it.

#116 from Kirk Parker at 9:08 pm on Oct 19, 2008

Do you like Baker any better?

I lost respect for Baker when he came out as SofS and announced that the US would solve the Isreal/Palestine issue because "we care" - talk about hubris, its only been going on for how many centuries, and the US will solve their problem? Because "we care?"

His performance on the recent Iraq study is almost as bad.

The man may be an elder statesman, but he isn't one I want anywhere near the levers of power.

Baker? No, not much.

Look, these guys actually did a very creditable job of foreign policy during the breakup of the Soviet Union. I credit Philip Bobbitt for changing my thinking on that point. However, I'm less sure that this is something they did knowingly, rather than just lucked out; and either way they seem to have just gotten stuck on stability ueber alles.

Forget Palin. She is a creature of the political past. The Reagan coalition has been irreparably smashed. A new coaliton will have to be built from the wreckage. In my opinion one that does not include the Neo-Cons and the Rovians.

Look, why don't you make yourself a political party, you can call yourselves the Noo Rethuglicans, you can start out with a membership of Peggy Noonan, Colin Powell, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, and Chris Buckley, and put in the formal rules no metalworker's wives or plumbers allowed in your treehouse. Then the rest of us can start one where working people can still join, and invite Sarah Palin and all the "nasty" Republicans who aren't good enough for you, and we'll see who has more members.

Phil Fraering, you made me laugh, a lot, so thanks; but let me drag this back a bit more on topic.

I take it from what you said that you're another vote for "this is about class and snobbery"?

"Personally, I would love to see her do real press conferences." Me too, but we have different expectations.

From CBS News' website, today, Palin Becomes Increasingly Accessible To The National Media

Though she often turns the “mainstream media” into a punching bag on the stump, Palin clearly enjoys interacting with reporters. She seems to relish the opportunity to demonstrate that her breadth of knowledge far exceeds what she offered to CBS News’ Katie Couric in a series of interviews that were marked by vague, often convoluted answers to straightforward questions.

After her plane in Colorado Springs, Palin answered no less than 14 questions from the media. It took traveling press secretary Tracey Schmitt three attempts finally to get the governor to move along.

Now that the press thinks they've delivered it for Obama, I expect to see more stories like this that resemble actual journalism regarding Palin.

David, to tell you the truth, really, I don't know. I don't know how class is defined in this country anymore. There's a party that's for the working man and the proletariat, or so they tell us, as long as they shut up, don't ask any irritating or embarrassing questions, and don't get ideas above their station.

They're used to a situation where they don't have to explain or justify any of their ideas, because hey, they have ideas and the rest of us don't. And who are we to question this?

The left in particular, but the Establishment Party among both the left and the nominally "right," like Powell and Noonan and the others, have gotten intellectually lazy over the last thirty years, because they can count on being Automatically right and Automatically Compassionate regardless of how everything works out.

Maybe more later, I have to get back to work.

#102 from danielle at 8:52 am on Oct 19, 2008

And I have to say, TOC fits all too perfectly the profile of a Moby. But whatever.

I have never been called "a Moby" before? Is this a sexist code word for "a Dick".

I have been called that.:) Whatever.

And if this is the case, why single out me? This site is loaded with them!!

It sure does seem like McCain gain the liberal illuminati a lot of ammunition when he picked Palin for V.P. The funny thing to me is most the things they say about her are the same things conservatives are saying about Obama. Maybe everybody deserves a shot.

Palin, woman of the people, $150,000 in clothing expenses paid for by the RNC. Not that I am complaining; that's money they don't have for advertising. Elitist Michele Obama? Wears an off-the-rack $99 dress.

The Daily Show did an unbelievably savage report on Wasilla. I've been to, or rather through Wasilla, and it is a totally charmless exurb with Walmart and Target that could be anywhere else in America, except for the view. The Daily Show captures that, but it also got great interview from the local secessionist (how pro-America is that!?) and the current mayor, who feels the job definitely prepares one for the Vice Presidency—even as she hems and haws and admits Wasilla doesn't even have its own school system or fire department. Watch it through to the last bitter shot.

Mr. Lazarus, Michelle Obama isn't running for anything as far as I know.

That said; Wasilla (of course apart from the view) looks like the only American small town I've actually lived in - Parsippany, NJ - even for a short time; a totally charmless exurb (to steal your words) with wide roads (no sidewalks, so driving is compulsory) lined with enormous stores that look like nastier-looking factory units and with diners that serve food that makes your arteries harden just looking at it. Oh, and bars serving beer that looks and tastes as if it came out of a gnat.

So is that the real America, and is Mrs. Palin a real American? But she's still the best one of the four; and that says it all about America. Best of the bunch doesn't mean much when the whole bunch is rotten.

Well, for a party that ridiculed a $400 haircut paid for out of pocket, they didn't remember about glass houses and stones. Let's grant that Gov. Palin may not have had much of a dress wardrobe out in Alaska. But $150K? That's a lot of clothes, nor Joe the Plumber's budget at all.

Incidentally, it includes at least one store (Barney's, $700+) that sells men's clothes, so spouses and children are also getting clad.

But she's still the best one of the four; and that says it all about America.

This statement definitely says something about you and her supporters, who represent a particular segment of America, to be sure. But the idea thatRepublicans get to define what "America" means is especially galling given their predilection for hatemongering and promoting civil strife and conflict.

"The best of the four"????? She thinks it's the VPs job to run the Senate and can't keep her party mascots straight.

Just to name the latest two items among a long list demonstrating that, not only is she incompetent to be VP, but very likely Governor of Alaska or even Mayor of Wassila, which, as AJL points to in the hilarious Daily Show segment, has fewer responsibilities than your average fast food restaurant manager.

Doesn't know the mascots! Mayor of a small exurb with Target!

These are all probably horrible disqualifications in your world.

And she still got a 70%+ approval rating AS GOVERNOR (which positionmost of the left doesn't want to admit she's held, along with being on the Oil and Gas Commission, where she spent most of her time swimming upstream against the networks there), after unseating the incumbent governor in the primary.

You got it backwards, Phil. It's not that the two points you make disqualify her, it's just that by many other measures (you seem to have left out her lack of basic knowledge on how the government works) she is woefully unqualified. Perhaps more than any other figure running for higher office in the last 50 years.

You see, in "my world", we expect that our Presidents and Vice Presidents, you know, people with real serious responsibilities, are not just ignorant telegenic fools.

Face it: she's an idiot and choosing her has very likely cost McCain the election.

Now let's see if you can direct that anger and frustration elsewhere instead of at your fellow American.

Face it: she's an idiot...

I doubt that very much. I expect she's done better than most would if they were thrown on national television in the heat of a Presidential race, a few scant weeks before it ended.

Meanwhile, as governor, she's done better than most. Most governors.

That's not much of a standard, Grim.

And how do you mean "done better"? Except for projecting self-confidence and poise, she's bungled nearly every interview she's had where actual knowledge is called for. She can give a good canned stump speech full of raw meat, but she's not running for preacher.

Perhaps "idiot" is unfair and overly derogatory, if one wants to interpret this to mean "dumb". She's not dumb. She's just nowhere near smart or well-informed enough to be serving in the White House; that much is clear.

Now let's see if you can direct that anger and frustration elsewhere instead of at your fellow American.

You're the one who started throwing insults (like "idiot") around long before I showed up on this thread.

JFTR, Frank Murkowski, the incumbent governor Sarah Palin defeated in the primary, was so extraordinarily unpopular he finished third.