Sarah Palin and the battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party

Chingford Man

Oh dear. Why do people reach instantly for the dreaded Portillo Analysis, i.e. that a party must either 'retreat to the base' or 'move to the centre ground'? It doesn't even fit the Caudillo's Britain and I'm pretty sure that the US is different again. Defeated parties have enough problems without accepting a false dichotomy of how they might recover in a world that is changing constantly.

Besides, when you look at the figures, McCain got 47pc in what was always likely to be a bad bad year. Bush Senior got 37pc in 92, Dole got 41pc in 1996. Yes, 2008 was a decisive defeat and there should be no question of "one more heave", but this was also no catastrophe either.

If I was a US Republican, this is what I'd suggest for starters:

1. No hasty post-mortems
2. No malicious briefing
3. In due course, a systematic appraisal of the whole Presidential campaign and the previous 8 years
4. Hold Obama and his party to account.

Craig Strachan

James: "(I find it a stretch, though, to believe she thought Africa was a single country). "

Why?

Frank P

For a different take on this continued attempt by the left/liberal mob to prevent Sarah Palin from gaining traction in the next four years I suggest you take a look at his thread on Protein Wisdom:

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13611

and don't forget to read through the commentary: now they do know how to draw the 'hits'.

Frank P

p.s.

WTF is everybody? Recovering from jet lag en masse, I suppose?

James

You say "intellectual purity" I say "prejudiced, spiteful extremism".

Augustus

Conservatism also means an allegiance to past values and behaviour. Conservative reconstruction in America, as well as elsewhere, must focus on being above the ethical norm, not merely indistiguishable from corrupt career politicians. Down-to-earth Sarah Palin was a missed opportunity because almost immediately, for some reason, she was served up to the Washington press in 'gotcha!' interviews, and caricatured as a 'hockey mom' and a 'bimbo' by grandees in her own party.

The critical argument that was never seriously made is that the Liberal Democrats are now a party mostly of the largely affluent who want a Utopian social agenda, and of the poorer immigrants who want redistribution and guaranteed 24/7 attention.

Out-of-power conservatives now have a real opportunity to show that they can express differences in a professional and constructive fashion that puts America first and politics second. and perhaps most of all, to show that conservatives have standards.

Marbury

I believe the story on Africa is that she thought "South Africa" referred to a region and not a country.

TGF UKIP

I cannot recall any political candidate having such a hatchet job done on them as that on Sarah Palin. So promptly after the nomination did the Press on both sides of the Atlantic take after her that the demolition job they embarked on could truly only have been undertaken "with malice forethought."

The GOP has thankfully sufficient wise heads to realize that he worst reaction would be to over-react. The US is still an instinctively conservative, right of centre country and the gloss will will quickly wear off Obama to the disgruntlement of all these brave new first time voters.

The daftest thing the GOP could now do would, of course, be to emulate the British Tories and seek to become yet another social democrat party, Blue Labour = Red Dems.

Keep their heads, don't alienate their base (no Nelson Rockefeller or other Eastern liberal types) and build up the party again for 2012.

By that time the ultra pc, leftist headbangers in the Democrat Congress will have well and truly motivated the Republican base as well as alienated a large swathe of blue collar Middle America. By then too, possible new leaders and Presidential candidates from the gubernatorial ranks will have emerged, Jindal and Pawlentee come to mind for a start, and will have had more TV airtime and will have become much more familiar houshold names between now and 2012.

In short Republicans, hold your nerve and for God's don't do anything daft and forget who you really are like your erstwhile sister party, the British Tory Party.

David Lindsay

Absolutely any Democratic nominee will of course beat her in 2010. So, even more than anyway, Obama has no absolute right to the Democratic nomination.

I have never been an Obamaniac - I don't do mania, and I came to him late after better camdidates were out of the running.

He pretty much ran against the Clinton machine once he had beaten it for the nomination. And he beat it for the White House, not least after its media arm tried to whip up mass defections of Clinton primary voters to McCain.

Yet he is making significant appointments from within it. That is very worrying indeed.

He has no entitlement to an unchallenged run against nothing more than a person who cannot name a single newspaper that she has ever read. A credible primary challenge next time would do him no harm at all.

Nor would the election to Congress in 2010 of plenty of the economically populist, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists who put him into the White House.

The Laughing Cavalier

Sarah Palin was and continues to be the victim of the very worst kind of misogyny, especially from the "Sisterhood". Now disgruntled McCain staffers are on the lookout for new jobs they need someone to blame for their own failures.

Paulus

From US blogs its seems the story about the pro choice senator is incorrect it seems he voted pro life. It seems few in the media are prepared to check basic facts and lies and distortions gain traction especially where SP is concerned I have heard her interview on Alaska radio her response was totally different to the media stereotype

CG

It is quite disturbing that the critical faculties of some of the contributors to this message board are so jaded that they think that this bigoted and dangerous woman is an asset. Get the message, if the Republicans follow her, then they follow her to the oblivion of the party. Normal people will not vote for such a whack job in large numbers. Did you not get the message last Tuesday? Or are you like the Labour politicans of the 1980s who thought that the British people would vote for them if the party could become even more extreme?