The unstable Sarah Palin

I think Rich Lowry over at NRO has the right idea:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Nzc0MzY3MWRjMjE1OTE0NmI1ZjYzYzQwMWY1ZTE5Njk=#more

Sarah Palin’s words served only to throw a tissue of rationalization over a calculated choice made in her personal self-interest. In all likelihood, Palin is going to embrace her political celebrity with gusto, freed from the burdens of the geographic isolation of the Alaska governorship and its (relative to national politics) petty distractions. Her decision wasn’t particularly public-spirited, but neither was it crazy. She has seen her opportunities, and she’s going to take them.

Sort of like the words to the old song - How ya ginna keep em back on the farm after they've seen Paree?

Palin could remain as governor - facing an increasingly hostile legislature and the budget problems typical of the times and all the other tough things about governance- or she can go to the lower 48 - among her adoring fans - make money and garner adulation. Clear which she prefers.

Like Sanford, she is another one of those people we should ignore and move on to things that really matter.

"You give both Lowry and Palin too much credit for planning and discernment."

Isn't Lowry the guy who said he saw starbursts when Palin winked at the audience during the debate?

Classic example of why traditional responses to family crises aren't always the best ones.

In that the Palin's ditched the traditional preventitive of not allowing their daughter to go out unchaperoned, let alone with some trailer trash like Johnston, in the first place, that would be correct.

K Street,

Even Johnny Pod can get one right every now and again. Do you really have an argument against what the man has said, or are you just going to shoot the messenger?

How come we don't hear about Al Gore's son or Biden's daughter? Why does Sarah Palin's family reflect upon her and their family doesn't reflect of them?

While we are at it, why are we so focused on someone who lost the vice presidency, when the guy who won the vice presidency had to be corrected TWICE by his boss yesterday. Once on the economy and once on giving isreal a green light to attack Iran!!!

btw Rod, you deleted my previous post? Is there a reason why?

...yet now it's a conservative writer who explicitly makes the unfounded argument that Palin should be excluded from high office because she isn't of the right sort of people.

No, he didn't say that. He said her family life is unstable, and it is. His point is that she should not seek higher office until her kids have settled down, maybe ten years down the road. That's common sense, and it's advice that would have served Palin well last August, if she'd even have been willing to listen.

Palin simply lacks, in spades, what virtually all neo-conservatives lack these days. Gravitas, accomplishment, an education in the broadest sense, including travel and experience of foreign cultures. The ability to engage complexity in any issue or argument. An agenda that speaks to any issue beyond abortion, homophobia, reactionary militarism or the paranoia of the black helicopter crowd.

I'm no fan of Sarah Palin. That said, who in world gives a mosquito fart about anything a self-important weasel named Podhoretz says about anything? The man has been proven wrong about every policy stance he's taken since Bush's first administration, first and foremost being his cheerleading for perpetual war in southwest Asia.

He said her family life is unstable, and it is. His point is that she should not seek higher office until her kids have settled down, maybe ten years down the road.

If that was his point, he has an odd way of supporting it. Even if Bristol and Levi had enjoyed a traditional courtship and were 5 years older than they actually are, Levi's mother could have been arrested for drug possession. If he wants to argue that it was irresponsible for the mother of a four month old special needs child, a 17 year old pregnant daughter, and two other kids at home to say yes to John McCain, he should make that argument. But the issue with Mrs. Johnston just seems like a Roger Clinton/Billy Carter type issue that would have been embarrassing but not at all disqualifying.

How does it go? Something like "Blessed are those who believe though they have not seen"? So we who inspite of everything still like and admire the lady must be very blessed indeed. Until things clarify all we can do is be stoic, smile and console ourselves with the reflection that for somebody so dead and over hill as Sarah Palin they're sure talking about her an awful lot.

Re: One reason to be oddly grateful for the loss of John McCain in November is the question of what it would have been like to have Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin get married, and then have the Vice President's machetenesteh (the great Yiddish word for "my child's mother in law") busted for running a meth lab drugs, as Levi's mother was.

While I am not a Sarah Palin fan, I do think it's unfair to criticize people for the misdeeds of their inlaws, or even their blood kin with the possible exception of spouses and minor childen. I have a family of cousins who practically have a jail wing named after them in Pinellas Co Florida, with misdeeds ranging from domestic violence to burglary to drug selling. If I ever ran for public office I should hate to have to answer for their crimes.
And I wish we'd give Ms Palin a rest now. It's almost as if Rod's blog has caught Palinitis from Andrew Sullivan's, whom I cannot stand reading when he gets in one of his obsessive modes.

John, I agree with you. There are many, MANY things that make me shudder at the thought of Sarah Palin ever getting close to the presidency, but her personal life/family is not one of them. It seems a little unfair (and myopic) to claim that Levi's mum, or Bristol's goings-on, would impede Palin from doing good work as a politician. More likely obstacles are those we've all already gone through ad nauseum: inability to articulate her thoughts, narcissism, deceit, obsession with the media, seeming lack of interest in the real complexities of just about any and every important issue that faces our country today.

No, Maeb, I'm just wondering why so many people care so much about the antics of the soon-to-be former Governor of Alaska, and so little about what the President has been up to in Russia. Tis a puzzlement, so to speak.

Re-reading this thread above: My first thought:

And yet only yesterday Rod diagramed how Sarah Palin may, by default, become the GOP's 'social conservative' standard bearer. Which begs the question...now as when when I read that earlier thread...what kind of hybrid ideological dinosaur are you trying to clone here? If outgoing Governor Palin is at this point the great hope, it's highly questionable if the 'cause' can be, at this point, clearly drawn for many beyond the narrowing base.

Erin: "No, Maeb, I'm just wondering why so many people care so much about the antics of the soon-to-be former Governor of Alaska, and so little about what the President has been up to in Russia. Tis a puzzlement, so to speak."

Maybe you should ask Rod. After all, Erin, he is the one who started this thread.

Erin,

Well, I actually do find the whole Sarah Palin affair rather intriguing. She seems like a character sprung directly from the mind of Jonathan Franzen. I honestly can't wait to find out what La Palin's next media drop will be. And it seems to have SOMEWHAT more import to current affairs of our country than Michael Jackson's memorial service does. I don't have a great attention span so I have to chose my media spectacles wisely.

As for your assessment about what's going on with the Obamas…wow! That is just, really truly wacky to me. The newspapers this morning talked about Obama and Putin reaching a disarmament agreement, and the afternoon news included bits about the positive reception he's had from Russians--both of which I took to be rather good news; no one I know thinks the health care issue will be easy or perfectly resolvable, but everyone I've spoken to is darn glad that Obama (and the Republicans and Democrats in the senate) are trying to do something about it; I have NEVER heard the Obamas criticized for going out to dinner together (I even check fox news every once and a while--world net daily not so much) and, frankly, that particular criticism seems totally insane to me, coming from ANYONE (should they NOT patronize American businesses? Should they stay home every night and spend more of our taxes on the White House cook, instead?); and, finally, yeah, Joe Biden puts his foot in his mouth at every opportunity--but didn't we already know that, like, five years ago?

Erin, just this afternoon there were indications in both the NYTimes and on NPR that the administration was making headway with hospitals in negotiating Medicare/Medicaid prices to help pay for health care reform. what paper are you reading?

Having your kid's potential mother-in-law get busted for drugs certainly isn't an ideal situation. But Algore's own kid (not his mother-in-law) apparently has many problems that have been played down. But harping on his problems bigtime like Palin's would not fit the MSM agenda. It's only okay to magnify republican candidate's problems, from what we've observed. Democrat kids---off limits. 14-year-old Republican daughters are fair game for rape jokes. It's apparently also okay to do SNL skits accusing their father of "doing those daughters". Why? Because they are republican. Double standard, anyone?

Well, let's see, RSG. Here are a few of my sources:

online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090707-715907.html

www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlMpJGn28kqCcgU-aGcYE_ZHW-ywD999TQTG1

washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Public-opinion-may-doom-Dems_-health-benefits-tax-7937674-50159057.html

I could find more if you need me to; the point is that the health care debate isn't smooth sailing--politicians on both sides of the aisle have expressed doubts about meeting their present self-imposed deadline, and the degree to which Americans on both sides of politics strongly dislike the "tax employer-provided health care to pay for universal coverage" proposal, a key provision in the Obama plan, seems to have taken some members of Congress completely by surprise, and yet this proposal is one that Obama so far seems unwilling to relinquish. Could end up being a deal-breaker, and not just on the Republican side.

So while I don't lay awake nights worrying that Sarah Palin might be planning to give a speech somewhere, I do worry about what's really going to happen in the aftermath of a health care bill once Congress passes one and Obama signs it. If employer-provided health care is taxable income under the new plan, then it's reasonable to expect that a significant number of those currently receiving employer-provided health care are going to sign up for the government plan instead--why should they be taxed for their health care when others aren't? But if tons of people sign up for the government plan, then a) there won't be enough tax revenue to pay for it and b) the costs could be a lot more than currently projected, leaving us with an expensive national health care program and no discernible way to pay for it.

But since this is all very much off-topic for this thread, I'll just conclude by pointing out that the same USA Today/Gallup Poll Ken mentions shows that 54% of all registered voters asked were either not too likely or not at all likely to vote for Palin. I suspect the continued interest in her at this point is simply the suspicion--or hope, if you're Andrew Sullivan--that we're watching yet another celebrity train wreck, and I stopped finding those amusing a long time ago.

Meanwhile, in Russia, President Barack Obama skipped out on an opportunity to dine with Russian leaders to have dinner with Michelle and the kids instead, has seemed tired and has mispronounced names, said he met his wife in school instead of at the law firm, and gave the wrong age for one of his daughters, as reported by that shamelessly right-wing rag known as the "New York Times."

Yep, people tolerate small mistakes. When those mistakes are exceptions rather than the rule, people look past them. When the mistakes become the rule, you're in trouble.

The article also shows something about the supposed MSM bias against Palin. You learned of Obama's mistakes from the NYT.

Michele, I remember the Clinton affair, no pun intended. Most Democrats wanted him to stay in office (I'm one who didn't), but few thought his dalliance was no big deal.

But what does this have to do the religious right's refusal to criticize Palin? I don't buy the idea that her critics are upset that she busted up the Alaskan political establishment: that was her appeal in the first place. There are more than enough reasons to oppose her.

Erin, I didn't say the health care was smooth sailing. The discussion seemed to be about whether he was making progress. And he's made some progress, whether you agree with it or not.

Obama seemed to be tired--making obvious verbal mistakes. So maybe it was truly responsible for him to have dinner with his wife and kids, recharging the batteries before the G-8, which is quite important, no?

Public defender's right. This is not about verbal mistakes and slip-ups on one occasion but a pattern of behavior by Sarah Palin day in and day out. She's not qualified to be president. Period.

The thing about Clinton was not about the sex. It was about the perjury. And that's a crime. Bill got what he deserved.

Ken July 8, 2009 10:03 AM How is Obama a serpent exactly?

Charlie Chan say: "Serpent speak with forked tongue."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-broken/

(However, it's too early to tell if he will break most of his promises, or only some of them; but some of the ones he's broken are/were important ones.)

Someone please direct me to why Palin is unintelligent and nasty? I read a little here and there and for the most part all I get is MSM stating she is the worst person ever and then Fox News stating she is the coming of Christ. Someone please tell me where to find the real Palin. From what I have seen, she is a honest person but maybe I read Brietbart and Drudge too much.

Palin is a clown and has no business being part of any government with her kooky, ignorant and racist views. It's still blows my mind that she was ever even asked to run for VP. McCain must have been smoking Levi's mom's crack!