As to their ability to control the narrative, I have no doubt. That they have no idea what to do with it responsibly after that is what makes them look shamefully stupid.

She still has her tremendously influential Facebook page. She still has Sarah Palin’s Alaska, which I think will “humanize” her to millions. Everywhere she speaks, she draws enormous crowds of people who love her. And she has two years to continue to innovate in delivering her message.

I firmly believe that, in 2012, the Republican nominee will either be a candidate supported by Palin, or else Palin herself.

DiB

school would establish conditions for “selective breeding before the masses take things into their own hands.” Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College

At the start of WWII millions of men showed up at registration offices to take low-level academic tests before being inducted.1 The years of maximum mobilization were 1942 to1944; the fighting force had been mostly schooled in the 1930s, both those inducted and those turned away. Of the 18 million men were tested, 17,280,000 of them were judged to have the minimum competence in reading required to be a soldier, a 96 percent literacy rate. Although this was a 2 percent fall-off from the 98 percent rate among voluntary military applicants ten years earlier, the dip was so small it didn’t worry anybody.

A third American war began in the mid-1960s. By its end in 1973 the number of men found noninductible by reason of inability to read safety instructions, interpret road signs, decipher orders, and so on–in other words, the number found illiterate–had reached 27 percent of the total pool. Vietnam-era young men had been schooled in the 1950s and the 1960s–much better schooled than either of the two earlier groups–but the 4 percent illiteracy of 1941 which had transmuted into the 19 percent illiteracy of 1952 had now had grown into the 27 percent illiteracy of 1970. Not only had the fraction of competent readers dropped to 73 percent but a substantial chunk of even those were only barely adequate; they could not keep abreast of developments by reading a newspaper, they could not read for pleasure, they could not sustain a thought or an argument, they could not write well enough to manage their own affairs without assistance.

and we expect a mostly illiterate population with an inflated self esteem who cant sustain thoughts or long cogent arguments, and are mostly ignorant of the past, history, economics, etc…

to discern that they are being lied to and shined

want to know why they hate fly over country?
by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays. Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?

the farmers know more than they do and their charges do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the farmers like bundt are better educated since they are not educated by them for their purposes, but educated by family for the better outcome of the child.

the fact that a Walter lippman press (whose secretary was a soviet spy), is molding the population based on ideas back then, and the SAME ideas, is completely lost.

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party. Walter Lippmann

sound familiar? its only almost 100 years old…

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
Walter Lippmann

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Walter Lippmann

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Walter Lippmann

The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence.
Walter Lippmann

basically the riots are going to start soon when the 47% who don’t get enough welfare are going to find out they are getting less in exchange for all their help.

if food becomes a problem, know that ration cards are coming… but dont look to a man who lives the creten paradox for truth.

It’s very easy now to say that Obama is riding high, because that assertion won’t be tested for 21 months. (President Obama is a pioneer of running on untested promises.) But saying it doesn’t make it right. Any number of things could happen, in the week before Election Day, that would change everything.

In the meantime, I expect we’ll hear a lot of high-minded promises for 2012 — not because it’d be smart to do so, but because it’s what has always worked for him. He’s always promised the world to get the job he wants, and then coasted through that job, delivering very little, while promising the world to get the next job.

This is the end of the line. As President, he must act… and actions, unlike words, cannot please most of the people most of the time.

He’s demonstrated his willingness to throw just about anybody under the bus. His campaign prospects in 2012, I think, will depend a lot on just how many of us remember that.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

The Republicans’ best strategy is to:

1. Hammer away at the bad economy if there is one.
2. Hammer away at the sorry piece of legislation known as Obamacare.
3. Make the voters understand that to effectively repeal it, we need a Republican president and a Republican congress (House AND Senate).
4. Nominate a good strong, candidate who isn’t highly controversial.

Romney will have difficulty with this strategy because of the MA health care he supported. Palin just has too many (undeserved) negatives. I don’t see anyone else on the horizon who is willing to run.

Wish I did.

However, if the crisis occurs very near to the election, the immediate jump in crisis support, before the POTUS has a chance to show how he can handle the situation, a crisis might help his electoral chances.

NOmentum campaign 2011.