3401

There’s more profit in creating strife than peace for news channels.

3402

I have a friend who believes that Palin would be seen completely different if she had not sat down to be interviewed by Katie Couric. He believes that she would have a much different image among Americans if she had passed on the chance to be on CBS.

Personally I think it wouldn’t have made a difference, but I’m curious if anyone sees anything to his belief.

3403

Her narrative would have gone the same way regardless. If it wasn’t Couric, it would have been some other terrible performance.

3404

At minimum you would need to extend that to “if she had never allowed herself to be interviewed for anything except for softball interviews.” If she hadn’t messed up with Couric, she would have messed up with someone else. I do think that interview was particularly devastating. Also to be frank, I think the fact that Couric was a female made it more damaging to Palin, or at least made it harder for Palin to spin it. I’m sure the SNL replay of it (I hesitate to say spoof of it, since many of the lines were originally Sarah’s) didn’t help either, although I suspect SNL’s audience already skews left, and I’m not sure how far their reach is – probably more than Jon Stewart, but still not that big these days.

3405

Palin simply, literally can’t survive an actual interview on any subjects outside of her comfort zone (some domestic issues, snarky comments about liberals, waxing poetic about family values). She doesn’t have the knowledge required to actually extemporize as opposed to following a script.

This is why on the few occasions she’s knocked off her script she sounds so creepily robotic; it’s because she starts conjugating script fragments she remembers almost at random.

It happens even on ‘friendly’ media outlets. I happened to flip to Bill O’Reilly the other night while he was interviewing Palin yet again, and he asked Palin, jokingly, if a liberal woman could be a “Mama Grizzly”, one of her book’s tropes for honest god-fearing women taking back their country or some such. Palin just stared into the camera for a very uncomfortable, almost unblinking 5 seconds, and then, I shit you not, said that liberals could be “mama grizzlies” as long as they were conservative.

The fact that someone who quite literally cannot stand up to even the most cursory of unbiased media scrutiny is the front runner for the Republican nomination should tell you all you need to know about the state of our political system.

3406

I’m guessing your friend is a fan of Palin’s?

3407

I just hope she seriously tries to run. I don’t think she’ll ever make it to the election, but the primaries would be a hell of a lot of fun. Gingrich, Santorum and Romney would tear her apart like a pack of feral dogs. Does she have any idea of just how much her former allies would destroy her? And is Fox really going to stand by her? Last I checked, half the people who’re major contenders for the '12 GOP ticket get paychecks from Fox for FNC commentary. As much as Fox loves to trot around Palin as this by-golly real American, when it’s a choice between her or someone with an actual political career like Gingrich, do they really have a vested interest in sticking with her? It’s going to be the goodest of good times.

3408

My conservative father this weekend, “Ha, Obama didn’t turn out like you’d hoped, did he?”

My response, “What, you mean not being McCain and Palin? He’s doing great.”

H.

3409

Great response! Even people who aren’t so hot for Obama right now must remember that the old dude that made fighting the repeal DADT his main priority could have been leader of the free world.

And Palin would be in the same position she is today even without the “Gotcha journalism”. A ex-governer/reality TV star that dreams too big.

3410

I think Palin is publicly contemplating a run at the Presidency to keep her name front and centre so that she can continue to make money from public appearances.

3411

Was just about to point this out. I think she knows she won’t get anywhere politically so she’s just taking her gravy train as far as it can go.

What would you do?

Risk your carrier by entering an impossibly difficult challenge where the reward is an insane amount of responsibility and tough decisions

OR…

Milk the public for all their worth and live comfortably on your terms.

3412

Given that she resigned from a much easier job halfway through her term in order to cash in, I think your analysis is dead on. She’s not interested in power or responsibility, what she wants is money and popularity.

3413

It’s arguable that Palin resigned as Alaska governor not because “it was too hard” but (a) because being the governor of a state removed from the rest of the US geographically isn’t helpful to building a national campaign and (b) because she was under investigation for multiple ethics violations.

She actually cited (b) when she stepped down, in her usual incoherent and passive-aggressive fashion.

And yes, the CAPS are in THE official TRANSCRIPT.

3414

Palin’s campaign went off the rails when she was unable to give a coherent answer to Couric’s tough, hard-hitting question, “What newspapers and magazines do you read?” How could any candidate have been expected to hold up against that kind of hardball “gotcha!” question from a member of the biased liberal lamestream media?

3415

The ironic thing is that the vast majority of Americans don’t actually read newspapers and news magazines, and Palin casts herself as the “hockey mom” avatar of the average illiterate American.

It’s pretty obvious she (a) immediately thought of the Anchorage newspaper which is probably the only paper she reads, (b) quickly realized that would make her look ‘provincial’, © went hyper-defensive, (d) sounded like a retard.

3416

I just can’t believe that Palin could win the Republican nomination. I have to believe that there are enough sane Republicans to prevent that, and they’ll work together for a common good and elect anyone else. Even if it means an easy Obama victory, what it would mean about the state of the country would be too depressing to ponder.

3417

The Republican primaries make it uniquely likely she could pull it off. Take a look at the 2008 primaries, and note all the ones that are winner-take-all (the Democrats have none). That’s how McCain managed to do it in 2008 even though no one was particularly happy with him. Romney, Huckabee, and also-rans won various places here and there, but McCain won the winner-take-all ones and then ran away with it.

I can’t even come up with odds on her getting it. She has a crazy obsessed base of support like Ron Paul, but it’s much bigger than Ron Paul’s, and she’s broadly kind-of-sort-of popular with the wingnut base so the other candidates need some serious stones to attack her. It’s entirely possible she’ll somehow coast through getting 35/30/30/etc in state after state and winning it.

3418

Actually I’ve heard the exact opposite theory: the newspapers she reads are the newspapers one would read to find out what’s really going on in the world – i.e., the New York Times and perhaps the Washington Post – and that she realized that if she admitted to reading liberal media she would lose points with her base so she punted on the question.

3419

Well I heard she only reads in Chinese!

3420

For the good of the country, I hope she doesn’t get the nomination. Obama deserves some real competition.

For the good of my personal sense of schadenfreude, I hope she does get the nomination, because it would exacerbate the dysfunction of the wingnut arm of the Republican party, further cementing the political isolation of that entire anti-intellectual reactionary ill-informed bunch of delusional menaces to democracy.

It’ll be interesting to see. Though if I were betting, I would bet against her even entering the race, because I suspect she will wind up being fundamentally too lazy to go through with it. Spinning up a whole campaign is a lot more work than getting picked out of the blue as VP candidate three months before the election.