She went rogue a bunch of times,

Which phraseology proves my point: The handful of times she broke free or was seen to have broken free of campaign strictures were dismissed and even made the subject of ridicule (including on SNL) – “oh what a lousy candidate she is, unable even to stick to the script, foolishly going ‘rogue.’” It was a fight for her even to get permission to go on rightwing and right-center radio – something she should have been doing from day 1, virtually every day.

As for predictions, I’ve been around too long to see much value in them. Certainly the scenario of her running and getting nominated is among the easier ones to envision. It’s very hard for me to imagine a scenario – other than perhaps TEOTWAWKI and military dictatorship in the offing – in which she would lose badly, but some other known Republican would win, or lose less badly.

what she could say was strictly constrained by campaign-strategic decisions, good and bad.

BS.
She went rogue a bunch of times, like on McCain pulling out of Michigan, and that pallin’ around with terrorists statement wasn’t written for her by Schmidt and Co.
I’m an empiricist.
There is very little there for someone like me.
It hardly matters.
She is going to get the nom.
And you will lose badly.
_tant pis_

I won’t bother trying to defend the Tea Parties or Glenn Beck. I’ll just point out that obviously neither were part of the McCain campaign. You essentially concede my point by reaching for them.

She wasn’t a free agent, and she was unprepared to run, but she had become a focus of attention to an unprecedented extent for a VP candidate – a condition that persists to this day and to this post. Her public and media appearances were limited and what she could say was strictly constrained by campaign-strategic decisions, good and bad.

How many depictions of Obama as Hitler?

Plenty at the teaparties, and Glenn Beck the Insane Clown juxtaposes Hitler and Obama in wall sized slide shows.
But the other guy did it too isn’t an excuse.
Sure there’s frothers and ravers on both sides. I realize that, but…..
So what?
This is what I see happening to the GOP.

Thing is, when exposed to someone like Beck, sane people back away slowly while avoiding eyecontact. I’ve seen AllahP do it. But the base and a whole lot of the rest of you excuse Beck and even agree with him because you see it as turning the adversary’s tactics back on them.
In the end, Palin let the MSM and her gaffes define her.
There are two possible reasons that she didn’t try to reclaim the message–
1. She didn’t want to, for w/e reason.
or 2. She couldn’t…….. for lack of substrate.
I’m goin’ with 2.

You have your opinion about her recovery attempt on Fox. No one’s obligated to share your impresson of it. You’re the kind of person who at least until a couple of weeks ago was given to asserting that she’d never read a book. I’ve noticed that you’ve amended that to “never read many books,” so I guess you’re progressing, even though it’s a ridiculous assertion that still makes you seem biased.

“lynch mob atmosphere” is a far more excessive description of the campaign rallies than “palling around with terrorists” is of Barack Obama’s long history of palling around with terrorists.

The idea of Obama inviting Palin to help with “abortion mitigation” is ludicrous. I guess you haven’t yet noticed that on abortion Obama’s a Spartan. And you should know better than to suggest that there is anything Obama could or would do to “totally win the GOP base’s allegiance.” I have no doubt that MO isn’t a huge fan of Palin’s. I suspect the feeling’s mutual.

Harry Truman could have answered poor, poor pitiful MO’s question to Valerie Jarret. Palin tells the truth, gets a few people properly excited, and suddenly MO think it’s Hell. People like BO and MO have grown so used to claiming that conservatives are destroying the country, violating its values, etc., that they don’t even realize they’re doing it, and react like political virgins when someone turns it back to them. How many “MO IS A C&NT” t-shirts did you see at GOP rallies? How many depictions of Obama as Hitler?

It’s pretty much just you and me here, strangelet. Be honest about the people you’ve cast your lot with. I don’t claim we’re all saints and geniuses on the right, do you really deny that the left maintains legions of foul hypocrites and ranting nutjobs?

They weren’t difficult questions, but they were odd questions

No they were not odd, it was total softball.
Her crude attempt at recovery on FOX didn’t help her.
Unprepared or unpreparable?
It is ludicrous to think that Team McCain failed her or sandbagged her.
They exploited the heck out of her as an attack dog and a stage prop.

Why do you suppose Obama ignores her? He could totally win the GOP base’s allegiance by tapping her for a committee on special ed or abortion mitigation.
Reaching out to Palin would be his style, and he could win you guyz over inna heartbeat very cheap.
I wonder if this is why.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: “Why would they try to make people hate us?”

I’m sure that unintentional on her part, inexperienced and clueless about public speaking and flash mob behavior…..still…..I wonder if Michelle Obama put a smackdown on any outreach to Palin because of that.

So, like I said, she choked. She was accessing her memory banks for correct, properly vetted, effective answers and coming up blank. Off balance, she threw up a shot that missed the basket, hoping for a foul call, but the ref was on the other team…

In avoiding them, Palin came up with a poor substitute –

You imply that her response was a choice.
It looked like a a choke moment to me, a deer in the headlights moment.
Afterwards she tried to front it with Carl Cameron and Patterico didn’t even believe her.

Obama as an elite leader was holding back the tide of populism

that he helped to generate, as per habit

that wanted to burn down the bankers for giving bonuses, bonuses that were legally negotiated according to the rule of law.

Did the Benevolent Protector of Beleaguered Bankers, In-Chief, ever point this out? I don’t recall him ever doing so.

And a person like me, someone from my tribe, could have chewed up Katie Couric up and spat out the pieces. I even rode hunters and jumpers like Katie did on the horseshow circuit.

There are a thousand ways that someone could chew up Katie Couris and spit her out that would be personally very satisfying, perhaps appealing to one or another segment of the electorate, but highly damaging to one’s political prospects. In avoiding them, Palin came up with a poor substitute – underlining the fact she was less ready to run than would have been desirable, but saying little about her ability to govern or about who or what she really is (unless you’re one of those people who really believes that she can’t read or never knew anything about Supreme Court cases).

I don’t know you well enough, strangelet, to propose a comparable circumstance, but take the most difficult interpersonal exchange of your life (job interview, first date, big speech, PhD orals, whatever), multiply it by 300 million or so, and you’ll understand how much pressure Palin was under, and why the vast majority of voters wouldn’t and shouldn’t have any difficulty setting it aside if and when they determined that what she represented was to their advantage.

One of my favorite things about the 19th Century US political history I’ve been reading lately is observing the differences between 21st C political culture and early 19th: Jackson’s “radical” notion that a president might address the people directly ever, other than through their elected representatives; the tradition that presidents wouldn’t campaign for themselves at all, but rely completely on surrogates… (while 85% of eligible voters turned out, and vast crowds gathered to hear multi-hour debates on the most important and divisive issues of the day).

Needless to say, there’s little reason to hope that we’ll get back to that kind of politics, but it makes em think of what else politics is about other than American Idol + sound bites.

You didn’t catch the “torch-reek” when President Obama threatened bankers, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

You don’t understand do you? Obama as an elite leader was holding back the tide of populism that wanted to burn down the bankers for giving bonuses, bonuses that were legally negotiated according to the rule of law.

Could I have liked Palin? Sure, if she had loved books and the life of the mind like I do. And a person like me, someone from my tribe, could have chewed up Katie Couric up and spat out the pieces. I even rode hunters and jumpers like Katie did on the horseshow circuit.

That isn’t what the GOP needs now, though.
I respect the wisdom of crowds. Palin is exactly what the GOP base needs now.
I don’t know what will happen to the GOP in the long run….it may become the Whig party, or be reborn, tempered in the fire of adversity.
I just ask questions.
I would have liked Palin a lot if she had exhibited some of my ‘satiable curtiousity.
;)

But there was one Elephant—a New
Elephant—an Elephant’s Child—who was full of ‘satiable
curtiosity, and that means she asked ever so many questions.

I still don’t catch the torch-reek off him like I do off Palin.

strangelet on May 22, 2009 at 1:54 PM

ORLY? You didn’t catch the “torch-reek” when President Obama threatened bankers, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Fine, then. You subscribe to tribalism. Then please refrain from any future mention of your political cherry. It makes most of us TUIOMAL.

divorced parents, schlepped around the world, on food stamps at one time, watched his mom die, never knew his dad, grew up B-L-A-C-K in a sometime slave nation, scholarshipped through school, turned down the big money law firm for work as (yup, sneer away) a community organizer.

I don’t buy the food stamps story, because his grandmother was VP of a bank in Hawaii. His white mother worked for the Ford Foundation with Tim Geithner’s father in Indonesia, and she was married to an oil company exec. Obama’s fellow alum from Punahou include pro golfer Michelle Wi, Travolta wife Kelly Preston and AOL CEO Steve Case. The up-from-the- streets economic populist Horatio Alger tale is malarkey.

Obama knew his father Frank Marshall Davis. He looks more like him than Barack Obama, Sr. I think that’s the reason pops took off on Obama’s slutty mom, too. The kid was not his, and it was obvious at age 2. Barry had no exposure to the mainland racism and legacy of slavery in Indonesia and Hawaii. Davis was there working with the indigenous native population which always resented the US. He was working to radicalize minorities and develop a model for export.

As for this noble turning down of big-paying corporate jobs, Obama has never had any interest in capitalism or playing along with the system to get ahead. He wanted to work with the Donks and dive into machine politics in a big city like Chicago, the most corrupt in the entire country. His wife Michelle introduced him to the players in Daley’s administration, since her father was a precinct captain.

This is what the Democrats, the former Federalists, the Statists, Communists, Collectivists, Socialists, Fascists, whatever you want to call them… mean by a “meritocracy.” Pay your dues, never rat on friend, pay to play, and you can one day be at the top of the pyramid. It’s disgusting.

However, you have convinced me that Frum, Parker, Powell, etc were wrong to tactlessly reject Palin when she is the choice of the base. Bagehot’s wisdom of crowds.
The people will instinctively choose what leader they need in this slice of spacetime. That certainly seems to be Palin.
I predict she will run.
I would be scared if I thought she could win.

divorced parents, schlepped around the world, on food stamps at one time, watched his mom die, never knew his dad, grew up B-L-A-C-K in a sometime slave nation, scholarshipped through school, turned down the big money law firm for work as (yup, sneer away) a community organizer.

Sorry, strange, that ain’t “tempered in fire.” Not close. Not by Jackson standards, not even by the standards of late 20th C USA. That’s “had some challenges.”

Palin’s a handsome woman, not a beauty queen by any means, and we’ll never know where she would have gotten if she’d been harder on the eyes and had been forced to compensate. I think a lot of her supposed prettiness is just good health, self-discipline, physical culture, and maybe some Norman Vincent Peale power of positive thinking – and also, though you deny it, native intelligence and activity of mind. It may be that her greater strengths are intuitive than discursive. Milton would approve if so.

And it’s pretty silly anyway for an Obamanaught to be ridiculing any other politician for taking some kind of unfair advantage of superficial appeal. You’re twisted about Palin, strangelet. How could you expect to see “it” about her when that place in your heart is filled with Barry, Barry, Barry, to the point that that you’re constantly projecting your own attitude toward Obama onto other people? You’re the lover who assumes the whole world must share the wonderful feelings you feel.

I think you should make a serious effort to talk about issues in relationship to Palin and BO both, stick to objective factors, maintain greater respect for uncertainty, set aside the impressionism for a while.

Let me axe you a question, Highlander.
Would Palin even have made it as far as governor if she had looked like….say Janet Reno?

con-law Harvard grad, who, like Andy Jackson, was tempered in fire

LOL. God knows what you mean by that. Community organizing with the socialist-activist front groups of Chicago? Cry me an effin river.

Intellect and will are not separate and cannot be separated.

Yes we discussed that.
Success is 10% aptitude(natural talent, genetics, memetics) and 90% attitude (will)
What Kylon said, and what I think Palin believes, is that there is nothing BUT will.
That natural talent or genetics or skill simply don’t matter.
That a small town PTA mom with an indifferent academic record can govern just as well as a cosmopolitan con-law Harvard grad, who, like Andy Jackson, was tempered in fire on his way to the top.
You see what you want to see in her, Highlander.
You are mesmerized.
But we will find out.

His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced.
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks.

Col. Lee was equal to the slave under the law, but not under genetic or memetic inheritance, or under acquired education and skillz.

strangelet on May 21, 2009 at 7:41 PM

Actually, Lee at whatever rank was never equal to the slave under the law of his state or of his temporary country.

Apparently, you have no sense of or interest in a moral or spiritual dimension of life – which might make Robert E Lee, the slave, and the Founders superior to you as they were superior to the beasts. It would also meant that the dimensions of their existence that they held to be most important would have no place in yours.

I have no idea what you consider to be the “good.” Without the good, then there is only “good for,” “better” is purely an instrumental question, and we all might as well be slaves, our fates a matter of complete indifference, even to ourselves.

You never could answer whether Robert E Lee was “better” than the least slave. He wasn’t, not in a democratic republic in which all men are created equal – all created equal inalienably.

CK MacLeod on May 21, 2009 at 4:03 PM

Oh that’s easy.
created with certain unalienable rights!
Col. Lee was equal to the slave under the law, but not under genetic or memetic inheritance, or under acquired education and skillz.