Palin flames out; can Huck pick up torch?

If Palin's treatment is any indication, then I'd bet on no one being able to withstand the onslaught of a media in the tank for the DNC and complicit detractors within conservative ranks.

Does anyone know what General Petraeus' politics are? If he's a Republican, and if he's interested, 2012 may be his year.

Brian,

No one is saying Palin isn't popular with the base. Hence the crowds at rallies.

As far as SNL, don't forget how many viewers are watching because SNL's political skits are hilarious and Tina Fey's impersonation in particular is terrific. Also don't forget how many SNL viewers are watching to see Palin ridiculed.

Palin's problem generally is that she is extremely polarizing and as a total newcomer, she has no substantive persona to fall back on.

Palin would have been a good candidate in 2012 if she had not been placed as a VP candidate this year. She could have been prepped on international and domestic affairs. A ticket with Jindal and McCain on it in 2012 would have ben tough to beat. McCain gambled away part of the party's future. For many of us, Palin will be forever an ill-informed, unprepared candidate who ran on arrogance and hubris. If she had put in even 1/10th the effort of a Reagan in preparing for national office, her ticket would be winning now.

While it is tempting to blame McCain here, I have come to beleive that he must be shcked about Palin also. McCain has lived and breathed foreign policy for years. I think it was probably inconceivable to him that a governor could be so ill informed. Too bad for McCain that Jindal was not 5 years older. Jindal has a much better fund of knowledge and grasp on policy.

Jindal/Huckabee is a pure domestic policy team. You should balance with some foreign policy type.

Steve

What I would like to see in 2012 is a Bill Richardson/Huckabee third part ticket. That way we get brains, world leadership and Faith built in one.

Sarah Palin's bigot following has hurt the campaign during the last few weeks. Somehow she left godly principles our of her speeches and has decided that rumours, smear tactics are more important that following the Sunday School lessons she learned about love, mercy and humility.

"Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let ther be thanksgiving." (Eph. 5:5)
"If anyone thinks he is religious and not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless." (James 1:26)

If you are going to claim to be Christian, then let you mouth proclaim Christ in all you say. Sarah Palin needs to ask heself "WWJD" before she goes on the campaign stump and starts talking. She needs to also tell tose raging bigots to shut up who keep yelling out "Kill him!" from the floor. John McCain has done this, why can't she?

If any can revive real conservatism, particularly with a crunchy spin, it these two.

Until then, I think I'll be going for "That One"

I'd say Huckabee-Jindal, but still. Even then J might not be quite experienced yet, depending if we're talking '12 or '16.

God bless!

As a former Ron Paul supporter (whose 'lunatic ravings' in all the debates are seeming somewhat prophetic now), I don't see how the Republican Party recovers from this without getting the young people excited.

That means that the Republican in question is going to have to appeal to the idealistic college-age demographic. Jindal and Huckabee may have some of that ability. Huckabee just gives me the shakes a little bit because he kept speaking at campaign stops in three-alliterative-point sermon form, and came off to me in temperament as Republican Jimmy Carter redux. Nice man. Little sense of purpose outside himself. And his comments about "putting God back in the Constitution" might sound great to a certain type of cocooned Christian, but it scares me as to what that might actually mean - and I am a Christian. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't win on comments like that.

To be honest, I just want a candidate that's going to respect everyone's rights to life and liberty (as well as privacy), and have a comprehensive and circumspect (including a plan to address the explosion of the poor urban birthrate were abortion to be outlawed) plan to go about that again. I want a candidate that will restore the powers of the Executive Branch to what they were well before the Bush Years (a whole lot less).

It's only what the Declaration and the Constitution grant us as rights. I don't think it's too much to ask that, at least, the candidate they put up would respect them. Please?

I didn't see that in Huckabee this last time around. But he seems to be a quick study. Maybe by 2012.

Larison and the other conservatives who have been complicit in the MSM's auto-da-fe of Palin have ensured that Jindal, Huckabee, and other "unusual" conservatives will never be nominated.

Larison, Douthat, Dreher and the other neuroticons would withdraw their support from Jindal after one bad interview one nasty MSM story about Jindal's participation in an excorcism.

If not Jindal/Huckabee, who will it be? I'm guessing a Romney who doesn't have much to say on abortion, gay marriage, and all the other social issues motivating the MSM's hatred of Palin.

Palin's problem generally is that she is extremely polarizing and as a total newcomer, she has no substantive persona to fall back on

You certainly can parrot Peg Noonan, Dana.

But can you back up that statement? I doubt it. She couldn't either--all she had was some gauzy WishSarahWasSmartLikeMe yappaflappa--not a single thing on her Alaska exec successes.

That wouldn't fit the narrative.

Brian's right. SNL's Palin audience tuned in for Palin, not Tina Fey, who was playing Palin (very well, might I add) for several weeks running.

As to Larison, he's wrong, too. What Larison, Noonan, and the other DC TwitterCrowd members are missing is this: Palin leads by example, not with hit-and-run dodgy political foofoodust.

The problem with Larison & al. is that they don't recognize that sort of leadership when it hits them in the face; they choose to ignore the crowds and the ratings.

They'd rather have their I'mSmarterThanYou club-meetings in the old familiar phone booth.

And they will.

Palin took "some hard licks in the press"? I could not go to the supermarket without seeing some disgusting headline about Palin on the covers of check-out line magazines. I've never seen anything like it. The Couric interview was nothing compared to the non-stop hyperbole and bile that has dominated the coverage of Palin. There is no way that a Jindal or a Huckabee could survive one tenth of the stuff thrown at Palin, and it will be thrown at them too because this sort of treatment is now mainstream. All the conservatives who were silent about Palin's treatment in this campaign--who saw it fit, instead, to obsess about the Couric interview--what will they say when Jindal and Huckabee get the same treatment? Probably something about how the GOP was foolish to nominate them in the first place.

Rod, did you not see this from Scott Conroy of CBS News?

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/20/politics/fromtheroad/entry4531447.shtml

"In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.

"By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September. John McCain—who spent most of the primary season holding what seemed like one, never-ending media availability—hasn’t done one since Sept. 23."

I love trp's neologism: "neuroticons." I think he's exactly right. The same people who have written off Palin will write off Jindal (or Huckabee or anyone else) at the earliest sign of trouble.

When liberals decide to burn a rising conservative leader at the stake, conservatives really shouldn't be dancing around and hosing the victim down with gasoline.

To change metaphors, we really are in a cultural war, with one side attempting to obtain and use governmental power to advance their ideological hegemony and silence any opposition. Like it or not, Sarah Palin is one of the conservative standard-bearers in the battle to keep the Left from gaining total control over the Federal government. Repeating their baseless attacks ("she won't have a press conference") doesn't help the conservative cause.

Sounds to me like the GOP has the corner on the Kool-Aid market this time around. That's fine by me. The more the faithful walk lemming-like off the cliff behind Palins, Huckabees, and Jindals, the easier it will be for our country to return to a sane way of governing.

Mike Huckabee/Piyush Jindal 2012...if that be the case, then let's have a preview of the commercials.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQs9whiZao

The other thing to note is how focused the left's (and their allies in the MSM) attack have been on Palin compared to McCain. I haven't seen that much rage and angst since Reagan, which is very telling.

You judge the strength of a candidate by how much outrage they generate in the enemy camp. The left wants LOTS more "lovable losers" like McCain around so they can pile up more wins. When go from reasoned "I like him but ..." style opposition to incredulity and apoplexy, you know you've got a winner.

I hope I don't sound like an entirely broken record here, but I have to agree with everyone who says that the willingness of Rod, Daniel Larison, Ross Douthat and the rest to join the establishment gang-bang of Sara Palin will have the unintended and unfortunate effect of more or less ensuring that Huckabee, Jindal, and any sort of crunchy, Christian, and/or populist Republican who tries to run for anything the next few cycles will get chewed up and spit out like Palin was, perhaps even worse.

The attempt of Rod, Larison, Douthat and the rest to shore up their credentials as "reasonable, acceptable" conservatives by piling on Palin will get them not a place at the table, but tossed off to the curb, along with any chance that any policy they'd like to see enacted will have a fighting chance for a long, long time.

One wonders how much gusto they'll have four years from now for reaping what they've helped to sow: Mitt Romney and Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2012.

Apparently, those sixty five percent of use who are white Americans now have to have a 'person of color' on the top of the ticket. Yes, someone born to Hindu parents, commanding our armies who are so reliant on Muslim soldiers. That's Rod Dreher's world.

Yeah--we should never question a person who can't even name a single supreme court decision they agreed or disagreed with.

Sadly I hear Governor Huckabee interviewed on FOX last weekend and he was saying LOVELY things about Sarah Palin. In fact he was all over the Joe The Plumber yadayada. I expected better from him. I was very disappointed because he was my favorite. But he, like others, must face the underbelly ugliness that is being generated on the darker corners of the GOP, to wit you, Rod, David Brooks, Colin Powell, Peggy Noonan, et al........have addressed.

And whether you can accept this or not, a candidate who tries to win polarizing the old litany of 'social/religious' concerns will not win again in our lifetime. George W. Bush, and his people, who used those wedge issues to garner votes when they had no real interest in making that part of their 'political capital'........ has closed that post Pat Robertson/ Jerry Falwell wing of the GOP's office.. Witness how flat Sarah Palins’ attempts to re-light that flame are falling. Fritter-like (in terms of national numbers), I’d say. And all reports have it that even young evangelicals are not making the old list their new list.

"MarcM's video is a perfect illustration of the script that the left and the MSM have already written for Jindal--they had one ready for him, just as they did for Palin, just in case. Exactly a week after he becomes the nominee, newspapers, magazines, TVs will be saturated with stories along the lines of "Jindal is a know-nothing kook, a pathetic product of GOP's inept attempt at identity politics, bla, bla, bla," and uncourageous MSM conservatives will quickly accept the script."

Have to call BS here. People may disagree with Jindal, but he sounds as though he has seriously studied and thought about the issues. He has put in the hard work. That is one of the things which is most insulting about Palin. Hard work used to be valued by conservatives. Palin is just lazy. If she was initially contacted months ago, she had time to start prepping and she did not.

Steve

Rod, I laughed at your line "If you're a politician seeking national office, and you can't handle Katie Couric, you're really way, way out of your league."

Prior to the Palin interviews I'd always found Couric to be more of a lap dog than attack dog. If there was an MSM plot, it must have been to gum Palin to death.

A lot of you are fantaszing if you think Jindal or Huckabee would not have been savaged (as Palin's been) had either been McCain's nominee this year.

Jindal: They've would have gone after his faith experiences; his actions as Gov. re; the death penalty; his support for a chemical castration law for sex offenders; etc.; etc.; etc. They would have sent teams of reporters to snoop around Baton Rouge and misconstrue the living daylights out of every part of the man's public record and private life.

Huckabee: Dittos to most everything said of Jindal. Add to that: the ethics questions; the "wedding registry" he and his wife posted when they left office; the goofy sons. We can be certain that the Clintons and their Arkansas cronies have a filing cabinet full of "dirt" on this guy that B.O.'s campaign operatives would have eventually managed to get their creepy hands on.

What's been done to Palin is what would have been done to Jindal or Huckabee had they been McCain's VP choice. Moreover, if either Jindal or Huckabee are on a ticket in 2012, the savaging of either will simply be delayed by four years.

The MSM media are determined to make this election about the "transformational" nature of Obama's election and the "post-racial" society his rise is meant to signify. Add to that the financial crisis and B.O.'s breaking his promise on campaign finance ... and it is hard to see how McCain's selection of Palin can be blamed for the current situation he and the Republicans are in.

Oh, and let's not have any illusions about what the MSM and their complicit "conservative" detractors (aka Andrew Sullivan, the Walter Winchell of 21st Century journalism) will do with Jindal's infamous exorcism moment.

Sullivan will have a field day tarring Jindal with the same "Christianist" brush he painted Palin with, and who can wait for Sullivan's "Odd Lies of Bobby Jindal" series, in which he parses Jindal's every word, lifts whole sentences out of context and makes up his own trail of "odd lies" along the way?

Brooks will wring his hands about all the snooty email he's getting from fellow New Englanders, who think Jindal is a little too Southern-fried-jumbalaya-crazy-Jesus freak for their tastes. Brooks will sort of agree with this hate mail, but will be too shy to say it outright. He'll continue to write meandering columns about "American greatness conservatism" -- which will seem increasingly hollow as America sinks and shrinks into bankrupt torpor.

Buckley will pen a column (glasses in teeth, no doubt) bemoaning Jindal's Southern temperament, and fondly remembering the time his father waxed eloquent about the laziness of the Asian subcontinent.

City Journal will wonder at the anti-intellectualism of picking a Louisiana first-term governor.

Peggy Noonan will pen more columns with lots of ponderous pauses, commas, and sentence fragments and dollops and dollops of faux patriotism -- while she whispers expletive about Jindal into live microphones on various 24-hour news channels.

But none of us will care by that point. America will be a very different, far less kind, much more hostile place to live. The "plenty of rich people to tax" will be poor. The middle class, no longer quite so middle, will be boiling with resentment under various official and unofficial speech intimidation tactics they've been subjected to, as well as an increasingly onerous tax burden. The entitlements bomb will be exploding. Islamofascism will be muscularly resurgent.

And these "conservative" voices will be completely irrelevant.

Hucklebarry/Jindhal? The idea is to make people vote for your party, not make them laugh themselves to death!

My absolute thus far favorite ROD DREHER line this year:

"If you're a politician seeking national office, and you can't handle Katie Couric, you're really way, way out of your league."

Rod will concur that Aaron Neville had it right when he sang, "Tell It Like It Is".......

There's an interesting WSJ opinion bit on Palin.

Reflects some of my thoughts well.

The wonderful post by Houghton being hailed as "blog-worthy":

"But none of us will care by that point. America will be a very different, far less kind, much more hostile place to live. The "plenty of rich people to tax" will be poor. The middle class, no longer quite so middle, will be boiling with resentment under various official and unofficial speech intimidation tactics they've been subjected to, as well as an increasingly onerous tax burden. The entitlements bomb will be exploding. Islamofascism will be muscularly resurgent."

I think Obama is doing so well because you are describing the general impression most Americans have RIGHT NOW after 8 years of Bush expanding government, cutting taxes on the wealthy while trying to conduct 2 wars (one of them illegal), shredding the Constitution, spying on citizens, intimidating dissenters, limiting rights -- how is it that a majority can see this, yet the hard right-wing remain so blind?

Doesn't matter. A vast swath of "anti-American" Americans are about to have their say after 8 years of oppression and deception. It must suck to be on the wrong side of this tidal wave.