"She's a runner, rebel and a stunner" Edition...
Max Twain:
"Palin is clearly staking her claim to the leadership of the Libertarian/Tea Party wing of the GOP, reaffirming her position after some minimal backlash over her support of John McCain’s reelection and her joining Fox News. Should [Rand] Paul go on to win this senate seat he could prove to be an incredible ally for Palin, potentially aligning Palin’s social conservatives with Paul’s libertarians. Such a union could prove an unstoppable combo should she decide to run for the GOP nomination in 2012."Malcolm A. Kline:
"Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, is number 4 on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s What They’re Reading on College Campuses bestseller list. This could produce the biggest shock wave to hit faculty lounges since Reagan captured the youth vote, you betcha’."Matthew Continetti:
"Palin's self-identification with the Tea Party is important. Clearly she sees parallels between the popular movements that brought her to office in Wasilla and Juneau and the movement currently pulling American politics to the right. Palin relishes her role as political outsiders -- the Tea Partiers are 'passionate outsiders,' as well. If Obama persists in his attempts to legislate a liberal-left agenda, and the economy continues to stagnate, these passionate outsiders may decide not only the 2012 GOP primary. They may decide the next president of the United States."Pamela Geller:
"Palin was wearing a pin with two flags, one for the US and one for Israel. This is so beautiful and brave, I am speechless. What utter goodness. Secondly, she delivered the goods. Palin is America. Before it was infected and corrupted by the left. Pray she runs and prepare to take a bullet for this woman, because they are going to come after her with every vile weapon the decayed and debased left can dream up. She threw down the gauntlet last night. The gangstas, smear merchants, chicagoland operatives, moveon, Soros, they are getting ready -- she is the silver cross to their Dracula."CK MacLeod:
"Palin might not make sense as a GOP 2012 nominee except in the context of an abnormal election year – on the order of 1980, but even more so. Because, however, there’s a more than negligible chance that 2012 will be such a year, it would be a mistake to count Palin out, at all, or for that matter to presume that the Tea Party movement or some successor won’t be seen as fairly mainstream by 2012, a classic and timely radicalism of the center. If that’s the case, then, just as Democrats and others in 1980 didn’t finally turn to Reagan because they temporarily confused him with Rockefeller, those suburbanites won’t presumably be voting on whims and fleeting sentiments, or for a merely 'moderate' change of course."HillaryIs44:
"Sarah Palin is beating Obama like a rented mule who has not learned anything from the years ago attack on the USS Cole through to the first and then eventually successful attacks on the World Trade Center as well as the 'shoe bomber' attempt... Those of us who support Hillary Clinton will give Sarah Palin her due and reject and confront those from the Dimocratic Left who attack her on the basis of sexism and misogyny."The Aged P:
"Sarah Palin... invokes comparison with Reagan and Thatcher but it is unwise to clothe contemporary figures in the raiment of the past – different times, different situations. But she will talk the Thatcher message of trusting people to make their own decisions rather than having decisions made for them and she will fearlessly take the fight to the left and the Frums and the trimmers. But with the Tea Partiers she will have something that Thatcher never had, a potential army of grassroots soldiers ready and willing to send a surge of electricity through the GOP machine giving it a will to power, not to gain office and enjoy the trappings but to transform the political and cultural fabric of the nation."Kathryn Jean Lopez:
"I can't help but think of her Republican convention speech. More than a year and then some later, she's showing the same charm and verve and love of country that got people's attention in the first place. The woman has talent in giving voice to some real concerns in a way that resonates with people who have been discouraged and disengaged. And the way she frames it, it's actually not about her. The most important part of her speech tonight, I think, will prove to be what she said about personality: Politics can never be about a person. Not Barack Obama. Not Ronald Reagan. Not even Scott Brown. Not even Sarah Palin. It's about ideas. Brown got elected on them. Marco Rubio's running on them. Their trucks and looks may help, but it's the ideas."Jack Lail:
The National Tea Party Convention may go down as a seminal event in the tea party movement ... or maybe just a seminal event in former Alaska governor's Sarah Palin political future. Palin left Nashville the Belle of the Ball... at the National Tea Party Convention. Whether Palin is now the de facto head of the Tea Party movement or the de facto leading contender for the Republican Party's presidential nominee is hard to tell..."C. Edmund Wright:
"Palin clearly tied the movement and the future of the country to an embrace of the Constitution and the principles of Reagan. She sees a conservative ascendancy within the GOP. The former governor also made it clear that the movement is about ideas, not about self-indulgent would-be leaders. On these foundational templates, Palin's vision of the movement is consistent with Rush Limbaugh's and Mark Levin's -- and not so much in line with Glenn Beck's or Mike Huckabee's. While dismissing loyalty to party for party's sake, Palin's vision of the future is clearly one where limited-government proponents win primaries leading up to the midterms of 2010. With a clear rejection of the "both parties are equally bad" dogma, she is referring to Republican primaries. Let's be honest: No limited-government types are likely to win Democrat primaries, and no third-party movement -- or fifty-third-party movement -- is going to remove Nancy Pelosi from the Speaker's office. Period. Learn it, live it, love it."David Zublick:
"Sarah Palin is running for U.S. president. Make no mistake about it. Everything she says, everything she does, is a clear indicator. She is not only the key figure in the resurgence of the conservative movement in the United States, she expects to carry the torch all the way to Washington and light the flame of freedom from a tyrannical government out of control... Palin has firmly implanted herself with the Tea Partiers. She is one of them. 'This is the future of our country. The tea party movement is the future of politics. America is ready for another revolution,' she said. And Palin will be the one leading that revolution."Frank J.:
"Sarah Palin may not run again for national office, although we have done much worse in selecting our elected leaders and seldom have had better representation than she could bring to the table. Since leaving the Alaska Governorship, she has become an outspoken advocate for America. Her Reaganesque approach to smaller government and her idealism is a breath of fresh air for those of us who choke almost daily on the stench coming from Washington... She is firing the early volleys in the second American revolution; a revolution that must take place if we are to wrest our country back from the Washington elites who are spending our future on ideological nonsense."Ruby Slippers:
"Nothing like a Palin speech to coax the liberal blogs to take a short trip over the edge... WOW, I am shocked that she had a few key words written on her hand when giving a major speech covered by CSPAN and most of the cable news networks. Really, it is the same thing as reading the whole thing word for word off a TelePrompTer isn't it?"John Hinderaker:
"What is it about Palin that drives liberals so crazy? Maybe it's the fact that she seems so happy. The most fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives tend to be happy people, while liberals tend to be unhappy. There are exceptions to that rule, of course, but then not all liberals hate Palin. Come to think of it, maybe Ronald Reagan's cheerfulness was one of the reasons they couldn't stand him, either.... One thing I forgot to mention: Palin wore a lapel pin consisting of American and Israeli flags. Nice."Ralph Reed:
"This may be Palin's unique strength. She understands the fiscal and values agendas of conservatism are reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. A nation that relies on God and family for its strength does not seek to expand the federal government to meet every need. Fiscal responsibility and small government are not merely economic principles, they speak to the moral character of a people that believes government has an important but limited function. In this sense, Palin is a fusionist who weaves the various strands of conservatism into a coherent whole. This is why Palin can act as a bridge between Tea Party activists and the Republican party and have credibility with both."Richard Fernandez:
"If the sociological theories are right, Emmanuel Goldstein, Sarah Palin, the Jew and even Barack Obama play a very special role in the world. They act as a foci for hatred around which groups form and dissipate, like attractors which pull things in or repulsors which push things away. They do what dry theory and statistics never do. They agitate us. An agitator appeals to a different part of the brain than a mere advocate does. Dick Morris says that while Obama’s policies (and their consequences in unemployment and national security) are driving the political discontent Sarah Palin represents an 'existential threat' because she threatens to pull white women away from the Democratic Big Tent. Like Goldstein she is a special kind of menace: the kind that can break up a group. Unemployment presents a contextual threat. Sarah Palin threatens the pack. And when that happens the ancient memories kick in. Something in Olbermann’s unconcious brain brings him up on his legs to howl because his pack is threatened."John Ziegler:
"Six months after being written off, [Sarah Palin]... Is the most famous woman in American political history; Has more money both personally and politically than she probably knows what to do with; Has found a place in public life that has largely ended the attacks on her family; Is the most sought after public speaker/endorser in all of politics; Has more influence over the media’s agenda than anyone but the president; Appears to now be completely immune to media attacks; Is the leader in just about every poll for the Republican presidential nomination and has a virtually unfiltered platform on by far the largest cable news channel; Is perceived by many as the leader of the most potent grassroots movement in modern American political history; Is the author of the most purchased political book in recent times; and Has all of this while not having to answer to anyone and has no actual responsibilities other than to her family."Aaron Goldstein:
"How... can one explain [liberals'] sudden obsession with Palin's left hand? The best liberals could do was to say that she had cheated by writing a few words on her hand. So let's see if I get this straight. Sarah Palin has all of six words on her palm and liberals conclude "she needs a cheat-sheet." (1) Yet liberals don't seem to mind that President Obama needs a teleprompter to read a nearly 2,000 word speech during the National Prayer Breakfast last week and still mispronounced the word 'corpsman' not once but twice. (2) Talk about hand wringing. But Palin is well aware life is unfair and that this is par for the course. She responded as perhaps only she could. During a rally for Texas Governor Rick Perry the following day, she wrote on her palm for all to see, 'Hi Mom!' Now that's telling liberals to talk to the hand."Rich Lowry:
"The Left was counting on the tea-party movement to divide the GOP, but it just isn’t happening... Palin’s rapturously received speech in Nashville could have been delivered almost line for line at a Republican National Convention. She skipped the social issues but otherwise rehearsed unalloyed conservative orthodoxy on national-security and fiscal issues. This is not the stuff of ideological fissure or self-immolation... Scott Brown and Sarah Palin are such heroes to the movement because they represent a relatively unpolished, plain-spoken conservatism untainted by association with the Republican compromises and failures in Washington during the Bush years. As Brown proved, with the backlash building against President Barack Obama’s big-government grandiosity, this sensibility appeals to the middle as well as the tea-partiers."Matthew Continetti:
"The media are playing into Palin's hands. They've used her celebrity as an excuse to cover her relentlessly even though she holds no office--and yet the attention helps her communicate to her supporters and reach out to audiences who may be giving her a second thought. 'We are the loyal opposition, and we have a vision for the future of our country, too,' Palin said. She repeatedly said the Tea Party movement does not need a leader. But is there an American politician who inspires such enthusiasm from her supporters (and her detractors)? And isn't that a unique strength in a polarized age in which the ideological stakes are so high?"- JP
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