My problem with the trashing of Palin is that if you read the tea-leaves it seems to be coming from the either the Romney or McCain camp, neither of whom are what I’d call intellectual conservatives.
I always go back to Newt Gingrich (before he got too full of himself) like him or hate him, when he was the mouthpiece, every argument was pretty damn tough. In my youthful days while in the military and aggressively studying for masters’ I paraded as a democrat. After all dad was a big union boss, and everyone in Youngstown Ohio is a democrat. I subscribed to New Republic, and loyally read articles from “The Nation”. If you think back to the very late 80s, early 90s, as the republican revolution was gathering steam remember the “talk shows”. Pat Buchannon used to destroy Michael Kinsley, and it killed me because I was a Kinsley guy. Newt would articulate well, as I’ve mentioned Dick Armey. Also Bill Bennett was a damn good debator, and at some point the logic and reason of the right won me over.
Now it could be said since I hated gun control, was pro-death penalty, and not a big fan of welfare programs I was not ever that liberal. However I was quite representative of a typical Midwestern yellow-dog democrat. Born Donkey, Die Donkey, just don’t bug me with pesky details.
I agree with Allen that we just don’t have those types of politicians in the GOP these days.
I disagree with Allen that it’s the Palin factor. The Palin factor is certainly a big part of the problem but she is merely an effect not the cause.
The problem and the reason why there are no intelligent debaters these days is precisely because of Bush’s massive shift left. Trying to be all things to all people instead of just being a conservative. Anyone who fervently supported Bush has no intellectual ground to stand on regarding conservative small governement principles. By that I mean smaller government, cutting wasteful federal programs (NE for the Arts, Dept. of Ed?), etc. How many voices out there have any credibility? If you were of the intellectual bent but went along with the massive growth in govt. how are you supposed to convince some fence-sitter to switch to the GOP?
So the last thing I think we need is a bunch of fvcks from inside McCain’s camp blaming Sarah Palin for not being smart. Scapegoating is what they are doing for to save their hides for the dumb ass campaign they ran. After all some of these losers don’t have real jobs they just hop from one politician to the next.
