Baked Alaskan: Stick a Fork in Sarah Palin. She's Done

Charles

Palin will be the most dangerous to the GOP (and America) if she DOESN'T run. That was she will remain the perceived influence of a power-broker or even a king-maker.

I, for one, hope that she runs because, as you say, she will likely lose at the nomination stage and - if not then - she will let Obama coast home to a second term. If she runs and loses then she will be seen as abusted flush.

normanc

I don't care one way or another who Americans choose as their representatives but I love the way Sarah Palin gets up the noses of the left / faux conservatives. That alone is a plus.

That aside, the way she is treated by the press is nothing short of scandalous.

She and her family deserve a wardrobe full of medals for what they get put through compared to other politicians (all of whom get treated shabbily, but seems she gets the dirty end of the stick more often than not).

Sir Graphus

7. I bloody hope you're right. She absolutely terrifies me. She has that same insistance that George W had that the world and its problems must conform to her narrow understanding of it. It was disastrous for the world when W was in charge and Lord knows we need 30 years of competent US govt to recover from him.

Unfortunately, she also has W's indestructability; time and again, when W was campaiging, he'd say something and I'd think, well there goes his bid, no-one could say something that ignorant and be elected to the student union, let alone POTUS. But still he carried on, so pig-headed and thick skinned that he didn't even understand he was finished.

cg

Normanc - Palin has deliberately used her family as publicity props. If anyone is responsible for their treatment in the media it is her. Her constant lies haven't helped matters either. I want to support a Republican candidate (although I prefer Obama to all of the current front runners), but if they are in her image and of her pathetically low calibre then I can't do this.

ndm

Sarah Palin gives and gives:

-- Our exceptional nation, so vibrant with ideas and the passionate exchange and debate of ideas, is a light to the rest of the world.

Awesome.

fifer

I'd suggest number 8 - Presidential candidates have to talk live on television, and engage in debate. Her team's (astute) determination last time around to prevent her getting in situations where she could actually open her mouth on live TV was the only amusing thing about the notion that this was someone "a heartbeat away from the Presidency".

russell

You know normanc, no amount of sucking up is going to get Palin to flash her kegs at you. She is a douche of epic proportions.

Ms Proper - - Courtesy Advisor to The Stars

A lot of woman-haters here, I see. Absolutely no reasoning behind the hatred; just pure misogyny.

It was all too predictable that the woman haters would race out of the woodwork and claim that it was the political right who caused the assassination attempt on that Congresswoman.

What the right has to do with it doesn't matter. It was a chance for men who are frightened of strong women, especially if they are also attractive, to lace the air with toxins.

Y'all shouldn't tawk so mean 'bout the next President of the United States. In fact, y'all should get yourselves a Tea Party of your own and blast the pretend Tories out of the water.

cg

Look up a word like misogyny before you start using it. You soumd almost as ill-informed as Palin. The reason people don't like her is not because she is a woman but because she is unpleasant and dangerous and because she lacks any sort of grace or self-awareness.

Ms Proper - Courtesy Advisor to Inuits Everywhere

cg - thanks, but unlike you, I didn't have to look misogyny (from the Greek, obviously) up. The hatred of women is generally inspired by fear.

Sarah Palin is a powerful package and some men would obviously feel inadequate around her. Men who can't shoot a rifle, for example, or fly a single engine plane alone, across the wilds of the Alaskan tundra with no fear, or drive a team of Huskies in the Ididerod. Men who have never held a powerful elected position.

President Palin will be the new Reagan.

normanc

As I said, I love the way she gets up the noses of the left and faux conservatives.

Delivers every time.

Every single time.

cg

normanc seems to be very good at name calling today. Maybe we're getting up his nose, if it isn't tooclose to Sarah Palin's buttocks that is.

Verity

I loved Alex's headline. It says so much about Alex.

Nina

Its a disgrace to women that Sarah Palin is representing us. There is no misogyny in declaring she is ignorant, an inciter and definitely not leadership material. Leaders need to know their stuff, being ignorant is not a virtue its a vice. Please get this woman away from our political stream.

Hans Castorp

No criticism about the "blood libel" then. Nope, it's not repugnant, it's "punchy". Might want to ask Mel P about that.

DavidDP

I'm just impressed that with just two words, she's managed to hold two opposite positions at the same time.

"Blood libel" was false stories told to incite violence against Jews. So she's said saying that words can have no responsibility for violence, by saying that words cause violence.

The doublethink at play here would make Orwell proud.....

DavidDP

Her position on collective responsibility for crimes seems to have changed since the mosque issue, too. Progress there at least.....

DMohr

This was Sarah Palin's penultimate chance to prove to all Americans that she didn't view herself as the #1 victim in a senselessly violent catastrophe, and she flunked it big time.

Let's look on the bright side: With the millions of dollars she'll be making as a FOX News pundit over the next decade, maybe she can build herself a mock Oval Office adjacent to her home, and spend her down time daydreaming about "what might have been"...

Verity

DMohr - while the rest of us spend some downtime wondering what motivated you to put finger to key and produce such a drab little post.

Baron

to those for whom the mere mention of Palin’s name induces a coronary - Buckley: ruled, at random, Boston telephone directory, from….

normanc, sir, you cannot be more right. The progressive limpets, the ones who suck up to the omnipotent one, that’s the one who promised to shut down Guanta in days (ha, ha), end rendition (gone quiet), save the planet (still at it, hard job) bla, bla, bla, fear nothing more than honesty, plain speaking, self-reliance and stuff of that sort. What a pleasure to see these squirming minions twist again.

Hayward Maberley

Ms PC,
So President Palin will be the new Reagan.!

The President Reagan who managed to turn the US from a creditor to a debtor nation.

In 1981, shortly after taking office, Reagan complained of "runaway deficits" that were then approaching US$80 billion, or about 2.5 percent of GDP

Within only two years, however, his policies had succeeded in enlarging the deficit to more than US$200 billion, or 6 percent of GDP. At the end of the Reagan/Bush era it had was down to US$150 billion, still almost double what it had been under Carter.

However the National Debt had climbed from US$995 billion, when Reagan took office, to $4 trillion by the end of Bush1's presidency, Under Reagan and Bush Republican Administrations it climbed as a % of GDP from 26% to 42%.

Clinton managed hold/wind back both of them in returning the budget to a surplus of some US$280 billion and reducing the National Debt to 35% of GDP.

But George, The Faux Texan and late encumbrance in the White House, even managed to outdo "The Gipper" and his own Dad. He set another unenviable record.

The deficit was to be $482 billion in the 2009 budget moving from black to red ink in the order of US$750 billion from the end of Clinton's term.

But that was before the Wall Street Debacle, aka GFC where so much money was sloshed around, including the "socialist style" buying of bank shares, that the deficit blew out to buggery. The National Debt followed.

Obama got stuck with the GFC toxic debt from The Faux Texan and the costs of both the Iraq Fiasco and Afghan Imbroglio. They being the first conflicts since the War of Independence to be fought on credit.

As for Palin, aka Bible Spice/Caribou Barbie, you only need to look at when she became Mayor of Wasilla, population at the time of less than 5,000, it had no debt. But by the end of her term its debt was US$22 million! She is a perfect fit for the Reagan Republicans.

Interesting to note that from 1978-2005:

Under Democratic Presidents, Federal Spending was up by 9.9%. Federal Debt by 4.2%, GDP by 12.6%.

Under Republican Presidents, Federal Spending was up 12.1%, Federal Debt by 36.4%, GDP by 10.7%

Kevin

Sarah Palin is not a Presidential hopeful. She's a kingmaker. Voters on the right saw her viciously and unfairly attacked for something she had nothing to do with.

Then she responded fairly well, and was attacked again for her perfectly acceptable use of the phrase 'blood libel'.

These attacks only make her supporters like her more, and people on the fence about her lean her way in sympathy. You are mistaken to think she had a bad week.

Dave

Well you can all write this fighting woman off as a contender for the GOP nomination.I seen many write off another in 1976.Keep underestimating her at your own peril.Palin like it or not is reaching into the hearts and minds of the population FOR BETTER OR WORSE.Palin is being noticed talked about and debated in millions of households constantly.Weather its negative or positive, get this one fact clear,she is on a massive worldwide stage.Take that put it in your pipe and smoke it.

Dittohead

Republican voters are rubes, you elitist non-American. We'll crawl over glass to vote for Palin and you can't do anything about it.

cg

Baron, Verity and Normanc seem to think that a person's suitability to be President should be decided by their ability to get up normal people's noses. If that were the case then they must also be big supporters of Michael Moore. What a stupid, pathetic argument, which says so much about Palin's fans (who bear an uncany resemblance to Moore's fans).

allahdad

This is all garbage. The writer is setting the bar so high for Palin she could never hope to reach it. You could substitute the name Barack Obama for each instance of Sarah Palin here and it would make just as much sense. Obama had far less experience than Palin, and absolutely NO policy experience. Palin is far more verbally fluent than him without a teleprompter. This piece is a combination of wishful thinking and political propaganda. 2012 is a long time away.

mlrose529

@ Normanc:

Here in the States Mrs. Palin has gotten a free ride, one not befitting a resigned half-term small (population) state governor mired in ethics violations. Her severe overexposure, admittedly both fawning and vicious, has been achieved in part by pimping her family to the voracious American media machine. To say Mrs. Palin invites negative attention is gross understatement. She is the dull-witted Greek chorus to President Obama's seemingly every move. Her Twitter feeds, NOT actually written by Palin, are frequently nasty, mean-spirited, and belie a deep misunderstanding of the world and governance in general. Moreover, her thin-skinned 'poor me' act has gotten moldy as she continues to demonstrate she can dish it out but she cannot take it. I'd like to see THAT play out on the main stage of a presidential campaign. But really...If you consider "What are you reading now, Governor?" to be a 'gotcha' question then, on a MULTITUDE of levels, you probably shouldn't be hired to leader of your own household, let alone the free world.

mlrose529

"President Palin will be the new Reagan."

You mean she'll raise taxes on the wealthy, expand government, ship illegal weapons to Iran, and withdraw troops from harms way in the Middle-East? It often amuses me how divorced Reagan-worshippers are from the reality of his presidency and personal beliefs. But I suppose it wasn't enough to have Mrs. Reagan herself denounce the agendas of Mrs. Palin and her ilk in the modern Republican Party. Hate to be the bearer of bad news but, despite his occasional rhetoric, President Reagan, policywise, was probably a hair to the left of President Obama.

mlrose529

@ Baron:

No, we progressives recoil at pampered conservatives who fancy themselves 'self-reliant' when in fact they grabbed the same government-enabled advantages everyone else did. Mrs. Palin governed Alaska, the biggest welfare state, bar none, in America. Alaskans receive back from the federal government almost $2 for every $1 they send to Washington. It's a sweet deal...for the self-reliant Alaskans. And what largesse doesn't come from taxpayers comes from Big Oil, at whose teat Palin and Alaska feast. There is nothing inherently wrong with this...just don't call it 'self-reliance'. Palin also availed herself of the free medical care available on a local nativist reservation. She bilked her campaign of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. In short, her words and her actions are entirely estranged. Hell, people in Wasilla will swear she had never even been hunting until 2008. It's a con...please don't fall for it. I say that, not as a man who hates women or conservatives, but as one who loves his country and knows a common grifter when he sees one.

mlrose529

"Obama had far less experience than Palin, and absolutely NO policy experience. Palin is far more verbally fluent than him without a teleprompter."

And typically, their respective educations and real world experience is eliminated from your equation. Barack Obama IS the embodiment of the self-reliance Palin preaches but doesn't practice. The mixed-race child of a broken lower middle-class home, President Obama worked his way to Harvard Law school where he became the first African-American editor of the storied Law Review. He toiled for years as a civil-rights attorney, a community organizer, and a constitutional law professor at the esteemed University of Chicago. He did so right up until his election to the U.S. Senate and subsequent election as America's first black president. The man KNOWS things. He has not only travelled abroad but has lived abroad as well. Obama not only reads books, he WRITES them...himself. Mrs. Palin's troubled tenure as small-town mayor and scandal-ridden half-term governor pales next to President Obama's personal experience...unless of course the achieving of third runner-up in a beauty contest trumps all of that. He is also capable of self-reflection, humility, original thought, intellectual curiosity and most importantly, critical thinking. These qualities matter when you are tackling arguably the most difficult job in the world. Fiery, self-victimizing stump speeches seem to be all Mrs. Palin has to offer. Again, education, maturity and professional experience matter.

allahdad

"Barack Obama IS the embodiment of the self-reliance Palin preaches but doesn't practice. The mixed-race child of a broken lower middle-class home, President Obama worked his way to Harvard Law school where he became the first African-American editor of the storied Law Review. He toiled for years as a civil-rights attorney, a community organizer, and a constitutional law professor at the esteemed University of Chicago."

The truth is, Obama traveled the world and attended private schools. He was no product of a lower middle class family. Palin was not self-reliant? Are you kidding? The daughter of a couple of school teachers who actually did work her way up to Governor? Stick the urban-raised Obama in an Alaskan forest and you'd find him days later at room temperature, curled up in the fetal position. Obama has had more people helping him get where he is than any politician in history. Law professor? Another big error. Obama was a "senior lecturer" - a part time classroom instructor. A professor is a full time state employee who has years of experience and is tenured. That's a big difference. I taught university classes as a graduate student - do I now have the right to say I was a professor?

Verity

cg - so incorrect that I can't be bothered to refute your ill-founded pointlett.

Verity

mlrose 529 - "Barack Obama IS the embodiment of the self-reliance ...".

Is that why he travelled to the United States, as a young man, on an Indonesian passport and applied for a "foreign student" grant from an Ivy League?

Is that how he became a ward heeler (oops! - "community organiser!") in Chicago?

Verity

A professor at Harvard is a "full time state employee"?

Wha?

allahdad

@Verity: "A professor at Harvard is a "full time state employee"?"

Where are you getting Harvard at? We were talking about the University of Chicago. Even so, it doesn't change anything. A professor is a full time employee at a university, public or private. Obama was a part time lecturer.

Christopher Davis

The gloating tone of the post is difficult to take. Humiliating people is a disgusting way to earn a living.

A. MacAulay

As for misogyny, let's ask the question as to where a man would be in American politics who behaved and spoke and thought like Palin?

Verity

A MacAuley - "As for misogyny, let's ask the question as to where a man would be in American politics who behaved and spoke and thought like Palin?"

In the White House.

J. Leyden

@normanc: Totally agree. I am sick and tired of the soft 'conservatives' who fancy themselves as getting on with the left, not realising that they are making deadly concessions. What we need here in the UK as Ms Proper has pointed out, is a Tea Party of our own. Conservatives would suddenly find themselves in very numerous and diverse company for the first time in years!

Gene Carr

I'm sorry, but George Will and Charles Krauthammer were never on Palin's side from the beginning. They probably would not have been on Reagan's side either.