The Sarah Palin backlash has now truly begun.
Among conservatives.
Who see other viable s-e-r-i-o-u-s candidates out there who do politicking in other venues besides Facebook, Twitter and softball “interviews” with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
An increasing number of GOPers who cannot be mistaken for RINOS are now dissing Palin. And, to use the word of a former Vice President who recently made a book settling old grudges, they’re doing it “bigtime.”
For instance, the tone of these words could come from the mouth of Sarah Palin about a Democrat or Barack Obama — if they weren’t about Sarah Palin coming from conservatives:
Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham took a series of brutal swipes at Sarah Palin on Tuesday’s “O’Reilly Factor.”
Ingraham was filling in for Bill O’Reilly, and she and Coulter agreed that Palin has outstayed her welcome.
“She’s become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party,” Coulter said. “She’s just ‘The One’ to a certain segment of right wingers. And the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this. No conservative on TV will criticize Palin, because they don’t want to deal with the hate mail.”
Ingraham said that Palin is too thin on policy to be a credible presidential candidate. She said people were “desperate” for “real substance” and that Palin doesn’t seem “all that interested in digging really, really deep on that stuff.”
Coulter said that Palin’s die-hard fans were becoming a real problem.
“You know, we used to all love Sarah Palin, conservatives like me, for her enemies,” she said. “I’m starting to dislike her because of her fans.”
The only phrase they did use was saying she was “paling around” with the noisy conservatives. (You betchya).
And then there’s Eric Erickson, a CNN commentator and one of the founders of Red State has also said “Enough.” Some excerpts:
To paraphrase Ann, a lot of us fell in love with Sarah Palin because of her enemies and a lot of us have fallen out of love with Sarah Palin because of her fans.
For the past year, Palin fans have become an online fixture with more venom and insanity than the most rabid Ron Paul fan. They have not evangelized on behalf of Sarah Palin trying to lead people to Sarah Palin, they have freaked a lot of us out.
I am at the point of fearing that should Palin not get in the race we’re going to have a Hale Bopp moment with many of her most ardent supporters. These people have become too emotionally invested in one person to discuss that person rationally or even to address serious policy concerns.
For the longest time I wanted Sarah Palin to run.
At some point, I decided Sarah Palin could not defeat Barack Obama, but I’d rather go down fighting on Team Sarah than side with any of the guys who will just take us down the “big government conservative” path of creeping socialism.
Finally, I decided Sarah Palin was not going to run and I moved on. Ultimately, 2012 really is about beating Barack Obama, not what Sarah Palin will or will not do.
Unfortunately, as I found out and as others are starting to find out, moving on from Sarah Palin is like leaving Scientology.
To not bow at the throne of Sarah you get disowned. You get attacked. You have people drum up stories attacking your credibility. “Oh, Perry announced at his event, he must be bought and paid for,” etc. Ironically, some of the very people going after this site’s and my credibility — claiming we’re pressured to do things by higher ups at Eagle Publishing — are people who were on payrolls advocating for clients while refusing to disclose potential conflicts among other things. To add comedy to irony, it seems more and more apparent that some of those who attacked this site and me for holding editorial positions based on what our corporate parent dictates (a lie designed to undermine our lack of sufficiently pro Palin bona fides among other things) are themselves engaging in projection because it is they, not RedState nor me, who must tread carefully in who they attack because their livelihoods depend on it. It’s always the kooks who project their sins on others.
Logic, reason, and being nominally on the same side in a fight against Obama has no logic for people in the cult. In the past month RedState and I personally have been attacked for being in Romney’s camp, Perry’s camp, Bachmann’s camp, Herman Cain’s camp, and most laughably in Jon Huntsman’s camp — all by Palin fans who clearly are not paying attention.
Ericson is illlustrating something that seems to escape many partisans these days: when people go after someone who is not a candidate for DARING to see something through a different political prism they are merely chasing away someone who might be won over. In a sense, this is symbolic of Palin’s “candidacy” since she quit her Governor’s job and became the GOP’s biggest political celebrity (second only to Rush Limbaugh) and one who kept dangling the possibility that she was a real potential national player:
She has made little effort to go beyond her existing supporters. And Ericson is illustrating how her supporters don’t seem to want to put in the effort to engage in the affirmative arguments to promote their favored candidate.
But that’s how our politics seems to work these days. A talk show host? Call for a boycott. A website? Don’t read it if it doesn’t already have on it everything you already agree with before you even get to it. A blog post? Go after the writer of the post, question his/her motives or sincerity. It’s search and destroy: if someone dares argue differently than someone, then the response in 21st century America is to try to destroy that person’s credibility, go on the attack. The shift here is that this isn’t the centuries old American tradition of blasting politicians of both parties and government. It’s going after those who dare comment on government or politics.
The fact IS people do genuinely see things differently and in olden times people at all levels of politics not only played traditional power politics games but also made a real effort to convince, change minds, win over — to build larger coalitions.
Palin has shown herself either uninterested or incapable of doing that — which is fine for a cable or radio media personality. But look at a Rick Perry, a Michele Bachmann, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney — any number of politicians in both parties and it’s clear that even if they fail at it they are trying to go beyond their existing base of supporters.
The bottom line seems to be that many Republican conservatives now sense that they may have apppealing, fresh political product in Rick Perry — and Perry is willing to engage and adapt.
Palin is willing to hold forth (on Facebook, Twitter and Fox), make big media splashes like her bus tour, and keep the political door open.
In politics timing is if not everything a lot of the thing. If Palin does get in now she may find some GOPers have already looked at other Republican conservatives and like what they can see and imagine — candidates who can engage, try to expand their existing bases, and who may meet the news media head on rather than mainly take softballs from Sean Hannity.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.