Peggy Pegs Palin

Conservative columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan pens the epilogue on the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, but I don't think Palin's done with us yet. Still, it's scathing stuff:

Noonan's non-no on Palin's no-go.

(HuffPo)

"She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence.

"In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying."

— Peggy Noonan

Read more, if you dare

I don't think anybody has put it any better, except when Noonan put it even more succinctly, very early on, when she was caught on a live mike last year calling "political bullshit" on the Palin pick for VP.

Chuck Todd: "Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?"

Peggy Noonan: "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives."

Chuck Todd: "Yeah they went to a narrative."

Mike Murphy: "I totally agree."

Noonan also reads the beads of people who make excuses for the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, "some of whom have taken to telling themselves Palin myths. To wit..."

"I love her because she's so working-class." She is not working class, never was. Her father was a teacher and school track coach, her mother the school secretary. They were middle-class figures of respect, stability and local status. I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class 'tropes.' Because, you know, that's what they teach in 'Ways of the Working Class' at Yale and Dartmouth.

I'm reminded of my sister's harangue. She's in education and says "kids today" are taught that everybody's a little prince or princess, everyone's a winner, except Noonan aims directly at OUR generation:

"The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

And here's an instance of power speaking truth to power.

"The elites hate her." The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.

Are you listening Bill Kristol? Do your party a favor. Stop dumbing down to them. Enough of these Dan Quayle-esque dumbasses you keep digging up!

Read of Noonan's scathing eulogy at the WSJ.

Kristol Dishes!

The fight over the much-aledged mis-handling of Palin continues.

Post-partum Diva or the future of the GOP?

(Politico/AP/VanityFair)

"When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, (to describe Palin) this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva."

— Jonathan Martin

Read more post-party gossip @ Politco

Good god, how ironic to read so far into such a sordid tale of sectarian gossip-mongering, and then to have a rumor mill like Bill Kristol cough up such a bizarre one.

What a bunch of divas they ALL are, and the preposterous macho posturing is just a laugh riot coming from one so prim, pursed and plainly effete at Ms. Kristol.

"Was Palin a fresh talent whose debut was mishandled by self-serving campaign insiders, or an eccentric diva who had no business on the national stage?"
— Jonathan Martin for Politico
Damn! If you have to ask...

But it gets even worse: Asked about these accusation, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt struck back: "I'm sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign."

"After all, his management of Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away," Schmidt continued.

Putting his experience as a blogger to good use, Jonathan Martin is totally rolling with the snark.

Go read more of Martin's gossipy drool!

The facts are these: If George Bush could pull it off, barging his way into office by way of the kind of judicial activism he swore he abhorred, having done it with a brain no better than Sarah Palin's, the American people COULD be just as susceptible to her under the right circumstances.

"There is ultimately no way to read McCain’s selection of Palin as reflecting anything other than an appalling egotism, heedlessness, and lack of judgment in a man whose courage, tenacity, and character they have extravagantly admired.
— Todd Purdum, Vanity Fair



But I think we've changed and may be set for at least 80 years before the religious crazies will be again able to whip people up into a supersticious stupor over the NEXT Millennium, Rapture, Tribulation, and Armageddon.

We're a decade past that mythological due date, so the appeal of a Rapture-ready battle axe like Palin is limited to the 20% of people who need end-times Apocalypse-mongering to get them to the polls.

"What happened, was what the McCain campaign had not really taken the time to find out, that there was a whole sort of counter-story about her in Alaska that was a lot less rosy than the one they sold of a governor... so there were always a lot more problems with her than they knew."
She'll do great in places like Indiana, Texas, and Alabama, but she'll need to reinvent herself on a scale that George Bush was able to do for himself, if she's going to pull off an electoral heist as blatantly as he did in 2000.

Go read Purdum's gossipy brew at Vanity Fair!