Apr 01 2009
GOP Still Wandering In The Wilderness
The one national GOP personality to rally record crowds (and who drew the largest TV audience for any national debate for all time) is being marginalized by those who have failed to succeed nationally:
Congressional Republicans decided Tuesday to ditch the former GOP vice presidential nominee in favor of the former House speaker for the critical House-Senate fundraising dinner in June 8 in Washington. It’s the marquee Republican event to raise money for GOP House and Senate candidates.
No wonder these fools are losing the national debate. Get a clue folks, Palin can totally upend the political equation with her amazing support from women and families that span the political spectrum from left of center to right of center. That core of the electorate who decides who wins national elections.Â
And she is a heck of a fundraiser too! What a bunch of losers.
If I didn’t have enough reason already to be suspicious of the GOP establishment in DC, this would settle it for me.
But I guess if you take on corruption in your own party, you’re going to make enemies in your own party, particularly if large numbers of members of your own party have gotten comfortable building their nests and their networks of influence in DC.
AJ, my reading of that article is that Palin & Co. were sending mixed messages about accepting. So the Congressional Republicans went with the former Speaker who led them to a majority in 1994 – a majority that started eroding the instant he was tossed out.
I’m not sure it’s a bad decision. The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Palin will be President…but not the 45th President. Gingrich is VERY reminiscent of Winston Churchill – highly successful, then a decade in the wilderness. To be followed by spectacular success.
The country is looking for a big-picture leader. Newt is one. Nobody else is showing an inclination to do so.
The reason Sarah Palin, or “Joe the Plumber”, resonate is because they are regular people. The Democrats demonize them because they want us to believe that THEY represent the regular people when really THEY have become the party of hot house flowers. Know for sure that if Carville demonizes someone it is because they speak the language of us, and we like it. Is Palin smooth, and knowledgeable on every topic, no, but her instincts are good, her core resonates with us, and the politicians in DC are embarrassed. The biggest opportunity that the Republicans have is a spokes person for the “folks” with someone like Sarah and they flubbed it.
I read another post about this earlier today and got the impression that this may have been initiated by Palin or her team rather than the GOP people in charge of the event. She is fantastic and needed by the party and her country but this is a marathon, not a sprint. Newt has been sorely missed so it is great to see him back in the game too. If this is a longer term strategy to build Palin and her resume for a powerful 2012 run, great! If Newt is signaling that he is back in the public view with his powerful, well articulated, and overwhelmingly intelligent views we win again. We need every conservative we have to derail the liberal hijacking of America. It is 2010 and 2012 that really counts….we need all of them!
I think you’re being a bit unfair to the Republican establishment in this case, AJ. Granted, they’ve done plenty of dumb things in the past, but it appears the initial “acceptance” came from SarahPAC, not from the Governor’s office. I’m not sure if it has to do with federal law or if it’s Alaskan statures, but there are barriers to the two coordinating with each other. It’s also very difficult for an Alaskan governor to get away during the legislative session, and they may be going into a special session that lasts through the date of this dinner. I suspect the organizers incorrectly assumed SarahPAC could commit for Governor Palin, but she found it too politically difficult (in Alaskan politics) to confirm the commitment. Going with Newt as keynote speaker then becomes a necessary “plan B.”
BTW, conservatives4palin.com is a good source for the “straight dope” on all things involving the Governor. They do a creditable job at laying out the facts when people spread misinformation or smear Sarah Palin.
The Republicans seem to be “eating their young” politically. There isn’t a single candidate put forward that doesn’t get ripped apart by one faction or another of the party.
It is like 1976 all over again. Reagan was ripped as an incompetent movie star without qualification to run a government and he lost the nomination to Ford who went on to lose the general election. George HW Bush did the same thing to Reagan in ’80 calling his economic plan “voodoo economics”.
At least Regan had a plan, something no Republican has so far put forward. All we see are criticisms of the current goings on but nobody putting forth an alternative and rallying Republican candidates nationally toward that vision.
In a nutshell, there is either a lack of leadership or too many knuckleheaded factions that will only follow a leader of their own political persuasion.
Attitudes like “conservative first, Republican second” destroy the party because there is no “conservative party”. There are more and less conservative Republicans just as there are more and less conservative Democrats. The real difference between Democrats and Republicans is the role of government. THAT is where the focus needs to be and it needs to be like a laser. Don’t get sidetracked on social issues, keep focused on the role of government. That is the issue that unites more Republicans than any other.
I love Sarah Palin, but I do worry that with the populist persona the mainstream media have defined her as having, she risks becoming the Republican’s William Jennings Bryan – a perennial party favorite who cannot win in the country as a whole.
Just to follow up on my earlier comments, if the writer at conservatives4palin.com is correct, then AJ has reason for his exasperation: Apparently the organizers couldn’t wait for the end of the Alaska legislative session in a few weeks, at which point she would have been able to give them a confirmation:
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2009/04/another-gop-epic-fail-they-coulda-had.html
I saw something interesting about this a few days ago. It seems they ask Palin to be the speaker without clearing it with her first. She was busy. I am not sure she wanted to do this in the first place.
I don’t know if this is some sort of a snub or just a screw up.
I like the lady, but it seems to me that every since 1988 the Republicans have a tendency to break up into little cliques and fight each other. There are a lot of people on the east and west coasts who do not like people like Palin, it is regional snobbery and it is not just a Republican thing, but in this case I think party intra fighting excaberates the whole situation.
Needless to say this is not the time for that.
crosspatch:
I have challenged some of these people on the blogs and such to star their own conservative party if they feel that the Republicans are not true blue conservative enough for them.
But they do not want to do that, it would require money and organization and all sorts of things. What annoys me is the tendency to believe that while they are indespensable to the party, all the people they don’t agree with are not.
Dittos on the Conservatives4Palin site. I can’t believe how many posts they churn out on a daily basis, most focusing on Sarah. But then they do have several contributers.
If Sarah decides to run, it’s going to be MAINLY UP TO HER to extend her already enormous appeal to enough people to win. She’s going to have to do a better job of defining herself, expressing herself on policy, and picking her venues. I think she knows perfectly well now that people like Katie Couric, who most average people have no idea her partisan goals, are only out to put notches in their liberal belts. She needs to at least insist on there being no edits, or no interview. Fool me once.
As far as we the keyboard people, I would suggest simply politely debunking, in as credible and thorough a nature as is possible, whatever false information and accusations you come across on the web. There’s an army out there both assigned and on their own immediately flooding any new Palin story or article with negative, often false nonsense about her.
This needs to be countered, the best way being with polite facts. Hence C4P, and some of the other sites that are linked there that are also good resources.
What does it tell you that, as a Democrat, I am *PRAYING* that Palin is the GOP nominee in either 2012 or 2016?
Yep. That’s how I and lots of fellow wing-nuts used to feel about the current occupant. PLEASE nominate that guy with that light resume, those associations, that stance on national defense and that liberal voting record.
Truth is — he likely wouldn’t have won if not for the late-breaking economic panic and McCain’s goofy reaction to it, even given the MASSIVE media complicity.
As always …… careful what you wish for.
That complicity being perhaps best typified here:
http://tinyurl.com/dxshaq