But while he was discussing this, Rush kept asking, "What's the problem with Palin?" And supposedly thousands of people emailed him saying, "The left is just jealous." "The left is afraid of her because she's so popular."
No.
I confess I don't understand Palin's popularity, but whether she's popular or not has got nothing to do with whether she's suitable for President.
She's not. Not right now, anyway.
I blogged about this a few days ago but I'm going to repeat myself.
A little more than two years ago, when Sarah Palin was announced as McCain's running mate, Rush and Sean Hannity praised her to the skies. As mayor of Wasilla and first term governor of Alaska, she had more political experience than Obama, they pointed out.
And that may well have been true.
But what has happened since then?
Obama has had 2 years of experience as the President of the US, and will have 2 more by the time elections come around. Whether he learns from experience is debatable, but still, he's got that four years experience. He's got his cabinet - men and women he knows. He's got his support structure.
What does Sarah Palin have?
She has exactly as much political experience now as she had 2 years ago. Then, when it came time to choose between continuing her job as Alaska's governor, where the going was starting to get rough, or quitting her job and going on the speaker's circuit where she could make a fortune...she decided to take that fortune.
In one way you can't blame her - the money was there to be made any anbody could be governor of Alaska - there's no question of war, famine, or disaster of any kind there (knock on wood they don't get an earthquake.)
But so for two years she has not increased her political capital at all. Oh, she's made speeches, she's endorsed a few candidates who won and therefore owe her favors, but so what?
When an Independent voter looks at Palin vs Obama in two years, what are they going to see? A speechmaker who quit halfway through her term as Governor of Alaska, and a President who has goals in place and is achieving them (regardless of the fact that most of those goals are driving us toward socialism.)
A President who is a known quantity - and won't get the US into any more wars even it if makes us look like spineless cowards, or a woman about whom not enough is known, whose political experience was brief and ended two years ago, and who knows nobody in the political arena except a few freshman senators and congresspeople.
Rush said that he'd vote for Elmer Fudd before he'd vote for Obama. Most Independents, I think, would rather vote for someone who has a political record they can point to and say - these are my accomplishments. This is the proof of how I would react if I were called up at 3 am and confronted with an emergency.
Frankly, the world is teetering on the edge of destruction. We've got militant Islamists, we've got socialistic countries rioting over losing their perks, we've got the United States where a third of our people are on welfare. Frankly I do not trust Sarah Palin to fix those problems (or Obama, for that matter!)
But who is there?
That's the problem with the political process - the average person apparently gets bored so easily. Candidates don't want to start canmpaigning 4 years in advance - folks would get bored with them. So they wait until the election is just a year away, then they start ramping up the campaign. I'd prefer to have had someone say, two years ago - I'm campaigning now for the 2012 presidential elections, and I want you to watch me as I do so as you'll see just what kind of a president I'd make.
We've been watching Sarah Palin for two years - and I don't think she'd make a good president.
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there's a story at Politico today. I'm gonna have to turn to some of you for some help. I thought I had this figured out, but it's gone beyond my ability to explain this, and that is this incessant, inexplicable, growing hatred of Sarah Palin by people on our side. The Politico story here: "'She's Becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska Edition.'" This is by Jonathan Martin and John Harris. "Sarah Palin has played the sexism card, accusing critics of chauvinism against a strong woman. She has played the class card, dismissing the Bush family as 'blue bloods' and complaining that she is the target of snobbery by people who dislike her simply because she is 'not so hoity-toity.'
"Most famously, she has played the victim card -- never more vividly than when she invoked the loaded phrase 'blood libel' against liberals and media commentators in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Palin's flamboyant rhetoric always has thrilled supporters, but lately it is coming at a new cost: a backlash, not from liberals but from some of the country's most influential conservative commentators and intellectuals. Palin's politics of grievance and group identity, according to these critics, is a betrayal of conservative principles. For decades, it was a standard line of the right that liberals cynically promoted victimhood to achieve their goals and that they practiced the politics of identity -- race, sex and class -- over ideas.
"Among those taking aim at Palin in recent interviews with POLITICO are George F. Will, the elder statesman of conservative columnists; Peter Wehner, a top strategist in George W. Bush's White House, and Heather Mac Donald, a leading voice with the right-leaning Manhattan Institute. Matt Labash, a longtime writer for the Weekly Standard, said that because of Palin's frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance, 'She's becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska edition.' Conservative intellectuals, while having scant ability to drive large blocs of votes on their own, traditionally have played an outsize role in the early stages of Republican nominating contests.
"Their approval has lent credence to politicians from Ronald Reagan onward hoping to portray themselves as faithful adherents to an idea-driven conservative movement. This year, the conservative intelligentsia doesn't just tend to dislike Palin -- many fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right. 'This is a problem for the movement,' said Will about what Palin represents. 'For conservatism, because it is a creedal movement, this is a disease to which it is susceptible.' The line of modern conservatism that can be traced back to National Review founder William F. Buckley would be broken by Palin, Will said.
"'There's no Reagan without Goldwater, no Goldwater without National Review and no National Review without Buckley -- and the contrast between [Buckley] and Ms. Palin is obvious.' Asked if the GOP would remain the party of ideas if Palin captures the nomination, Will said: 'The answer is emphatically no.' Columnist Charles Krauthammer, without talking about Palin specifically, noted that 'there's healthy and unhealthy populism,' and there is concern about the rise of the latter. 'When populism becomes purely anti-intellectual, it can become unhealthy and destructive,' said Krauthammer." Pete "Wehner," who's a good friend of mine, "now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cited the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous 1980 declaration that the GOP had become 'a party of ideas.' ...
"'Conservatives are very proud of that,' Wehner said. 'But she seems at best disinterested in ideas or least lacks the ability to articulate any philosophical justification for them. She relies instead on shallow talking points.' Does Palin care about what conservative commentators say about her? So far, the answer would appear to be no. ... Palin defenders say she has good reason to be dismissive of elite critics -- she has outpaced their low expectations at every turn." You know what I think? I'm trying to figure this all out. I can understand the left despising this woman. That would make perfect sense.
But this rising vitriol from the "conservative intellectual" bench is mystifying to me. (sigh) I don't get this comparison to Al Sharpton. I don't know where that comes from. That's Matt Labash at the Weekly Standard. I don't know where that comes from. What does Sharpton do? Would somebody point out one similarity between Al Sharpton and Sarah Palin? Where is the Tawana Brawley in Sarah Palin's life? Where is that incident? Where are all the megaphone-lead rallies and protests? Where are those things? Where is the complement to the National Action Network and its annual convention in whatever else?
Where is this? Where are the lawsuits that Sharpton files against people? Well, they claim that she's playing her cards. Where is her tax cheating, for example? Who is Sarah Palin shaking down? I mean, if we're gonna start making these comparisons... (interruption) What was it you just shouted at me, H.R.? Well, that's why they say she's portraying herself as a victim because she's firing back. They are saying that she should just shut up. In the aftermath of being blamed for this Arizona thing, she should have just shut up. The fact that she responded and reacted to it means that she's feeling sorry for herself and is portraying herself as a victim -- and that's something that the left does: Portray themselves as victims.
She shoulda just been quiet and let the story ride itself out and let it go away and so forth as it would have. I used to think that a lot of this was just fear-based. (sigh) I've really had a tough time understanding this. To be honest, folks, I've had a tough time. I still not sure. I'm wondering if some of this is not rooted in the fear that our "conservative intellectuals" have that our current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls is kind of weak; and that, therefore, she may be the most popular among 'em.
and
RUSH: Okay, I've read the e-mails, and they're pouring in. And many of them from the public e-mail account, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. "You idiot! You're supposed to be the one with the answers. You're asking us why everybody hates Sarah Palin, you idiot. If we know, you should know." Some of them say: "You stupid fool, don't you know it's because they're jealous of her?" That seems to be, by the way, the number one explanation from people answering the question. I haven't had a chance to read 'em all. They're coming in here by the hundreds, every 20 seconds or so, but they're jealous of her or they fear her. Of course all of that's true. But look, I think I get it. I think the simple explanation here is, if you want to be an accredited intellectual, one of the tests is, do you hate Sarah Palin? Do you think she represents a pox? Is she a danger to whatever? If you do, then you will pass the test and you are, therefore, an accredited intellectual.______________
In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
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