“You’re a conservative woman. So what do you think of Sarah Palin?”
I always cringe at that question, usually coming from someone on the left, because I find myself in the annoying position of having to criticize one of the few high-profile women in right-wing politics. On the plus side, Ms. Palin is a tenacious politician, refusing to fade away after the Republicans’ electoral drubbing of 2008. As a new mother, I admire her for raising five children, and for keeping her baby after learning he had Down’s syndrome, a brave and heartrending decision. And she speaks her mind, an uncommon quality in politics.
Unfortunately, her mind doesn’t appear to have that much in it, much of the time. Her performance in the vice-presidential election debates was so high school, it was painful to watch. In her book, Going Rogue: An American Life, she blames everyone else — the media, her staff — for her bubblehead image. But the truth is, she is not an intellectual, and she happily plays up her aw-shucks-hockey-mom stereotype because in the current political climate, it works for her. A large swath of middle America likes her not despite her lack of knowledge, but because of it.
The Palin phenomenon builds on the same foundation as U.S. president George W. Bush: pro-America conservative Christian populism. Faith and gut instinct will show us the way, especially when dealing with radical Islam. Wishy-washy liberal intellectuals who would negotiate with terrorists are the problem; plain talk the answer. (To which I would counter: Showing zero tolerance for Muslim extremists is a good idea; fighting one brand of religious zealotry with a different brand is not. Reason has its place in this war, and ignorance is not bliss when terrorists are attempting to blow up your airplanes.)
This leaves the field open for the American left to claim the cerebral high ground, a dangerous development in the best of times, but particularly alarming under the watch of Barack Obama.
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Notes:
I’m certain Tasha meant no harm when she penned this article but I find her viewpoint a bit disturbing in that she suggests only really smart, well educated people should lead. Perhaps in her next column she might explain to the great unwashed masses out here in “La La Land” why the US is currently in the mess it is, being led as it is by “really smart, well educated people”.
Brain surgeons as it were.
Additional Point:
Sarah Palin is no George Bush. She’s something the US has never seen before and it scares the hell out of “intellectuals”. Simple common sense over highly educated “warped thinking”.
I think that is a good thing.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If the US can ignore a person’s color and elect him as president they can also ignore sex and elect a woman.
The country has come a long way in a few short years. “Hopey–Change” is happening although it may not be exactly what Obama has in mind.
The problem with education is not education itself but rather what is being taught. As any good computer programmer will tell you if the input is garbage the resultant output is also garbage. Unfortunately for an extended period of time education has been such a ‘closed loop’ (academics listening to academics not real life) that its input has become garbage and thus the output is equally garbage.
Ronald Reagan was characterized the same way as Sarah is being characterized, by the same people and I think they will have the same results. Reagan was and is a model for modern conservatism and freedom globally.
There are going to be many people that say that I’m one of you but you have to get rid of him or her. Fifth Column people. They act as though they are with you, but in reality, they are against you. This elitist crap is just an example of it.
Pat me on the head and say “There, there” and I’ll break your arm.
Again I feel vindicated in that I prevent this crap from entering my home thru my front door.
Tasha, Tasha, Tasha, you are like sooooo many of your colleagues (I love the term colleagues, as it implys higher lernin!) in the media in that if you only knew a wee little bit more, you would realize how much you did not yet know!
Pity!
Pat and Jack, you have snotty Tasha’s number. She is oh! so nice about the fact that Sarah did not kill her little boy because he was not ‘perfect’ and could never, in Tasha’s cultivated mind, amount to anything of value. (Good thing for Tasha’s child that there was nothing wrong with him/her, otherwise..)Then Tasha stabs Sarah in the back by saying that Sarah has a ‘high school’ mentality; Sarah calls a pig wearing lipstick a pig!
Tasha claims that the followers of the Boy Bolshevik, next door, have claimed the ‘high ground’ – where has Tasha’s been – living in a haram in the middle east? Obama’s and his congress are tanking at the polls. The Bolshvik Kid is the guy who said he had not visited all 57 states of the 51 United States of America – that is primary school mentality, Tasha!
With ‘friends’ like Tasha, Conservatives don’t need enemies!
Re #3, I wonder if it is a coincident that Reagan is repsonsible for this financial mess more than any other president.
Re #5, that’s it – keep demanding conformity. That’ll get you far. The cult of Sarah rolls on.
If smart and well-educated people aren’t required to run the nation then it can’t be much of a job. Pick someone randomly for president and let’s see if the nation ends up any worse off for it.
It is just as wrong to label all smart or well education people as dimbulbs than the reverse. I have a Ph.D. I worked bloody hard for it later in life. I have “educated” people with science degrees make fun of my lowly “Education” degree. The insults are everywhere. The last thing I need to hear is that all my hard work was a waste of time. I’m sick of reading the B.S. in this regard — just as much as those of you who are self-made men and women. Give me a break!
Oh, and one more thing. Common sense is something you can have with or without a formal education. I have had my share of contact with “educated” dolts. However, there are dolts everywhere.
Re #8: I agree completely, common sense, wisdom ( whatever that is ) is independent of education.
A leader needs a bit of both common sense and some education but the most important thing is a good B.S. detector so as to be able to choose qualified experts in all the field the leader can’t be an expert in and once given the best information available has the wisdom and the political courage to make the best choices perceived at the time.
This doesn’t mean that he or she can’t make mistakes or mistakes when viewed in retrospect.
Palin smart or stupid ? A lot of people decide that emotionally and based on agreeing on what she is saying or not ! Or what others say that she said but actually didn’t. ( Tina Fay said the ” I can see Russia from my house ” ….. LOL ).
“Pick someone randomly for president and let’s see if the nation ends up any worse off for it.”
America won’t make that mistake twice.
Re: # 6:
I am sure you have heard that saying which explains that one could pick 100 names at random from a phone book and put together a Senate which would be more efficient than what exists now.
The issues of course are not a matter of education. The problems are corruption, dishonesty, an “elite” ruling class.
Strangely enough, people do not spend any time looking at Palin’s record of achievements. That record speaks volumes about what she is capable of, no matter what she says (or not).
It is there for all to see.
As an aside, I now read that Obama is trying to take control of the gas pipeline which Palin got going, through negotiations with Exxon and Trans Canada Pipelines.
Even though she is hated, even Obama sees the value in her achievements.
Re #11: That can’t be right. You said before that Americans only voted him because he was black. That’s not random. Get your smears straight.
Re: #8 — “I have had my share of contact with “educated” dolts. However, there are dolts everywhere.”
True enough and they are everywhere.
My problem (if I have one at all) is that they are like “cream” and always manage to rise to the top somehow. Why is that?
Hey Cy,
Be careful now, I am an equal opportunity smearer.
My note above clearly stated SENATE.
I did not mention “him”.
Re: #15 — “She needs someone to groom her a bit — to bridge accomplishments with potential.”
Agreed but she needs to stay “folksy” because that is her appeal. Regarding “I feel she will never be President”.
I wouldn’t bet ten cents on that comment.
“My problem (if I have one at all) is that they are like “cream” and always manage to rise to the top somehow. Why is that?”
Peter Principle.
But if left outside too long, even cream can go bad as every dairy farmer knows.
Re #21: Jack, just in case there was any misunderstanding I wasn’t meaning that you had that specific prejudice, I was just supporting Sandy that having a degree doesn’t exclude having common sense while at the same time some people with degrees don’t have any sense.
Having pride in one’s accomplishements due to life experience and being blessed with common sense need no apologies as you said.
Re: #23 — I have no problem with you at all, Jean. I understand and YOU keep it coming also (Re: #24).
Your comments are always welcome and I have a very thick hide.
I don’t believe that the Sarah Palin divide has much to do with intelligence at all, I think the left can’t handle her because she is just too real.
We all say we have had enough of politicians, but only conservatives really mean it, which is why, unlike liberals, we can still support an actual real person with human faults, foibles, mispronunciations, mid-western accents, and other such speech impediments, and so can get behind politicians outside the usual Ivy School mold, such as a Preston Manning, a Ronald Reagan, or a Sarah Palin, as long as we agree with the sentiment behind most of their ideas.
In contrast, what many liberals really mean when they say they have had enough of politicians is that they still haven’t found perfection in one yet, and without perfection there can be no Utopia. Lefties desperately need an uber-politician/Messiah, a shiny new intellectually brilliant professional-politician, who acts and dresses the part, speachifies and electrifies, and will not only solve their’s but all the problems in the whole wide world, while simultaneously perfecting socialism where all other lesser politicians before have failed. Nothing less than perfection will do, so Obama, being a mere mortal, will continue to lose support, mainly because lefties are so easily distracted and with his head bouncing back and forth between teleprompters, it increases the chances that they will become fixated on a bright shiny object located elsewhere and lose all interest in Obama, but also because his socialism will fail, just as it always does. Of course, such perfectionism is indicative of a variety of obsessive compulsive mental disorders, liberalism being just one.
Sarah’s appeal is cultural, not intellectual. The divide with her older (vs younger), rural (vs urban) and white (vs everything else). She represents Mayberry.
Also I don’t find her that “real” at all. As much as she wants to portray herself as a moose-hunting everygirl dunce, one needs to be a sneaky, slimy S.O.B. to make it to a position like governor. Sarah Palin has somehow managed to tap into the angst of a people who have been told for most of their lives that they are God’s gift to humanity but recently have felt left behind. She assures them that their values and biases are in fact right, and that the world really should adjust itself to their simplified hierarchy.
Will she become president? In this economy anything is possible In a regular economy she wouldn’t get close.
Re: #27: Sarah is “what you see is what you get”. Obama has a huge problem with that and it looks good on him.
Have you met her? How do you know? What makes her different from every other politician who ever needed a core constituency?
Sarah Palin isn’t taking votes away from many people who would have supported Obama otherwise. She’s the least of his worries.
‘Re: #27: Sarah is “what you see is what you get”. Obama has a huge problem with that and it looks good on him’.
Well stated Jack. I have been in the same room as Sarah Palin , she is one of the most charming, enthusiastic, curious, perceptive, compassionate people that I have ever been fortunate enough to share a room. She did a lot of listening and her brief vocal contribution was clear and polite.
I was in the same room about one year after Sarah had become Governor of Alaska – it was the finalization of the deal with Foothills Pipeline (who owned the corridor through the Yukon ) and the government of Alaska.
The citizens of Alaska own the mineral resources and they get a cheque once a year for the sale of their resources. Those cheques tripled after Governor Palin cleaned out the dead wood in congress who were making side deals with developers. No wonder she had an 80% approval rating!
People of Alaska talk the way Sarah Palin talks – so do people on the prairies who work and/or own businesses; esp. farmers and ranchers. They just say what they have to say; and you can like it or lump it – they really don’t care. People who do not rely on saying the right PC thing at all times, for their livelihood never become ‘people pleasers’ and they don’t revert to saying the PC popular thing – like Tasha, I would bet that Tasha has never even listened to one of Sarah Palin’s speeches -she has already taken the msm view to ‘please’ her audience, she gave no evidence of substance research.
Sarah Palin has lived the life she talks about, she is not ashamed of living that life (which irritates the hell out of ‘sophisticates’) – I know because I live in the Yukon where we lived in the same glorious, unpretentious, manner up to less than 30 years ago when people got ticked off with the Conservative territorial gov’t and stayed home, thus allowing the minority of newcomers to elect a Dipper gov’t. Things got BAD fast…the Dippers financed an importation of ‘new’ gument workers from the south to replace the free enterprise population that relied on mining for their income – the Dippers, with the enviro freaks closed down mining – the real Yukoners moved out and the PC/Troika type groupies moved in. The Dippers spent all the mounds of Yukon money that had built p over the years fast and furiously,,now they just use Fed transfers to keep the gument workers paper shuffling. There are 3 gument workers for every one of us regular people in the Yukon. 95% of the population is crammed into Whitehorse.
I was fortunate to have met the Governor before her lovely person got smeared by the unlovely msm and I was lucky to have lived the life she lives. I know she is not a phony – we were once all like that and snotty people from ‘outside’ (our word for outside the Yukon/Alaska) either climbed down from their high horses or found themselves ostracized.