…

They see lower-middle-class populists like Palin

As Professor Hugo Farnsworth would say… “Whuuuh?”

Since when is the daughter of a teacher and wife of a business owner lower-middle-class? Are we talking about the Governor of Alaska or Joy Darville?

Troll and trollery notwithstanding, she’ll likely receive every chance, and certainly an extended second chance which will for all intents and purposes be her real first chance with the American electorate – if she wants it. This was just pre-season for her: You don’t win the Super Bowl in the pre-season. In the meantime, if she goes ahead with a book deal, she’d do well to spend some of her advance outfitting Yuval Levin or someone like him in a full line of Alaska-proof weather wear, and spending an hour with him every day.

…Sizable blanks?
Compared to whom? McCain? Obama? Biden? (Noonan? Brooks? Wills? the RNC? The RNCC? Al Haig? who are they talking about?)…

entagor on February 5, 2009 at 11:52 AM

Exactly. The “vacuum” she “created” was apparently between the ears of the lefties and the self-appointed “elite” of the Republican party, who recognized immediately that this woman was not one of their own. Normally the powers that be presume they can make useful idiots of the lower castes who demonstrate native political talent, but not this time. To this very day, weeks after the election and the new President’s inauguration, they continue to be strange bedfellows united in their determination to stop Sarah Palin. Even if I knew nothing more about Palin, I would encourage her just to see these buzzards squirm.

Instead, Palin became an instant cultural and political magnet, attracting some and repelling others and dragging a helpless McCain into a culture war for which he had little stomach. Indeed, the overheated response to Palin’s presence on the national stage, from both friend and foe, was oddly disconnected from Palin’s actual actions, statements, and record. It was a turn of events no one could have anticipated, and one that has much to teach us about American political life in our day.

McCain was not helpless. McCain made a point to fly the Palin flag and lead the Palin cheers at the rallies but he could not bring himself to build up Palin politics because in doing so he would have diminished his own style. Palin was strangely used as a rally-dog only, brought out to rev the crowds but kept off of the spontaneous press interactions at which she not only would have outshone McCain, but could not be edited,

McCain meeded Palin to be good but not too good and it was not because McCain was helpless that Palin was kept from defining her own image

Meanwhile, on the Right, Palin was the cause of a manic episode of a different sort. The governor’s touching life story, her folksy way of speaking, and her gut-level appeal to the culture of the lower middle class exercised tremendous power over many conservatives, which inclined them to fill the sizable blanks in Palin’s political profile with their own wishful assumptions, and to make flustered excuses for her shortcomings.

Sizable blanks?

Compared to whom? McCain? Obama? Biden? (Noonan? Brooks? Wills? the RNC? The RNCC? Al Haig? who are they talking about?)

McCain and Biden are hardly brilliant internationalists, although they present themselves as such. Their references include sitting in DC or in political committees for decades sucking up self importance. what a joke.

And yet one must acknowledge that Palin was a problematic candidate. Charismatic and thrilling though she was at first glance, and impressive and dogged though she was throughout her 66-day run, she ended up at the center of a political and cultural vacuum of her own creation. She began by opening up a huge space for herself, and then was unable to fill it.

Palin created her own vacuum?

Palin was kept from having her own press conferences or live interviews. She was staged at rallies, and given one pre taped, edited interview with the biggest political enemy McCain could find to introduce her to America. After the edited tape was shown, the McCain group kept her from doing any damage control, but played a cheap game of hiding her as if she was incapable of handling herself.

Palin’s image was shaped not by Palin but by the McCain group, the RINO right, and the happy to cooperate MSM.

The same staging was used against Ronald Reagan by the MSM, and the Rockefeller Republicans. The defference was Reagan saw no need to defer to anyone and he went directly to the public to win. The Rockies and the MSM to this day think Reagan was a simpleton because he promoted simple solutions.

No joke intended. The few times I’ve read Commentary (mostly Podhoretz articles) the tone seemed Northeast liberal. If I’ve mis-characterized or misunderstood the editorial tone of the magazine, then I stand corrected.

Anton on February 5, 2009 at 11:02 AM

Give it another chance, please.
John Podhoretz has his flaws, but his father Norman is the real deal.

I know Bunnyshake is dumb, but I didn’t know he was dumb enough to : 1. Not be able to count time passed 2. Directly contradict his own “Great Leader” – All in one sentence!

Are you making a joke or what?
Commentary is a fine, erudite Conservative magazine (and one to which I proudly subscribe).

Jenfidel on February 5, 2009 at 9:19 AM

No joke intended. The few times I’ve read Commentary (mostly Podhoretz articles) the tone seemed Northeast liberal. If I’ve mis-characterized or misunderstood the editorial tone of the magazine, then I stand corrected.

Umm, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Sarah Palin went to 5 colleges in 6 years and doesn’t read newspapers or even know what the vice president does. But enjoy your little theory.

Vernon Hardapple on February 5, 2009 at 10:06 AM

Clinton was a smart guy who knew early on he wanted to be President, so he worked hard to get all of the right stuff on his resume (I don’t consider that a negative; to know what you want and to work hard for it are fine things).

By contrast, Palin wasn’t thinking of being President, or Governor, or secretary of the PTA for that matter. She was trying to get a college diploma, a stepping stone that people need to get a good job. She did whatever she could to come up with scholarship money, and put herself through. If that took 5 schools or 50, I couldn’t care less. Like Clinton, she knew what SHE wanted, and worked hard to get it. We can debate whether the best President is the one who grows up wanting to be President; I don’t really see that it is a particularly good thing.

The “doesn’t read newspapers” thing is just so stupid, and has been so thoroughly debunked I’m not going to even address it other than to point out that she frequently wrote letters to the editors or many different newspapers regarding stories therein, predating her political career. People who don’t read newspapers seldom do that sort of thing.

The claim that she “doesn’t know what the vice president does” is perhaps the lamest accusation of all time! When speaking to children, instead of saying the VP “presides over” the Senate, she said the VP “runs” the Senate. Now, I know liberals aren’t fond of children, except in the abstract, when they’re trying to outdo one another at doling out tax money, so let me explain something about children: their vocabularies are not always fully developed. Many young children actually don’t know what “preside over” means. Knowing a thing or two about children, Gov. Palin knew that. Her choice of the word “runs” seems like a pretty decent synonym.

That said, I’m going to have to see some real growth in foreign policy and economic understanding before I can support her for President. I may yet not be able to do so. But it won’t be because she’s an idiot who doesn’t read. The natural tools are all there, and I suspect she’ll do what she did to get through college: whatever it takes.

…Play Machiavelli’s fool, act like a plane speaking idiot, and then blame the quote “intellectuals” (people who just want to know where you stand on an issue) as elitists. Its the same childish jocks vs nerds paradigm, the same anti learning environment that is cultivated in our public educational institutions, don’t stick your neck out or you are obviously being a peacock.

LevStrauss on February 5, 2009 at 9:54 AM

Intellectuals are people who want to know about where a candidate stands?

Barry Soetoro was affirmative-actioned into Law Editor.

A complete nonentity in the position.

I would like the pancake slam with bacon and all the accoutrements, please.

Impresses the hell out of the waitresses.

Bishop on February 5, 2009 at 8:59 AM

I knew they were something you ate! In fact, I got a box of Accoutramints for Christmas! I wouldn’t have eaten them (at least not all of them in one setting like I did) if I knew that the Obama favored them. Kinda makes me feel a little bit “queasy” right now. (For us uneducated,”queasy” means you’re gonna puke. I looked it up. It’s not, like I thought it was, that thing you clean the windshield on your pickup with.)

Oh, almost forgot. Wanted to ask “Eh” something. You got me scratching my ol’ head here. You seem to be a reasonably smart fellow seeing how you can string a few words together and all.

But boy, howdy – - the dumb-as-a-stump words you write! You’re like an ol’ mule with blinders plodding along in a dumbocrat circus parade. You go only where you’re told to go, see only what your supposed to see, and completely miss the fact that the fellow cracking the whip over your witless, pointy ears, is the circus clown leading you along with a whole heard of mindless jackass directly to the glue factory.

Anyway, what I wanted to ask you – when you got smarts, how’d you get to be so stupid? Did you go get “educated”?

What we are seeing is the first steps in the revolt against the College Elite Oligarchy which currently holds power here in America.

Romeo13 on February 5, 2009 at 1:05 AM

please, somebody? davec or somebody? i need someone to explain to me that this plague of proud, militant anti-intellectualism i’m talking about is all just a figment of my bigoted imagination.

eh on February 5, 2009 at 1:18 AM

It is not “anti-intellectual”, but rather “anti-bigotry” to oppose the notion that one must attend an ivy-league school to be intelligent. Lincoln managed to become quite intelligent and articulate without the benefit of an ivy-league sheepskin. So did Reagan. Or Truman.

The ability to lead, and a vision of WHERE to lead, are not qualities that are bestowed by Harvard or Yale. To the extent that those institutions still demand academic excellence, they might be advantageous; but judging by my experience with a few latter-day Harvard and Yale men, they aren’t what they used to be. Moreover, if a person past the age of 40 holds up his collegiate record as evidence of his intellectual attainment, I’d be gravely concerned. I have a degree in computer science from The University of Texas, a pretty well-respected state university; but my formal education represents only a minuscule fraction of my total learning.

Give me Ronald Reagan over John Kerry any day of the week. Is that populism? I really could not possibly care less.

It makes no difference where you went to college. Paying big bucks makes you no smarter than when you came in. You just have “connections” when you get out. It’s just like incest when you think you have an education when you get out of any of those institutions.
BetseyRoss on February 5, 2009 at 9:46 AM

Many years ago, there was arguably a real correlation between learning and schooling. But with the invention of the moveable-type printing press, institutes of “higher learning” became nothing but good-old-boy’s clubs.

Assuming you don’t completely flunk out of school (as the liberal’s “Second-Smartest Man In The History Of The World” Al Gore did so competently) the oxymoron of academic performance is pretty much irrelevant to real-world performance.

The only thing more pathetic than a full-grown man bragging about his grades is anyone bragging about what school he happened to attend: “I’m better than you because I had really SMART people reading to me!”

Sarah Palin went to 5 colleges in 6 years

Abe Lincoln went to 0 colleges in 56 years.

Umm, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Sarah Palin went to 5 colleges in 6 years and doesn’t read newspapers or even know what the vice president does. But enjoy your little theory.

Vernon Hardapple on February 5, 2009 at 10:06 AM

Vernon Crapapple weighs in…
I’ll put Sarah’s record as Governor up against Slick Willy’s any day!
Bill Clinton still doesn’t know what the President does and has never been able to produce conclusive proof that he got a degree from Oxford and his record at Yale Law is about as sketchy as NObama’s at Harvard.
‘Nuff said.
And you’re a complete tool of the idiot Left MSM if you really believe that Sarah Palin doesn’t read newspapers or know what the VP does.
BTW, does Joe Biden know what the VP does even at this late date?

Umm, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Sarah Palin went to 5 colleges in 6 years and doesn’t read newspapers or even know what the vice president does. But enjoy your little theory.

Vernon Hardapple on February 5, 2009 at 10:06 AM

Hey vernon.. what planet did you drop in from??? Liberalnutcasia???

So, Bill Clinton was a rhodes scholar.. So what??? What did obama accomplish during his school years?? Don’t know do we, those records are sealed.

I’ve taught in higher ed for over 20 years now. It is extremely over-rated. Again, who cares how many colleges she attended…

The newspapers thing is BS and you should know that. Besides. The media is so skewed it isn’t funny. I wonder why they are all going out of business. Wonder if there is a reason for that…

As far as the VP thing.. Guess what.. Joe “Gird your lions” biden was the one who screwed that answer up in the depate.. In his answer he got the operative clause of the constitution as to the VP roles wrong….

When “conservatives” supported this stuff with the plain speaking Bush it got us large Democratic majorities and destroyed the 94 revolution which was largely issue based. I forsee the same Democratic majorities if we continue down this path. Yes Straussian Neocons are nothing but “Liberals mugged by [political] reality”, especially with their use of class warfare and all.

LevStrauss on February 5, 2009 at 9:54 AM

You are conveniently forgetting that the GOP kept their majority in the House from 1994-2006 and in the case of President Bush, we kept control of the House in the 2002 Congressional Election, which was almost unheard of in American political history for the President’s party.
Frankly, I loathe Levy-Strauss and I have no idea what “Straussian Neocons” are.
I tried to deconstruct your first paragraph, but frankly, it was too obtuse even for a mind-bending anti-intellectual intellectual like myself.

How was it he wasn’t seen as a yokel? Yeah, yeah, Oxford and all that. But his Rhodes Scholar bona fides wouldn’t have been worth a shovel full of cow manure to the “elites” had he not espoused the proper ideology.
I guess since Washington is a college town, Bill was the ultimate drunken frat boy.

Umm, Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Sarah Palin went to 5 colleges in 6 years and doesn’t read newspapers or even know what the vice president does. But enjoy your little theory.

Somebody’s touchy! Okay, okay, I’m sorry I made fun of Biden.

Jim Treacher on February 5, 2009 at 8:55 AM

You take that back..

if there is anyone more worthy to goof on in this administration, it’s Biden.

Right after Obama, of course.

Palin’s social conservatism had never been the core of her political identity in Alaska. She always expressed general support for traditionalist views in interviews and debates, and it was widely known that she had also chosen to proceed with her fifth pregnancy after discovering the child had Down syndrome—a discovery that in about nine of ten cases leads parents to opt for abortion. But Palin never went out of her way to raise abortion or other social or cultural issues, and in her first two years as governor had not sought to change state policies in these areas. She was a good-government reformer with social conservative leanings, not the other way around.