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Where did Sarah Palin go wrong? — 33 Comments

1. 1. In the final analysis, McCain may have fatally exposed Palin by bringing her onto the national stage before she got there on her own, i.e. before she was ready.

   2. In the course of trying to answer this question, Green writes nearly 6,000 words and yet manages to leave out any mention of the role of the press and its smear campaign against Palin in the 2008 presidential election and since. (p)That’s quite a feat of omission.

   For the sake of argument, let’s take it as a cynical partisan ploy and go from there. I conjecture that the article is sympathetic to Palin because a) the Left is now confident that they can beat her in 2012, and/or b) they believe that a Palin run that does not win the nomination will weaken the Republican candidate, and/or c) they believe that a Palin-led third party will divide the Right electorally for a decade or more.

2. I also found it very strange. Part of me wondered if perhaps there wasn’t a tinge of remorse for participating in the bullying now that the damage has been done–while still maintaining the underlying rationale: she had to be destroyed for the good of The Cause.

   On the other hand, gs’s hypothesis that this is a cynical, Machiavellian ploy makes perfect sense too.

3. They just keep truing to write her off….and she keeps denying them her scalp. The sympathetic pose is a nice touch, though.

4. A thought experiment is in order. Would a more traditional “country club” republican woman with similar experience have gotten the same response? Say Christie Whitman or Libby Dole? None of them had anywhere near the public enthusiasm that Palin had which I think explains the need to crush her.

   Also the fact that her supporters were drawn from men and women in what used to be the blue collar world. I was driving across Michigan before the GOP convention and some talk show hosts were talking about the possibility that Sarah might be nominated as VP candidate. The callers, both men and women were uniformly highly excited about the idea. From their calls it became obvious that they knew something about her prior to the convention but also that she was someone who could represent them.

   I found this was true in Canada as well (even though a boring canadian election was underway). Maybe this explains how the Conservatives won recently?

5. Everyone is making an assumption that something went “wrong”. The assumption is that the only thing she wants out of life is to be President.

   She is now a multi-millionaire, with a considerable legs to her income stream, in a position in which she can influence people and events, and all without having to leave her favorite place to live.

   I’d say she’s been one hell of a success.

6. Saw that this week’s Newsweek cover has a subtitle “Is Sarah Palin Finished?” (I wonder which way they hope. I kid.)

   So it seems JournoList 2.0 is up and running just fine, with the CPUSA coordinating the PR campaign.

   Oh, and thanks for reminding me that The Atlantic for some reason is still being published. I’d thought it was long defunct.

7. Its seems doubly surprising that Green can see no media culpability in what “went wrong” with Palin considering that the Atlantic hosted Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog for years. You know, the blogger who has posted tirelessly for years about the paternity of Palin’s son Trig. I recall it was also the Atlatic blog’s most visited page, meaning that the Atlantic actually profited from their ongoing Palin hate.

8. I for one have grown weary of trying to digest the endless nonsense of the media in their never ending, yet futile attempt to assassinate the character of Sarah Palin, so you’ll forgive me that I do not bother to read another 6,000 words on the subject.

   If the woman is as brain dead as her critics claim then surely they would be making contributions to her PAC and eventually to her committee as to assure her nomination as the Republican candidate in 2012.

   Logic would clearly dictate that Obama would mop the floor with her – it wouldn’t even be close – so clean and articulate is he!

   But that is clearly not the case, is it?

   The truth of the matter is that her words resonate throughout the political world – her every proclamation is studied, examined and contemplated to see if there is any indication that she may be running. Then comes the guffawing of her critics – she can’t be right, she hunts caribou and makes babies, lots and lots of babies, so many that she even gave one to her daughter to raise!

   And in the end, despite the efforts of her critics to disparage her, she is proven correct. She is the one who steps forward and calls them as she sees them long before those who stick their finger up to see which way the wind is blowing before they take a position.

   So count me in as one who will wholeheartedly support Mrs. Palin if and when she decides to run. I think she’ll make a fine president – not another Reagan, not another Lincoln and not even The First Woman President. She will be a fine president in her own right, a person who knows who she is, who she works for, what the difference between right and wrong is and a person who will never ever bend on principle.

   Just the kind of president our founders envisioned.

9. If liars out themselves as liars – the only thing that went “wrong” is that liar spoke.

   The Nyom’s of the world lied.

   Sarah Palin is as she was – a valuable asset to the country.

   Is she the Messiah? No. Neither was Obama.

   Did she have more executive experience than Obama? Yes.

   Did she have the solutions? Yes. Obama was the virus and still is….

10. gs Says:
    May 10th, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    1. In the final analysis, McCain may have fatally exposed Palin by bringing her onto the national stage before she got there on her own, i.e. before she was ready.

    Some of McCain’s own people were sniping at her, and he did nothing about that.

    When later asked about that, by David Letterman, he just laughed and said “Hey! These things happen.”

    In the final analysis,, he brought her on board, and then when it counted, he did not have her back.

    That would be disgusting behavior in anyone. In a former military officer, that is unforgivable.
    –

11. In contrast to the Left and MSM’s concerted efforts to demonize, marginalize, and bury Palin–I don’t know how many headlines I have seen in the last month or so on the themes of “what went wrong with Palin” or “Palin’s support declining”–there are the efforts of the Left and the MSM to create and propagate the myth and “legend”–in the spy craft definition of “legend”–of Obama.

    The latest and kind of interesting piece of evidence concerning this very successful effort by the Left and the MSM to create what might actually be properly called our very own version of the “Manchurian Candidate” is shown by the apparent Photoshopping of the well known picture of college student Obama flanked by his grandparents, who came to visit him at Columbia (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA7hd3j1yHI&feature=share). A photo that was released to the Press by the Obama family and/or by the Obama Campaign.

    The person who alleges this photo has been Photoshopped by inserting Obama between the couple (the couple are shown, minus Obama, on the same bench in identical poses and light conditions in another widely circulated photo, which apparently formed the basis for the Photoshopped picture of the three of them) makes the commonplace observation that in the picture of Obama’s grandparents alone, Obama’s grandfather has his left hand placed on the bench to support himself and, as would be expected, has his shoulders parallel to the bench yet, in the picture of the three of them Obama’s grandfather has somehow miraculously been able to again have his hand straight down on the bench, supporting himself, while simultaneously having this same hand somehow resting on Obama’s shoulder, with no change in the position of his grandfather’s arms or shoulders, which remain as they are in the photo of Obama’s grandparents alone.

    Barring the intervention of God or “Rubberman,” it seems pretty convincingly argued that this image was, indeed, Photoshopped but, then, the question is, what would be gained by going to all the trouble of creating this particular phony image? Or are most or even all of the few images we have been given of Obama stage managed or Photoshopped as well, all to create the chosen narrative of Obama’s life and “legend”?

12. For all the leftist claims that Sarah Palin is a moose-head who is only marginally more knowledgeable and marginally brighter than her Down’s Syndrome child, she has an amazing ability to quickly frame issues.

    Either that or she has some pretty good handlers and speechwriters.

13. Palin did not “go wrong” and POing Progressives is not being “polarizing”; it is a signal that she is uniting America. We only here this from the MSM when the Marxists are being called out.

    This whole article is just Democrat electioneering. Best not to view it as anything else.

14. only here=only hear

15. If Sarah runs, I’m voting for her.

16. Shaping the battlefield with disinformation, who they fear the most they must downgrade while lifting those they know have no chance, I have noticed a recent meme among liberal commentators of how awesome a candidate Ron Paul is, “this is his time they say”, while Trump and Palin, “they just aren’t serious candidates” it’s easy, whatever they tell you, think the opposite 🙂

17. Well said turfmann. nft

18. You have to translate from Hivespeak. In their world, “go wrong” means “become a threat to The Hive.”

19. There just may be a whole lot of people (called independents) who share Elizabeth’s view–they just don’t know it yet.

    It would take a campaign of genius and some luck as well, but the “she’s down and out crowd” is stuffing themselves full of victory before it has actually happened.

20. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I love Sarah Palin. She is an amazing woman and would probably be a wonderful President.

    The problem with so much political talk is that certain types of voters, especially liberals, expect Presidents to be Saviors. No one person could ever solve the many problems that will crop up in any administration. This was true at the time of George Washington, and it is even more true now, when human life is so much more complicated and global.

    Therefore, a President can only be a person with good character and proven leadership/managerial skills. He or she must know how to listen to various opinions and then make important decisions. He or she must be able to understand complicated subjects (like oil production, sales, and transmission).

    Sarah Palin could be an excellent President. All the arguments against her have been so trivial and uninformed. Plus, she has extraordinary stamina. Unlike our current lazy boy. Plus, she has a fighting spirit.

21. I hope some you watched her series, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” It was very informative and showed just how versatile she is.

22. oops “some of you”

23. Promethea, I agree completely that our problem is wanting a messiah instead of a competent person of character. This causes us to eat our own when we are disappointed. We drive very good people from our pool of advisors and supporters, and we narrow our own thinking about how to approach problems. We want in-your-face conflict rather than quiet strategists. One example is Boehner: it actually appears that he has been thinking strategically about how to win the spending and deficit battle, although not in a way that is immediately obvious.

    Rather than picking winners and losers at this stage, we should put more emphasis on our standards and priorities and ultimately decide which potential candidate can best act on them. And we should remember that any candidate and president will have to keep the voters in mind as policy is made. The more informed and sensible we are, the harder it will be to ignore us.

24. I will vote for her in primaries and the general election, and work in her campaign. If she is stupid, then America is stupid. I realize that the Left believes that, too. They wrong, on both counts.

25. Some things done in politics are maybeyes/maybeno.
    What has been done to Palin is flat wrong.
    There is a tactic, mostly among the left, of demonizing an institution or individual for a political purpose.
    If you make a point, they can laugh and sneer and say, “You got that from Faux News”, or “another Palin talking point”.
    This puts the conservative on the defensive, having either to defend the source, which is impossible given the framing of the issue, or insist the source was something else, thus validating the tactic.
    This tactic, too, is wrong, so wrong and dishonest that I don’t think I can put up with anyone who tries it. Fortunately, none of the lefties to whom I am related have tried it, yet. I hope, for family purposes, that they never do.

26. Where she went wrong is to have the audacity to have not graduated from Harvard or Yale or another pre-approved East Coast school. That was her fundamental, unforgiveable sin. Having failed that, she could have at least had the good sense to genuflect and defer to those that did graduate from one of those schools. But she refused to do that, too, somehow believing that she was their equal. At the very least, she could have lived in Washington for a time and obtained some sort of East Coast cred before attempting to pretend to have anything to say about national politics.

    Since she didn’t do that either there was no choice: she had to be destroyed. It was a turf war, and she was wearing Crip colors on Blood territory. That was enough. Actually, more than enough. What type of person she was and her personal qualities were irrelevant. The East Coast mob, and their enforcer, the MSM, went to work to protect their turf. And, as many have pointed out, the East Coast mob is not all Democrats. Plenty of East Coast Republicans have more loyalty to their East Coast buddies than they do to their party. So, before she had spoken one word at the Republican convention, the hit was already out. And the guns started firing on all cylinders. The fact that she’s still with us almost three years later, after the full forces have been bombing her ever since, shows she’s made of sterner stuff. I guess it proves they were right in assessing her as a terrible threat that needed to be destroyed.

27. I think that the shameless left and its pathetic minions in the news and entertainment industries have done far more damage to Palin than she has done to herself. And almost every bit of it has been based on distortions or half-truths, if not outright lies.

    However, she may have curtailed some of the damage since the 2008 election if she had chosen not to be so “visible.” It seems that, even while she was still serving as governor, there was at least one weekly appearance on Hannity, or O’Reilly, or both. And taking swipes on television and on Facebook at such trivial (and potentially worthwhile) efforts as FLOTUS’s campaign against juvenile obesity is seen as cheap and self-serving by more than just those on the left. If Laura Bush had promoted such a cause as has Ms. Obama, we would be defending her fiercely against the libs’ criticism.

    I like Palin as much as or more than I do most other potential GOP conservative candidates for 2012. But I’m not so enthusiastic about her as I was in 2008, or 2009 for that matter. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t make guest appearances or comments – just that it may have been wiser and more effective to limit those on-air opportunities and to focus on those political issues that actually deserve such attention.

28. Older and wheezier . . .

    The Michelle Obama obesity campaign is not as harmless as it may appear. MO started telling schools what to serve in their lunchrooms. One more example of federal overreach, along with curly lightbulbs, and higher utility taxes for “green” energy.

    One can always find mistakes a candidate supposedly could have prevented, i.e. “macaca,” but the problem is the media and their soundbites, not the candidate.

29. The only failure has been the Leftist propagandists who have wholly bought into their own propaganda. It should be easy to defeat such incompetent useful idiots, but America has been too asleep on the wheel to fight Communists and domestic insurgents well. Petraeus and the US Marine Corps they are not.

30. Paul in Houston — damn straight! This is why I have said that, in 2012, I want to vote for a Republican who either (a) is Sarah Palin, or (b) stood up for Sarah Palin when it counted.

    (And among Republican politicians, the second group is an empty set, as near as I can tell. I’d love to be proven wrong.)

    Promethea: excellent points. And yes, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” was good watching, and a powerful infomercial for her. (Watching her kill her own food, with her own hands, is instructive. Would she have dithered for sixteen hours before sending SEALs in to get Osama bin Laden?)

    This woman has what it takes, and America would be lucky to get her. My dream team would be Palin for President, with Herman Cain or Allen West as running mate.

    Now — has the character assassination of Sarah Palin caused her to shun the office of the Presidency? I hope not; we’d all be the poorer thereby. (But frankly, I don’t think so. If she does not intend to run, she gains nothing by keeping us guessing.)

    DiB

31. kcom says, “Where she went wrong is to have the audacity to have not graduated from Harvard or Yale or another pre-approved East Coast school. That was her fundamental, unforgiveable sin. Having failed that, she could have at least had the good sense to genuflect and defer to those that did graduate from one of those schools. But she refused to do that, too, somehow believing that she was their equal.”

    Yes. Palin is the wise, tempered by experience peasant who refuses to accept the status quo. That is what is lodged in the gizzards of the MSM and the elitist liberal mindset in general. The Barracuda is real and they are pinata intellectuals constantly regurgitating dogma. The left has no choice but to hate her…. its in their DNA.

32. “the MSM, who set out to destroy her and have largely been successful.”

    Not just the MSM. Sarah (she’s through, no really this time) Palin just hired a new foreign policy adviser. Because all the housewives in Wasilla have one. He is not a neo-con, unlike the two holdover McCain campaign part timers she let go. Sarah Palin just articulated a five point doctrine for the commitment of US forces abroad at the TAPS benefit at CCU. It is more Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon than George Bush. Just coincidentally Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, and Jon Podhoretz chose this moment to engage in their own version of piling on. Its not just liberals that get nasty and vindictive when someone they thought was ‘theirs’ asserts her independence.

    If ‘they’ had largely succeeded, this conversation would not be taking place.

    “We’re here. We’re clear. Get used to it” – Sarah Palin

33. Thanks for this post. I think you got it exactly right.

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