I can’t think of a better candidate for the GOP to run against Barack Obama in 2012 than Sarah Palin, can you? Let’s do our darnedest to give her candidacy the exposure it deserves:
Gov. Sarah Palin appears to have broken state ethics law by asking people to donate money to a trust set up to pay her legal bills, an investigator hired by the state [of Alaska] found.
“In light of the evidence that the governor expressly authorized the creation of the trust and the fact the trust website quite openly uses the governor’s position to solicit donations, there is probable cause to believe that Governor Palin used, or attempted to use, her official position for personal gain in violation of Alaska statute,” Anchorage attorney Tom Daniel wrote in his report.
Heck, when you’re a Real American you don’t need no stinking ethics! As commenter dhatten noted in his oh so dead on comment to the Anchorage Daily News story:
In a nut shell. The problem most people have with Gov. Palin, especially women, is that Gov. Palin is a hot good looking woman. Envy rules!
Well, that and her vindictive nature, complete stupidity and utter ignorance of the issues. But, hey, since when did that ever stop a Republican from attaining high office? Just ask Dubya.
And Sarah, when you do go for the brass ring, I suggest you sign up Dick Cheney as your presumptive Vice President. I’m sure he’s available and would be more than happy to resume his former position as the Fourth Branch of the Government. You know, the one that does most of the hard work (like keeping Congress from finding out what the hell your administration is really up to so you have plausible deniability) so the President only has to make the occasional aircraft carrier landing. And trust me, your base supporters would dearly love to see in a flight suit someday (no offense Dubya).
And as for all those 19 ethics scandals (that we know of), I say be proud of them. If I were you I’d advertise the fact that the state you quit on as Governor felt the need to investigate you so much. You’re a Republican, dammit! Scandals are a necessary part of any GOP candidates’ resume. And here’s another idea: maybe you can score another interview with Charlie Gibson or Katie Couric to explain your side of the story. Then when you screw up your answers to easy questions you can bash the liberal media and blame them for all your troubles. Again. Seriously. It worked so well last time, didn’t it?
So is that the problem that those on the right have with Michelle Obama? (And she, unlike Palin, has the added attraction of a highly functional brain.)
Well, Michelle is a “darkie,” you know. She could be Albert f-ing Einstein and “Real Americans” would have problems with her. Of course, even then, they’d call her uppity.
For Republicans, that is a turn-off. Women are supposed to be brainless baby machines.
I’d say be careful what you wish for. I’ve been told by folks older than myself that in ’78-’79 Democrats were hoping that Reagan would get the nomination against Carter because he was so nuts he’d be the easiest to beat – and that worked out nicely.
If Obama screws things up over the next couple of years no matter who the GOPers put up against him he’ll lose. If Obama doesn’t screw things up over the next couple of years no matter who the GOPers put up against him he’ll win. That’s just how politics works – partisans like to believe that it’s about ideology and message and whatnot, but in actuality it’s a lot more about people looking to make changes when things are bad and people not paying much attention at all when things are good (which is why you can end up with useless twits like GWB getting into office when times are good).
Reagan with Alzheimers was smarter than Palin. He was also an accomplished actor who knew how to play a role and could ad lib. That is, he could actually string more than one sentence together and sound reasonably intelligent. You ight not liek what he had to say, but he could speak off the top of his head without sounding like a complete idiot. You see any of that with Palin? I sure as hell don’t.
Damn typos.
You might not like what he said …
Reagan was not a religious wacko – maybe wasn’t religious at all.
I do believe that those on the right really do support her based mostly on her looks – witness Rich Lowry & the countless “MILF” comments during the Republican convention.
So what happens when her looks fade? When the jawline breaks & she begins to get a little jowly? (That has already started.)
I predict that her fame-clock hits 15 & that is the last we hear from Sarah Palin.
PS – Steven, you for to put “/snark” at the end of your post. 😉
Snark? What sort of wee beastie is that? Can you shoot it from a helicopter in the wondrous wilds of fair Alaska? Does it taste anything like Moose? Can it run as quick as a wolf? Can I shoot it with my 50 caliber autoload M2 Browning Machine Gun, and will it blast the little varmint into a bloody pulp?
Inquiring minds want to know.
😉
I do believe that those on the right really do support her based mostly on her looks
I don’t – mainly because the most fervent supporters of Sarah Palin I know are Republican women who don’t normally get that much into politics but got fucking RABID in their support during the campaign last year. A couple I know going so far as to actually volunteer for a political campaign for the first time in their lives. I couldn’t even talk to my younger sister for a couple of months there – she went from a tepid “it doesn’t really much matter if Obama or McCain win as long as it isn’t Hillary Clinton” “moderate” Republican to a full-on rabid “Obama is EVIL and Sarah Palin must win or the country is DOOMED” partisan almost literally overnight.
I don’t actually know any male Sarah Palin boosters personally, only female ones. And I think they were all honestly pulled into her orbit by the fact that here was a woman who they convinced themselves was “just like them” – a woman who was working but wasn’t an evil “feminist”. And in the case of one of my neighbors, an evangelical conservative woman in political power – the combination of which had a woman who rarely bothers to vote going to rallies and knocking on doors for crying-out-loud.
So don’t write it all off to a “MILF” attitude – that may be the case for some of her supporters, but I really think a chunk of her support comes from middle-and-lower class women in the GOP who are actually kind of sick of being treated as second class citizens and projected a lot of their own frustration with the party onto her.
(I think she also gets a lot of support from an unlikely place – the “class warfare” that runs right through the middle of the GOP between the rich folks who think they own the party and the middle class evangelical Christian folks who think they own it. Palin represented the middle class, evangelical Christian base of the GOP snagging power at the highest level. So she was pullings support from multiple groups that harbor resentment against the GOP elites. Someone else is going to figure that out and tap it, even if she fizzles out before she gets a chance to herself.)
Wasn’t that Huckabee’s angle?
I think she also pulls support from the limited government, libertarian crowd, though not as much as Ron Paul.
Huckabee pulled support from the disgruntled evangelical base but he was blackballed by the anti-tax nutbags like Grover Norquist. They hated him because he actually once raised taxes to keep his state solvent. The nutbags were, at worst, neutral towards Palin because she’d never done anything to piss them off, so she didn’t face the blackball that the Huckster faced (and will face again if he tries to run in ’12).
And yeah she might have actually pulled in some support from the limited government crowd mostly because of her background from a frontier state. As an ex-libertarian, most of the folks I know who were/are libertarians tend to fetish-ize “The Frontier” and so that mythology might have earned her some cred with that group. I hadn’t thought of that because I don’t actually know any libertarian-sympathetic types who liked Palin – after the last 8 years all of my former libertarian friends have started calling themselves “civil libertarians” and voted Democratic this time around – the police state crap and the evangelical infestation finally scared them off voting GOP, possibly for good.
Disagree. Palin’s support is strongest among men. Most of the conservatives that I know are men who are GaGa over Palin. From a September 8th CNN article: (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/09/palin.poll/)
“A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey out Tuesday indicates that 62 percent of men questioned have a favorable opinion of the Alaska governor, nine points higher than women”
Palin does not have enough broad based support to be a viable National candidate. All this business about her running is nonsense. There is no way that she would win the GOP nomination. She may not attract swing votes but she sure has the republican SCHWING voters on her side.
That’s a fair piece of insight but I doubt it will give her durability in the male-dominated Republican party.
Neither do I think that Michael Steele is going to last.
Sarah Palin & Michael Steele are both caricatures of national political figures – they seem purpose-built buffons, to reinforce the “this country was built by white males” meme that Pat Buchanan is peddling.
speech in something like English? Courtesy fo Vanity Fair.
.
Ahh, you beat me to it …
(Vanity Fair) – If you watched Sarah Palin’s resignation speech, you know one thing: her high-priced speechwriters moved back to the Beltway long ago. Just how poorly constructed was the governor’s holiday-weekend address? We asked V.F.’s red-pencil-wielding executive literary editor,
, together with representatives from the 
and 
departments, to whip it into publishable shape. Here is the colorful result.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."That’s high praise! wink
Fritz Thyssen back Hitler because he was a good public speaker that could get the hoi polloi excited while serving the interests of the corporate wealth.
If Adolf was a MILF maybe he’d have won WWII. Scary thought, in many ways.
Palin is a cackling example that Gawd, from time to time, likes to remind us that the Fates have a sense of humor.
ignorance is bliss.
it’s also led to great fortunes and
infamyfame for the likes of hannity, limbaugh, o’reilly, beck, etal. now sarah, “l am not a quitter”, palin wants her piece of the pie.as h.l. mencken wrote:
run sarah, run…
I disagree. Palin in dangerous in that she riles up the haters and white supremacists. They are riled up enough right now without having her doing town halls etc and getting them really wound up. Remember how she had them chanting hateful comments during the general election.
She needs to be marginalized!
I’m hoping Palin just fades away. Given the influence of the corporate media on our culture, I am not convinced that we would have the collective common sense to keep her from high office. Look at the last thirty years or so. One B movie actor; one oil man/cia head; one oil man’s #2 son. The voting record makes it crystal clear that we don’t have a clue when it comes to voting our own self interest. Given enough money and the media support that would come with that, I can see the country going bonkers over Palin. You Betcha!
And Bill Clinton.
And Obama.
Personally I viewed Clinton and a moderate republican. As for Obama, school is still out on him. Better than ole #2, but by how much???