Palin 2012: The End... or Only The Beginning?

...and yet people still want her to run again?!

Good. What an absolute imbecile. The Republicans are, in effect, handing The White House to Obama for another 4 years if they select Palin in 2012.
And I can't wait to see what else pops up over the next few weeks. Perhaps some allegations of "liberal media" spin?

I love the scroll across the bottom where they are furiously spinning the fact that it wasn't a landslide victory. I'm almost sorry I didn't watch Fox on election night just to see them going to pieces.

I commented on this in the previous entry. But what's funny is that, yes, there are allegations on random sites that Fox News is in fact deliberately smearing Palin with lies and false accusations. There's a story on: http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200811060004 which examines how some of the strongly right-wing outlets are reacting to this. Apparently Fox News has finally giving up trying to be "fair and balanced" in its outright refusal to present the truth about the candidates--i.e. that Sarah Palin is terrific, and that Barack Obama is (insert attack here). (Well, besides Hannity I guess.) So there you have it: Fox News is now part of the Liberal Media.

The day after seeing the clip, I suppose I can admit that this is not conclusive evidence; Fox News is not a reliable source, and the fact that they're reporting information that goes against their standard bias doesn't really change that. But Palin's answers to questions in that Couric interview really happened. And on that basis, at the very least, the report that she didn't know that Africa was a country is fully consistent with everything I've seen of her.

Er, that Africa WASN'T a country, I meant to say.

Well, I feel dumb now.

Yes, that certainly is a clever bumper sticker. Too clever, I'd say. Maybe the Patriot Depot is secretly part of the East Coast elite. They gave themselves away with their inconsistent grasp of Real American-Speak. Sure, they got "gas-guzzlin'" right--that's how sneaky they are--but they turned right around and slipped on "rising", "cutting", and "shipping". Go back to home schoolin', guys, if ya wanna keep foolin' us.

I'd rather be judged than dismissed."

They don't call it the White House because of the paint job."

It's pretty disgusting that only now we can begin to judge a leader, see his/her faults without automatically going to a discussion of color. In my mind, all I see is what I've been seeing for the last 20 years or so. Mixed marriages, mixed births - these are people to me, not crazy, objectified pieces of history. President-Elect ... wow, that sounds weird, to say the least ... Barack Obama - and now he has an opportunity to screw up miserably, much as a Bush or Clinton would, but he doesn't get any slack for it, and he will be punished for his skin color. He will be punished because he is black (or, more accurately 1/2 black). There is no standard for a black president and that is truly sad.

Meanwhile, attacks on Palin (a woman, I might add, a woman with a vagina) increase. Palin is the sad, sorry state of affairs, another object like Obama. The woman (with the vagina) can never say the right thing. She has become a punchline for the Democrats - they may have 2012 sewn up tight, but they'll never look as themselves as anything less than victims of globalization (even though when the train came in, everybody rode), racism, and what they perceive to be, da-duh! Autocracy! I think humanity is realizing and embracing your imperfections instead of having to live up to a standard you can't yet identify - a concept lost on both sides of this country.

I rejoice Obama's victory, but he is not my savior. My only messiah is myself.

David: Pundits of all stripes seem to agree that the Obama campaign was able to make the election about change and leadership rather than about race. That's been said all along, and has been emphasized in all the post-mortems I've read in the last couple days. But the McCain campaign, and Palin herself, played the gender card immediately -- beginning with those cynical appeals to disaffected Hillary Clinton voters (!). The very next day, Samantha Bee was spoofing that (il-)logic on "The Daily Show," announcing she was a Democrat who was switching her vote to McCain because she was a "Vagina-American." Palin herself delivered her own punch line, and cemented her image, when she characterized herself as a "Hockey Mom"/pit bull in lipstick. Her appearance at the GOP convention was to the accompaniment of Heart's "Barracuda" (prompting a cease-and-desist order from the Wilson sisters). The winks, the "Joe Sixpack" catch-phrases, they were all hers -- her trademarks on the political circuit before the VP nomination, her media tools deployed to "rally the base." They evidently worked for some and not for others. Some of us felt insulted by them, but they were her decisions -- not at all like a person's racial heritage. But this is the person McCain chose as his running mate, and everything that happened after that said at least as much about him as it did about her. For many voters, including conservatives, who were considering McCain, the choice of Palin was itself definitive. She motivated some people to vote for the ticket; she made it impossible for others to support it.

You're right: Obama will get slammed no matter what, and he made it clear in his election night speech that he knows there are rough times ahead. Obama doesn't present himself as a messianic leader (leave that to W., who has said again and again that god chose him and guided him), and I don't understand those who think in those terms. But then, I don't believe in gods or messiahs.

Jim,

John McCain had chosen Sarah Palin so Americans would believe that the Republican Party stood for women. He also chose her so that Republicans would stop accusing him of leaning a bit to the left. It was a bad choice, however. If Palin was a bright person and showed knowledge about the issues, than perhaps the McCain campaign would have had a better chance of succeeding. Sarah Palin proved to the American people that she is stupid and lacks the knowledge required to lead the country. If Sarah Palin runs for the presidency in 2012, she will once again show the American people that she lacks the intelligence and the wisdom to be the president of the United States. Bush lacked the intelligence too, and look where it has gotten us. We can not have another stupid person in the White House.

Sarah Palin is the James Stockdale of the 21st century. Not only did she show herself to be an idiot, but she is likely to be forgotten.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6n5OQVzVVQ

Even if it is the beginning for Sarah Palin, she will continue to get herself knocked down.

"Sarah Palin is the James Stockdale of the 21st century. Not only did she show herself to be an idiot, but she is likely to be forgotten."

I'm very difficult to offend, and politically and socially very liberal, but this comment is very, very wrong, almost to the point of being obscene. Do some research on Jim Stockdale and find me any instance in his life besides his one bad television appearance (when it's entirely likely he was already suffering from Alzheimer's, besides there having been a number of other mitigating factors) in which he proved to be an idiot or anything less than a really honorable human being. I'm not talking just soldier stuff, either. I've read a collection of essays and speeches he gave, and of courses he taught, and he was quite sharp. He was an adherent of Stoic philosophy and could explain it backwards and forwards. Think before you make a silly comparison between two people who really are not at all comparable. They're opposites, in fact- Palin was good on TV (other than the interviews) and an idiot in reality.

I have been spoofing Palin as much as anybody but I'm not so comfortable with all the talk about her stupidity for two reasons: One, I don't really know, and two, I actually doubt it. She's woefully ignorant, and what's worse, she plays that up as a strength, which really helps widen the gap in this country. Folksy populism doesn't have to be stupid (Mark Twain) and can be suspicious of the so-called "intelligentsia" and their motives without actually stooping to attacks on such crimes as being well-read or eloquent.

Unless she gets a talk show, in the next four years Palin will most likely embark on a whirlwind attempt to educate herself. If--and I'm not predicting it--she is the Republican candidate, it would be a good thing, even to someone like me who will almost certainly not be voting for her, to see her put her knowledge on display. The Republicans do still say they are for education, even as they (not all of them) mock the manifestations of it.

"You can keep 'the change'", that is...very, very special. There is no keeping the change, this country has been changed in such a powerful way that's noticeable less than a week later.

The sad fact is that the Republican party has shown itself virtually unable to keep up with the 21st century. Obama won because he is truly of the now in a very profound way. They need to drop this country bumpkin crap, it simply isn't going to work anymore. If they fail to change, we'll be seeing Democrats in control for a long time. They need to adapt, or they won't survive.