new Sarah Palin book to enthuse over

To me, it'll be enough that Palin runs. I don't think she can win, other people say she can, whatever--the only thing that's guaranteed is that if she runs, it'll be a spectacle-and-a-half. If she were up against Rubio, I assume there would be ample pushback against her from within her own party. She doesn't respond well to that, and that's when the fun would begin.

every time she says something i hate her a little more for being such a smug creep.

i hate her, too, but -- and i mean this very, very sincerely -- she is still cute, in a naughty-librarian sort-of-way

http://www.coolsprings.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/sarah-palin-america-by-heart-book.jpg

flag pin is a nice touch. shows she's thinkin' next-level.

still . . . me and hon. soto have the same thought for 2012

I'm telling you: it's Rubio. The GOP has such a terrible record with Hispanics that party leaders will forgo their usual habit of anointing an old, tired worthy and go for someone as pretty and eloquent as Obama.

― look at it, pwn3d, made u look at my peen/vadge (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

but, unlike alfred, i think rubio (and rick perry) will have major trouble on immigration-issues in the primary.

as pretty and eloquent as Obama

C'mon--Sarah's got half that covered.

i don't think rubio is anywhere as eloquent as obama, actually. but he's good enough to compete.

palin is second favourite for r nom in 2012 according to uk bookies :/

― nakhchivan, Friday, November 19, 2010 11:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol UK

― you can sub out "bipartisan solutions" for "some of my dick" (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, November 19, 2010 11:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

the American/worldwide sports betting sites have her as the second leading candidate as well.

http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-election/us-presidential-election/republican-candidate

flag pin

flag bracelet

FLAGS

AMERICA

palin is second favourite for r nom in 2012 according to uk bookies :/

that's based largely on name recognition. hard to know who will emerge, because of all the new faces in the GOP now. but i still stick with what i said.

The same friend who covered Tallahassee said Rubio's speech (his equivalent of Reagan's The Speech) about living in a Land of Opportunity as the son of political exiles was moving exactly once. He now says he's heard it 500 times.

yeah, i think you may be overstating rubio's eloquence and smarts. i still think he's largely an empty suit. but he's a handsome empty suit, who looks like the kind of figure the GOP likes. and being hispanic will help him with the GOP (there you're totally right; that's largely why they dream of him as "their obama").

I didn't overstate it at all! I thought Obama was a pretty empty suit in 2007, but one which said a few things I liked.

In other words, I'll call anyone who claims to genuinely like Sarah Palin a dumb ass, but Marco Rubio's appeal isn't strange to me at all.

My admiration for Barack Obama in 2007 was literary, after reading his first book and noting how crisply and thoughtfully he could discuss his past.

depends on what you mean by "empty suit," i suppose. obama was very bright and articulate (to me, much moreso than rubio; but rubio is slick and telegenic enough).

i have relatives who are "fans" of hers on facebook and i don't really feel like debating anyone about it, b/c man do people ever get rabid in their defense of her. maybe because they see themselves in her, or imagine they do? they never really ask themselves if they would also be legitimate candidates for the presidency, though i'm almost afraid to find out how many of them would answer that question with a "yes."

honestly, i hope she and/or tom tancredo run, and force the tea-party wing to turn on rubio and/or rick perry, both of whom are "soft" on immigration.

Her cultural critique is not limited to "Idol." Palin praises the uplifting "It's a Wonderful Life," starring Jimmy Stewart, which teaches, she says, that "working hard and doing the right thing pays off in the end." But look, she writes, at Kevin Spacey's character in "American Beauty," who comes home and tells his wife he quit his job, blackmailed his boss and asks her to please pass the asparagus. "Message: Hard work is for suckers and brainwashed, brain-dead drones," Palin writes.

Palin praises "Juno," the movie where a pregnant teen chooses to carry her baby. "Most Americans, I think, are a lot like Juno," she writes — they may not be actively religious, "but they still want to do the right thing." She also likes "Knocked Up," in which a baby results from a one-night stand, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

would love to read her take on "All About Eve"

Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.

Sarah is also a fan of "A Face In The Crowd"

Palin praises "Juno," the movie where a pregnant teen chooses to carry her baby. "Most Americans, I think, are a lot like Juno," she writes — they may not be actively religious, "but they still want to do the right thing." She also likes "Knocked Up," in which a baby results from a one-night stand, and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

rounding out palin's top five movies: ben hur, yankee doodle dandy, pootie tang.

oops. top six.

brainwashed, brain-dead drones

The big question for me about Rubio (to fill in my ignorance of the guy) is how does he play the fundie card? Is he adept at doing the nudge-nudge wink-wink that shows them he's a biblical literalist, rapture-lovin' fellow traveler, without the suburban soccor moms catching on? If so, then, is there evidence that enough fundies would throw Palin over the side in the primaries and move on to Rubio?

If Rubio can't co-opt the grassroots crazies in the primaries, then he's going to have just as much rough sledding as Romney had.

he already did! and now -- as expected -- he's backing away from them, gracefully (a miami herald article just after rubio was elected focused on him aligning with the GOP, not the tea partiers who fueled his campaign).

Rubio has never, to my knowledge, discussed religion other than drop "God" in a few speeches.

rubio and religion

In other words, bupkis.

AFAIK, the deep-dyed fundies would only trust an RC to side with pro-life on the abortion issue. Most would see a Catholic as basically alien and probably forsaken by god.

It's interesting that the link specifically cites that he attends a non-denominational church, which should play fairly well with the Rev. Schuler/Crystal Cathedral drive-in mega-church crowd - which is more a suburban, soft-focus-Christian signifier.

http://imgur.com/N42xc.png

take it back!

loooooooooool

"Message: Hard work is for suckers and brainwashed, brain-dead drones," Palin writes.

hey look, it's her career's thesis statement.

and go for someone as pretty and eloquent as Obama

so, not very eloquent?

Bam is about as eloquent as Mario Cuomo, and just as fucking useless

He's very eloquent for a 21st century American politician. Don't know what scale you're putting him on exactly.

golfclap.gif, to the both of you

I know virtually nothing about Rubio--I saw a bit of his CNN debate with Crist--but before you annoint him, has he ever faced a serious damage-control crisis? Obama managed to withstand Wright because--whatever you think about it in retrospect--his Philadelphia speech was more than enough to reassure his supporters and the media. Rubio will face at least one of those moments; every candidate does. Obama's cool during the campaign (which, as everyone will tell you now, is a key reason he's such an abject failure as a president) navigated him through a mess of trouble more than once. Rubio would need to have comparable skills in that department.

I tend to judge eloquence by results; thus, in November 2010, I give Obama a very mixed grade.

Eloquence is eloquence, and results are results. They're not the same thing at all. Casey Stengel won five World Series in a row...

I didn't say they were, only that I judge Appeals to Our Better Natures retroactively.

Okay...I see what you mean. Be consistent, though; one of Obama's Appeals to Our Better Nature during the campaign was trying to work with the other side. And that's one of the things he gets ripped apart for--weakness, naivete, incompetent strategist--here and elsewhere; I think you've done that too. You and everyone else may well be right. But, as I see it, there's a disconnect there.

Of course I don't fault him for trying to work with the other side. He underestimated the strength of GOP intransigence and the popular rancor from which it fed, and stuck with kumbaya long after he realized the public blamed him. Moreover, it's difficult to believe his version of a city on a hill when Wall Street owns his administration.

But, yeah, this is for another thread.

Fair enough. Before going back to Palin, though, can you give me a sense of how you think Rubio would handle a damage-control moment? I know you've followed him for a couple of years.

You're right: he hasn't yet been tested. When a politician as adept and ambitious as Rubio can straddle several camps at once, the test will come soon enough.

One thing I've always thought about Palin (not sure if anyone else has made this point on one of the political threads). On the one hand, she's clearly going to be a radioactive wild-card for anybody who has to face her for the Republican nomination, but on the other, I see her as the ultimate high-risk/high-payoff opportunity for anyone who steps up and says what anybody with half a brain has known since within days of McCain trotting her out two years ago: that she's a joke, and completely unqualified to hold any elective office beyond mayor of Wasilla. To do so, you'd have to be ready--temperamentally, intellectually, in terms of your own campaign's fundraising strength--for all-out assault from about 30-40% of your own party. But if you could hold fast and come out the other side of that, you'd be in fantastic shape for a general election; you'd have reeled in a large percentage of independents (who by and large recoil from Palin, I believe--and assuming such a thing as "independents" even exist, something someone on The New Republic questioned the other day), and I bet you'd even win over some grateful Democrats.

2012 - first president elected on write-in vote.

Note how criticizing democrats for not embracing organized religion is soon followed by criticizing Obama's old pastor. Sarah certainly lives a post-ironic existence.

i still say immigration is the wedge-issue for 2012, one that could cut against candidates in both parties, to be sure, but the newly-energized tea party wing of the GOP will not be kind toward presidential candidates who are "soft" on immigration. and that could hurt two key contenders: rubio and tex. gov. perry.

this will all end in a sex tape im sure

let's hope!