“Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin missed a prime opportunity on Wednesday to demonstrate that she can play on the presidential stage, top Republicans say…

“‘You have to see it through her eyes,’ said Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary for former President George W. Bush. ‘She has been accused in the mass media of being a accessory to murder.’

“But, he added, ‘She would have done much better if she had just ridden above all the nonsense and the politics of the shooting, including all the references of her map.’

“‘She could have, and should have, set a different tone entirely. She did for 75 percent of the speech, but for 25 percent she did not,’ Fleischer said.”

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“I hope one can still use cooking metaphors in this new age of low-key rhetoric, right? Anyway, this has been another Bad Week for Palin Inc. She’s been traduced this week and the statement she’s released today, while typically punchy, isn’t likely to change anyone’s opinion. Nevertheless, the fall-out from the Tucson shootings has damaged the erstwhile Governor and added weight to the sense, fair or not, that nominating her may be more trouble than it’s worth. I think her prospects of winning the Republican nomination have been sliding quietly for some time (whatever the polls say) and this week’s events do nothing to change that. Among the reasons why I think she’s done…

“George Will was never going to endorse Sarah Palin and nor was Charles Krauthammer. But while Will may not be as influential as he once was there are plenty of people who still listen to Dr Charles. Now that it’s ok to point out the obvious – Palin can’t win – expect more conservatives to do so. Hell, she;s lost Jennifer Rubin too. She’s no longer Untouchable. You can like her, but that doesn’t mean you have to vote for her. Sorry, Sarah…”

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“Coming days after the event and then shrouded in what literary critic Walter Gibson once identified as the ‘stuffy,’ official language of bureaucrats and Fourth of July picnic speakers, it is not only curiously dispassionate but vague and legalistic (filled with barely earned conclusions prefaced with ‘so,’ ‘thus,’ etc.). It is a tapestry of threadbare cliches (‘our Founders’ genius,’ ‘May God bless America,’) in search of a news hook, the type of windy oraration that could be dusted off for any event, from a disaster site to a Kiwanis luncheon. And if the style is what captures the reader’s attention, it’s because there’s no substance on which to feed…

“But since her bravura entrance onto the national stage, virtually every interaction she has had with her public has been so tightly stage-managed and scripted that her main selling point has been swathed and suffocated in layers and layers of distance from anything approaching a real-time response to the world she lives in. When she resigned her governorship long before her first term was up, she signaled that she wasn’t so interested in being an actual legislator. Fair enough, and who can blame her? But she’s now getting to the point where she’s signaling that she is incapable of giving even her most sympathetic audience what it wants from her. Which means there’s one less interesting character on the public stage and her future, even as an entertainer, is dimmer than it once seemed.”

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Click the image to watch.

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Via the Daily Caller.