Another Palin Apostate
For some time now–and increasingly over the past week or two–my discomfort with Palin has been increasing. I know that by writing this, some conservatives will think me treacherous, but I have to say it: Palin is not ready to be Vice President, let alone President, and the McCain camp was wrong to pick her.
I was wrong. From my very light vetting of her, I came away with the belief that she was an extremely savvy politician–must have been, given her meteoric rise in Alaska. I liked her reformist image. I liked that she’d given her own party hell in Alaska. I liked her because she seemed smart, witty, charming, and she was (let’s face it) an attractive candidate in more ways than one. Her portfolio was greatly assisted by her beauty. The GOP, it seemed, needed someone like Palin.
On that front, I was right. The GOP did need someone like Palin. Just not Palin. Not someone this naive about global affairs.
And I’m not alone. Kathleen Parker writes:
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there…
And there are more. The Palin choice that so wowed and wooed the Conservative base is starting to meet with some doubt, regret, and flat out animosity.
She is not as smart or disciplined as Barack Obama. If she were, she would sound better than she does at this point. And the McCain team has done absolutely nothing to defuse these problems — nor, to be honest, has Palin herself apparently learned the first thing about successfully finessing questions she is not ready to handle.
Conservative columnist Rod Dreher has this to say:
Palin is mediocre, again, regurgitating talking points mechanically, not thinking. Palin’s just babbling. She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero….
…I am well and truly embarrassed for her. I think she’s a good woman who might well be a great governor of Alaska. But good grief, just watch this train wreck.
David Brooks chimes in:
Sarah Palin has many virtues. If you wanted someone to destroy a corrupt establishment, she’d be your woman. But the constructive act of governance is another matter. She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.
And there are more. George Will, and David Frum, who writes “So this is the future of the Republican party you are looking at: a future in which national security has bumped down the list of priorities behind abortion politics, gender politics, and energy politics.”
Which is where I come in.
This is not the vision of the Republican Party I care to see. I am not a social issues voter. I am more annoyed than anything that we have to have this abortion debate every four years. Gay marriage should be State politics, not national politics. Can we talk economics and security please? These, to me, are relevant issues and especially for this race. I want to know who the best candidate for the economy will be–and after these past few weeks, the financial meltdown, and so forth, I’m rather inclined to not trust either party, and to not subscribe wholly to the idea of free market at all costs with no real oversight, no true fiscal conservatism, nothing. McCain will no doubt operate more like a Democrat than a Republican in many of his economic policies, except he will be somewhat watered down by his Party and advisers, giving us a half-baked economic policy at best.
And Palin? As far as I can tell her grasp of the economy is no better. She’s really a populist, who used higher taxes on oil companies to give payouts to Alaskans (no wonder her popularity there was high!) Not really the most conservative of moves, though…
Then there is national security. McCain is as strong as they come in this arena, and it was his strength here that made me like him as much as I did. He’s very savvy on foreign policy issues, and was quite on the mark with his support of the surge. He would make a good commander in chief.
But he could kick the bucket in a year, leaving us with commander in chief Sarah Palin.
I shudder at the thought. Even more than at the thought of Obama as head of the military, amazingly. I think Obama will follow a very Clintonian foreign policy, and I’m not against that. Clinton was every bit a liberal neocon with his interventionist policy in the Balkans, in Somalia, and in Iraq (sort of).
So I was wrong. I was just plain wrong about Palin. And so was McCain, though he can’t admit it now. Kathleen Parker said it best:
Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.
Do it for your country.
Just an example of Palin’s dissapointing foreign policy…
Sarah Palin is still very popular with the voting public. Relax! She is smart enough to do the job of VP!
ATTENTION REPUBLICANS:
RE: SARAH PALIN
Obviously there has been a HUGE mistake…..
Palin’s Dribble, Weasel Wording, Mush-Mush, Ass-Backwards speak Cleary demonstrates who carries the Down Syndrome trait in her family, because of this we (the democrats) will allow you to send her back to Wacky-silla without prejudice and select another candidate.
For this consideration the Republicans agree to sell Alaska to Russia (with Palin) and never mention the State of Alaska or her again.
The Democrats
Thank you so much for your bravery and honesty here. It is such a relief to hear conservatives acknowledging the painfully obvious but hard to admit: that Palin is a lovely, accomplished, inspiring woman in her own milieu, but an absolute disaster as a potential global leader and a flagrantly irresponsible choice on the part of McCain.
Thanks, Elissa. I agree. The more we know, the more we see just how irresponsible the choice really was. I just keep saying to myself, if McCain truly cares about American security, why did he pick Palin?
I agree Erik. I understand why people like Palin, and the Republican Party does need some new life within its leadership, but she has been a mess when it comes to her ability to put a clear and meaningful foreign policy forward. Watching her on these talk shows has been torture.
Maybe she will really bring it to the debate, but based on her past performances, I highly doubt it.
Having her on the ticket is a mistake.
Roland, absolutely. I must say…the McCain/Palin ticket is increasingly difficult to swallow. I thought McCain was terrible in the debate last night, too. I’ll write about this soon. He came across as smug, condescending, and immature. I get the impression he only believes half of what he says anymore. Who is this man?
Erik Ks last blog post..Another Palin Apostate
The elitist wing of the conservative movement has always been wary of us libertarians coming into the GOP. Sarah Palin is one of the top elected libertarian Republicans in the country, (along with Idaho’s Gov. Butch Otter, and Cong. Jeff Flake of AZ).
Of course, she’s going to make some conservatives nervous.
They are wary of her libertarian cultural views. This is the woman, after all, who famously fought back against social conservatives in Wasilla who wanted to run all of the bars and taverns out of town.
They even started a whisper campaign in Alaska during the 2006 primaries that Sarah wasn’t really a Republican, but rather a “closet libertarian.” She had attended a couple local Libertarian Party meetings seeking their support.
But what she loses from the social conservatives, she gains 10 times over in libertarian votes.
Figure, Libertarian Bob Barr was polling 6% nationwide in mid-summer. As high as 10% in New Hampshire. And post-Palin he’s now down to 1%.
Ever since Goldwater the eastern establishment Republicans have distrusted Western cowboy individualists in the GOP.
With Sarah Palin, the libertarian wing of the GOP has finally arrived. Of course, that’s going to make some other Republicans nervous.
Get over it Conservatives, THE LIBERTARIANS HAVE ARRIVED!!
Sara is merely a trophy pick. Hutchison would have been better.
Real Reason why McCain chose Palin : Sexist and condescending
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apdFC-vh6Ng
Also his poor record of voting against equal pay for women and opposing Equal Roles for Women in the Military should be the business of American women voters.
Real Reason why McCain running for President in his own words
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-GfRmfb274#
Eric Dondero, thanks for commenting here. First, let me say I admire your work and opinions. Second, one of the first things that attracted me to Palin was her libertarianism, which I mention above. However, this libertarianism seems actually outweighed in my mind by her social conservatism. How you can assume that she is somehow disapproved of by the soc-cons is beyond me.
The most damning factor, though, is her inability to grasp the important and dangerous foreign policy issues we face today. As a pro-defense libertarian, surely this must on some level concern you?
Frankly I see very little difference anymore between the Republicans and Democrats. The last eight years I have viewed with amusement the Wilsonian politics and now the FDR attempts by the Bush administration. There are those who like to call “W” Hitlerbush. I think he would be more suited to the moniker Busholini. Fascism is a socialist ideology, properly belonging on the left with communism and Marxist/Leninism. The only reason fascism is called a right wing movement is because it was to the right of Lenin and his followers wanted to discredit it. Frankly it has always been the extremes of Progressivism that pervade both parties, though each may have a different version of the agenda. The American Revolution was the impetus for the French Revolution, just as the Progressive movement heralded by T.R. Roosevelt and Wilson was the impetus for the Mussolini and Hitler. Enough said about that! Stalin’s another story altogether.
I do not excuse the Democrats, those wonderful Marxist/Leninist folks who gave us eugenics and the New Deal [don't forget Fannie was borne during FDRs terms in office just as Freddie was born during the Nixonian seventies, or did Dick Nixon inherit that from FDR's bum boy LBJ?] that helped prolong the Great Depression for ten years. After all who is the biggest Democratic supporter, Wall Street. Wall Street traders came up with this present mortgage scheme. Wall Street traders knew the economy was in trouble, yet proceeded with high risk/high yield returns for them anyway. Who gets stuck with the bill, why the taxpayer of course. I say no bailout. These clowns should be made to pay, and along with them the rich foreign investors who keep sticking it to you every which way but loose. I have a suggestion; institute a tax system such as Canada has. It is a unified tax where the province gets a percentage and the feds get a percentage. It doesn’t have to be as exorbitant as Canada’s but it may be something the US should look at.
Try eliminating personal income tax at certain income scale levels, or at least reduce it some for people under a certain income level. I know that big business pays the lion’s share of tax revenue. However, if you could cajole or convince big business it’s in their overall interest to rid the GDP’s dependence on foreign oil by conversion to some other form of viable energy source think of how that would affect the country. We wouldn’t need to beg for Islamic dollars. It would be America dictating the terms.
Of course any time you have a sustained armed conflict such as Iraq it always takes years for the economy to really solidify. It appears that throughout America’s history there has been one armed conflict after another, many of them deliberately engineered. You had WW1 which was an engineered war followed by a depression in 1907 [not forgetting the post civil war one]; the Great Depression in 1929 followed by WW2; the Korean War and the Viet Nam war. You had recessions in the 1970s and late 1980s to the early 1990s. I expect a major armed conflict within the next three to five years. In retrospect, it should have been Iran you invaded not Iraq, and you should have allowed the Israelis to eradicate the Syrians in the north and Hamas in the west. Of course, maybe it didn’t fit the engineered plans at the time. Just a few thoughts.
Bipartisan Politics or not it is time to Move to the side of the democrats. We cannot afford our nation to be headed down the same direction it is in now. It has been 8 long years and thankfully we will have some fresh new faces in the white house soon, However Palin is not fit for V.P. and McCain is a scary person to have running our great nation. I am neither a Marxist of Leninist but rather a REALIST! Don’t forget REAGONOMICS.