new Sarah Palin book to enthuse over

Nice piece.

or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up--as Palin might say--and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.

That's what I said yesterday upthread; that if Rubio or someone else can do this and survive (it tends to get called a "Sister Souljah" moment on the Democratic side, which is kind of unfair, seeing as Clinton was flexing his muscle on an obscure 18-year-old rapper), I think he or she would be in fantastic shape for a general election.

I find her far more patronizing of the Left than vice-versa.

the general election is like: is unemployment still around 10%, if so a republican wins, if not obama stays

hard to see unemployment falling that much before 2012. i do still think, regardless, obama is a very formidable candidate. but, rightly or wrongly, he owns the economy now, so . . .

btw, this part of rich's article:

It’s anti-elitism that most defines angry populism in this moment, and, as David Frum, another Bush alumnus (and Palin critic), has pointed out, populist rage on the right is aimed at the educated, not the wealthy. The Bushies and Noonans and dwindling retro-moderate Republicans are no less loathed by Palinistas and their Tea Party fellow travelers than is Obama’s Ivy League White House. When Palin mocks her G.O.P. establishment critics as tortured, paranoid, sleazy and a “good-old-boys club,” she pays no penalty for doing so. The more condescending the attacks on her, the more she thrives.

is 100% otm.

unemployment could easily be way down in a couple years, the fact that its not all ready is ~a bit of a mystery~

someone here (maybe on the rolling us economy thread) noted how many jobs have to be created each month, from here until 2012, to make the unemployment rate drop even 2%. it's a huge number. between that and the systemic problems with the economy, i don't feel so optimistic.

as to why it isn't already, i hope/assume that part of the answer is that many of the infrastructure projects weren't really so "shovel-ready" as advertised?

Stupid-and-proud-of-it white folks may seem like a huge demographic but... large enough to elect a President?

yeah shes good at playing the victim but even rich has to insert this highly unlikely cavat into his completely media driven narrative Should Michael Bloomberg decide to spend billions on a quixotic run as a third-party spoiler, all bets on Obama are off.

this is OTM. I don't think she would stand a chance in the GE w/o some extraneous factor, & Bloomberg would likely win over just as many old-guard repubs as middle-of-the-road dems.

Tho I agree w/ Rich that the nom is hers to lose (which she very well could once the spotlight narrows on first round primary candidates & the mudslinging begins).

eh, Frank Rich doesn't amuse me much these days. I wish he didn't devote so much attention to Palin, actually. Guys like Rich are for some reason shocked at the rise of someone like Palin; they're genuinely flummoxed.

I mean, it's almost redundant that Palin should get her own TV show -- she's been a reality show candidate since 2008.

i don't think he's flummoxed by palin's rise.

He definitely is -- check out the archives. So many column inches devoted to her. I'm as guilty as anyone of explicating her appeal, but something about Rich's posture -- a liberal pedantically explaining to other liberals who haven't the faintest intention of ever voting for her, let alone visiting a Red State -- bothers me.

I'm about to remove this much older acquaintance from my Facebook friends because every other post is CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT TODAY'S GOP IS DOING? and during the elections was genuinely appalled by Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. It's like, "Where WERE you when Nixon and Reagan were in the White House?"

I don't think there's anything wrong with being flummoxed by Palin's rise. Her rise is very...flummoxing. Again, there are lots of historical precedents, but--even against a yardstick as recent as W.--she's something new.

But we tend to overstate her importance because we all read the same lib blogs. She'd be scarier if she commanded more than a fifty percent approval rating.

And that's where the disconnect, and the flummoxification (my very own "refudiation"), is: people like Rich trying to calibrate if it's possible for someone viewed as a joke by 50%+ of the country to make a credible run at the presidency.

sure it is, because the primaries are for the core constituency, unlike the general election (where both parties, each of which have roughly 50% of the country already in their corner, fight like mad over the 5 -- 10% of voters who are undecided/truly independent).

Israel reference or no, I would be surprised if she could make it all the way to getting the Repub nom for the GE without being undone by some egregious gaffe (or series of them in all likelihood).

See, this sort of sounds like common sense when dealing with Palin in the public sphere, yet so far she has shown an amazing ability to control the narrative about her. FAR more than Obama or the Dems or frankly any other politician I can think of. She can pull out the Lamestream Media card, the Sexism card, the Liberal Elites card, whenever she pulls a gaffe. It doesnt matter if it shows her to be a complete phony (for example the hand cheat sheet) objectively because she has the power to say "Oh, well, gosh, I'm just an ordinary folk, wink wink".

Her fanbase believes everything she says, and she provides them constantly with new content. The idea that a gaffe will discredit her, I think, is sort of a pipe dream that belongs in a world of facts and objectivity that simply doesn't exist in the US political climate today.

far she has shown an amazing ability to control the narrative about her. FAR more than Obama or the Dems or frankly any other politician I can think of

not so in the 2008 general election. more recently, she's taken shelter in friendly media environments, where it's easier to "control the narrative."

she provides them constantly with new content

This seems U&K for explaining the 10% or so of USAers who are her diehard fans. They are Palin consumers, and she needs to feed their hunger constantly or she'll be knocked out of their attention by some other media-generated stimulant.

xxp: does that ability really work outside of her base, tho? To get through the primaries (& I'm not necessarily arguing that she can't), she is going to have to convince the more moderate and traditional swaths of the repub base that she is electable. I could even see some of her steadfast apologists getting cold feet about that if she does anything too outlandish or if poll numbers suggest a bloodbath in the GE.

she needs to feed their hunger constantly or she'll be knocked out of their attention by some other media-generated stimulant.

like tickle-me-elmo

She seems more like a Justin Bieber at this point than like a John Boehner.

Just for the hell of it:

http://www.glossynews.com/artman/uploads/palin-barracuda-lipstick.jpg

A conventional gaffe could not, I don't think, affect her in either the nomination process (for the reasons Adam B. points out above) or even a general (because I can't see that someone who would consider voting for her in the first place is suddenly going to go "I have to rethink this"). The only thing that could cause everything to fall apart would be either a meltdown similar to the one Andy Griffith has in A Face in the Crowd (one of many blueprints for Palin), or, courtesy someone in her own party, a "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" Joeseph Welch moment.

Except with her, it would be more a "Once and for all: you really are a moron, aren't you?" moment.

But, like Rich says, it's like if someone had accused Andrew Jackson of having no sense of decency.

And the chances of such a climactic impasse occurring once the gloves come off in the primaries & the candidates get to ripping each other apart? Not altogether unlikely, I would say.

xp

She seems more like a Justin Bieber at this point than like a John Boehner.

i am more dumbfounded by the popularity of justin bieber than i am by the popularity of sarah palin

really? Which aspects of "pre-teen girls go apeshit over young male singer w/ cherubic face & windswept hair" do you find curious?

the part where the object of those pre-teen girls' affections is justin bieber.

One thing about that dream moment where someone finally confronts her on her completely lack of credibility: pretty much everyone who's possibly running on the Republican side, from Romney and Rubio on down, has thus far treated her with deference and respect. Even allowing for the fact that the survival instinct takes over in a primary, some of these people are going to have a hard time suddenly turning on her.

If she found herself going head to head with Gingrich, I could see it happening. Not sure what the chances of that are, tho.

i do: 0.

Yeah, Jesus.. Looking over the list of other likely repubs, I think u guys might be right: just a bunch of wishy-washy softshell dudes for the most part.

Speaking of which: I ate mussels last night.

Looking over the list of other likely repubs

can't go by the list of likely-suspects.

I think our best hope is that she achieves so much media saturation (and really, with the Palin klan bombarding over cable and network TV these days, that could be fast approaching) and the public gets sick of her by the time she tried to run for prez. The success of her media blitz is really disconcerting to me and makes me more cynical than most of you. I believe the same country that voted for W twice would elect a Real Washington Outsider like Palin.

the way she talks is so unctuous and fake, when i heard her for the first time in the first VP debate i was stunned that people actually thought she did well, let alone others who thought she won.

me too. tho I had the exact same reaction to the Reagan Vs Carter debate in 1980 - therrrre you go again [shakes head] - and look what happened...

to be honest i hope she runs, loses in spectacular fashion, and thus disappears from the national stage forever. the worst case scenario is never actually running and milking her audience for all they're worth for the next 20 years a la talk radio types. but in either case since so much of her appeal is based on her being *kinda* hot (i dont see it) the most gratifying thing to see will be the ravages of age leaving nothing but a bitter crone!

frankly, im pretty optimistic that the sarah palin story will end in some gratifying way. at least at some point.

The party won't nominate her because they want to win in 2012.

i'll leave it to shakey to explain to you precisely how that story will end.

I think our best hope is that she achieves so much media saturation (and really, with the Palin klan bombarding over cable and network TV these days, that could be fast approaching) and the public gets sick of her by the time she tried to run for prez. The success of her media blitz is really disconcerting to me and makes me more cynical than most of you. I believe the same country that voted for W twice would elect a Real Washington Outsider like Palin.

really, i think our best hope is that she wins the GOP nomination. i just don't see it happening.

If she does run for President, it'll be mainly to stay in the public spotlight as an extension of the Sarah Palin Show, because she has a minuscule chance of winning the GE (though I'm given pause by the fact that the GOP performed as well as they did in 2010 despite high disapproval ratings), and because she won't want to be tied down by governing the country when she could be hunting wolves from helicopter. I.e. it's going to be hard for her to live down her abbreviated governorship.

Just to clarify a couple of things I said earlier.

When I say she's completely new, I mean the context for her is new. As an archetype, she's been around forever. (You could even apply that famous William Carlos Williams line to her, "the pure products of America go crazy.") But appearing square in the middle of Fox News and reality TV and Facebook/Twitter, that's what new. (Nixon in 2008 would have been done in by a trail of Facebook posts rather than reel-to-reel tape.)

When I said that Romney and the rest have treated her with deference and respect, what I meant was that they've pretended to treat her with deference and respect, for fear of incurring the Tea Party's wrath. Unguarded, I'm quite sure they're every bit as derisive of her as anybody on the other side (something that slips through now and again).

And if anybody does take her on from within her own party, ideally it would be a woman; if not, you know where she'll go with that. When Palin first appeared in 2008, Hillary was in a perfect position to cut her down at the knees. But, still angry at Obama's side, she accorded her the same arm's-length credibility as everybody who doesn't want to open up that door does.

Sullivan makes the connection explicit:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/palin-as-lonesome-rhodes.html

lawl http://www.tinadupuy.com/uncategorized/sarahpalinsenemylist

A few more thoughts--thought I'd move them over here rather than post on the Giffords thread.

There's so much money at stake in a presidential campaign, I don't think the Republicans would ever send someone into a general who had zero chance of winning. I'm not a conspiracy person, but I do think party machinery (whatever that might mean) keeps a close watch on who gets the nomination. They do so out of view--i.e., things like the apportioning of delegates. One thing I got from the Halperin book on the 2008 campaign was that, contrary to the accepted view at the time, Obama didn't come out of nowhere and, through the will of the electorate, defeat the party's first choice. Clinton had the support of half the party establishment at best--probably less, as there were people who declared for her publicly but privately wanted Obama. The point: the party no way wants Palin in a general, so there's no way she'll get the nomination.

The question to me is, will she run? I'm on the fence there. A lot of people say no, that she's smart enough to realize she won't win, and therefore won't want to damage her (I hate this word) "brand." I'm not so sure. One myth about Palin that developed along the way is that, no matter how clueless she seems, she has great political instincts. I don't know why people say this; I hear it all the time on CNN. She had great political instincts for exactly one night, the night she gave her speech at the convention. Since then, she's made one suicidal move after another, last week's video being the latest (and resigning the governship being the most damaging to her chances of ever conceivably running again for higher office). She has a fantastic instinct for making news, and making sure she's still a story long past the point where she should be, but that's not the same as political instinct.

The one motivation that I think could cause her to run would be spite--she knows it would gum up her party's chances in the next election, and clearly she's developing a chip on her shoulder to match the one Nixon had. Every time she gets criticized within her own party--they were even questioning her video on Fox's roundtable this past Sunday (even Kristol)--I think she just digs in deeper. So I could easily see her running out of spite--a giant "go fuck yourself" to the party that doesn't want her to, knowing that the 25 or 30% of the Republican voters she controls would create chaos for everyone else.