Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha

[deleted15807]

Palin is on the top of her worlds — both the Republican Party and the media universe. “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” set a ratings record for a premiere on TLC, attracting nearly five million viewers — twice the audience of last month’s season finale of the blue-state cable favorite, “Mad Men.” The next night Palin and her husband Todd were enshrined as proud parents in touchy-feely interviews on “Dancing With the Stars,” the network sensation (21 million viewers) where their daughter Bristol has miraculously escaped elimination all season despite being neither a star nor a dancer. This week Sarah Palin will most likely vanquish George W. Bush and Keith Richards on the best-seller list with her new book.

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What might bring down other politicians only seems to make her stronger: the malapropisms and gaffes, the cut-and-run half-term governorship, family scandals, shameless lying and rapacious self-merchandising.

Could She Reach the Top in 2012? You Betcha
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On one hand I would be overjoyed if she did run because surely she would lose then again Palin is just what America has been pining for since Reagan. And the embrace of his simplitics answers to all problems, his embrace of know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy.

 

[HazelGod]

On one hand I would be overjoyed if she did run because surely she would lose then again Palin is just what America has been pining for since Reagan. And the embrace of his simplitics answers to all problems, his embrace of know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy.

I hope she runs, and I hope she gets the GOP nomination.

In addition to ensuring utter hilarity during the debates and the SNL season, she'll literally fracture the GOP vote along the line between those who don't need to be reminded to keep breathing and those still playing with their own poop...and effectively diluting any possible threat to Obama's re-election.

 

[deleted15807]

^ Exactly. Tina Fey will have to rejoin the SNL cast as I'm sure there will be enough material for a weekly skit. And it won't take any writers. It could just be Palin Verbatim.

 

[SilverTrain]

Sign me up for the Limbaugh Effect in 2012.

Sarah has my vote in the Primaries all the way!!!

 

[YoungHungMachine]

Hate to say it. I wouldnt vote for someone to be president who quit in the middle of a governor term.

 

[HazelGod]

Hate to say it. I wouldnt vote for someone to be president who quit in the middle of a governor term.

Why do you hate to say it? That's just basic common sense.

You'd have to be a complete fucking moron to vote for someone like that...which means we can count on about half the GOP doing precisely that.

 

[B_New End]

half the peopel watching her reality show did so to see her do something stupid. The GOP is trying to make Palin a star, based on the fact that stars do well in elections. They do not understand that a reality tv star is worthless and a dime a dozen, not like a terminator series movie star.

 

[B_VinylBoy]

Everyone with a brain knew that she started her "2012 campaign" back in 2008 when it was apparent that McCain wasn't going to win the election. That's why she "went rogue". It's only a matter of time before she announces that she's officially running and I'm sure she'll claim she's "doing it for the people" as well.

But HG nailed it on the head. Even though the majority of people in this country don't think she would make an effective president, we can count on about half the GOP voting for her if she does get the nomination. That says a lot about how screwed our nation is right now.

 

[B_OtterJoq]

God, I hope she's the nominee!

 

[1kmb1]

i dont think she actually wants to be president. i think she just wants to be a celebrity.

 

[Bbucko]

She polls extremely negative, especially among women. She uses the term "title" when she should be saying "office", which speaks to her roots as a beauty pageant runner-up. And as I've said from the beginning, she's the most incurious political figure I've ever encountered: not dumb but entirely without curiosity. She has everything already figured out.

She combines the paranoid thin skin of Nixon with a populistic appeal unseen since WJ Bryan. I agree with HG and others who find even the plausibility of her candidacy to be an indication of how insane the GOP has become.

Please don't ever put me in the position of defending Reagan again, but it's instructive to keep in mind that he was president of the SAG for years and served out multiple terms as governor of our most populous state. Much as I despise the man, his policies and the permanent damage he inflicted on our country, he was both qualified for the presidency and had the extraordinary good luck of running against Carter, who was a parody of himself and his worst attributes as soon as he was sworn in.

I find it instructive that even The Weekly Standard, to whom we owe Palin's emergence on the national stage to a large degree (thanks to Bill Kristol) is poking holes in her ballooning myth.

 

[HazelGod]

I find it instructive that even The Weekly Standard, to whom we owe Palin's emergence on the national stage to a large degree (thanks to Bill Kristol) is poking holes in her ballooning myth.

Hey, I'd still poke her holes... :wink:

 

[The Dragon]

Hey, I'd still poke her holes... :wink:

I just threw up in my own mouth....uke:

 

[Bbucko]

Hey, I'd still poke her holes... :wink:

Sadly, that concept comprises a not insignificant proportion of her base appeal (pun intended).

 

[XXLJohn1955]

I'm afraid you are overestimating the power of the Fox News Party (formerly known as the Republican Party). If Palin runs, I'm afraid a majority of Americans are stupid enough to vote for her...in the giant electoral states: Florida, Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan....in the rest of the middle west (Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri...), mountain states (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Arizona...), in smaller states like New Hampshire, Maine, and Delaware and in the south: Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Louisiana. The only states where she might have a problem are California (but even this is suspect), New York, Connecticut, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Illinois, Maryland, maybe Oregon, maybe Washington. She may even have some trouble in the most progressive of the southern states, North Carolina and Virginia --but it'll be a stretch.

The Fox News Party's goal is to destroy progressives and the Democratic Party. They are well on their way to accomplishing this task. Sorry to be so gloomly but I'm shocked to hear people reguritate the Right-wing lies they hear/read on a daily basis...and am convinced, as is Paul Krugman said in his editorial today in the NY Times, that this country is in serious trouble and under real threat from the Lunatic Right.

The Fox News Party has taken a page directly out of the pages of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels and Americans, never very good at history, are falling for it.

 

[XXLJohn1955]

Hitler himself outlined the Nazi's use of propaganda to "take over" Germany even though, up to that time and even for several years after, a majority of Germans didn't / couldn't believe that the evil that was ultimately manifested could actually become implanted in their nation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda

 

[HazelGod]

I just threw up in my own mouth....

You know you'd hit it...'til she squealed like a stuck pig. :biggrin1:

 

[Industrialsize]

I remember thinking,"I hope they nominate G.W Bush because the country will never be stupid enought to elect him."

I remember thinking," I hope they nominate Reagan because the country will never be to stupid enough to elect him."

And we all know how those elections turned out.
I've learned to never UNDER estimate this country's electorate's willingness to embrace stupidity.

 

[BF2K]

Hitler himself outlined the Nazi's use of propaganda to "take over" Germany even though, up to that time and even for several years after, a majority of Germans didn't / couldn't believe that the evil that was ultimately manifested could actually become implanted in their nation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_propaganda

Do you realize that the Nazi propaganda machine used President Wilson's (major progressive that also was the first President in the 20th Century to segregate blacks from whites in the Military and put thousands of US citizens of German decent into concentration camps in the US. Roosevelt did the same with the Japanese during WWII) as a model? The ONLY propaganda we need to be afraid of is that that is disseminated by the Government, otherwise people have the choice to either turn the channel or not buy the newspaper.

 

[D_Miltie Orgasmic]

The ONLY propaganda we need to be afraid of is that that is disseminated by the Government, otherwise people have the choice to either turn the channel or not buy the newspaper.

Germans (and French, Italians, Spanish, Poles, etc.) could have refused to buy Fascist newspapers but they didn't. American's can, and some do, change the channel and refuse to buy neo-Fascist newspapers but that doesn't mean that the message doesn't percolate through society nor did it stop the Fascists from gaining power.