The Meaning of Sarah Palin

4 Responses to The Meaning of Sarah Palin

1. Synova says:

   March 4, 2009 at 2:11 am

   My eyes started glazing over.     What I did read, I think misses the point.    The conclusion?

   “Either way, the Palin moment shed a powerful light on the power, the potential, and the ultimate inadequacy of a conservatism grounded solely in cultural populism. ”

   I don’t think it’s that complicated.

   Obama ran against Bush, even though McCain did everything possible to separate himself from Bush and Bush did everything possible to distance himself from those running.   We can talk about how McCain wasn’t terribly conservative and how no one was excited about him or particularly liked him, but McCain was irrelevant.    His History, his policy opinions, his attempts to take the high ground and play in a civilized manner.   None of what was *real* mattered.    Obama ran against Bush.    McCain was vilified for mudslinging and racism.    And in the end the campaign against Giuliani, or Romney, or Fred would have been identically campaigns against Bush and the straw-men errected for the Democrats to run against.    

   The reaction to Sarah was pretty much the same.    The division she presented would have been the same no matter who stepped forward and caught our interest.   The details would have been different is all.     And everyone is obsessing now about conservative cultural populism or *whatever*, when nothing that happened, not to McCain and not to Palin, has anything at all to do with those two people.     If it wasn’t outrage about Sarah wearing “hoochi-hoops” so disrespectfully when she went to view hurricane damage… it would have been something else, and was, over and over and over.

   Conservatives are acting like abused lovers.

   They’re trying to figure out how they could be better, where they went wrong.     And it doesn’t seem to occur to them that they really didn’t *do* anything to deserve the treatment they got.   They refuse to see that an excuse would have been found no matter what.    If it wasn’t the divisive Sarah it would have been the divisive someone else.    Abusers find excuses.    You *can’t* please them and you shouldn’t try.   

   But people who should know better still do it, and it’s sad to see them all turned in on themselves and trying not to offend, scuttling around with hands out placating, offering to do any little favor, focused closely on their abuser’s expressions so they can head off an upset or blow-up by abasing themselves just a little bit more.

   We hear now about Sarah’s moment having passed.     The next person put forward isn’t going to have any greater approval.   Whoever runs as a conservative, as a Republican, the next time around is going to be just has hateful and divisive and unacceptable,  even if the details change.   Just wait.    Because abusers always find an excuse.   

   The bad behavior of others isn’t something that an emotionally healthy person takes responsibility for.   

   Just.  Don’t.  Do.  It.
2. iac says:

   March 4, 2009 at 8:43 am

   Your argument appears to overlook the fact that almost 60 million people did vote for McCain in 2008, which does not indicate the collapse in Republicanism you seem to have recognised. You might care to ponder on why, given  all the advantages he enjoyed in the 2008 election cycle,  Obama did not, in fact, win by a bigger margin.

   And, of course, you are listening to the wrong people if you “hear” that Sarah Palin’s moment has passed.
3. ChrisB says:

   March 4, 2009 at 9:24 am

   I think her “moment” may have passed, but just in the sense that the election is over and she’s not all over the headlines anymore. Now is her chance to learn from mistakes and from strengths and build herself another moment come 2012 (or 2016 if the case may be). 

   And I think the article points out that the only real ground gained on Obama was because of Palin.
4. Ymarsakar says:

   March 24, 2009 at 11:06 am

   Sarah Palin has demonstrated once again that whatever the Left accuses their enemies of, were only ever true of the Leftists themselves.