printPaul Gottfried, one of the best and most under-appreciated intellectuals in this country, provides a superb analysis on Taki’s Magazine of “the unstoppable glorification of the faux maverick and faux right-winger Sarah Palin and the equally nonstop attacks from the same sources against the floundering Mark Sanford.”
“The neocon media” is clearly pulling for a goofy “photogenic dullard,” says Paul, a “Wasilla version of Bill Kristol and John McCain,” over an “economic libertarian” like South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford, who “slashes budgets boldly and is a passionate enemy of every aspect of Obama’s stimulus programs.” Sarah, on the other hand, “sounds exactly like the man who chose her as his running mate in 2008,” “on foreign policy, immigration, and federal laws banning discrimination against women.”
“Neocon Central,” “FOXNews and its NY Post-affiliate,” does not wish Sanford to “hinder Sarah in her run for the presidential nomination,” concludes Paul.
Pay attention to this prescient warning: “For the American Right, Sarah may be the ultimate Trojan horse. She offers the Idaho State- or Wasilla version of Bill Kristol and John McCain,with a few alterations, namely, an inability to engage national issues in a specific manner and the endless recitation of GOP platitudes about ‘smaller government’ and ‘national defense.’ Of course the Doles and McCains pulled out the same tiresome ‘get government off our backs’ rhetoric, while advocating programs to expand federal control. But these candidates could manage to say concrete things in their addresses and interviews, even when they packaged substance in deceitful campaign slogans.”
The complete column is “Palinomania & Sanford-Phobia.”
If what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), at least ms Palin is not a factor anymore.
Here’s an idea: get a young tart and teach her to recite libertarian doctrine and have her run for VP along with Ron Paul come next election. [There are some such lightweight sweet things being paraded in libertarian circles.]
An even better Idea is to have a Mixed-race(tm) pairing running for office and have a group of shadowy libertarians running things in the background. This was done quite effectively in South Africa for ten years with the SA Commy Party dictating policy and our then president acting like a sock puppet. The idea is to have candidates with appealing looks and sexy voices telling you what you want to hear and leaving the actual work to the “philosophers”. [Practically, such a conspiracy can’t work, b/c democracy prevents a proper application of libertarian. constitutional principles.]
What I was trying to say is that having a “Manchurian candidate” is obviously working for the left and the pseudo-right, so why not the real right?
Gottfried nailed that one. Some of our better Presidents (Jefferson, Cleveland, Harding, even arguably budget-balancing Clinton) were or might have been involved in non-marital relationships. Then there are great moral upholders of marriage such as Grant, Truman, Nixon, and both Bushes – warmongers who were faithful to their wives. Frankly, the Palin worshippers love her for the enemies she has made even if she is a philosophical blank-slate and an ambitious hottie who can’t keep a reliable Excel spread sheet of her Governor’s expenses, keep her family off the front pages, articulate principles of limited government, or complete her term of office.
Neocons adore Givemhell Harry Truman, the innovator of UN-sponsored “police actions” and indefinite “undeclared wars” (Korea) – a family man and uninhibited warmonger who despised wimps like J. Robert Oppenheimer for articulating regrets over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sanford brazenly defiled the great “family values” of the Christian Socialist (Yeehaw Huckabee) wing of the Fox Republican Neocon Party so he must be excommunicated. With those awful love letters, Sanford is politically deader than a doornail. Right now, it looks like a 2012 rematch between Ken-doll Mitt and whomever the Christian Socialists settle on – Sistah Sarah or the Huckster.
Gottfried writes:
“Within minutes of Sarah’s resignation speech, I learned that as a “working mother” the Alaska governor did not want to sacrifice her children (including presumably the one who got pregnant by the jock) for her political career and that she was hanging tough and planning to go on teaching us “values.””
Dare I suggest that something hypocritical might be going on here? I admit, I was somewhat surprised that the Christian mother of a special needs newborn would accept an invitation to run for high office in 2008. I believe I’ve since heard Palin say, on TV, that she’d have to see how her kids are doing before weighing a Presidential run in 2012; but perhaps that’s only my imagination.
What kind of message does this send to Christian (and other) mothers? Part of it, I suppose, is that as a “pro-lifer” you don’t abort; but after you give birth, hey, throw the kid to the nearest neighbor (or relative) and get on with the “higher calling” of your career.
In my judgment, Palin is all about the business of “climbing a ladder,” and has little substance.
From what I’ve been reading and hearing, you would think that the candidacy of John McCain never happened. And now we have John McCain II, with a different accent and nicer legs.
So it’s official: the lame-duck Republican Party learned nothing from the last election. It deserves to be crushed.