RSS Feed MenuIn today’s Washington Post, Bill Kristol asks tauntingly “[T]he mainstream media and the Republican establishment. … tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they afraid of?”
That’s easy to answer: They – we! – are afraid that Palin’s distinctive combination of sex appeal, self-pity, and cultural resentment has a following in today’s GOP. We are afraid that it is not utterly inconceivable that she could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and we are afraid that if she did so she would lead the party to a 1964-style debacle, accompanied by unnecessary losses down the ballot.
We are afraid that even if Palin does not win the nomination, that she will still help to brand the Republican party in a very damaging way. No national candidacy has ever collapsed so rapidly and totally as Sarah Palin’s in 2008. The evidence is strong that she is the only vice presidential nominee in history to have had a significant impact on voting preferences – and negatively so. Since voting day, she has only continued to lose ground. Yet no matter how ill-considered her statements and actions, her core group of supporters excuse everything on the grounds that she is a social conservative martyr, scorned by her cultural betters. Those excuses are exactly the wrong formula to win back the voters the GOP lost in 2008 and needs to recover to win again.
My friend and mentor Bill Kristol may think it is cowardly to take counsel of those fears. I think it is irresponsible not to.
sinz54 // Jul 8, 2009 at 12:25 pm
inthemiddle16 sez: “Once the public health care option is approved….there will be a restored liberal sensibility throughout the land”
Not for long.
The advent of Social Security didn’t stop Eisenhower or Nixon from getting elected.
The advent of Medicare didn’t stop Nixon or Reagan from getting elected.
Even though Medicare and Social Security weren’t “options,” but mandatory.
What conservatives end up doing is accepting what can’t be undone, and moving on.
The advent of a public health care *option* isn’t going to change anybody’s attitude, any more than the existence of the U.S. Postal Service has.
You liberals are contradicting yourselves at every turn. First you claim that it’s only an “option,” and now you’re claiming it will cause a universal change in attitude. That’s hard to do if only a minority of Americans subscribe to it.
ottovbvs // Jul 8, 2009 at 2:03 pm
sinz54 // Jul 8, 2009 at 12:25 pm
“The advent of Social Security didn’t stop Eisenhower or Nixon from getting elected.”
……..Both would be called RINO’s today as to a large extent they were.
“What conservatives end up doing is accepting what can’t be undone, and moving on.”
…….Exactly……the goal posts get moved further left and we move on.
……..As for the last couple of paras all “in the middle” is saying is just this. You might want want to re-read your last three paras if you want to see a perfect little gem of self contradiction……I haven’t the energy to explain it
sinz54 // Jul 8, 2009 at 8:21 pm
chekote asks: “I think the time has come for John McCain and his team of campaign advisors to tell Republicans how this woman was selected as VP. Why were grown-ups, compentent people like Tom Ridge, Joseph Lieberman overlooked”
Is this a rhetorical question, or you really don’t know the reason???
That’s not a TOP SECRET, chekote!
The dynamic that led to Palin’s pick was widely reported by Washington Post, NY Times, and other major media.
I’ve explained it myself on NM several times already:
When word leaked out that McCain was considering Lieberman or Ridge to be his running mate, the pushback from the social conservatives was instantaneous and furious. Because both Lieberman and Ridge are pro-choice.
Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review threatened a walkout of conservative delegates at the GOP convention, if McCain nominated either one of those two men. I read her diatribe the day she published it.
Faced with a potentially fatal split at the convention, McCain backed down. He had to do some fast rethinking–and basically pulled Palin’s name out of a hat. (The fact that she was a woman also gave him some hope that she could appeal to some of Hillary’s supporters too.)
Remember that the Religious Right hated McCain already. A reliable social conservative, say Hunter or Huckabee, might have been able to get the Religious Right to swallow Tom Ridge as VP. But for McCain, already hated by the Religious Right, choosing a pro-choice running mate would have been the last straw for the Religious Right. They might have made trouble at the convention, and/or sat out the election, rather than campaign for the GOP.
BTW, welcome back! I always liked your posts, and I was concerned you might have left NM.
sinz54 // Jul 8, 2009 at 8:31 pm
ottovbs: The “goal posts” on government intervention in the economy have NOT moved steadily left.
In the 1960s, there was no serious large-scale theoretical opposition to big government social programs. All the GOP could do is mutter it would cost too much.
Today, about 40% of the electorate is philosophically opposed to big government social programs on principle. Polls taken this week show a majority of Americans opposed to a second stimulus package despite double-digit unemployment. That attitude would have been unthinkable 40 years ago.
Forty years ago, wage and price controls were considered a legitimate tool of economic stewardship. Today, they have been discredited.
Forty years ago, the notion that the welfare system would be drastically reformed seemed unthinkable. In the 1990s, it was reformed.
And the lack of a positive socialist role model in the world these days has left the Left scrambling. In the 1960s, Leftist intellectuals in the West rationalized certain Marxist regimes like Hungary and Yugoslavia. Today, even Leftists have been forced to give up their Marxist wet dreams.
That’s why Obama is forced to sneak a single-payer health care system past the American people, by bamboozling them with this so-called “public option.” He wants single-payer, he’s said he wants single-payer, his supporters all want single-payer–but notice how afraid they are to say so in press conferences and public speeches. Because they know that will be a non-starter. That was not true 40 years ago.
Ben Wattenberg had it right: It’s like driving a car. Your hands are constantly making slight course corrections. You keep those things that are good from liberals (FDIC, Social Security, Boulder Dam). You jettison those things from liberals that were bad (stagflation, forced busing, welfare handouts, Soviet domination of half the globe). You keep those things that were good from conservatives (the intellectual and physical destruction of Marxism, the creation of emerging markets, vibrant private sectors), and jettison those things that were bad (anti-intellectualism, invasions of personal privacy).
Chekote // Jul 8, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Hi Sinz!
It was a somewhat rhetorical question; however, I would like for Steve Schmidt and others to openly, clearly state that it was the NRO crowd that caused Mac to change course. We need to have an open discussiong about it. I truly believe that we need to take this time to reform the GOP and create a new agenda for the future. If we don’t present a credible alternative to voters, Obama’s policy failures will not be enough for the GOP to win.
Today, Coburn admitted that he knew about Ensign’s affair. I really believe that it is time to drop the “family values” and much of the SoCon agenda and above all their tone. Have you seen this?
Republican Sex Scandals a Sign It’s Time to End the Family Values Wars
An Oklahoma state legislator recently divined the cause of our economic funk. We are paying the price, according to a resolution state Rep. Sally Kern is sponsoring, for becoming a “world leader” in pornography, same-sex marriage, divorce, and other “forms of debauchery.” It will come as no surprise that Kern is a Republican (a “Kern-servative” at that, according to her website).
If the states are indeed the national parties’ farm teams, the Sally Kerns of the world will doom the GOP. Republicans can no longer afford to lustily fight the culture wars, and it’s time for them to sue for peace on the marriage front.
I am still hoping that NM will be a vehicle through which reform of the conservative movement will take place. It is badly needed.
Canadian liberal // Jul 9, 2009 at 3:21 pm
You know, she’s growing on me. Not as a potential president (that is still very scary) but I can see how her life has changed so much that since getting the VP nomination that there is no joy left in the governorship. She whines a bit, yes, and she thinks she can get away with taking the easy path (and not studying up to learn some important policy files), but she does have a core of common sense and a real “fetching” way of putting it across. A little logic-training might help to get her ideas strung together in a way that makes her speeches easier to understand, and maybe fewer cliches would help. But politicians always need training on how to say not much without sounding like they’ve nothing to say – its just an art not to sound like that all the time. Much as I tend to disagree with most of her positions, I think Palin is good to have on the political scene. But only if she promises not to run for President – I’m pretty sure she will never be ready for that one.