Bailin’ Barracuda, Or The Quitah From Wasilla
Not such a slow-news holiday weekend after all. Here’s a rundown of Sarah Palin-related developments and opinion:
* First, my quickie prediction: Though she probably does envision a role in national public life of some kind, I don’t believe she intends to run in 2012. She may end up doing that, but my bet is that’s not what is driving the resignation.
This is a woman who appears to crave dominance, and gets visibly frustrated and deeply rattled when it eludes her or when her self-mastery wavers. She can’t dominate or control the national media or her national image. This was borne out again with the flap over the Vanity Fair article. She quit in a huff, and doesn’t have any intention of coming back.
One other thought: How could someone who resigned as Governor of Alaska possibly present herself as ready for the presidency?
* By the way, it’s worth recalling that among rank-and-file Republicans, the woman who resigned at that rambling press conference yesterday is the most popular figure by a mile. What’s that say about today’s GOP?
* Jonathan Martin says her oddball presser and resignation reflect her own ambivalence over how to leverage her national fame and frustration with her missteps amid the scrutiny her renown has brought.
* Josh Marshall is less charitable:
Either Palin is resigning ahead of some titanic scandal (which should emerge in short order if it exists) or her resignation was triggered by an even more extreme mental instability than we’d previously suspected.
Just to reiterate, I don’t think this has anything to do with 2012.
* Indeed, Andrea Mitchell says that she “has told some of her biggest backers in the national Republican Party that they are free to choose other candidates for 2012,” which, if true, would mean she ain’t running.
* Although that’s not what fellow Alaska Republican Lyda Green (who had a falling out with Palin) says: She believes this is a sign Palin’s running for president, because her continued tenure as governor had been badly tarnishing her image.
If you’re leaving your elected position with more than a year to go because you can’t handle negative publicity, personal attacks and GOP back-biting, how could you possibly handle the rigors of running for president — much less being President?
I’ll tell you how, Glenn: She doesn’t intend to run.
* The head of the Republican Governors Association blames nettlesome Alaska bloggers and activists for hounding her from office — but then claims she didn’t buckle to pressure.
* The Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti reminds us that her resignation smacks of the equally-impetuous decision by John McCain to abruptly suspend his campaign. Oh, what might have been…
* Whatever her motives, Dan Balz delicately sums it up by arguing that her resignation “demonstrated once again yesterday that she is one of America’s most unconventional politicians.”
* And if you missed yesterday’s presser, or want to watch it again for some reason, video is right here.
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Good of you to chime in, Greg.
We have to hand it to Sarah Palin, she did shatter some stereotypes. For example, contrary to myth, not everyone who wears glasses is smart.
I agree, she’s not running. Something big is about to come down. Her entire rambling speech was one big whine-fest about how oppressed and misunderstood she is. Preparation for the victim/martyr defense when the criminal indictments come down would be my guess. Just a guess!!
Happy 4th Greg. All I gotta say about Palin is, What a Maverick! This whole thing reeks of maverickyness.
It’s not a shock if you think about her personality, and how she is so myopic and deluded. There are two forces at work here: first, that she’s a virtuosa self-sabatour, like all pathological narcissists; second, that she could not bear being exposed day after day for the phony, vapid, prima donna she was.
I suspect, like othere here, that a new scandal, even greater than Troopergate or Travelgate, or Wardrobegate is brewing, and it’s either Constructiongate or Babygate.
Either way, it’s a career-killer. Good thing she got that book advance before this.
Happy 4th. Maybe someone DNA tested her offspring and they’re not all hubby’s. OK, slap me for my dirty mind and cynicism.
Greg, thanks for weighing in with good links and your invaluable perspective. The ********** thing is a fresh angle, excellent.
This is just Sarah being Sarah. Look at her college record. She jumped from one college to another every year. She did the same thing as Mayor of Wasilla. She ran up a huge debt for the place, and then moved on.
What a train wreck. On another note, y’all see the video of Chuck Grassley telling someone if he wan’t better health insurance he should go work for the Govn’t. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzZwAhuqzAw There are so many things wrong with that statement according to his orthodoxy I don’t know where to begin.
mike: we let people who enjoy govt funded health decide what kind of care we get, outside govt, of course. Is it any wonder that the comfortable are in charge of our afflictions. Grassley, of course, does not want govt to interfere with HIS health pacakage, How nice.
greg said… “And if you missed yesterday’s presser, or want to watch it again for some reason”…Very funny. Might I dedicate a little poem? “She barked like a pitbull…Flashed her teeth like a killer…Bought those diamond-bit high heels…And drove ‘em down like a driller…Billy Kristol’s baby…The Wuss from Wasilla”
Whatever the reason for her resignation, I still think she’s looking to a 2012 presidential run. After all, the ever increasingly schizophrenic right wing (arguably) elected Dubya – twice! Rush has it backwards; never has there been a political party that regaled their party leaders with such symbolism over substance as the conservatives do that began with Reagan and continues with their infatuation for a not-ready-for-prime-time Palin.
I think Palin is now sending out messages that she may run in order to maintain the irrational hopes of her base and to give herself back some of the legitimacy she just squandered by quitting.
I watched her presser twice. The first time, I felt she was quitting to get ahead of a scandal. The second time, I felt she had just found a good excuse to quit so that she could go out and immediately start making the big bucks. I don’t believe that she is interested in attempting to govern any longer now that she sees an alternate path to fame, riches and glamour but that she will maintain the illusion in order to string her fans along.
But I hope I was right the first time and that her incompetence and corruption will be catching up to her, soon.
The real power is not in elective office, but in propaganda. That is where she is headed.
Face it – Sarah’s thin skinned. I think that’s always been her major weakness. Why go to all the trouble of having to govern and being criticized when she can quit and spend the rest of her life giving speeches and making money, money, money!!!!
It is about money and how much support can Sarah Palin get.
Can the GOP stand any more “shoes” dropping–Ensign, Sanford, Palin and….any volunteers?
There’s always the possibility that she didn’t think past today. There is no motive at all beyond whatever has bubbled out of her id. I’ve always thought people discount this possibility among Republicans far too easily these days.
What I would love is that Matt Taibbi take apart her speech from yesterday and her statement from facebook today in much the same fashion as how he has torn Thomas Friedman to shreds for years.
Given format weirdnesses here, had to post this on my blog instead. With sincere apologies to Tom Waits, my ode to Sarah…
Big With The Base
I got the bark but not the bite
I got the corner but not the fight,
I got the nails I got the smile
I got the teeth, but not the file
full version… http://bernielatham.com/2009/07/05/big-with-the-base-apologies-to-tom-waits/
I thought the attacks on her children and parenting skills were cheap shots during the campaign. Sexism reared its ugly head – as Biden got a pass, as did Obama.
She’s not cut out for the national stage. McCain knew he was gonna lose the race – picking Palin showed his desperation.
Something is off on this whole thing…if this was prep for 2012 or prep to go out and make some big bucks…then why was her father-in-law shocked to hear she was resigning and learned of it through an emailed news alert to his cell phone?? That is way off of the idea of a 2012 run or a move into the “glam side” of punditry! If you were Gov and you were about to resign, wouldn’t you at least inform your in-laws? Along with your own parents and kids of course…it is very strange indeed…
Attacks on kids: cheap shots. Attacks on her parenting skills: those choices are part of her package–persona, character. Sexism, yeah, some, but that is a known obstacle in every woman’s path. You either go through it, around it, or over it. She flirts with it, plays the victim and lashes out as the vigilante. The main thing is she’s a master manipulator, BSer and unqualified platitudinizer who has a powerful magnetism. It attracts her base and repels the rest of us. It was nice to think she might fade away, but no. This summer must remind her of what she was up to last summer. And she had to get the hell out of Alaska and back to her adoring audience. Sarah Bernhardtacuda.
As with Cheney, the motivation here isn’t clear. Or perhaps most of us have difficulty empathizing with the sort of ambitions (and narcissism) which the two of them seem to be driven by. Frustrated urges toward dominance of others (Greg’s thesis) works for me, but who the hell knows? Douthat in the Times writes on her today. It’s not a bad column, I think, except for the two significant points: his conceptions of “class” and of “meritocracy” as he differentiates it from “democracy”. On the first, it is hardly the case that we wish for or support elected representatives who sit at some mid-point on a bell curve of our population. Better than average intelligence, knowledge, ethics and competence aren’t merely what we wish to see in a rep, it is also what candidates will insist their personal histories display. Douthat’s conception of “class” suffers from the same sort of failure. Douthat’s blind spot here is his apparent inability to honestly assess how intellectually unfit Palin was/is for a set of responsibilities the Presidency (or anything remotely like it) demands. You’d think that the consequences of the conservative movement’s zest for leaders who are so commonly and deeply incurious about the world and so commonly incapable of serious reflection on their ideas would have impinged on Douthat’s thinking.
Sorry, got ‘first’ ought to be ’second’ in that fourth sentence.
I wake slowly
Joe LieberSchmuck (א-Likud)
as joan walsh notes, she’s “Sarah Barraquitta.”
her demented presser reminded one and all of a four
year old stamping his or her feet and pitching a temper
tantrum because they could not have ice cream for dinner
she’s a quitter. americans do not like quitters.
she loves Alaska so much, she’s quitting. this is
just nuts.
she’s a self absorbed whiner.
“attacks on her children and parenting skills” ??
I seem to have missed that part of the 2008 campaign. With the exception of some chuckles about Bristol’s delicate condition, which you could hardly expect the press to ignore, I don’t recall much in the way of attacks on her children or parenting skills.
Most of the criticism of her was for being a ill-informed doofus who then morphed into a violence-inciting demagogue; a person whose history and temperment made her mainfestly unsuited for the Presidency.
Kristol notes two emails he received from allies re Palin. They are really worth reading… http://www.weeklystandard.com/Weblogs/TWSFP/TWSFPView.asp#12274 … Note the fundamental concentration in both emails on “balls” and maleness vs femininity (the recommendation to paint Obama as feminine and Palin as masculine – this is a constant in Republican propaganda). Note as well the “age of Soros” thing. These people are (I think) smarter than that (Soros has no significant influence on the progressive camp but he is used as a symbol or myth-figure to suggest covert control by big money thus stoking old populist paranoid tendencies AND thus countering the knock on the conservative movement’s support by Scaife, Coors, Bradley, etc) so tossing that in here seems to be a simple propaganda move. And there’s much more in the piece like that, eg “her impressive record”. Oh?
@virginia -
Commentators slamming her for campaigning while having a “special needs” child – I witnessed it on msnbc & cnn. The attacks on her family were just nasty.
She is a kook & her beliefs are bizarre – they could have stuck to them, like they did with Biden & Obama…instead they showed their true colors. It was shameful.
Bernie
I just can’t read the Kristol link so early in the day but I think here he is playing with fire. The Soros mention is not *just* about banking but about the ‘jewish’ hand in the capitalist crisis. This is a very big part of the right wing populists and Kristol is so into riding that tiger he seems totally oblivious that they would trample him over as a jew boy the first chance they get.
And Greg–thanks for the control angle. perfect.
Once again – I missed the “slamming” of her for campaigning with a special needs child. It certainly wasn’t a common theme – regardless of what one or another bloviator might have said on cable once or twice. The Obama campaign never said anything of the kind – they essentially ignored her. Let’s not have revisionist history that plays into Palin and the right’s sense of victimization.
I can’t believe the way so many Republicans are so ga ga over her. Even well educated ones like Bill Kristal. Are they just oblivious to her utter lack of qualifications? Oh wait, these are the same people who supported Bush..
Is there something in the water in GOP land?