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Bennett on Palin Last night I was on my weekly international phone call to my ‘boss’ to discuss progress on various agreements, proposals and such of our small Wyoming aerospace company. Before signing off we got into a discussion on Sarah Palin’s background and future prospects. Jim suggested I read his article in the Telegraph. I might add we both agree that ‘win.lose or draw’, she is now a force to be reckoned with in the GOP and will probably make her own Presidential run in the next decade.
I expect many of you will find it of interest also.
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Sarah Palin represents a clear and present danger to the Democrats and the feminist left which is why there’s an all out assault being waged against her right now. So far it’s backfired spectacularly and her unflinching response at the convention has turned her into an almost instant cultural folk hero.
Win or lose in November, if she survives the next couple of months intact she almost certainly will become the leader of the conservative movement in the US and will represent a powerful alternative to the Gloria Steinam/Hillary Clinton brand of feminism.
“…if she survives the next couple of months intact she almost certainly will become the leader of the conservative movement in the US…”
How the hell? On what authority? Around the ‘net, I’ve seen people I respect talking about her being the “next Maggie Thatcher”, etc.
My respect for Thatcher is sharply attenuated because she couldn’t stay out of public office and keep a real job like the rest of us. Even so, I am not seeing this, at all. That little girl just doesn’t have enough ass behind her, and I’m not talking about her skirt. She doesn’t have half of Thatcher’s intellect, and nevermind her whole style. She hits me like a mall retail-worker who’s jumped-up way out of her league.
If what you say is true, then my country is at least as fucked as I ever thought.
Already read it, already blogged it.
The article makes it clear Ms Palin is not quite the small town hick her opponents try to make her out to be.
And you work for THAT Bennett!!!
Billy,
And Maggie was a grocers daughter from Grantham. Lets see how SP performs over the next four years. Like it or not, this pawn has been promoted, and there is now another queen on the board.
Yes. Jim and I and Rand Simberg (Transterrestrial Musings) have been entrepreneuring together for over a decade (and we go back a *lot* farther than that even).
Someday we might even make some money.
You are waxing eloquent in various places today CC;-)
The Left are in a frenzy over SP for VP, because to old school feminists, she may ne a woman, but like Maggie, was the wrong kind of woman.
I love their incoherent, despirate sneering rants about her family and guns N God. Because they are driving away middle America (especially women who’s lives are not a million miles from Sarah’s) in droves.
The wimmin really wanted America to become the Night of the Living Hillarys.
Swarms of them with clip boards and dressed in Orange Pant suits (see Mao) sticking their noses into everything a free born American likes doing for fun.
And stopping it.
They sneer that she is a Harper Valley Pta level entrant for the job.
Small town politics etc.
Well what they miss, and Bennetts article does not, is that the political minefield that has to be negotiated by a prospective politician, is just the same at local level, and takes the same skills as it does at a National one.
McCain has managed to give himself a real chance by the simple expedient of picking a real person not a Beltway drone, for VP.
We, the people, are fed up to the back teeth with those who have done nothing but Politics for a living telling us how to live.
Yes Mrs Palin, barring being found to be a serial killer,
is in for a big big future.
I liked this Camile Paglia article for various reasons:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/print.html
Governor Sarah Palin’s future (and a lot else) depends on winning in November.
I know leaving the Union is talked about in some circles (both in Alaska and in Texas), but I just do not think it is practical politics (although I have no philosophical objection to it – now there is no slavery issue).
The left would not be happy with any State leaving the Union – and the media would present any effort at secession as racism against a black President.
Also, in the case of Alaska, Russia would not be happy with the idea of bits of countries breaking away – especially as Putin and the United States would be friends again.
So it is win in November or bust.
Maggie might have been a Grocer’s Daughter from Grantham but she got a science degree from a rather good university at a time when that was pretty extraordinary a thing for a woman to do.
I don’t see Palin having anything like as much going on up top. Nor do I see the ability in her to have actually put together a presidential bid of her own.
At this stage, the election could go either way and neither side is acting in a particularly appealing way.
After reading what Paglia has to say, it really makes me wonder how many people will vote for Palin because, for the first time, they are seeing someone real on the presidential ballot.
In spite of having been on a newsfast since exiting from the republican executive committee in my county, I am actually reading the news now (since Palin’s nomination) and mildly excited about this election.
Daveon:
Sarah Palin has a good record as Governor of Alaska. A rather better record than Mrs Thatcher in her early years as Prime Minster (people forget that government spending and taxes greatly INCREASED after 1979 and their was no serious labour market reform till about 1983).
And Senator Biden has the third worst record as a Senator. He is such a wild spender and anti private enterprise man that he makes President Bush look like a fiscal conservative. Biden really would be “more of the same” and worse.
And who has the worst record of all in the Senate?
“The One” of course.
A “good record” eh? Ever the Rose Tint. The ability to decrease taxes (individual, not corporate) during the largest oil commodity boom in history doesn’t seem all that “good” to me. Nor am I impressed with the contrast over what she says about the Bridge to Nowhere and the actual record of events.
Based on what I’ve seen so far she seems to be a fairly nasty piece of work and a hypocrite to boot. Especially around the effectiveness of teaching abstinence only.
Now I’m not saying that’s any better than Obama – the lad has a too much of the Tony Blair’s about him. However, any comparison to Maggie is way off target.
Obama might not be ready to be president, but she certainly isn’t. The interesting thing would be whether or not she would be able to get the nomination on her own. I suspect not.
Daveon, your sources are showing. Here is a closer look at the bridge and on abstinence education, from that bastion of conservatives, the LA Times:
What you think from what you’ve seen so far suggests that you might be getting led by the nose. She has problems for sure, but don’t be gullible. Equating her libertarian merits with Obama’s is absolutely preposterous.
Midwesterner: The version of The Bridge in FactCheck and other sources has a slightly different spin on it. There seem to be more sources out there against her position than supporting it and, as with my chips, I often take articles in the NRO with a heft pinch of Salt.
What you think from what you’ve seen so far suggests that you might be getting led by the nose
She may have said the above in a debate, but she also said (http://tiny.cc/Sqfyu) :
3. Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?
SP: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.
All of which slaps of pandering and hypocrisy. Not to mention if she can say what you report about kids not getting information in their own homes – that suggests that she didn’t have a conversation with her own daughter.
She may well be more Libertarian than Obama in certain areas (gun control etc…) but I suspect she’s just as, or more, statist and interfering in other areas.
From the LA Times link above:
So far, everything I’ve been able to track back to the source has been misreported, usually extremely, in the MSM.
Your spin on the bridge is certainly setting the bar in the stratosphere. Less than 10 months after taking office she terminated a $400,000,000 project that her predecessor thought he had made unstoppable and had already committed $91,000,000 state dollars to. Frankly, I think she showed both caution and resolve.
This is not a time for swallowing hooks and buying into media narratives. She is quite likely the best and closest chance we will have of seeing a libertarian friendly politician in the White House. The eagerness of the Libertarian camp to vandalize Palin is partisan politics at its lowest. Don’t buy into it. The question is whether McCain will do more damage than Obama and which approach will put a libertarian (even libertarian lite) in the White House in 2012. I think her libertarian credentials probably are better than Barr’s but unlike Barr, she very well might be President in 4 years.
I think you’re not digging far enough. As I read the Fact Check time line by the time she “put her foot down” the ear mark was already off the finance bill – making it at best a slightly hollow gesture. Hard to say what she would have done before that.
And looking at her words on contraception:
“Explicit means explicit,” she said. “No, I’m pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don’t have a problem with that. That doesn’t scare me, so it’s something I would support also.”
So did her kids hear about it at home? Did they discuss condoms? And what does she mean by explicit? It’s sex for crying out loud and I’m not too old to remember that teenage hormones need to be hit over the head with a metaphorical two by four for things to register. What the heck does she mean that she’s against “explicit” sex ed? Does she want a soft porn version? The G rated, we’ll talk about condoms but not actually do the display with the banana about how to put one on properly – not something that is a natural born skill – so it works as intended?
How about emergency contraception in the event of a breakage? She’s being wishy washy at best and I suspect for the reason that she actually isn’t really pro-contraception in the first place. At the very least she could have her own house in order.
It is one thing having a Libertarian “friendly” politician in the White House, but, in your heart of hearts, can you honestly say that should the worse happen and McCain falls ill in 2 years – would you be happy with Sarah Palin facing off against Putin’s proxy?
As it stands a Green Card won’t let you vote in an election and, on a purely personal level, McCain/Palin would be a better choice for me financially if I could. However, from a purely security stance, she scares the living hell out of me.
Daveon, I think that a politician’s opinions on personal sexual behavior should be completely irrelevant, as should be any particular situation vis a vis this subject in their own family. What should be relevant is their views on whether the state should have any say on the matter, and that includes public schools, and that includes sex education in those schools. I happen to think that this is none of the state’s business, and that sex-ed, especially the more explicit kind, belongs at home, and this is also what Palin seems to be saying. (And believe me, I am as far from being any kind of evangelical or religious fundamentalist as one can imagine). The fact that she seems to be favoring abstinence (I don’t), while at the same time allowing room for the use of contraceptives, and that this approach some how did not work in a best possible way in her own family, is of no interest to me as a voter, as long as she doesn’t seem to be inclined towards shoving these preferences down anybody else’s throat.
Daveon,
What are you reading?! You sound like you think she is some cute little Shirley Temple. How condescending. Grow up. You are the one not reading carefully enough. The plug was never pulled on the bridge. The earmark was off the bill, the bridge money was not. Her predecessor thought he had made the bridge unstoppable. She took the money away from the bridge (and IIRC one or two other projects) and reassigned it to necessary and useful highway funding. That is absolutely the best thing that she could do short of mailing the check back to Washington. If you demand that she had done that, you really are determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. You do know that both Obama and Biden voted twice each against eliminating or redirecting the money to Katrina recovery efforts?
RE Putin. Obama is the one who absolutely terrifies me on national security. Biden, too. I much prefer Palin as CINC. Obama (who claimed his campaign as his executive experience) has been knocked completely off the rails by Palin. And he’s supposed to be Putin’s equal? Snort! He’s an ivory tower academic who’s one and only talent is second guessing other people. I’ll say it again. I would far rather have Palin as CINC even today to say nothing of after a couple years as VP.
And I don’t understand your entire rant on sex instruction. She wants it confined to how to not get pregnant and how to not catch any diseases. What’s wrong with that? You do know what she is talking about with “explicit”, do you not? She is talking about the entire spectrum from ‘one man one woman’ to ‘Bobby’s two daddies’. Frankly I want government to stay the hell out doctrines of morality and am amused that you think it should be involved.
Since your own instincts seem to be betraying you, let me reassure you. Obama/Biden are UN friendly, summit arranging, speechifying, equivocating, relativist conciliators in the Chamberlain tradition. They will emulate his sophisticated statesmanship until defensive war is the only option. McCain and or Palin may not be able to read a wine list but they will elect to address problems before they become a threat to our security, require major military mobilizations and become an excuse for a command economy. One FDR was enough.
Alisa,
As I read this:
It sounds like she is favoring contraception education but has room for abstinence education.
What, exactly, does ‘explicit’ sex ed contain? Is it, “Use Nutella rather than artificially-sweetend chocolate syrup unless you’re diabetic” or is it “This is how you select and put on a condom?” The former, I don’t think anyone sane would want in schools. The latter, I personally think is a reasonable item for a high school health class, but I also think that reasonable people can disagree on that point.
Daveon,
I will say that, if you plan on claiming that a parent was unfit because of her teenager’s poor judgement, you’ll have a tough row to hoe. Especially with me: I’ve never quite been a parent, but I was that foolish teenager not so very long ago. If I had come home at 17 and told my folks that my girlfriend was pregnant, I don’t think they’d have handled it with nearly as much patience or grace as the Palins have. And while I have plenty of experience with unfit parents, that label certainly didn’t fit my mother and would need to be stretched to fit my father.
As for security and defense matters, Midwesterner largely stole my thunder (again.) And I say this AFTER seeing the interview where she said that, if Georgia were a NATO member then she would order the US to defend Georgia in the event of Russian attack. A bully will never respect you out of actual respect. He will respect only the fact that we have the power and the will to fuck up his whole world if he steps out of line, if you’ll pardon my language.
I hope Daveon is a lot better at his computer job than he is about politics.
Most likely he is.
When I was at achool we were asked to rank sexual activities in order of their risk of STIs. We were given hand realistic drawings to help us out. Among the depictions were two men whacking each other off, rimming and a man urinating on his girlfriend, which was helfpully tagged “golden shower”.
Whenever the sex education debate comes up, I’ve thought back to this. To this day I genuinely can’t come up with any reason why I would have been “educated” in this way except that someone somewhere got off on the idea of us being exposed to that sort of muck.
So my position is always no sex education in schools, because the worst paranoias of the Religious Right are in my experience dead on the money. In any case, it’s a waste of time. I was a cantakerous religious lunatic as a minor and even I knew about all the bits and bobs and where they went and what you put on them to stop you getting the clap by 13 or so. I first saw a condom, like most normal people, when one of the harder kids brought one from a pub toilet. If schools can’t think of any better use of the pupil’s time they should let them do something useful instead, like play.