What’s the difference between between Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin?
Wait for it…
Lipstick!
The more I see and hear from her the more I lean towards the seaward. Why would anyone vote for the Republican candidate because of her?
Because they’d like to bend her over and fuuuuuuiiiiiind out if she likes the idea of a stimulus package aimed at her tapir constituents.
I have a feeling Palin’s 15 minutes of fame are going to be over in November.
Yep. She’ll sink into obscurity as quickly as that Mondale running mate. What was her name?
Camille Paglia sure has the hots for her. Not that that means much.
Gack. “Admiring not only her always shapely and syncopated syllables”? Sublimating much there, Camille?
I’d say Palin was more Cleopatra than Madonna.
Anyone who would vote Sarah Palin for President deserves the resulting idiocracy.
Dear Sara Palin,
I heard you were considering a 2012 run. I have one thing to say:
And Alaska’s, for that matter!
As she says in her article, Paglia is pretty anti-mainstream feminism. I knew she would like Palin the second I saw her convention speech. Paglia can be pretty out there at times, but I find myself agreeing with her views on feminism more than the Steinem model.
It’s like Camille Paglia goes out of her way to be infuriatingly wrong about most things related to politics. And yet I still swoon like a schoolboy when I see her Salon caricature on my screen…
As for Palin. Man. The “she’s the next Reagan” crowd has caustically split into two divisive groups: the “she’s still the next Reagan” camp, and the “please please please just stop talking” camp.
The next Reagan. Seriously, that’s what people were saying the week she was announced. I’ll just let that settle in for a minute.
Fixed.
And she also says (as she’s said in every single article she’s ever written) that Madonna in the late 80s early 90s represents all that third wave feminism should be aspiring to. To quote a man wiser than myself, “NOW THAT DON’T NECESSARILY MAKE IT FUCKING SO!”
Seriously. I read everything she writes and I agree, her praise of Palin was predictable. Her constant Steinem/Standard Feminist bashing is irrelevant to me because I live in a post-feminist world where knee-jerk feminism is virtually non-existant. But as usual Paglia is abroad in search of monsters to destroy (or prop up), and she instinctively props up a muppet because she can shape this muppet’s life story into one that she imagines fits her ideal model of feminism. Again, it’s nice to imagine that Palin represents some sort of apex of intelligence, life balance, and ideal feminist model, but that don’t necessarily make it fucking so.
It’s pretty early to predict Palin’s long-term political impact. Assuming McCain loses next month, she’ll go back to Alaska and have to face some serious questions about the trooper case and some other stuff. Who knows how Alaskans will feel about her come re-election time.
And recent history does not suggest that failed VP choices have much of a chance of ever becoming their party nominee, let alone actually winning the presidency.
As Paul Keating said of John Hewson, “Souffle doesn’t rise twice”.
The next Reagan. Seriously, that’s what people were saying the week she was announced. I’ll just let that settle in for a minute.
People commented back in the day that Reagan wasn’t very bright, that he had no original thoughts and could only read what was placed in front of him, etc.
He looks pretty good next to Palin, though.
Maybe our standards for what is a “dumb” politician are changing as the years go by.
Vice Presidential candidate in 2028: “Buh wuh gumble gumble spuzz. Voop voop wah wah diddly dee dingle. Yawa yawa zoo.”
Commentator A: “I tell you, he’s just not that bright.”
Commentator B: “I dunno, I thought he was surprisingly articulate.”
Reagan wasn’t bright, but a lot of what politicians do doesn’t require intelligence. I’d argue he got a lot of broad-stroke stuff right, or if not right at least consistent with his ideology, but because he was incapable of understanding the details he fucked up shit left and right, was unable to keep staffers from fighting, ran up a massive deficit by accident, etc. He also had years and years of experience in politics.
By contrast, Palin can’t even get the broad stroke view of stuff right.
Hey guys, this thing’s not in the bag yet. Let’s not talk about Palin 2012. There’s still a reasonable chance (should something unexpected happen, and we have 4 weeks to go) that it could be re-elect McCain 2012. If Gore and Kerry taught us anything, it’s that it’s not over till it’s over. (And even then, we usually have to hold our breathe to let the courts sort it all out.) So let’s keep the eye on the prize and not worry about anything else right now, capiche?
I don’t think Reagan and Palin are all that much alike.
I don’t want to do all the research now, but I think Reagan was active first with the union in the 50s, then in California state politics in the 60s and early 70s, and then on the national stage. I think he had a pretty fully formed political world view that was, IMO, the right one for the time (i.e. shrink government in general, but beef up the military and stand up against the Soviets). He was a great communicator, and I believe he wrote a lot of his own speeches and columns in the 70s. I think I’ve read one or two and they were pretty good.
(Sorry for the “I thinks” and “I believes” - I don’t feel like doing a major research project right now to check on my vague recollections of things I’ve read/seen.)
Reagan was probably slowing down intellectually during the time he was in office, but he had a large reserve of charisma, experience, and ideas to call upon.
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I think it’s likely that McCain/Palin will lose, and if they do, it’s likely that Palin will fade from the scene. Probably not as abruptly as Ferraro or Quayle, but still…
I actually think that with a little more ‘time in the oven’, Palin might have made a stronger national figure.
If the unlikely happens and McCain/Palin win, then Palin has time to broaden her appeal, and likely has a stronger national political future (beyond the Vice Presidency).
I think Alan Moore wrote a story like this once.
The two thousand six hundred and fifty six active members of QuarterToThree are the most important human beings on the planet because, as Woolen Horde says, our collective concentration on the Obama victory is going to make it so. And if we lose that concentration? Obama loses!
