In last week's "Friday Palin", I threw this off quickly (I didn't have much time), thinking I'd have to come back to it later.
This [Palin combining with Glenn Beck for a 2012 presidential run] is practically a starved-for-entertainment liberal's wet dream. It's Obama-porn - or would be if the Democrat party had a clue that this isn't 1993 any more, which it doesn't. They're still stuck back on Planet Gingrich....
This is later.
Yes we've had a lot of fun with Sarahcuda around here. She's provided practically all there has been of comic relief as we chronicled Obama's fall into Bushland and subsequent groveling at the feet of Wall Street's major thieves, the economy's refusal to recover despite endless trickle-down schemes, the tricks and scams that have made Corporate America the land of the rich and the home of the knave. But there is a more serious side to the Sarah phenom, beyond celebrity to identification - in a recent poll two-thirds of American women say they "admired" her and "shared her values". That deserves a "Huh?" but so does adding to it the apparent fact (see Max Blumenthal in vid below [via FDL]) that she also has the second lowest approval rate of any well-known American politician.
As the discussion in the video makes clear, Sarah's appeal to the general population is extremely limited and, as her career arc in Alaska tends to show, short-lived. It takes a while for people to see through the folksy glitter and sexy come-ons but when they do they're appalled. In Alaska it's getting damn near impossible to find anybody who still thinks she's a hero. Most of Alaska breathed a sigh of relief when she quit, and she may very well have quit because she knew she'd be humiliated if she ran again.
And yet, despite the fact that her appeal is restricted almost completely to the 20% of wingnuts who comprise the extremist Teabagger segment of the GOP, the Democrat leadership is already pretending that they're running scared, acting as if they think La Cuda has a legitimate shot at winning the presidency. Like Bob Dole. You remember President Dole, don't you? And nobody but Harry Reid thought he could win.
Sarah Baby may be comic relief to you and me but she's rationalization material to the conservaDems, who are using the specter of a Palin win in 2012 like a genuine threat rather than the joke it is. Wny? because they need the cover: They have to sell us out on healthcare reform, Afghanistan, FISA, the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, etc etc etc because if they don't Big Bad Cuda will eat the country alive!
As if.
But they're going to be coming at us as if Sarah Palin is an actual threat who could take the presidency away from Obama and Congress from the Dems if we don't close ranks behind them and give the conservatives every single thing they've ever dreamed up for their wish list, plus everything they haven't even thought of yet but probably will. The all-evil of Sarah and her Big Bad Destruction Machine will justify every sell-out up to and including new wars or extensions of the old ones.
They won't be doing this because they believe a Palin victory is plausible, let alone possible, but because they want us to think so. They want us to be so afraid of a potential Palin win that we won't have the heart to argue with them when they sell us down the river for insurance/campaign/Big Pharma/corporate $$$.
This must not be allowed. Sarah Palin CANNOT win under any circumstances except total dissolution of the country, its economy, its social life, and what's left of its political credibility. IOW, short of the Apocalypse, no matter what the conservaDem leadership says, Sarah doesn't have a chance, NONE.
Sarah Palin isn't The Big Bad Wolf. She's just an ordinary Alaskan whacko who can't put 2 sentences together without embarrassing herself unless Lynn Vincent or an oil company flack writes them for her. She's the Queen of Destruction, alright, but not ours: she'll be taking what's left of the BushWracked GOP and leading it straight off the cliff. We shouldn't fear her ascendancy. We should stand up and cheer for it.
To win the argument, Obama's party must treat Palin as if she is ready for prime time and then take her on - with care. The keys are to focus on her ideological extremism, not her inexperience, show her respect and have women lead the charge.
Posted by: rhodiola rosea | January 12, 2010 at 05:44 AM