Monday, November 16, 2009

Sarah Palin and Going Rogue

This is going to be quite a week for the politics of personal destruction. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's autobiography, Going Rogue, is out today. Ms. Palin's whirlwind book tour begins with a high-profile appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as a very personal interview with Barbara Walters, portions of which will appear this morning on Good Morning America. ABC's Kate Snow has a story, "Game On: Palin Book Blitz Begins: Former McCain Aides Rebut Claims in 'Going Rogue'."

One thing to watch out for is whether critics of Ms. Palin have actually read her book. On yesterday's
Fox News Sunday panel, Liz Cheney offered the best comments because she said she'd actually read portions of the book. Along those lines, check out Melanie Kirkpatrick's book review, at the Wall Street Journal, "Her Side of the Story":
She discusses her coming of age in the "new frontier" state of Alaska; her personal faith journey; her experiences with marriage and motherhood, including two miscarriages, a special-needs child and a pregnant teenage daughter; and the free-market convictions that have guided her political career. As a politician, she comes across as a prodigious worker capable of mastering complicated issues—not least the energy policies that matter so much to Alaska's economy—and of building bridges to Democrats.

Through it all, Mrs. Palin emerges as a new style of feminist: a politician who took on the Ole Boy network and won; a wife with a supportive husband whose career takes second place to hers; and a mother who, unlike working women of an earlier age, isn't shy about showcasing her family responsibilities. She writes with sensitivity and affection about her gay college roommate, and she confesses her anguish when she found out that she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome. That experience, she says, helped her to understand why a woman might be tempted to have an abortion. This is not the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination.
Perhaps the most important issue raised by Palin's reemergence this week at the center of national politics is, again, whether she's qualified for the presidency. Of course, by just having run as a major party vice-presidential nominee she's broken perhaps the ultimate threshold, although people will continue to attack her as an undignified backwoods hick. Significantly, there's probably an inverse relationship between Sarah Palin's prospects and the radical attacks against her. Not only is the left's rabid demonization of Palin perhaps the best indicator of the former Alaska governor's viability, but the deeper the levels of leftist secular demonology, the higher Palin's favorables among moderates are likely to go.

We still have over a year until the 2012 campaign gets seriously under way. During that time, Ms. Palin will no doubt be continuing her aggressive self-marketing. There's no one on the right who inspires more passion from the faithful, and that's pretty much what it takes to win the presidential nomination. So, Palin just needs to keep chuggin'. Things are going her way.

(And don't put too much faith in these early public opinion polls, for example, Gary Langer's, "Sarah Palin: Rogue for President?" Palin's got lots of time to work her wonders with the American public, and I can guarantee that the left's demonization campaign will only work to increase Palin's favorables over time.)

More at
Memeorandum.

7 comments:

  1. Looking at that table, we see someone who personally had a stake in Obama's election (Ifill)a useless suck up (Brooks) someone who should know better (Will), and someone who said that a book and a compelling narrative, never elected
    anyone, (Woodward) Irrelevancy was never more clearly shown

    ReplyDelete
  2. Donald, I've heard liberal pundits say that Sarah Palin hasn't the right qualifications to run for president. GADS! How can they say that when they elected Obama? What were his qualifications??? It's a mystery!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, pity the poor brave quitter. Yes, the politics of "personal destruction."

    Of course, it's OK to say that if you're a lame duck and you don't quit you are simply a sponge glomming off the taxpayer, not someone trying to fix budget issues in the worst economy since 1930. So Palin didn't throw Hailey Barbour, Jody Rell and Tim Pawlenty under the bus, right? Right?

    And Vice Lombardi, what did he say? "Winners always quit and quitters always win." Right? Isn't that the quote? Maybe it was the other way, in which case Lombardi must have been some kind of socialist.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Actually Pawlenty seems to travelling a great deal on the tax payer's time if not dime. She put
    a competent team in place, from Parnell to Campbell and Atty Gen. Sullivan, to further her objectives

    ReplyDelete
  5. Recently, on talk-radio, I heard the sexual stink-bomb Letterboy end his top ten with "People who were able to make it all the way through Sarah P's new book."

    P.O.S. Letterboy would have been ritually destroyed had that been a reference to "Dreams of My Drunken BIgamist Father," heh heh.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous-- who doesn't even have the courage to show a user id-- the Democratic party, and its minions in the news media, are telling us exactly who they are afraid of.

    They are telling us by trashing her at every turn. Several months ago, when she resigned as governor of Alaska, they all said, "Well... she a goner!"

    And yet they continue to trash her.

    Why?

    They're afraid of her, that's why.

    BTW, that one clown at the table said that all the Republicans HE knew voted for Obama because McCain chose Palin.

    Funny that... all the Republicans *I* know voted for McCain because he chose Palin... they were going to sit out the election until she joined the ticket.

    Just goes to show that the guy at the table who made that preposterous statement hangs out with the wrong crowd.

    Attempts to muddy the record are not going to work.

    ReplyDelete
  7. PRINCIPLE OR POPULARITY

    How should we pick a proper candidate, let’s say, for President? Should it be one most principled or most popular? Should it be one reflecting the principles of America’s founding, or the most popular? Would a Sarah Palin be the most principled while a Hannah Montana the most popular? If so, which would be best? Following the Civil War, the most principled candidates were the Democrats, in that they stood for the founding principles of America. The Republicans, in order to win, picked popular military heroes, but were not of the same principled class as Democrats. At the start of the 20th century, founding principles defining Democrats began to vanish, leaving new principles reflecting Old World policies once tossed out of America. Today, we have Republicans wanting win by avoiding principle, and Democrats wanting to change America, back to an Old World two-class dictatorship model, where the few elite rule the many. Obama was elected on popularity, not that McCain was principled, and has led America, like the pied piper, toward a Marxist Paradise like Cuba and North Korea. It just goes to prove, today, that an Obama or Hannah Montana would be the preferred choice of non-thinking Americans and a new Royalty for their admiration. In the meantime, the unique principles upon which America was founded are allowed to vanish forever. claysamerica.com

    ReplyDelete