new Sarah Palin book to enthuse over

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!

Rubio or Palin, I'm cool with that either way.

rubio and palin, how about?

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.

in Sarah's tiny brain Wright is a political firebrand and race-baiting charlatan, not a true Man of God.

which makes it extra funny that she takes up for Mormon Romney, because any fundamentalist evangelical worth her pillar of salt will tell you that Mormons aren't truly Christians. They might as well be Muslim.

with hon. thomas' wife dancing around them in a toga.

Has she out and out taken up for Romney?

joe biden, serious bro, u amuse me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhBYGX61zxM

xpost to PP -- not sure about that, but upthread it mentions She praises Mitt Romney, a Mormon, for not "doing a JFK" during his campaign for the 2008 GOP nomination, but instead speaking forthrightly of how his faith would inform his presidency.

i just can't see her doing that for any other non-Christian* candidate who lets their faith "inform" their politics. maybe i'm wrong...

(* i should note that i'm not arguing that Mormons aren't truly Christians. frankly I could not care less. both believe in magical fucking faeries and goblins and so fuck them)

Biden has always been so good in reaction to Palin. He even took up for her in '08 when there was criticism about campaigning while having a new baby with Down's.

I wonder if Palin is nominated and debates the president, if she'll ask him during the handshake, "Can I call ya 'Barack'?"

I hear you, will. I just know their camps hate each other.

may i call u NOBAMA

The brass neck of that woman complaining about anyone's pastor, when there's video of her having The Laying On Of Hands from actual Kenyan batshit insane Assemblies of God 'witch doctor'...

^^exactly

Eh, I admire the GOPs "brass necks".

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Cma4BbnihlY/SK4jOlrYBRI/AAAAAAAAABw/yFoJvFzSr_Q/s400/Alec_Baldwin%27s_Brass_Balls.jpg

Any time you post a clip of Palin, you have to take a moment to appreciate her cadences, word for word and emphasis for emphasis:

"I'm looking at the lay of the land now, and trying to figure that out, if it's a good thing for the country, for the discourse, for my family, if it's a good thing..."

Obama ums and uhs a lot, I know--I'd say because he's actually thinking about what he wants to say, but leave that aside. Palin needs to learn how to ums and uh, which might spare her elocutions where she puts the emphasis three different places in about seven seconds. I'm also not sure if the discourse has any strong feelings about the prospect of her candidacy one way or the other. (I'll she concede that she's making a valid point there, insofar as her presence always poisons the discourse.)

Hmmmn...better watch the typos if you're going to be taking Palin to task for incomprehension.

i think the most irksome thing about that Palin JKK quote is that she is so pig-ignorant that she likely doesn't understand the political implications of being a Catholic and running for president in USA 1960. she prob thinks he was just being 'progressive'

The JKK took my baby away!

(I'm the god of typos--no insult intended.)

For someome born Catholic as Palin was, a bit rich.

Imho America is a politically stupid enough place to elect Sarah Palin as president.

well what do you know! i did not know she was born Catholic. i r ignorant, too.

Ain't no such animal as "born Catholic." "Born to a Catholic family," yes, but babies don't know from catechism.

/pedant atheist

In fact, some babies die before they become Catholic and have to spend eternity in Baby Purgatory.

Well, no, functionally you ARE born Catholic. As long as you grow up that way, you're generally considered Catholic forever. You don't have to/get to choose.

She seems to be the embodiment of a right-wing mass email ("Ya gotta love Robin Williams!! He gave this speech against Muslims in New York City! "). I'm surprised she hasn't used one of those in a speech.

Barbara Bush Palin zing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TNVB3SgyX8

In her acknowledgments, Palin offers "special thanks" to Jessica Gavora, an Alaskan who served as chief speechwriter for former attorney general John Ashcroft and who is the wife of conservative writer Jonah Goldberg.

conflict of interest is such a liberal conceit. imagine the outraged posts on The Corner if, say, Frank Rich's spouse ghost-wrote a democrat candidate's book

you know i really don't think it matters that palin was born/ raised catholic. i still don't think she has the capacity/empathy/desire to understand what a catholic candidate running for pres in 1960 would have faced.

now if that candidate were an embattled evangelical otoh..

"embattled"

i think it does matter that she was born catholic. it makes her even more dense for not understanding the context of jfk's words.

I'm not sure you can be a hard-line Ayn Randian and also legitimately claim to have any interest in what Christ said at all.

^ thus would seem to be the primary dilemma of contemporary evangelicals (not that they seem to have any problem conflating the two, mind)

legitimacy got nothing to do w/it

Um, you can do Jesus and social Darwinism if you're into Prosperity Gospel BS. Which she very much is.

Does anyone here know why so many Catholics went screwy evangelical in the last half of the '70s? Our terribly crackery Catholic neighbours (the kids were called Travis, Keith, Shane and L0ydene) flipped out and became 'Jesus People' at around the same time as SP's family left the church so I'm guessing there was a larger reason for the phenomenon.

My feeling is that she'll go on running her mouth for ages, and maybe she'll run for office, but I'm pretty sure she'll say something egregiously stupid about her 'love' for Israel (you know, that special love crazed Evangelicals have for Jews). That is the only possible way to GAME OVER that I find plausible right now.