The Potemkin Mavericks?
Sunday September 21, 2008
Categories: Republicans
Sigh The WaPo reports: When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Ahhh, wonderful!
Q: What happens when the party of radical autonomy of the body campaigns against the party of radical autonomy of the wallet?
A: Four more years of the same crap.
Can "news" organizations get any more mindless and banal than this? RNC = Republicans? Wow, who knew?
I wish I had the resources to relocate. Are there any benevolent monarchies left out there?
I really feel sorry for Palin because I really do like her for some reason.
But because of the way these debates have been setup, she's in mortal danger of a humiliation worse than Dan Quayle's. The moderator is simply going to pose a question and then let the two candidates go at each other. Palin is not going to be able to just hold on to a couple of talking points and then say "and John will fix that" as she has in her interviews so far.
These people seem like managers and handlers, not policy wonks. They have the most experience helping candidates campaign. This is hardly a sign of "Bush's third term." I would be worried if/when key policy positions were held former Bush staffers.
When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month.
She's a governor of the state. Now she' suddenly incapable of governing without handlers?
What a shame. If only her handlers were Clinton and Obama operatives...
For more, check out this article from this morning's Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-troopergate21-2008sep21,0,5688051.story
Having made heated love to his new mistress for three weeks now, Rod awakens in the cold morning light, looks at the head on the next pillow and learns, once again, the hazards of following your heart.
"But because of the way these debates have been setup"
ah, no.
She is at a disadvantage in the debates because she has vastly less experience grappling with most of the issues a candidate running for national office (as opposed to one running in Alaska) must be fluent in than does her opponent, not because of the structure of the debates.
All Palin has to do in the debate is make Biden look old and boring, a task that should be easy as he is certainly boring.
All Biden need do is make Palin say something stupid, which should be easy as she is stupid.
But as the Vice Presidential debate is a sideshow that really does not influence elections (Dan Quayle got demolished and Bush the Elder still won by a landslide) it does not matter very much who wins.
there is nothing new in politics. it is all incestous. BHO is just a Chicago politician. McCain is a maverick in name only
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
It's a cliche. But like all cliches it has a truth at its core, just a lot more core than most.
What the Bush handlers seem to have missed is the attraction of Palin is her independent woman image. That's what the women who are rallying to her side are all about. She represents their kind of woman.
So what do these geniuses that gave us the Iraq War do? Why of course they instantly turn her into her fans greatest nightmare. She's now a puppet of powerful men.
Rod, as I recall you jumped on Michelle Obama like a bad coat of paint awhile back. One has to wonder if you've wondered about First Dude at all?
Think about it.
Hillary's biggest asset in some circles was she slept with Bill. Her biggest liability in other circles was she slept with Bill.
Allegedly the state of Alaska elected Palin the Mrs as Governor. And they got First Dude as a bonus. He's unpaid number one ramrod. Now imagine First Dude treading the halls of Congress as Palin's representative. How does that fit in the pipe? Is there room for tobacco too?
I'll bet Palin's fall won't have anything to do with her being a woman other than the kind of men she surrounds herself. The keystone that will break causing the fall will be First Dude.
A lot of us here have been saying from the git-go that this was how it was going to end up. No "change", no "new Republican", no one who was going to change the way things work. Just more of the same. I understand, Rod, that you were sincere in your enthusiasm for Palin as a person and as a symbol; but some point comes for all of us, no matter whom we support, to wake up and smell the coffee. Some of us have been through this type of thing before, so we go in with very low expectations. Cynical, maybe, but one doesn't get as much disappointed, and one is usually correct in expecting less. I guess I still don't get why you and many Palin supporters have taken so long to get dragged back to the cold, hard light of reality with her, especially in light of the betrayal by Bush of the principles for which you voted for him. I mean, even a few on the right said from the beginning that Palin was not a change, just a distraction. In any case, the next few weeks, especially the debates, will tell the true story (I hope).
Bush has been in office for almost eight years. Of course Republicans working on the McCain campaign will have ties to him. He's their president. What were Republicans supposed to do? Retire to a monastery and meditate upon Russell Kirk until the Coming of Reagan II? Where exactly would you find these Immaculate Advisers unsullied by connections to their own political party?
T. McDonald: What were Republicans supposed to do? Retire to a monastery and meditate upon Russell Kirk until the Coming of Reagan II?
Well, except for the part about "Reagan II", that actually sounds like an outstanding idea! I think, BTW, that an awful lot of Democrats could do with some monastacism, too. ;)
jumped on Michelle Obama like a bad coat of paint
Ever think of entering the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Harvey?
Well, yes, it would have been a good idea to quietly retire and get back to first principles, but it's just not the done thing. In other circumstances, I would hope for a Republican loss this year so they could (perhaps, though not likely) be humbled enough to return to the true roots of conservatism. If we had wound up with Hillary, for instance, we at least would have a standard-issue cynical politician with some experience. We can work with that. But Obama's overweening messianism is frankly terrifying. America doesn't need it's own Dear Leader, complete with a ready-made just-add-water cult of personality.
Really Rod? You didn't see this coming?
You're an American. You fell in love with the package and accepted the substance on faith. The Palin phenomena mirrored the Reagan phenomena; "we can sell her to America, ignore the voodoo economics."
Sigh, indeed. I long for conservatives to be conservative again, instead of radical right-wing experimenters at play in the fields of the Lord.
T. McDonald: "...I would hope for a Republican loss this year so they could (perhaps, though not likely) be humbled enough to return to the true roots of conservatism."
Return to the roots? When was the last time Republicans didn't run a deficit? They wouldn't know where the roots are to return to! It's time for a new generation of Republicans to come forth. The current bunch are failures!
>Return to the roots?
1923-1929. The greatest presidency of the 20th century.
This situation reminds me of 2000, when some of us Texans tried to warn the rest of the country that this guy they thought they "liked" was a packaged, manufactured, coached image of a "regular guy," but not the real thing.
We tried to warn people that Bush was a fan of eminent domain (which is how he got land for the Ballpark), that his great idea for bringing money into the state was to invite other states to dump their waste in Texas--over the Edwards Aquifer; in his October 2000 debate with Al Gore, he made his first reference to Saddam Hussein possibly having "weapons of mass destruction," and I tried to people that he might try to take up where his daddy left off in Iraq...
...and all I can say is I hope the Alaskans against Sarah Palin have better luck than we did in getting the word out. (Article about protest in Anchorage Daily News: http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/525008.html , Photos from protest: http://s521.photobucket.com/albums/w335/frsbdg/Alaska%20Women%20Reject%20Palin/)
Roots...1929!!! Never mind... when was the last time the Whigs ran a budget surplus?
Who were we expecting was going to be advising Palin?
Rod: "… she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers…"
Didn't somebody already warn us that Palin was to be a mere Culture War Fembot? Sorry, Rod, but your dream was nice while it lasted. The implants have taken hold—she is Borg now.
>when was the last time the Whigs ran a budget surplus?
Scoff if you will, but the only way to get the parties back on track is for both the liberals and the conservatives to return to their roots and argue from first principles. I'd make the case that modern (in the long-view historical sense) conservative principles are best embodied by Silent Cal. Others might argue Teddy Roosevelt or Reagan. I have no idea who liberals might pick: perhaps FDR. I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative.
Who knows? Perhaps there is some young Whig idealist out there who wants to return us to the glory days of Millard Fillmore and Zachary Taylor. God speed, young Whig! Log cabins and hard cider! In our past is our future.
Kirk: "Are there any benevolent monarchies left out there?"
I think most of the remaining monarchies are benevolent, though there are a few tyrannical kings left in the Middle East. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg sounds nice, though I've never actually been there. If you're a limited-government conservative, it sounds like Grover Norquist's dream come true. The Prime Minister is listed in the phone book, and answers his own phone, apparently with the greeting "hello, government".
"I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative."
The very movement that cheered Bush's appointments of Roberts and Alito and his using of taxpayer money to fund faith-based programs now claim he's not one of them. The movement that cheered the Bush tax cuts, especially in the face of war, and his deregulatory programs now claim he's not one of them. The movement that decried anyone who would question the wisdom of invading Iraq as being unpatriotic and unAmerican now claim that he's not one of them.
Spare us this, please. Bush is exactly as conservative as the movement that supported him, that breathed a sigh of relief when he chose Dick Cheney to be the "adult" in the administration, that looked the other way at the indecency of the Swift Boat ads, and all the rest.
I think banking is a fairly large chunk of the Luxembourg economy. Probably not the best place to be moving to atm.
"I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative."
Given how conservatives were flocking to his side in 2000, why should we trust the opinions of any conservative pundit here in 2008? Clearly they were dead wrong about Bush. Can we afford to listen to them if they are also wrong about McCain?
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