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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It actually began with Nixon, the southern strategy and his sneering attitude of 'east coast elites'. But, it was highlighted with Quayle.
Palin was part of a group of up and coming young gop pols shaped by Gingrich's pac that taught them how to sell themselves to their base and also was spotted by the neocons, who were interested in her as a Bush type pol. Incurious, unfocused and not too bright. But, very ambitious.
If you watch videos of Palin's Alaska gov. debates she talks totally different. Normal without the 'you betchas and winks and posing and preening. She tried to be serious and come off as a serious candidate.
Nothing like her image now.
She is still not answering questions and ducking and shifting but, without all the fake behavior of last night.
She saw herself as a serious person but, she just was not that bright because she did not care about issues.
Now she is just a pretty package and window dressing complete with fake slogans and fake accent of what passes for just a middle class mom in middle America small town.
So... Obama is qualified to win an election because he won a primary? By that logic, then McCain is far more qualified to be President than Obama - he's won lots of elections, including a very competitive Republican primary. I'm just pointing out that Palin has more actual experience that qualified her to be President than Obama has. Why don't you just stick to actual issues? Back to lurking ... I don't want to get too deep into the idiocy around here. It seems to be contagious. - jebdlmm
No, he won several primaries, and ran a nationwide campaign for President? Before that, he served as a Senator, before that, a State Senator, representing more people there that are in the entire STATE of Alaska.
Where is Palin's experience? 20 months of serving as Governor of Alaska, preceded by six years of being Mayor of the bustling metropolis of Wasalia? Perhaps that would qualify her... if she hasn't shown herself to be a complete anti-intellectual who can only talk in sound bytes.
But if you want to stick to actual issues? Fine.
Please explain to me how Palin wants to fix the problems with Wall Street by more deregulation.
Please explain to me why she thinks Putin is planning a land grab for Alaska.
Please explain to me how drilling for oil will help us in the here and now when it will take 10 years to really access it and we have only 3% of the oil supply of the world but use 25% of it?
Please explain how Obama's work with Republicans on nuclear non-proliferation is not "bipartisan".
Please explain how someone that is as intellectually closed as Palin should be allowed within a heartbeat of the Presidency.
Or, go back to lurking and thinking of a creative way to twist what I said. Since you, like most Republican hacks, grasped one minor snippet, twisted it beyond recognition, and decided to answer that instead of having an honest discussion. ;)
Democrats, in Congress and out, continue to misunderstand what's going on. How can they be so obtuse? Republicans do not care about language, truth, laws or anything else except pure power. While Democrats worry themselves into an impotent frenzy because Republicans nominate idiots or don't seem to understand how they abuse language by saying one thing and then doing the opposite (and seeming to revel in it thus demoralizing Democrats even more), Democrats stand helplessly by and do nothing. THEY DON"T GIVE A SHIT!!! Get it, you idiots? They're fascists. The will do ANYTHING to increase their power. They are not playing your game! You can't beat them at a game they don't play. Get a grip on yourselves and admit the obvious reality. The country, as we speak, is going through a slow, fascist take-over. The question is not will Obama win or not. The question is, if he does win can he actually do anything to stop this fascist militarization of the country. Of course, if he doesn't win we KNOW the take-over will continue. Why aren't more conservatives disgusted that their party nominated a bona fide (Christian Fascist) idiot? Because they don't have to be. Because there is no Congress, no court, no democracy, no citizenry, no press that stops them from doing whatever they want. Wake up before it's too late you. Writing this kind of weak, ignorant article is defeatist and emboldens them even more. They strip you of rights, slaughter thousands, break the laws of the land with impunity and you WONDER why they nominate idiots and don't care about truth anymore. Why shouldn't they? They're fascists and no one has stopped them. Congress has the power to do so but doesn't. Democrats don't even COMPLAIN about it. They just roll over.
... why expect them to be now?
Palin is Bush. If they did not object to the asshole jock idiot 8 years ago, why would they object to the asshole cheerleader idiot this time?
Because they keep winning.
and familiar. The movement promotes policies that Americans hate, that damage their personal well being (on average), and that have done grave damage to their nation's security and standing in the world. The only way "conservatives" can get elected is by throwing smoke and dust and diverting attention from their true goals.
Palin is smoke and dust. Incoherence is her job.
This isn't a new problem for this country; it has deep roots. Richard Hofstadter's excellent "Anti-Intellectualism in America" (1963) and "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964) are basically a revealing one-two beer gut punch to the American reactionary movement, at the time of their post-McCarthyite rebirth. They lay bare the deep roots of the Right's distrust of intellect, whether Richard Nixon's deriding of Adlai Stevenson as an "egghead" -- which became a generalized epithet for most of the liberal intelligentsia, back in the day.
What we're seeing today is merely the late-period results of that deep-seated trend in American reactionary politics. A candidate like Palin is desirable to the Right precisely because she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, just as GW Bush was valued on that score, and patron saint Reagan, too.
Never mind the dirty secret that the Right depends on their own smart folk (people like Rove, for example, who's a brilliant campaign strategist), but they are so ideologically hidebound as to be reliably doctrinaire in their opinions -- chained intellects, basically, working relentlessly toward the goals of the movement. That is the Right's intellectual ideal -- having a group of Josef Goebbels types who can do yeoman's service for their movement.
But for the rank-and-file, and for high-profile positions, why not have dullards filling out the ranks? It's the party apparatus that does the heavy lifting, anyway. Palin's charismatic, and so she has value to the movement above and beyond her clearly-limited intellectual chops. Loyalty to the cause is always a more valued right-wing virtue than free thinking, anyway. That's how these authoritarians operate.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
