It's always fascinating to read what liberals write when they try to figure out Sarah Palin and explain her to other liberals, as Marc Ambinder does in his latest column for The Atlantic. Unlike his colleague Andrew Sullivan at that publication, Ambinder at least isn't completely unhinged, and he's not as clueless as most others on the left when they try to grok what those of us in flyover country are all about.
Ambinder says not only is Sarah Palin running for president in 2012, but she is doing so by establishing her own paradigm. It was easy to pull excerpts from his piece. All we had to do was leave out most of the elitist nonsense:
"If the primaries were this year, I suspect she'd be nominated," a senior adviser to one of Sarah Palin's potential rivals confides. It's easy to see why: no one who's thinking of running beats the enthusiasm she generates among Republican activists. But there is more to the case for Palin than just the confluence of her personality and a vacuum within the Republican Party: there is a method to her management of her public image. It strongly hints that she has pretty much decided to run for president in 2012, unless something knocks her out of the race; it is more organized and structured that it appears; and it is something that Republican insiders, in particular, will ignore at their peril.Read Marc Ambinder's column unabridged here.
[...]
The only presidential candidate who is able to put the boots to Obama and get away with it. What's she running for? Not the question. What's she running against? Not just Rockefeller Republicanism and the media, or pointy-headed law lecturer presidents, or Katie Couric: she wants to relitigate a bunch of issues that once were settled but now seem to be unraveling. The unrestricted embrace of immigration and the dilution of an American culture. Overweening Greenism. A complicated socially engineered tax code. A much larger role for government (embraced by the president who said that the era of Big Government Was Over and his successor, who was a Republican). The rule of experts. Even the concept of bipartisanship itself.
[...]
Not a single other Republican presidential candidate can build a crowd like Palin, can run against something like Palin (be it Washington, the media, the McCain campaign or Obama); no one speaks to the resentment/aspirational conservatives like she does; no one's life has better exemplified the way they perceive their struggle against the elite. We like to think about presidential primaries in paradigms, but candidates who fit with the times often find ways to completely subvert established paradigms.
- JP
You should read this JP. From section 9 on C4P:
ReplyDeleteDon't be fooled. Ambinder is merely channeling the latest High Wisdom from Plouffe and Axelrod. This is the new "sophisticated meme" from the White House, as they are figuring that mysoginy backfired. Ambinder's article is actually a Look Ahead to the oncoming White House attack. At first, even I thought it was a newly independent piece from Ambinder, but then I remembered that his role in Washington is to peddle White House memes.
There is a reason Mickey Kaus calls Marc Ambinder "The Draedel".
Palin People, we know you lurk here, so read carefully.
Palin is the candidate of White Resentment who is become the New Nixon. She has no new ideas for a Complicated World. Thus, Republican Moderates are Safer With Obama. Better yet, why not nominate a Squidward like Romney or Pawlenty who would Lose Gracefully instead of inciting a divisive, Race-Based Campaigner like Tricky Dick in a Skirt.
Always read Ambinder CAREFULLY for White House trial balloons. Ambinder is an errand boy, nothing more, nothing less.
Ambinder's column is a more sophisticated piece which grudgingly grants her organizational skills but maintains, in so many words, that she is the Candidate of White Resentment. You can almost smell the crosses burning in his article.
Remember, when reading Ambinder's take on Palin or ANY Republican, it is always best to remember Mr. Churchill's take on the Labour press of his day: "One does not have a conversation with the Monkey when the Organ Grinder is in the Room."
Regardless of Ambinder's motivations, the excerpts are basically correct. Unfortunately, now that many on the left finally see that she is not a joke but has a high chance to get the nomination they may change course and team up with her rivals on the right to "knock her out of the race" in a more insidious way.
ReplyDeleteIn this respect, her strategy of endorsing candidates of very different varieties of conservatism is a very good one and not to be criticized for inconsistency.