Sarah Palin

We have not seen former Governor Palin out and about for awhile. Indeed, the various bloggers @ Conservatives4Palin often complain that the McDonnell and Christie campaigns haven't demanded her to walk the length of VA or NJ with them.

And right now, I' ve seen no indication she's going to campaign this season. But is there some huge surprise brewing?

I recall that before the 2008 Republican National Convention she swooped into Ohio out of nowhere for her debut. 

I know she's a "hockey mom" and I also know one candidate associated with the 1980 Winter Olympics.

There's an fairly large airport just minutes from the Lake Placid Ice arena and the Hoffman campaign HQ. Could there be one more surprise left in the NY 23 race?   Could she just show up on Doug Hoffman's doorstep and alert the local media?

Sure would upstage Joe Biden

Well, did anyone expect Sarahcuda to toe the party line on this race?  

The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now.The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it's important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York's 23rd Congressional district. It's my honor to endorse Doug and to do what I can to help him win, including having my political action committee, SarahPAC, donate to his campaign the maximum contribution allowed by law..

H/T Weekly Standard

The Hoffman camp viewed Sarah Palin as the big "get".  And they "got".

Well, it's pretty clear that the Rightosphere is now "all in" for Hoffman in NY 23. It's also clear to me that Newt Gingrich circa 2009 is looking a lot like the guy he replaced as Republican leader, Bob Michel, circa 1993. Backing Dede Scozzafava is such a Bob Michel move, Newt.

The Hoffman campaign now needs to make a quick pivot. For weeks they have tried to establish credibility with the conservative media and activist community. That mission has been accomplished.

But with 12 days to go; it's time for the candidate and the campaign to focus back to upper NY State, and worry less about national talk radio. Victory over Bill Owens will require turning out less motivated voters and convincing a critical quantum of active, but nonideological voters that Hoffman "gets" the "pothole politician" role of a successful upstate House member.

Glitz is nice. Now's the time for grit. 

This is the anniversary of a tragic day, September 29, 2008. That was the last day I believe John McCain could have salvaged the 2008 Presidential election.

The McCain campaign started losing altitude following the mid-month collapse of Lehman Brothers, leading McCain to leave the campaign trail to stay in Washington to respond to the crisis.  This led to a confusing set of events surrounding whether McCain would attend the first debate; which he did.  By Monday morning, September 29, it a ppeared a deal to approve the $700 billion bailout was in place and the House was supposedly in line to vote "aye".

Assuming the time had come to return to the stump, McCain left Washington to join Sarah Palin at a rally in Columbus, OH.  This decision doomed his chances.

Many argue McCain was politically dead for even supporting the unpopular bailout , but if there's one thing worse than being unpopular, it's' being both ineffective AND unpopular.  Having chosen the unpopular path, McCain had to, as an absolute necessity, get the bill passed and gotten back on the trail arguing the crisis had been addressed and he helped promote a solution..

While McCain was in Ohio that morning, Speaker Pelosi decided that insulting the Republican party was a good way to spout off when she needed their votes. Enough bailed to scuttle the bill. Many flipped back to support a somewhat amended version a week later. Many of these folks are no longer in Congress.

John McCain faced incredible obstacles in 2008 ...a popular opponent, having to defend an unpopular incumbent President from his own party, and a weak economy. Given this, he needed to maximise his own assets. And he absolutely needed every possible day to draw the contrast with Barack Obama. One rally, even in Ohio, wasn't worth the risk he would lose the chance to punch through with his own message nationally because of events in Washington.

We don't know if McCain whipping the House Republicans would have gotten TARP passed a week sooner, but by failing to put his shoulder to the wheel (and not "assuming the second out of the double play"), McCain cost himself two things he could never recover--he lost a week of the campaign and he lost credibility for returning to Washington only to see things fall apart anyway. The split in the polls reached  double digits in early October, never to fully close.

There's a lesson here somewhere, not that I expect the Beltway brain trust to figure it out. 

We've seen an awful lot of time devoted by conservative commentators about who is a Nazi, who used the Nazi symbols first, and what political movement resembles the Nazis.

Stop. It's a waste of time. (this is directed at you, Rush)

What the Left is successfully doing is starting up a political sideshow that our camp feels compelled to address, and then retreating into the swamp knowing our forces will get tied down in an indecisive quagmire far from the main field of battle.

Don;t make a big deal about every stupid LaRouche poster or insane Nancy Pelosi remark. Invoke Godwin';s Law and move on.

Say whatever about Sarah Palin, but at least she had the good political judgment in railing against the "death panels" to address a legitimate concern in the bill itself, not get into a useless dialogue about a dead dictator.

In any event, if conservatives must raise the specter of what socialism in practice is like, might I suggest there are plenty of fine examples from nice, friendly regimes who were American allies.  I suspect the Democratic party and their SEIU muscle would be quite happy with the "Old Labour" government of the UK pre Maggie Thatcher. I suspect most Americans would be quite appalled to be governed that way. 

Better yet. Stick to the bill. Stick to Obama's rationale.  We have a limited amount of airtime (only three hours a day. Mr. Limbaugh) and bandwidth to use in opposition. We'd better start using it wisely.   

There's a must read over @ the New Ledger which I think makes a point missed by the Beltway brain trust.

Yet the assumption that these protesters are right-wingers — or as others have accused, fake grassroot anger, or “astroturf” — seems a vast oversimplification. While we hardly have data on the people who have been attending these townhalls and shouting down members attempting to sell health care insurance reform, anecdotal evidence indicates that this is hardly manufactured dissent. Obama’s plan is hardly popular, and many Americans who are not Republican or conservative are opposed to the package and nervous about its outcome.

Domenech makes the point that this appears much more to be a sudden resurgence of the Ross Perot phenomena than any Republican party inspired movement. I tend to agree. Recent polls show that Republican party identification is still rather low; it's been deterioration in Democratic support over recent months that's kept the gap from widening. To the extent any national figures have stoked the flames, they are media hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity , Beck and Levin and not Republican elected officials.  And the "feel" of the crowds doesn't reflect the losing late decade Republican coalition of preachers and lobbyists.

These protesters aren’t really fans of either party (George W. Bush is no more popular at Tea Parties than Barack Obama), but driven by a strong sense — and basic American ideas of liberty — that the government shouldn’t be intruding on their lives, taking their money and giving it to companies that don’t deserve it, telling them which doctor to go to, and generally mismanaging things.

Indeed, the only contemporary Republican political figure who seems to be aligned with this inchoate anti-establishment vibe is Sarah Palin, who as we are well aware marches to her own drummer.  While Palin is often pigeonholed by the MSM as a 'social conservative champion", much of the energy she brought to the McCain campaign during its brief burst of success was appealing to these sorts of voters who had tuned out the Republican establishment.

These voters are "middle American radicals"--distrustful of big government but usually skeptical of movement conservatism or corporate Republicanism.  I suspect that one will find a rather substantial number sat out the 2008 election, and clearly they decided to abstain from the 2006 midterms in droves, costing us both houses of Congress. 

So here's the challenge:

if those on the right aren’t able to present a strong, coherent alternative, they will be unable to rally these Perotistas to their side. In 1994, the Republicans were successful at this, combining a package of populist governmental reforms with outrage against irresponsible governance to attain victory — but more recently, they’ve given no signs of having this capability. Whether they can recapture it, and claim enough of the independent middle to win, will be a very challenging thing indeed.

And what are Republicans doing to harness this energy for the 2010 elections?  Nominating a bunch of "certified pre-owned candidates"

The latest example is from Colorado, where it appears failed 2006 gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is about to challenge appointed Democratic senator Bennet. 

Beauprez appears to be a perfectly satisfactory guy; he won a swing House district twice and seems to have done a credible job in Congress.  But how much pizazz are we getting running a guy whose been around awhile and lost his last statewide race by double digits?  Maybe the alternatives haven't shown to be able to get it done, but I'd like to think we'd do better than a "round up the usual suspects" approach to nominating candidates in this unconventional election cycle  

Same for Roy Blunt or Charlie Crist. Are we giving ourselves our best shot in 2010 by running old time corporate Republicans? And let's assume they do win. Are these the sorts of people that are going to inspire a new generation to become active Republicans?

Lemme throw a race where we should be thinking outside the box. Nevada. Harry Reid has anemic approval numbers but all the prominent Republican officeholders of late have legal problems or think they'll wait for John Ensign to step aside in 2012.

Fine. Why don't we look to a nonpolitician to run against Reid. Make this the classic outsider vs. the classic insider.

Half of Nevada's voters weren't around when Reid got into the Senate. Nevada is a state built on gambling, this seems like a good bet to me.

Or will we find the last political warhorse who lost a statewide race or hold some obscure legislative post and hand the keys off to him?

Stop looking for old jalopies. The Republican party is not going to thrive in the future running its own version of "cash for clunkers". Time for the bright new models!  

“As a public official, I expect criticism and I expect to be held accountable for how I govern, but the personal, salacious nature of recent reporting, and often the refusal of the media to correct obvious mistakes, unfortunately discredits too many in journalism today, making it difficult for many Americans to believe what they see in the media.” . . .Sarah Palin

 Something has happened to the political landscape that most potential conservative candidates aren’t even aware of yet. An astonishing, unintended “change” has occurred that will give candidates from the Right a definite advantage if they choose to take it. A definite chink in the Left’s armor. And that’s a dilemma because charging in and taking advantage of this new breach in the Left’s parapet will take courage and conviction. Assets that even the best GOP politicians are generally in short supply of, especially in the higher echelons. With the exception of a couple of “bold ones” the rest are all playing it safe. Over cautious. So what is this significant “thing” that has happened? Simple, the biased, autocratic, domineering Main Stream Media (MSM) has clearly given away its position and, as a result, they can no longer be called objective or respectable. “What?” you say. “you’re telling us something we’ve known for years.”   True, but the difference is that today, there are literally volumes written that prove, and expose, without a shadow of a doubt, the hatreds and prejudices that the MSM have for Conservatives.   It’s no longer just the lone, pioneer voice of Limbaugh talking about it on the radio. Its now categorized and documented by a myriad of learned experts and available for any conservative politician to reference. At their finger tips. Now the possibility of a surprise ambush by the MSM is almost non-existent. This is huge. Conservatives can now make a legitimate case for a major break in relations with the various elements of the MSM. So, what does this mean?   Is it now time to go on the attack? Hit the MSM head on? Kick them where it hurts?   No!  We can learn from beloved former Washington State governor, the late Dixie Lee Ray who took a confrontational strategy with the state media. When a pet pig had a litter of piglets, she even went so far as to name each of the piglets after some of her worst adversaries in the press. Dixie Lee was a brilliant scientist but she made some serious missteps in her handling of the media which cost her a re-election. Dixie was a no-nonsense gal, God rest her soul.   Not enough like her, sadly.  Were I advising a contemporary conservative politician vying for a high public office, I’d tell them to take a look at how ** Danish politician, Fogh Rasmussen handled the situation when an aggressive, left-leaning member of the Danish media began to pressure him to grant an interview. In reality it was nothing but an ambush and Fogh knew it. But he didn’t counter attack. No, Mr. Rasmussen made a simple public statement: “it is an infringement of my personal freedom if I, myself, may not decide who I will speak to on a day to day basis”. Surprisingly, that was the end of it. Fogh simply ignored them, stuck to his principles and kept quiet.  I’m sure he then focused on his constituents. Perfect. A simple, respectful refusal – and then ignore them.  Of course we can expect no such civility in our own political process. Maybe from the Conservative side but you can bet that the MSM counterpart will not reciprocate.    You see, the MSM considers itself a legitimate and legal part of that process. When in fact they’re nothing more than a business trying to make money and they’ve been given far too much access. They have no more rights than any other business other than their individual right to vote.    But they won’t see it that way. Which is why any conservative politician who attempts to quietly banish them from “our side” of the political process will set off an unprecedented political firestorm.    And this will be an opportunity for Conservative politicians to, once and for all, forget George Bush’s disgusting “New Tone” and grow a spine. Regain some respect and stop pandering. Politicians with a backbone? What a concept.   They’ll have to learn just as Riot Police must learn. Riot Police are taught to keep their fear, anger and emotions under control. Not an easy task when being verbally attacked by a mob. Only when the rioters cross a certain line and actually assault the police, are they allowed to retaliate. Until then, they remain silent with plexiglass shields locked. The tuning-out and expulsion of the MSM from the conservative side of the political process will cause an intellectual riot of sorts. Depriving these spoiled MSM brats of what they think they’re entitled to will cause the expected destructive conflagration. Something to definitely be prepared for. There may even be some small skirmishes. Extra security might be required for restricted conservative functions so that disruptions don’t occur. Yea, its going to take some real backbone on our part! We’ve catered to these Constitution-hating leftists far too long and they’ve become accustomed to having their way. But it is the MSM, through their own misconduct that have forfeited these privileges. Privileges are not rights and can be taken away. What would be the positive effects of this sort of decisive and courageous action on the part of Movement Conservatives?   Think of the time spent by Conservative politicians preparing for the hostile gauntlet that they require themselves to run through every political season. They must shift their focus away from the Conservative Base and give rapt attention to the enemy in the MSM. They must become as “walking encyclopedias”. With knowledge and the correct pronunciation of every little tinhorn dictator around the world and the tiny nation they lord over. They’re required to know minute details on all subjects or risk looking foolish on national TV. The irony is that the vicious MSM will see to it that they look foolish anyway. No matter how well prepared they are. Can we remember the ’08 GOP debates? The time it takes to maintain this charade totally shifts the politicians focus away from connecting and bonding with the actual voting Base that will, hopefully, elect them. Exactly as the Left has designed and implemented it!   Such a tragedy that Conservatives have repeatedly fallen into this trap and allowed themselves to be manipulated to this extent.  It has been Sarah Palin who has taken the worst of the full frontal attacks/barrages of the MSM and certain other well organized, well financed elements on the Left. This fact is telling.  If Sarah decides to pursue the 2012 POTUS, she should consider a departure from the traditional/conventional forms of campaigning and that will also include banishment of the MSM. Going straight to the populace or working through “friendlies” of which there are ample. She can learn much from the mistakes of Fred Thompson and Duncan Hunter.   Sarah will need to skirt around the Left’s Maginot Line. She should also avoid, like the plague, the well traveled thoroughfares that other GOP candidates choose to travel upon. They’re lined with trip wires, booby traps and snipers peering down from tree tops. Sarah can reach the same destination by traveling off road along dirt roads and game trails. Metaphorically speaking, of course.  Darvin Dowdy   **Danish politician – copy/paste this url: https://www.indymedia.ie/article/82913?comment_order=asc&condense_comments=false

Much has been written about the fights between Sarah Palin and John McCain's campaign staffers. Apparently not all of them had a difficult relationship with Palin.

Palin's mother-in-law and father-in-law both gave to Vaughn Ward, a candidate for the first district of Idaho.

Now, Vaughn would have had a lot of contact with Palin. He was the McCain state director in Nevada, a swing state where Palin spent a bunch of time. And Palin grew up in Idaho, so she might have seen a little bit of herself in him. Or maybe like her son. He is an Iraq vet and a Major in the Marine Corps Reserve.

This could also be a preview of what Sarah PAC looks like.

Just a thought.

We've seen an awful lot of nasty verbiage from the chattering classes in response to the Sarah Palin resignation. Upon reflection, it says a lot more about them and what they think about the people who really support the Republican party than it reflects on Palin.

Let me first preface that I'm assuming Palin isn't stepping down because she is running off to the tropics with Rosie O'Donnell or has converted the Alaska pension funds into gold bullion in a numbered Zurich account. Assuming that she simply thought "going with the flow" was what dead fish do; this move still could be as useful to her ambitions for elective office as Plaxico Burress's marksmanship was to his football career. It does appear the Republican base were understanding of the move; but that still won't win a general election.

I'll also preface that I respect the opinions of those who simply and dispassionately think Palin is not presently ready to run for President, and will not make the effort to attain that stature.  I'm willing to reserve judgment until I see what Palin 2.0 looks and sounds like.

But I think we ought to at least appreciate that Palin took on the thankless task of trying to derail the Barack Obama juggernaut.  Unfortunately, it seems the DC insiders are for the most part more interested in fragging their own troops than leading the counteroffensive.

Two in particular are Micks gone wrong---Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy. As for our party, it's like they've thrown away their rosaries and enlisted in the Black & Tans 

Peggy Noonan once used her "force" for good. Sadly, she seems to have slipped the surly bounds of both political reality and good taste in her latest columm.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.

Since I have no reason to believe Ms. Noonan actually interviewed Palin before this writing this diatribe the concept of "facts lacking evidence" seems to kick in. But then again, I was busy learning a profession when Peggy was writing feel good speeches for President Reagan.  

It also seems that the alternative--the election of Barack Obama--was less "horrifying" to Ms. Noonan. Jeez.

Noonan then goes on to disparage the Republicans who identify with Palin's background. You see she really isn't  that blue collar and we shouldn't identify with the "politics of resentment"  And you see    " She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

If anything, the reaction of the Republican rank and file since her resignation announcement should demolish the lie that social conservatives and libertarians are "easy to command" . The entire media establishment  said the Palin decision was at the least "bizarre".  Evidently it was a bad thing now the Republican voter wasn't "easily manipulated" and reached their own conclusions.

You know Peg, I started in Brooklyn and you started there a decade earlier. I ended up at 'Cuse and you went to where, Fairleigh Ridiculous. The difference is my Irish folks don't put on the "lace curtain" airs, pretend we were like the Kennedys and trash the common folk for not being socially aware. Your loss.  

Then again, once you did work for CBS, maybe rooting for the MSM is like hardwired in your DNA. I dunno.  Never had that problem.

Now, for that other marksman of friendly fire, Mike Murphy.  Murphy is a Georgetown grad (one reason I, a Cuse grad, distrust him)  hailing from Grosse Pointe, MI, so there's little reason to think he's really encountered any appreciable number of working stiffs. And let's look at his resume. 

Murphy is a writer and Republican political consultant who has advised John McCain, Mitt Romney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jeb Bush.

(Yep, Arnold's been such a great Republican governor, Mike. Hope you aren't owed any IOU's. I hear Alaska still pays cash) 

Murphy's a bit less catty than Noonan, but still jumps all over someone whom he says he was an admirer of --McCain--for picking Palin.  And again, it's those terrible clueless people in Middle America who don't know what's good for them. 

 Palin profits mightily from a Republican blind spot. She has all the right smirking enemies in America's media elite. To them, Palin reeks of flyover America, that vast and corny collection of Nebraskas and Alabamas where the Army can always meet enlistment quotas and Tina Fey's private jet stops briefly to refuel. Red state Republicans see the snarky, elite attacks on Palin as an attack on them. And in some ways, they are.

I'm trying to figure out what Murphy's accomplishing here.  He can't be doing his buddy Mitt Romney any good by trashing the very people Mitt needs to get nominated. But then again, Murphy does MSNBC and is writing scripts in Hollywood. Maybe we just aren't that important to him anymore?

I may not be part of the meritocracy here, Mike, but, hmm, it's not like you haven't been associated with campaigns that crashed and burned----which you conveniently omit from the resume.  ( Hey, I never spent $42 million to lose what started as a dead-even statewide race to Hillary Clinton--by 12 points!)

I won;t even dignify the likes of John Weaver--last seen trying to get Huntsman in as the RINO hope after failing to get McCain to run as a Democrat--with a response. Nor Steve Chapman who thinks Palin's support is all due to looks, as if every Republican doesn;t have a gender gap.   

Lemme set this one up for ya, Peg and Mike. You guys have been running the Republican party from your little salons for over a decade. And running it into the ground while the both of you have personally done wonderfully.  And you think the rank-and-file weren't gonna notice?

You guys act like you are in the Omega House and we are the Delta House.

Let's see where a decade of poll tested, focus grouped, well researched, blow dried Republicanism got us from the professionals and party statesmen.  Sarah Palin's favorable rating is higher than that of the Republican party.  Hello, who's dragging who down?

Voters are turning against the center and that includes the professional consultant industry, K Street lobbyists, retread candidates (including the "heir force") and especially Republicans who'd rather attack their own party members instead of Obama.  Maybe we're tired of being told things like Arnold is pro-taxpayer or the GOP Congress was against wasteful spending.

I think we crave authenticity and the willingness to fight. And that's the last thing to expect from the old timers trying to keep their grip on the party. It's time for some "creative destruction" to the hackasaurses who can't see their way clear to respect the very people who are now the Republican Party 

I have a suggestion for any and all Republicans who do not want Sarah Palin to be our nominee in 2012.

How about....hmmmm....running a better candidate and explaining why he or she is better?

or isn't that haughty enough? 

What will Sarah Palin do next?  So far, the punditry has outpaced the evidence, so I won't speculate about her intentions.  However, the most interesting theory - floated by one of Glenn Reynolds' readers - is that Palin "will try to start a new Tea Party" to challenge the Republican Party.  There are some very important problems with this.

• First, Reynolds is correct that ballot access is a major barrier.  His reader suggests that Perot won 19% of the vote, and it would be very significant is Palin helped a Tea Party win "20% of the contested seats in 2010".  But winning 20% of the vote is not the same as winning 20% of contested seats.  To accomplish that, you would need to win a lot more than 20% of the vote in a lot of elections, but a brand new party just would not have the campaign infrastructure needed to do effective GOTV on anything like a large, reproducible scale.  Certainly not by 2010.

NOTE: The Barry Goldwater and Howard Dean campaigns suggest there is movement-building value even if you lose...but note that the were insurgents operating within their Party, not revolutionaries going outside of it.

• Reynolds argues that Palin would "draw almost entirely from Republican voters".  That is correct and a serious barrier.  But Palin draws almost entirely from Republican voters because Palin does not appear to differ a great deal from the Republican Party.  If she has some grand vision to sustain a new movement, she hasn't actually explained it or otherwise gone beyond standard Republican talking points.  A 3rd Party would be redundant.  Immediately.

There could, in fact, be an exploitable gap in American electoral politics.  A lot of voters just don't map consistently on the liberal/conservative spectrum in both economic and social matters.  There might be room for a fiscally liberal, socially conservative movement (i.e., Christian Democrats).  Or perhaps it could be a fiscally conservative, socially liberal movement (e.g., Goldwater).  What you can't do is build a new movement around being exactly like Republicans, except super-sincere.

Another Instapundit correspondent hit closer to the mark.

I think the third party talk is ill advised. I think Palin just needs to try and stick her finger in the eye of the Republican establishment. She can do that by supporting/encouraging challengers to incumbents, where appropriate, in the Republican primaries.

The next leaders of the Republican Party will be the people who kill some sacred cows, make a lot of Republican enemies and force the movement itself to evolve past this comfortable equilibrium.

Reform starts at home. So far, nobody has had the guts to take on the sacred cows.

From the moment of her selection as the vice presidential nominee, we non-Alaskans heard a lot about what made Sarah Palin different from your average lower-48 woman, from moose-hunting on down the line - you know the story.   The "maverick" storyline, a variation on the McCain standard, worked very well in around the time of the convention, but her numbers began to sink for some of the vary same reasons that the GOP as a whole is in a ditch.  Here's why:

1. The obsession with media bias.  Palin went on and on about the "gotcha media" and the unfair shake she got in the press.  Yes, she was often treated dismissively and with the same sense of curiosity usually reserved for lost tribes of the Amazon.  Still, the media is what it is and whining about it won't change that.  In addition, she did no favors for herself, completely bombing one open-ended softball after another in the famous Katie Couric interview that, in retrospect, marked the beginning of the end of her political career.  And no, "what news sources do you read," is not a "gotcha" question.

If one theme has unified the right's blogs, magazines and radio shows, it has been an endless stream of media criticism.  Most of it is richly deserved.  But to paraphrase our former SecDef, "you go to war with the media you have, not the media you wish you had."

2. The victim mentality.  Am I the only person around here who thinks Palin milked the Letterman controversy for too long?  When something like that happens, you demand an apology (not two) and try to act like the better person.  Instead, there were several TV interviews over the course of a week.  Does she really think that the problem voters had with her is that she wasn't sufficiently sympathetic?  If liberals have showed us anything over the past half-century, it's that the victim mentality doesn't do much for the victims.  Same goes here, both for Palin and the party.

Every day, I read on this site and others about how the deck is always stacked against the right.  First, there is a horde of brainwashed Obamabots ready to follow Dear Leader's wishes (paranoid much?).  Then, we didn't lose by millions of votes across many formerly-red states, it was ACORN.  When it comes to independents, lean-republicans and the other people who really matter, this comes off as whining and conspiracy-mongering.  A wellspring of leadership, it is not.

3. It's not always an issue of motives.  I don't think I'm the only person who has grown tired of Palin defenders claiming anyone who criticizes her of being part of an elite, Ivy League, cocktail-sipping fraternity that simply will not accept an out-of-towner who went to sub-par schools.  Is it that hard to imagine that reasonable people who seek common goals can say that a particular politician is not well-suited for national office?  The knee-jerk appeals to class resentment are akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and singing.  Palin has a very different campaign style and some serious gaps in her policy knowledge.  Acknowledge that or dispute that, but don't cast aspersions.

The main reason that the Bill Ayers material towards the end of the campaign didn't stick is because people looked at Obama and didn't believe what the critics were saying - namely, that he's really some sort of secret radical closer in alignment to 60s hippie terrorists than to middle class America.  A better strategy would have been to take the man at his words, showing good faith, and then going after his policies based on the ample problems they had on their face.  It comes off as conspiratorial and paranoid to assign unseen motives to a political candidate.

What will we learn from the Palin story?  If we continue to blame the media, Letterman, Frum and the Harvard Alumni Association, perhaps nothing.