The Guys Doth Protest Too Much
Kristol at the Washington Post defends Palin against the media and the GOP establishment. It’s faint praise, but far from damning. Nothing like an establishment elite explaining to the others that they don’t own this thing, the people do.
I like Sarah Palin (though I don’t know her well). I respect her (though I’m aware of some of her limitations). I wish her well (though I’m not convinced she should be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee).
I am convinced, though, that she should have a chance to compete and make her case. In this, I seem to differ from many of my friends in the mainstream media and the Republican establishment. They tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they so scared of?
It’s silly to claim Palin has no chance to win the nomination or the presidency. The fact is, despite a rough campaign in 2008, Palin has been (for what it’s worth at this stage) a co-front-runner in polls of GOP primary voters for 2012, along with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. In a recent Pew survey, she had the strongest favorable-unfavorable numbers of the likely candidates among Republicans.
…
She’ll be able to make the case effectively that she should be the nominee, or she won’t.
… But the panic among mainstream media commentators and the GOP establishment suggests real worry that if she does, she might pull off an upset. Why else the vehement assertions that she’s clearly made a terrible mistake? Why else the categorical insistence that her political career is finished? Aren’t they all protesting too much?
…
For psychological and sociological reasons too deep for me to grasp, a good chunk of elite America hates Sarah Palin and what they’ve decided she stands for. But if she wears their scorn as a badge of honor, comports herself with good cheer and personal dignity, studies up on national issues and takes the lead in selected debates on behalf of conservative principles against Obama administration policies, she has a shot.
If she’s as foolish, erratic and even nutty as her critics claim, then of course she’ll fail. If she performs well, she may succeed. If you have an anti-mainstream-media and anti-GOP-establishment bone in your body, it’s hard not to root for her at least a bit.
Kristol compares Palin favorably to Obama in ‘05 and Bush in the late ’90s. I’d just add, if she doesn’t have the adoration of the media, what does she have that Obama didn’t have back then? A successful governorship, national name recognition and a national base, and something Obama has yet to fully experience, a trip through the national wringer throughout which she held her own.
Podhoretz at Commentary comes to Palin’s defense from bizarrely hypocritical sexist partisanship … not to be confused with the the obsessive crazy kind exercised by Andrew Sullivan … but concludes the only way she gets her house gets clean is when the nest is empty.
Ezra Klein blogging at the Washington Post gets literal on Kristol, indignantly demands to know who is trying to bar Palin from running. That’s what you get when you hire 25 year olds to do your deep thinking.
Heading farther down market, here’s Sadly No! with a great example of lefty commentary. Don’t worry, easy pictoral, no heavy reading, deep thot or logic required.
OK, climbing out of that, here’s The Other McCain at HotAir:
Just because you don’t know what Sarah Palin is doing doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.
Big, fat commentary and largely newsless news roundup at Memeorandum. Because she’s still keeping everyone guessing. And we’re out with some fun compliments of Surber: A Palin Critic Whines.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:58 am on Tuesday, July 7, 2009
6 Responses to “The Guys Doth Protest Too Much”
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July 7th, 2009 at 9:10 am
One of the strongest appeals of conservatism is its down-to-earth, common sense simplicity. Take the economy, for example. It is embarrassingly obvious that the problem of soaring deficits cannot be solved by spending MORE money. Fiscal discipline is a conservative tenet, true, but it is also a simple reality for most people. Hence the outrage by Americans who see the elites in D.C. — including Republicans, shame on them– voting for vast expansions of public debt (and spending for things that benefit no one except politicians and their cronies).
And here is the great appeal of Sarah Palin. Like most of us, she does not need an Ivy League education to see common sense solutions staring her in the face. Stop the spending. Cut waste. Reduce government. Eliminate corruption. She has done more than just talk about it, she has done it as a governor. So she has some credibility when she speaks. Americans are fed up with “nuance” and politically correct excuses for what seems like obvious insanity. If Palin can find a way to shun the handlers and image makers and just advocate the common sense solutions that most of us know are there, she will have no lack of support. The GOP elite need to wake up from their D.C. stupor or get out of the way.
July 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am
“If you have an anti-mainstream-media and anti-GOP-establishment bone in your body, it’s hard not to root for her at least a bit.”
I don’t always agree with Mr. Kristol, but I’d say he’s bang on with this. I believe that there’s a substantial “None of the Above” vote for whom poking both the GOP leadership and the Punditry in the eye is a priority.
Every report I saw of her speech last Friday was edited with sufficient art that they all supported the notion that her decision was irrational. Reading a transcript showed that to be misleading. It was an honest, straightforward, logical response to the real world situation, which of course would disqualify her continued role in Federal politics in many peoples’ eyes.
She’s still on my short list.
July 7th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
As I said before in my comment to the thread about renaming Reagan airport, we, as Americans, should not base our politics on heroes. Our country, was founded on a proposition, not on a person. Our politics should be about ideas not personalities.
Let the liberals search for their anointed, the Won, who is the embodiment of their desire. Let them wake in the morning disillusioned, bitter, and wondering who is the rube*.
“Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish.”**
Our standard must be Our Country, Our Constitution, and the American people.
*If you have to ask who the rube is …
**Ps 146:3-4
July 7th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
“Let us now praise famous men and our fathers who begat us.”
Ecclesiasticus 44:1-15
July 7th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Sorry for the truncated post…got 44:1 in above. To keep it crisp, I’ll just add 44:9-10:
“9 And some there be, which have no memorial;
who are perished, as though they
had never been, and are become as though
they had never been born;
and their children after them.
10 But these were merciful men,
whose righteousness hath not been forgotten.”
July 8th, 2009 at 4:10 am
It seems that she had the only spine in the entire campaign. When her erstwhile boss started trashing her, I realized that she struck the conservative note that he had been trying to drown out.