Month: November 2009

The Daily Wrap

It feels like the campaign again on the Dish. Over the past three days, we tried to wrap our heads around the latest media blitz of Sarah Palin.  Andrew ultimately blamed McCain.

Greg Sargent parsed her polling, TNR and Slate indexed her book, Cottle called out her victimization, a reader deconstructed her psyche, Steve Chapman contrasted her with Reagan, Andrew shuddered at her settlement statements (and attracted dissents), Damon Linker chastised her critics, Allahpundit sized up 2012, Nate Silver predicted she'll run, he explained how she could win the nomination, and the Dish tallied another odd lie. Palin blinked when Barbara Walters asked her about Levi. Meanwhile, he held his fire and released some starbursts.

In the other big story of the week – terrorist trials in NYC – Ackerman told us to bring em' on, Josh Marshall calmed fears, Eric Posner cut through the spin, and Andrew praised the president.

In home news, the Daily Dish released its very first print publication, "The View From Your Window." To secure a copy of the book at the 50% discounted price of $16.25, click here. They're going fast.

— C.B.

Fox Rigs The Video Again

After running video of crowds from a September Tea Party rally to make it seem the recent health insurance reform protest was bigger than it was, Fox News has done it again: this time to make Sarah Palin's crowds look bigger, using old footage from the campaign. It's funny, isn't it, that these "errors" never happen to make Democratic crowds look bigger.

Palin vs Reagan

Steve Chapman notices the stark difference:

Who needs policy? In her world — and the world of legions of conservatives who revere her — the persona is the policy. Palin is beloved because she's (supposedly) just like ordinary people, which (supposedly) gives her a profound understanding of their needs.

That attitude used to be associated with the left, which claimed to

speak for the ordinary folks who get shafted by the system.

Logic and evidence about policy, to many liberals, were less important than empathy and good intentions. Now it's conservatives who think we should be guided by our guts, not our brains.

Palin is the embodiment of this approach, never imagining that knowledge and reflection might be of more value than instinct. When Oprah asked if she had felt any doubts about her readiness to be vice president — which requires the readiness to be president — Palin replied breezily, "No, no — I didn't blink. I felt quite confident in my abilities, in my executive experience, knowing that this is an executive administrative job." (The audience tittered.)

Contrast that with Reagan, who after learning of his victory on election night 1980 told his supporters, "There's never been a more humbling moment in my life."

And I, of course, think of Thatcher, whose example helped make me a conservative, and her total grip of policy detail, and her fascination with ideas and history, and her degree in chemistry from Oxford and her training as a lawyer, and years in diligent opposition and government, and her willingness to take on and argue with anyone, and to never quit anything.

And I silently weep that the right has been reduced to this absurd fantasist know-nothing who believes her ignorance is her selling point. It is worse than a descent. It is an abyss.

Deconstructing Sarah, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your last post on her book is the single best review of it I have yet seen. But when you wrote:

"because I just want to know. I want to know what really lies under that facade."

I couldn't help but think that it's a fruitless effort. There's nothing under the facade. She believes her own myths. She is ignorant and foolish enough to accept modern conservative slogans as true and believe that they can guide her life, and should guide everyone's. I grew up in the Assemblies of God, and the only thing that surprises me is that you insist on trying to hold her to some fact based world of objective reality.

That just isn't the world as she experiences it. I think she genuinely is the thing that you call a facade. She's the real facade, if you will. To someone who lives in the Pentacostal world of magical, spiritual reality, the contradictions don't matter. God is the answer to contradictions.

The slogans don't need "meaning." She believes them because she feels their truth. Her faith filters her reality and because she's been born again, she fears no consequences for God is with her.

All of which makes her the natural leader of the fundamentalist religious movement currently known as the Republican party. That she and they have no grip on objective reality makes them ideal for government, if you just loved the last eight years in which deficits didn't matter, there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Iraq war would cost $50 billion, Afghanistan was a success, Republicans balanced the budget, and waterboarding someone 183 times wasn't torture. 

You betcha.

Sarah Palin, Elephant Hunter

Larison criticizes Robert Stacy McCain's Palin coverage:

What McCain misses in his article is that liberal journalists actually take great delight in the Palin phenomenon. Yes, of course, they don’t want to see her in power, but I think they do want to see her prosper and thrive as the face of the Republican Party. An American right led by or identified with Palin is one that they can very easily ridicule and discredit, and at the same time they can be confident that a Palinized GOP poses no threat to anything they value. Palin is not going to bring the party out of the minority, and were she to lead the party it would more or less guarantee continued Democratic ascendancy for many years to come. Her content-free pseudo-populism ensures that the legitimate political concerns of her constituency remain irrelevant to real policy debates. Media outlets also thrive on controversy and conflict, both real and manufactured, and Palin continues to give them plenty of opportunities for both.