PALIN AND CONSERVATISM
It doesn’t matter how much you study American politics, it still manages to spring a surprise on you when you least expect it. Anyway you try and analyze Sarah Palin’s decision to stand down as Governor of Alaska during her FIRST TERM, it still boggles the mind. I have been reserving judgment about Sarah Palin ever since her debut onto the national American stage in 2008, but I have made up my mind. This woman frightens the life out of me.
I have tried my very best to find a single, well thought out policy speech, statement or remark that explains her views on current political debates and I have come up empty. I have searched for almost a year and I have come up with nothing. This is a woman whose conservative political credentials are Christian centric and very limited. I haven’t heard or read her views on the current global economic disaster in great detail, I haven’t heard about what she thinks could be the solution to peace in the Middle-East, I haven’t heard about her thoughts on Health Care but I do know her views on gun rights, abortion and the role of religion (Christianity) in American society.
Again, this woman frightens me.
She should also frighten the life out of true conservatives. No I’m not talking about the pseudo-morally pure politicians who claim to have fiscal constraint but oversaw the 8 years before Obama took office, I am talking about conservatives in the same mold as the men and women who helped Clinton take control of the deficit – men and women who are now a rarity both in the Senate and the House. I have to believe that such Republicans still exist. I have to believe that they are not all Libertarians or ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats. I have to believe that Palin also conjures up unpleasant feelings within the very depths of their souls because this woman can realistically become President of the United States one day.
Whats the saying? Only in America.
In Palin I see the end of the mainstream elected Conservative political thinkers.
Many might have ill-feelings towards Mr Gingrich but you could never say that his political views were not thoroughly thought out. You would have never seen Gingrich do Couric as Palin did it. Mr Gingrich can look at his work in the nineties and hold his head up high. Instead in Palin I can envision the rise of Pop Socialcons – compassionate conservatism without the compassion. The ultimate hijack of the Republican Party by the religious far-right wing all packaged with a wink and a smile.
I know how this all sounds, call me sexist, call me a socialist or call me an elitist – that’s all fine with me but please tell me how she would get the banks loaning money again. I am happy to be considered all of the above but if you can tell me how she plans to calm the growing tensions in the Middle-East I will gladly be pleasantly surprised by Ms Palin. But I am unable to find such mind easing statements.
It’s disappointing because America needs a respected, functioning, intelligent opposition to Obama’s Democratic Party. If there was ever a time to sell real fiscal Conservative values it would be now, when job loss rates are at its highest in 26 years and confidence in the American financial market is at an all time low. But instead America has an opposition party that is in meltdown and foams at the mouth and screams ‘SOCIALIST’ every time Obama is on the television screen (which is alot).
If the Republicans want steer their way out of the political wilderness, Palin is NOT the driver to help them do so.
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Colin Powell was on ABC news saying that President Obama was making mistakes. When Colin Powell said that McCain was making mistakes, every left of center blog made a big deal out of it. Now that Colin Powell is saying that President Obama is making mistakes, every left of center blog is making 20 posts about a never was, never going to be politician by the name of Palin instead of talking about energy policy, health policy, growing unemployment, and mounting massive deficits.
I remember when all of the left of center bloggers said that they were not going to be apoligist for the Obama Administration. Six months later and if Moveon.org is not telling them about it, it would seem that the left of center blogger do not know what to think about an issue.
How about ten issues on real issues before another fluff piece of the most irrelevant politician in America.
Good summary of the Palin phenomenon. I wholeheartedly agree with this comment:
“America needs a respected, functioning, intelligent opposition to Obama’s Democratic Party.”
The GOP is not providing the quality of check and balance that is needed. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so in the absence of that “respected, functioning, intelligent opposition” we get people who say “NO” a lot and who thrive on division.
Yes, Powell is an exception to that scenario, and I sincerely hope we hear more from him. Someone of his stature and abilities can help the GOP in a way that noisy, foolish, and heated rhetoric never will.
There are two political parties in the US, one is a center-right party which attempts to balance budgets and whose foreign policy is not “Kill them all, let God sort them out” and the Republican Party whose membership would be right at home marching in the Phalanx and cracking skulls left and right.
So you better hope that Obama manages to get the US economy on track, or else Palin or someone just like her ( Huckabee )will end up in the White House.
Who gives a sh*t what Powell says?
When it was time for him to stand up to the Bush administration, he went in front of the UN and lied his ass off instead of handing in his resignation and going in front of the media and explaining to them that the Bush administration was lying its way into a new pointless war that so far has cost 500 American life, a few hundred billion dollars, at least a half a million Iraqi lives and a few million refugees.
We now know exactly what Powell is, a careerist with no scruples or backbone. Why the MSM treats him as anything other than that that is beyond my understanding?
DQ,
If you look at the states running the biggest budget deficits, they are overwhelmingly blue states with New York, Illinois, and California near the top of the list. It is hard to claim that Democrats care about the budget when the Obama Administraiton is running the biggest deficits of all time while trying to do what FDR did. Look at how the Democrats are trying to maneuver to claim that sky high taxes means that you are fiscally conservative. I guess the Democrats have forgotten what the ratchet effect is and how to govern knowing it exist.
Unless the U.S. begins to bomb factories throughout the world, the economic plans of FDR are bound to fail. Look at how private sector invest has collapsed and that fiscal stimulus has pushed out private invest instead of encouraging it. I guess the Democrats need to go back and remember how bad the private sector was in the 1930's.
You crack me up…
A) All the states with a couple of exceptions are having budgetary problems, they all have to balance their budgets and through a combination of tax increases and service cuts they will, unfortunately this will not improve their economy.
B) Running budget deficits when the economy is in the crapper the way it is right now is standard economic policy. (sent there courtesy of 30 years of crappy Cheap Labor Conservatism policies that are so thoroughly loved and supported by Republicans.)
C) When the economy was running full steam in the 80's, 90's and 00's, the Republicans/Conservatives in power were not willing/able to balance the budget. Not Once… The National debt went through the roof when Reagan, Bush and Bush were in the White House, I did not hear a peep from the Conservatives/Republicans then.
I think the Republicans/Conservatives should pay a little more attention to history and observe what the countries that did not have an FDR to bail out the capitalist system got instead, do the names Mussolini, Franco, Tojo or Hitler ring a bell? You should kiss FDR's ass three times a day every day of the week for having saved capitalism and prevented the American equivalent of those people from coming to power.
So now have yourself a nice cup of STFU.
Who gives a sh*t what Powell says? – DQ
If matters of degree matter, then Powell had to be considered less out of control than the chickenhawks that surrounded him. Many of us desperately wanted to see him stand up to the neocons, but the combination of poor intelligence and his inherent loyalty to the job (he is a military man in case you forgot) conflicted with that. He is widely considered to be a moderate, and that is not just my own opinion. If you have a personal ax to grind with the man, then so be it.
So was Eichmann… He implemented the policies but did not propose them, therefor he was a moderate…
So you're comparing Powell with Eichmann now? Ya know, they have this thing called “credibility”…
Which Powell has none…
Eichmann ran the trains on time, Powell lied to start a war of aggression that has killed at least half a million people. Neither of them set the policy, but both of them executed it.
PS. Powell could have resigned & denounced the policy at any time without risking his life or that of his family…
Gotta run here, but just want to say, your logic carried further could well apply in the future to people you currently support… or even yourself. Not taking sufficient action (even on the part of a citizen) to stop any atrocities (which occur on a daily basis) could garner similar comparisons. We don't all have the luxury of devoting ourselves to full-time protest against every injustice… but maybe we should eh?
It does.
But there a subtle difference between John Q. Public and the Secretary of State. John Q. Public is but one of a 150 million voters while the Secretary of State is on of the most powerful members ( #3 or 4 depending on the administration) of the most powerful government on the planet. When the Secretary of State speaks people listen, when I speak get dismissed as a left-wing radical, doesn't matter whether I am right or wrong.
“How about ten issues on real issues before another fluff piece of the most irrelevant politician in America.”
… or about Michael Jackson again [rolling eyes], or on Al Sharpton's wanting a national day of mourning for him, or on other fluff celebrities or obscure subjects (or on people who are so vapid they don't even merit the use of the term “fluff,” which is too substantial, in the case of Maureen Dowd we see elsewhere currently).
Obama's foreign trip was and is odd, but at least he met with Medvedev, and that meeting is the most important topic currently facing us. Not for the nuclear-arms-reduction fluff (and related anti-nuclear idiocy many of his followers exhibit), but because it's a chance to engage with Medvedev (strings attached to Putin and all) and with Russia. What will Russia do or not do to reduce its support of Iranian nuclear weapons work? Will Russia make concessions to the West, its scapegoat for its own problems and failures? Will Bruno not lay his claws on any more of his neighbors or gyp them with gas price contract “renegotiations” next winter? Etc.
More interesting than any fluffy subject and obscession currently on this site (such as with Palin) is that the Manx Missile took two straight road stages so far in the Tour de France and might be challenged later by a US sprinter, while Lance Amstrong in his later thirties rode excellently today (Monday).
OK, you'd rather play with Palin. So be it, kids, though some want to look elsewhere…
“If you look at the states running the biggest budget deficits, they are overwhelmingly blue states with New York, Illinois, and California near the top of the list.”
California has bankrupted itself by liberal policies the same way New York City did by the mid-1970s.
California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, etc (Blue Nation) have nobody but themselves to blame, though I wonder if one reason (other than ineptitude; I discount reluctance ever by Dems) that Washington didn't misspend more stimulus money to date is that they might have reserved much of it to give to Blue states that went broke (not for constructive purposes, but to further misspend money, just to give it to them to fund current operations with no fundamental reforms and improvements required in exchange).
We'll just have to wait and see if Cailfornia officially goes broke as well as if proper attention is paid (for a change) to something important like that on this site (with hopefully some refreshing realism and truth about such events by this site's staff).
“Colin Powell was on ABC news saying that President Obama was making mistakes. [...]“
He shared the mainstream concerns we all have. Why all this excessive misspending, with no results to show for it, and why the inane rushing? Is it just cynical exploitation of the for-now-still-exploitable? Is it due to excessive ambition and arrogance and conceit? Is it naivete and relative ineptitude, a misreading of the public and what it will notice and tolerate?
Why was Powell's concern not a subject on here (more important than Jackson fluff, or obscession with and hatred expressed for Palin), at least to be the object of snarly sniping by the lefties a la Lieberman?
Something else is preferred over substance. …
* * *
“Look at how private sector invest has collapsed and that fiscal stimulus has pushed out private invest instead of encouraging it. I guess the Democrats need to go back and remember how bad the private sector was in the 1930's.”
The 1930s (referred to less now than prior to the election, and when the stimulus was considered afterward, when “Great Depression” was commonplace scaremongering language) seems to have taught the more ambitious Dems the wrong lessons. We have more, not less, federal infiltration into industry (GM and Chrysler being the most notorious examples, along with the financial “reforms”), and the “public option” maneuver shows you the direction they want to take public-vs.-private with health care and what they think at least of the private sector insofar as health care is concerned. At their worst the Dems are threatening to regress truly to the 1930s in their viewpoints and attempt more federal expansionism.