Continetti on Palin
My friend Matt Continetti — one of the smartest journalists I know — has written a smart and thoughtful comment for the Wall Street Journal on the long, difficult road ahead for Sarah Palin if she intends to become a serious presidential contender. Though I don’t agree with Matt in every detail, his basic argument, as I understand it, is:
(1) Palin is polarizing and voters consider her underqualified for national office.
(2) She needs to reintroduce herself to the public as a market-friendly populist who reaches out to the center from a solid conservative base.
(3) High unfavorable ratings aren’t insurmountable. She hasn’t reached truly toxic territory yet.
(4) Effective performances in interviews and debates will go a long way towards correcting her perceived deficiencies.
(5) Palin needs to return to the broad position she embraced in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, which Matt compares to Bob McDonnell’s 2009 approach.
This is where I disagree with Matt — Palin’s 2006 campaign was a highly idiosyncratic insurgent effort founded in no small part on her support for measures that can’t be described as conservative by the standards of the lower 48. And her central accomplishment in office was to pass a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
(6) But again, Matt offers straightforwardly constructive advice: “But she also might spend less time discussing campaign intrigue and Alaska trivia, and more time outlining how to spur job creation through tax reform,” and, he goes on to suggest, emphasize the downsides of the Democratic agenda.
Matt never suggests that Palin will necessarily take these steps. Rather, he is suggesting that she ought to do so if she intends to win. He has aligned himself with reformers like Mitch Daniels who argue that conservative candidates need to present workable, effective solutions to the various problems facing middle class and working class voters in non-ideological, non-polarizing language. Yet the fact that Matt isn’t unremittingly hostile to Palin is reason enough for many readers to reflexively dismiss his arguments.
I find this pretty depressing, albeit pretty predictable. What’s worse is that this contributes to a tit-for-tat culture that is the enemy of thoughtful, reasoned discussion.
the op-ed would have been a lot more persuasive if palin was still governor. reagan was governor of the most populous state for 8 years, and, he had been a moderately well known actor before that. the arc of his persona was long. most of the palin-exposure has been the past year. she can probably change her image, memories are short, but seems too short of a time unless she’s an officeholder for anything in 2012.
— razib · Nov 16, 09:06 AM · #
Please Reihan…..its over.
Stop embarrassing yourself.
The Palincrack you have been pushing on the base is utterly rejected by a plurality of the American electorate.
Your clientele is dying off.
WECs (white evangelical christians) are the only part of the electorate that will vote for a Young Earth Creationist.
YEC is like a signifier for stupid in the 21st century.
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 09:47 AM · #
Lets see Continetti scope out a plausible intelligible response for press corps questions on this fragment from her book.
Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.” In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the G.O.P. ticket, she sees the hand of God: “My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over.”
lol
Jesus take the wheel.
Jesus is a pretty bad driver..he drove us into the ditch on Iraq, Af-Pak, and the economy…do you really think the American electorate is going to give him another try?
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 09:55 AM · #
“The Palincrack you have been pushing on the base is utterly rejected by a plurality of the American electorate.”
A “plurality” is a group smaller than a majority, but larger than any other sub-group in a pool split among at least three options. How can a “plurality” reject “Palincrack”? Other than “accepting” “Palincrack,” what are the remaining options that account for the divided majority that doesn’t reject “Palincrack”?
— SDG · Nov 16, 01:42 PM · #
SDG give it up.
70% of the electorate says Palin is unfit for the high office.
Rehain has been dipping into the merchandise if he thinks she can reform her image with a book full of lies and self-aggrandizing equivovation right out there for people to pick apart.
No, the only way for cinderella to get to the ball on time was for her to ride Sick Grandpas coattails into the oval office before the electorate got a good look at her. Now her path lies through a hostile forest filled with antagonistic media and a suspicious electorate.
Do you honestly think this woman can be elected without giving press conferences?
Step away from the Palincrackpipe now, Reihan.
Admit the truth…..Palin wasn’t insufficiently vetted on her abilities and experience…the GOP leadership knew full she was incompetant……she was insufficiently vetted on her MALEABILITY.
She simply wouldn’t do what the Old White Christian Guy Posse told her to.
Thus her fail-interview with Kouric.
She wouldn’t go back to Alaska and read some books and govern well like Dr. K and Jonah told her to.
This woman drove people like me out of the GOP.
She has done irreparable harm to conservatism.
And you are STILL trying to rehabilitate her so you can use her as tasp on the base.
Jeebus, Reihan…..that is just evil.
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 02:36 PM · #
“Yet the fact that Matt isn’t unremittingly hostile to Palin is reason enough for many readers to reflexively dismiss his arguments.”
This would be more of a shame if there weren’t such a great many gold-plated diamond-encrusted simply awesome reasons to dismiss his arguments. Razib (above) nails a good one. The fact that Mr. Continetti has written a book about Palin’s “persecution” gives us another reason to be skeptical that he is offering thoughtful and reasoned discussion. Saying Palin’s political career hinges on surviving an appearance on Oprah Winfrey, and counting being more popular than the most detested man in US politics as a point in her favor – I mean, no matter how dazzlingly smart and thoughtful a commentator you are, you’d better have some stout support for your ideas or the whole article comes crashing down under the weight of its own absurdity. What makes the WSJ piece so laughable is that it takes as given the tropes of Palin boosterism – the Couric interview was “disappointing,” for example; yes, becoming a national laughingstock can be disappointing.
It occurs to me that the comparisons of Palin to Ronald Reagan in Mr. Continetti’s piece and elsewhere seem strangely to agree with vintage liberal CW on Reagan – that he was all image. In fact, quite a few thin-resumed charmers have quickly become pretty sticky with Reagan comparisons before fizzling out – Fred Thompson comes to mind. It’s like Reagan is now the patron saint of wishful thinking for Republicans.
— krogerfoot · Nov 16, 02:48 PM · #
Matoko, my question wasn’t about Palin or conservatism, it was about English and mathematics. Cheers.
— SDG · Nov 16, 02:52 PM · #
Reihan:
Is is correct to assume that you are one of these “readers?” Seriously, I haven’t read anything by you on this topic, so forgive me.
If not, why should any conservative give a damn about any of these “readers?”
— jd · Nov 16, 03:15 PM · #
Forgive me SDG, I simply don’t have any other word to describe the data.
70% of the electorate say Palin is unfit to be be president, yet her approve/disaprove is 46/53.
What word would you use to describe the data landscape?
I’m a math major, Jim, not an english major.
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 03:22 PM · #
Matoko, if you want a word that means “more than 50 percent,” the word is “majority,” not “plurality.” A plurality is the largest single group in a pool where no group forms a majority.
— SDG · Nov 16, 03:37 PM · #
Reihan….I beg you…please explain your strategy.
I honestly want to know why you and Douthat and Contenetti and others continue to cynically try to rehabilitate this deadend candidate to use as a tasp on what remains of your base.
Do you have a deathwish?
Palin is purely toxic for the demographics the GOP needs to attract to survive into the 21st century: the college-educated, minorities, and youth.
Why don’t you just throw her under the bus?
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 03:38 PM · #
ty, SDG, I stand corrected.
/makes obeiance
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 03:41 PM · #
If Salam gets depressed by an aggressive “tit-for-tat culture” that reacts before it reflects, imagine the quantities of tequila and Oxycodone he’ll need to endure a Palin candidacy.
— turnbuckle · Nov 16, 03:43 PM · #
That Reihan doesn’t consider Palin a virus that’s undermining his party and movement stretches the bounds of “fair-mindedness” and ventures into “just odd”.
— Steve C · Nov 16, 03:48 PM · #
Continetti’s thesis sounds like the same line the Weekly Standard was running during the McCain-Palin campaign. Briefly summarized: Palin can turn things around if she stops sounding incoherent and confused and starts being awesome.
For what it’s worth, I think that thesis is probably correct, but I think going from incoherent to awesome is a lot more easily said than done.
— J Mann · Nov 16, 03:49 PM · #
That Reihan doesn’t consider Palin a virus that’s undermining his party and movement stretches the bounds of “fair-mindedness” and ventures into “just odd”.
Either that or rapaciously cynical.
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 04:18 PM · #
What’s worse is that this contributes to a tit-for-tat culture that is the enemy of thoughtful, reasoned discussion.
That’s true, Reihan, that this is an impediment to a thoughtful, reasoned discussion. What’s also an impediment to a thoughtful, reasoned discussion is when politicians divide the country up into the Real and Unreal Americas, as Palin did repeatedly during the campaign. It’s an ugly thing, and it’s the refuge of people who have nothing constructive or convincing to say. As well you would know.
— Freddie · Nov 16, 04:20 PM · #
but I think going from incoherent to awesome is a lot more easily said than done.
Actually, impossible, since she is going to have spend 24/7 defending the Book of Lies and Extreme Crazy that she just released.
— matoko_chan · Nov 16, 04:21 PM · #
Can conservatism get rid of Palin or does it have to hope she just decides to go away?
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 16, 04:41 PM · #
Continetti is right. By using sophisticated marketing strategies, and by relying on the guileless boobery of a homespun electorate, Mme. Palin might indeed fool enough ‘people polled’ to justify a run at the presidency.
Media-saturated democracies are awesome.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Nov 16, 05:03 PM · #
Freddie is calling out Reihan for using cheap attacks to cover having nothing of substance to say.
That’s educational.
— Steinkraus · Nov 16, 05:14 PM · #
I’m not calling out Reihan at all, actually. Read it again.
— Freddie · Nov 16, 05:42 PM · #
Continetti is saying that his team’s star recruit, given practice and a few tweaks to the system, could shine.
Others say no, she’s a problem recruit. She can’t hack it.
Still others claim that she as well as the system she was recruited to help execute are flawed. Not only is a new approach required, but a new crop of talent better suited to support it.
It’s quite possible that those in the latter camps are not reacting to Continetti purely out of reflex, but from healthy, grounded pessimism. They’re not disputing his observations that a conservative speaking persuasively from a broad, moderate platform could be successful; they’re disputing that Palin is the one to pull it off, particularly when you recall her pathetic departure from the governor’s office.
Wouldn’t it signify a worse reflex on the part of conservative journalists/bloggers, if they largely rallied around a piece like Continetti’s and its weakly justified optimism?
— turnbuckle · Nov 16, 06:14 PM · #
Without excusing unfair attacks or knee-jerk reactions to Mr. Continetti’s piece, I think it has two major flaws:
1) “Ms. Palin’s unpopularity — the result of horrendous media coverage and her role as the McCain campaign’s pit bull — is a major political obstacle.” Unless I am missing something, nowhere in the piece does Mr. Continetti acknowledge that Ms. Palin’s unpopularity is due at least partly to actual deficiencies in the candidate.
2) One particular deficiency — her utter lack of foreign policy experience — would seem to be an electoral obstacle should she run for president. But Mr. Continetti neither acknowledges that deficiency, nor includes among his advice an admonition to bone up on foreign policy.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Nov 16, 06:33 PM · #
please Reihan….please.
I am begging here.
Why do you continue to treat that horrorshow Palin as if she could be a viable candidate?
She frickin’ believes in THE RAPTURE……or at least she says she does…..you know ……where the WECs use the Jews as staked goats to kick off a WWIII-apocalypse?
Why on earth wouldn’t she just use the nuke codes to start it up?
What in the 99 names of god are you thinking?
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 02:46 AM · #
I think Freddie’s hit the nail on the head with this one. Actually, when you think about it, it’s utterly astounding that Reihan doesn’t feel an enormous amount of personal revulsion towards Palin. Consider that he and Ross were among the very first championing Palin, back when she was a supposedly moderate, non-partisan governor of Alaska – they were talking her up on NPR before McCain even picked her, IIRC. She was literally their idea of a poster girl for what a post-Bush GOP would look like.
But not only does she do a somewhat unimpressive job on the campaign, she’s bent over backwards to repudiate virtually everything Reihan supposedly liked about her, back in the day. She’s become thoroughly partisan, fully embraced the small government tea party platitudes that are pretty much the polar opposite of what Grand New Party was about, and, yes, divided the country into “real” hardworking rural Americans (who are almost universally white christian evangelical conservatives) and “fake” urban Americans who are… just about everyone else. Despite his association with the National Review, where does Reihan think he’ll fall? My guess is it’d be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a Bangladeshi American from a Muslim background who lives in New York, voted for John Kerry, and works in the shudder media to be considered a “real” American.
— Chris · Nov 17, 04:49 AM · #
This is like old times. Palin, Matoko, Reihan…. I’m getting a little misty.
Anyway (sniff, sniff) I think there is a Shakespearian-type question about character here. My wife and I were just discussing the nature of Snape and my daughter is currently playing Julius Caeser, so I am currently under influenced by the Shakesperian-like focus on character and it’s effects on events. Anyway, the question is this: can the protagonist really change their basic character? Can Caeser drop his arrogance for one minute and actually beware the ides o’ march?
I believe we have seen Palin’s basic character pretty clearly (it’s as if she has been on a stage and we have been in the audience). Would it be believeable that now, in the second act, she would suddenly develop an interest in policy over popularity? She would probably have to learn to read, first, and that’s hard for adults. But anyway, as my dad used to say, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And I belive, from my own personal struggles, that the best predictor of future character is past character.
So basically, I think we are watching a tradgedy here. Palin has a fatal charcter flaw and it is indelible, even though all of us out there in the audience (or all the conservatives of a certain flavor) are calling out warnings to her in our minds: “Don’t antagonize Levi! Figure out what a president really does! Don’t go up in the attic alone!”
— cw · Nov 17, 06:15 AM · #
Palin says no. Biden says no. McCain says okay. Clinton says okay. Obama wants to study it further.
Do we ever get a candidate who says yes?
— Kristoffer V. SargentI · Nov 17, 06:44 AM · #
Your question made me put together what I thought was an interesting observation. There are probably no acts we, as a culture, consider more indicative of bad character than murder or sex crimes. Someone who commits a homicide isn’t just a guy who did it once and we let it go, he’s a murderer. Forever. We consider him to have a murderous character, that he always had such a character, even before the murder took place.
But sex crimes and homicides are the areas of crime that experience the least recidivism overall. Most murderers don’t ever kill again. Most sex crimes are one-off events. Even pedophilia – which most people assume has “no cure”, and that society and even pedophiles themselves would be better off if we just shot them on sight – has an incredibly low rate of recidivism according to DoJ statistics. (Less than 3% of convicted pedophiles are subsequently convicted of another sex offense.)
I don’t know if that answers your question, but I thought it was interesting. But if there’s a difference between a person’s character changing, and that person simply revealing an aspect of their character we simply didn’t know was there all along, I don’t know what it would be. But that’s real life. We certainly don’t accept character shifts in our stories. So, no, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar cannot beware the Ides of March. The real Julius Caesar might have been able to, though.
— Chet · Nov 17, 07:39 AM · #
Oooh, when I read stuff like these comments it makes me wish I was a Palin supporter. Maybe I could become one yet, but I’m not sure how. I’m glad to have her around, though, because of what it reveals about people around us. We need to know those things.
— The Reticulator · Nov 17, 09:08 AM · #
I just want to know why Reihan, Ross, et all are hellbent on rehabilitating her.
What is the payoff?
They know what she is.
She’s a glossy candy shell full of electoral poison for the GOP.
It isn’t Shakespeare, its game theory.
Is it just pandering to the base?
Is it part of some supersecret strategy to burn down the GOP and start over?
Is Continetti still starbursted?
Lets face it…..Palin gives old white christian guys wood. That is the secret of her appeal in a…….. nutshell.
She is physically attractive, not too bright, and a good breeder.
She’s like a talking doll…..press the button and you get a random selection from a stored library of slogans……Respect the Troops! Drill Baby Drill! Deathpanels! Freedom! Real America!
She is the realization of the conservative vision of virtual chattel slavery of women.
And she has some seriously crazipants ideas about letting Jesus take the wheel and the arrival of the Rapture.
Reihan knows this…..yet for some reason…..he continues to pimp her like she could be legit.
She cant be legit….because she wont take direction.
Reihan is a smart guy…he sees her clear….Palin might give Continetti and Lowry wood, but i don’t think that works on Reihan.
What is the Palin strategy? She has proven already she’s no Galatea…..she rejects the kind of discipline and self refinement that Reihan wants to pygmalion her with.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 01:43 PM · #
and…yeah.
O Dark Sithlord of Known Blogspace…..does “cw” stand for “conservative wisdom”?
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 01:50 PM · #
also, too…..she lies like a rug.
She is obviously a pathological liar…..someone that lies when the truth would serve.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 01:57 PM · #
“I’m glad to have her around, though, because of what it reveals about people around us.”
Well this is true, but, it reveals a lot more about conservatives than it does about liberals.
— Socrates · Nov 17, 02:42 PM · #
Reihan, If Matt Continetti is “one of the smartest journalist you know”, YOU GOTTA GET OUT MORE.
I’ve heard Matt too many times on Bloggingheads.tv to share your opinion.
— Frank Montague · Nov 17, 03:24 PM · #
Don’t mess with the Reticulator, lest he boggle your mind with more of his reticulations.
— turnbuckle · Nov 17, 03:24 PM · #
Chet,
I beg to differ (that’s a stupid phrase). The whole reason tradgedy is meaningful to us is becasue we know from personal experience that people can’t change thier basic character. We are who we are. Caeser was arrogance. That was who he was. That was what he was made of. To change he would have had to become someone else. It’s like they say at AA: “My name is Doug, and I am an alcoholic.”
It may be possible that a few remarkable people can change, but the truth of tradgedy is that most people can’t. And character flaws don’t always lead to tradgedy. It’s character flaws plus particular circumstance that lead to tradgedy. The gods got bored or were having some kind of spat, and caused Plain to be elected Gov. of Alaska. If you go back and look at the circumstances you will see that her election was the result of all kinds of different factors coming into an unlikley alignment. So now we have the recipe for tradgey: exactly the wrong flaws for the situation. The situation plays to her flaws, inflames her worst insincts. She can no more wise up than Ceaser can find humility. And I believe she and everyone around her will be destroyed in some kind of way.
If she is elected president, then we all will be destroyed. We as an electorate will be the tragic protagonists and our fatal flaw will be that a majority of us are retards.My tragic flaw is that I am a terrible procrastinator and the circumstance that will lead to my destruction is the internet.
— cw · Nov 17, 04:29 PM · #
I just wanted to repeat it, and procrastinate while doing so.
— Kristoffer V. SargentI · Nov 17, 04:42 PM · #
Be of Good Cheer, cw, for Behold, I bring you Tidings of Great Joy.
Palin will NEVAH be elected, inspite of Reihan’s shameless pimpage and obfustication of the facts.
For Sully and the rest of the Medjai stand with drawn swords at the Gates of Hamanaptra to ensure Anck su-Namman will never return from the dead.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 05:02 PM · #
Never again can we be fooled into putting considerations of perceived popularity and natural charm of a candidate over her actual experience, qualifications, prudence, and independence from special interests or unfounded dogmas.
Next time let’s trust those who look beneath the surface and know what true competence looks like – the ability to hire the right campaign managers and speech writers.
If Palin could run a successful campaign seems she is just as qualified as any social justice parasite voting present who echoes the conventional platitudes of the day.
That’s where the frantic condescension and fear of the most hysterical panicked Palin haters comes from – the groundlessness of their own judgment, knowledge, and opinion which Palin’s success would expose as merely sophisticated attempts to ride shotgun in the shiny, broken bandwagons they hallucinate.
— Cuddles · Nov 17, 05:22 PM · #
Not exactly Cuddles.
I would think Reihan’s instincts for self-preservation would discount facilitating the election of Palin….she believes in teh Rapture.
In light of her jesus-take-the-wheel statement in her book, I think it would be an extremely poor choice to handover the nuke launch codes to someone who believes in using Israel and the Jews as staked goats to bring down the endtimes, and who has such poor impulse control that she quit a governorship because she didnt want Krauthammer and Goldberg telling her what to do.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 05:36 PM · #
Thats it isnt it Reihan?
You all knew from the beginning that Palin was unfit for the high office…..but you thought you could make her into Elle Woods…we talked about that right here. She doesn’t have the substrate to be Elle….but you knew that…and you didn’t care.
But she won’t play that.
She won’t be Galatea to the GOP’s Pymalion.
And you just can’t bear to give up your shiny tasp that so energizes the base.
You are isomorphic with the rest of the “conservatives”….you would do anything for power…no matter how vile or dangerous.
You are a whore, Reihan.
And a cheap one at that.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 05:52 PM · #
Oh yeah, of course, Mr. Crusader Daddy-Issues’ book presents a life steeped purely secular rationalism and clear-sighted, self-reliant prudence.
We can trust Obama believes exactly what all sensible smart people believe. All the metaphysical and spiritual, soggy-feeling tripe he writes about are surely just bald lies to placate readers in Kansas, like when he said he actually believes Jesus died for him, because he is a sinner in front of the church rubes.
That’s just the sort of thing smart people like us say to get elected – we are all smart enough to know there are no absolute moral gods or rules like “lying is wrong.”
Of course, Bush and Palin can never be given the same pass – how could they be as shrewd and sophisticated as the Barack in your binary, manichean mind? They surely actually believe everything they say, except that which is mere rhetoric.
— Cuddles · Nov 17, 05:54 PM · #
I’m a grrl and we are not talking about Obama.
We are talking about Palin.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 06:09 PM · #
And I guess Cuddles is advocating we elect teh Stupid….because that has worked out so well for us over the last eight years.
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 06:12 PM · #
Cuddles,
Dude, it sounds like you are eating your own bullshit here. A diet of poisonously cynical delusions is bad for the brain.
— cw · Nov 17, 06:28 PM · #
Since this seems to be a common refrain on this thread, let me point out that people CAN change. George W. Bush is a great example of that. All available evidence is that he was a drunk-off-his-ass screw up until the age of 40, at which point he straighted up his life. True, he couldn’t make up for the shallowness of character those 1st 40 years shaped and he never gave up a certain frat boy dickishness, but 35 year old George W. Bush could never have been President under any circumstances.
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 17, 06:46 PM · #
Here’s a balloon juice thread of people mocking Continetti.
Is it really possible that you don’t get how poseur you are Reihan?
Have you no shame at all?
— matoko_chan · Nov 17, 06:46 PM · #
“I’m a grrl and we are not talking about Obama.
We are talking about Palin.” = stop raising the context of reality and let us feel superior again for a few minutes.
Obama (and your strong endorsement of him) is why your authoritative opinion and judgment (about Palin or anything) is entirely discredited and laughable as your writing style is stale and played out.
You may as well out yourself as a Truther like Chet.
So you went out on a limb and endorsed a neophyte as the opposite of Bush based on the convenience of your lame prejudices against anyone you don’t think shares your religious convictions (so liberal and tolerant). Big deal. Every generation makes stupid choices in their youth (that’s why you can’t vote til your 18).
Too bad you had to do it with such arrogance and blind moralistic vitriol to convince yourself. Too bad Obama has already undermined everything you claimed about him and brilliant appointees being more qualified and competent than the bad kind of demagogue.
Too bad you are still digging and still think that the vast difference between the capacity of Biden and Palin merits calling someone a cheap whore, even when you stay so loyal and doe-eyed about your own abusive pimp.
I guess it’s just harder for some people to mature and learn they have been tools of the same old thing.
No one cares if your a grl, you’re still a disgrace, like Sullivan, whose own obnoxious certainty also grows in proportion to how wrong he is about something or someone. But at least he’s always changing his mind about everything (always with the same tiresome level of bourgie-catholic conviction though), even while disowning any responsibility for his past premature breezy ramblings of thoughtfulness.
You want this just be about Palin, because then you can have the excapist therapy of saying the same thing again and again, but the Palin brouhaha isn’t about Palin.
Anyone with any memory or experience can recognize Palin’s celebrity for what it is: a manifestation of the peoples’ growing anxiety about the declining competence, judgment, and eliteness of their elites, and vague, empty hope that backing a boob or outsider will somehow “send a message” so someone (sound familiar, tool of hope?). It is itself a reaction to the fact that the educated aren’t really as smart as they used to be, or keep insisting more a more adamantly.
Palin’s modest popularity is just a sign of desperation, but looking at the reaction of those those you pathetically echo to her fame, I’d say the polloi’s lack of confidence might be merited this time.
And cw, someone who writes “I am currently under influenced by the Shakesperian-like focus on character and it’s effects on events” shouldn’t expect her own accusations that someone else is eating her own bullshit to be taken that seriously.
— Cuddles · Nov 17, 10:22 PM · #
No cuddles….Palin is the 21st century manifestation of an ancient unkillable demon from the dawn of time….Kylon of Croton.
Do you remember Kylon?
Dude raised a local mob to burn the temple and chop up the teachers with scythes when he couldn’t get into Pythagoras’ school for leaders.
Palin is the incarnation of the idea that one does not need merit to serve in a democratic meritocracy…….populism.
She is the opposite of Jefferson’s Natural Aristoi…..a jumped up Yeoman Farmer, bereft of talent and virtue….what the Founders and Framers would have recognized as a demagogue.
— matoko_chan · Nov 18, 12:35 AM · #
Wow, the Conor and Matoko blog is back. Boy have I missed that!
And Freddie chimes in, to denounce the people who demonize their political opponents. ROTFLMAO.
— y81 · Nov 18, 02:31 AM · #
ROTFLMAO.
That’s the kind of sober analysis I’ve come to expect from you.
— Freddie · Nov 18, 04:04 AM · #
I also consider Matt a friend, and a very bright guy – and the op-ed is a fine piece of writing. It’s also a damning indictment of his forthcoming book.
The program that Matt sketches out is a viable – indeed, perhaps a necessary – one for a Republican presidential candidate. It also has nothing whatsoever to do with Sarah Palin. Nothing in her career suggests that she’s inclined to launch a policy-oriented, deeply substantive campaign. Nothing suggests that there’s an economic as well as a cultural angle to her populism. She certainly needs “to present workable, effective solutions to the various problems facing middle class and working class voters in non-ideological, non-polarizing language” – but instead, she continues to employ polarizing language and to eschew any detailed discussion of such solutions. There’s hardly any substantive policy at all in her just-released book, even on issues about which she ostensibly cares.
It amounts to saying that if Palin wants to win, she needs to reinvent herself to be someone entirely different. Which is true. But it also suggests that she’s not some unfairly persecuted victim, but a woman who is in far over her head. And that, I think, is why it has met with such a hostile reaction. After all, what is there to recommend Sarah Palin for this role, other than the fact that liberals disdain her? Wouldn’t we all be better off with a conservative standard-bearer who, you know, understands and believes in these proposals, instead?
— Cynic · Nov 18, 04:28 AM · #
Cuddles
You are so, so angry. You must be feeling a lot of pain. I hope you have someone at home you can talk to. Meanwhile I will pray for you.
PS. I see your that name is Cuddles and I wonder if maybe you are a professional clown. Tht would make sense. I can see how it would be frustrating, always making caring for others, trying to make them laugh. Butwho cares for you? WHo makes Cuddles laugh? WHo hugs Cuddles whenhe’s feeling sad? ISn’t there an opera something to this effect?
— cw · Nov 18, 04:44 AM · #
Look, cut the bullshytt (Anathem reference for the reading challenged).
The reason this “Second-look at Sarah Palin” crapfest is coming out now is because Petraeus utterly rejected the prospect of a 2012 run.
Lets face it, this country will elect a scientologist as president before the electorate selects a mormon.
It is an incontrovertible fact that a part of the WEC demographic (which is the clear majority of the conservative base now) would vote a satan ticket before electing a mormon.
— matoko_chan · Nov 18, 02:44 PM · #
I guess that’s what I was getting at – we “know” that’s true, and as a result we demand a certain level of constancy from our fictional characters. But clearly in real life we’re either extraordinarily bad at determining which acts are reflective of character and which are not, or human character changes more than we’re prepared to give it credit for.
Most people assume a single act of pedophilia is reflective of character, for instance, to the point where they’re convinced that pedophilia has a “100% recidivism rate” (a claim I’ve heard quite frequently, usually followed by the prescription that pedophiles should be killed on mere suspicion, since they “can’t be cured” and it’s just better that way, for everybody.) But almost no convicted pedophiles offend again.
Is that their nature, changing? Or is that our misunderstanding of what pedophilia reveals about character? Like I said, I don’t know how I’d tell the difference, so one’s as likely as the other.
A lot of people – many of them addiction medicine specialists – have major problems with the AA methodology, not least of which it’s insistence that you don’t just have an addiction problem, you’re an addict, and you always will be for the rest of your life.
Nothing about the human species, and the human body, is not mutable. Character must be changeable simply because everything it is based on, is.
— Chet · Nov 18, 04:42 PM · #
“But almost no convicted pedophiles offend again.”
What is the factual support for that claim?
Mike
— MBunge · Nov 18, 04:55 PM · #
Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
— Chet · Nov 19, 02:20 AM · #
May I remind you Reihan, of this Ezra Klein post?
I cited this comment before.
“I read somewhere else that she was like a post turtle.
You see a turtle balanced on top of a fence post, you know it doesn’t belong up there, it doesn’t know what the heck to do now that it’s up there, it didn’t get there itself, and you find yourself wondering what kind of jackass goes and does a thing like that.
Posted by: anonymiss | October 2, 2008 7:29 PM”
You and Ross have contributed to the destruction of your party and recklessly endangered the whole country by pimping out this wholly unfit candiate, who is absolutely bereft of an iota of Jefferson’s “talen and virtue”.
You are part of that pack of jackasses, along with Kristol and Continetti and John McCain.
The woman is unteachable, because she doesn’t want to learn.
She has narcissistic personality disorder and she is a pathological liar.
Besides being a post turtle.
Sarah Palin calls for sanctions on Iraq to stop Iran’s nuclear production.
— matoko_chan · Nov 20, 01:42 PM · #