It certainly makes them look desperately insecure. More Hitchhiker's Guide advice: Don't Panic. Sarah Palin can stir people up, but she's unelectable.

Moreover it's hard to imagine she would still want the job after her VP run. She seems to have concluded life is too short even for the headaches of the governorship of Alaska.

NO!

With Lib-Dems, the hatred toward them simply devalues their detractor.

Palin gets to laugh all the way to the bank, in addition to relishing the fame the critics create for her.

1. The critics are irrational, as usual.

2. They ignore the relevent details, including being governor as a resume as well as springboard position.

(Note that at lefty attacks on Bush were demented and the most hateful to date, but at least they involved the rational inclusion of viewing Bush's record as Texas governor — we saw a dearth of that in the irrationationality about Palin, as well as the related inference that she would probably behave in the White House as she did as governor, as with Bush and Texas, and with Bill Clinton in Arkansas.)

3. Alaska is seen as Red Nation and a lesser-light state, as opposed to Dem dino stuff like New York.

4. It's probably convenient for lefties to devalue the states or deny their importance routinely, given their contempt as well as disdain for constitutional federalism and restricting Washington's role in US life.

With Palin, the hatred toward her simply devalues her detractors

This.

I don't like Palin much, except for the way mere mention of her names makes some Progressives look like the biggest idiots on the planet. (except for maybe Andrew Sullivan who looks like the biggest idiot in the universe at mention of her name) Thats always good for a laugh.

I agree though I wanted more stories but I read it not long before his death so felt lucky to have anything. I looked on the politics in it a bit differently though, I saw his tirades as a reflection of his generations view on what was being called a conservative movement. This version of conservatism is very radical and far from the text book definition of conservative which I can see that being rough to understand at such an advanced age. I happen to think that Reagan would have been moved back to the Dem party during the Bush years as well though since he was a new deal dem as well.

To me he was a new deal era person looking at the dark abyss of another extreme. If I am correct a similar thing will likely hit conservatives in another 30 years or so when we hit this sides extreme. Its not that they are right or wrong as much as come from a very different background and have a different idea of what reality is. For instance he embraced socialisim because he knows its history in this country while half of our population has a knee jerk reaction to the word now it was not always this way. It sounds revolutionary and slanted from someone born after say 1970 but to them I am sure we sound like mad fascists.

As you say, a main factor on whether a person enjoyed Man Without a Country depended largely on whether they agreed with the message. In that sense, I felt MWAC was a lot like watching Fox News or reading DailyKos.

And damn it, I wanted a story! Vonnegut was such a great storyteller but abandoned that approach and just groused about GWB and Big Oil.

Finally I thought Vonnegut betrayed his readers and much of what he had stood for by charging $24 list price for a small short hardcover book that was largely his ramblings. He had adopted what he had previously criticized – a callous, greedy, corporate attitude.

That's the logical and normal thing to do, as opposed to the pathological, hateful, sensationalist choice.

But let's see what she accomplished with her tenure in both of those positions. As mayor of Wasilla, she oversaw the construction of a sports center that went over budget in an eminent domain dispute, left the city of 6700, $20 million in new debt and actually had conversations about book banning (!) with the local librarian. Nothing earth shattering there, slightly reckless, perhaps, but whatever.

She then manages to get elected Governor of Alaska. WOW! That's great, a young conservative woman in a position to make real change. New thinking, and all that. You, go, Sarah! She spends less than a year in that position, and is tapped to be the GOP VP nominee.

It becomes painfully clear, very quickly, that this woman has, at best, limited knowledge about the world outside of Alaska. I will state again, she is proudly, willfully ignorant– a very dangerous combination. Being ignorant is fully correcible, if one has the motivation and desire to change. Being proudly ignorant, proudly uninformed and uneducated is not. Not to mention she has a bad habit of telling patent falsehoods, that are easily, embarrassingly refuted with a few key stokes and a working knowledge of Google.

Finally, rather than stay in office in Alaska, working hard to show her governing prowess, she RESIGNS(!), after a year and a half in the position of governor to do what? Have a ghost writer produce a self serving book that is neither memoir, nor policy based, but simply payback to the very people who set her upon the national stage? I am scratching my head here.

She has neither the temperament, nor the intellect to be a national leader. If she really wanted to effect change, why did she resign as governor? Constitutionally, she is eligible to be President, as am I, as are you. But she lacks probably the most important quality a President needs–the ability to know when they don't know something. A self awareness, an intellectual curiosity central to the innate ability to LEAD.

Thankfully, the portion of the American public that understands this, is not taken in. The portion of the American public that embraces her, is not doing itself any favors. She is patently unqualified to be president by any measure of thinking, rational people.

On the other hand, why isn't anyone talking about her record as governor? We elect officials to make decisions, not do interviews, yet that's all that either side seems to talk about.

Novelty in and of itself amounts to little. Even Obama and Hillary Clinton as pioneers (black, female) didn't rely solely on this, ever.

That's probably the reasonable verdict of most. No, not the scummier elitist and playpen stuff by Brooks (who's little different than someone else who's a separate thread subject currently, Chris Matthews, as well as someone I've mentioned before, David Frum), who is no “authority” (except in DC and among Northeastern liberals, perhaps) on conservatives or non-liberals. But I believe the public overall was as I was, first surprised, then initially impressed by a novel choice, then the bloom quickly wore off. Obama is far from the God his few hard-core worshippers may still believe he is, and the honeymoon is over, but Obama is certainly competent (and a good pretty-boy Dem figurehead above all others in his administration and most others in his party and surrounding “society,” it has not gone unnoticed), and the “passing of the honeymoon” happened in (note) conventional slow motion relative to Palin's intro.

“[S]he should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers.”

Then she would meet anybody's reasonable criteria for qualification for the office.

It's not as if everyone expects the President to be a living God on earth, not merely their parent and all.

Aside from the cheaper sniping at Palin that this reminds me of (I'm not accusing you, Polimom, of doing it here), there is something else (another more important issue) that I think of promptly here. This would be as true, also, of, say, Wyoming rather than a “megastate,” which is understood to mean a state that is often of impressive physical size, but more importantly has a large population. This is on a absolute rather than a relative (density) basis. However, it illustrates that someone running Alaska or Wyoming, the other example I think of immediately in this context (has to do with the States, why equal suffrage is justified in the Senate and why “equal footing” is deserved, all that related lefty-gripe material), might be considered inferior (not necessarily due to regional discrimination and slighting by dinos in Blue Nation) to someone running a smaller but more heavily populated and complex body, the principal example being Mayor Bloomberg (unappealing, but always considered in this light) and the “city-state” of New York City.

Primarily because I've never served a day in public office in my life. Ever. Nor have I ever made decisions with public funds that affect thousands and/or millions of people. She has. I don't have to agree with her politics to see that she's at least got some relevant stuff on her resume.

And imo, it doesn't make sense to conflate her ideology with her experience. Furthermore, I honestly think the fact that she's from Alaska is a HUGE reason why her view of the world is so confounding to many in the lower 48 states. Issues (and approaches to them) really couldn't be much different up there.