Those bitchy Republicans
A recent Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin has triggered an entertaining catfight among Palin supporters like Bill Kristol and former operatives from the McCain-Palin campaign.
Remember last fall when a McCain campaign official called Palin a “diva”?
Asked directly if he accused [senior McCain adviser] Nicolle Wallace of being the source behind the “diva” leak in his message to Kristol, [McCain foreign policy adviser] Scheunemann said: “My e-mail did not accuse Nicolle Wallace. It said something very disparaging about Nicolle but it did not accuse her of being the leak.”
A source familiar with the contents of the e-mail said that Scheunemann actually accused Nicolle Wallace’s husband, Mark Wallace, of being the source of the leak.
When Kristol questioned the likelihood of a male like Mark Wallace using such a gossipy term as diva, this source said, Scheunemann wrote back that Mark Wallace knows something about divas because he’s married to a diva.
Rrrowr.
Update: Palin quits as governor of Alaska.
Comments
| 2 July 2009, 5:43 pm |
‘gimmick’. Fucking sexist crap. I would not have believed that the media could be so fucking shitty, so misogynistic, and so breath-takingly sexist as watching and reading the MSM during the Hillary and Palin campaigns.
I think the Uk media must have worked a lot of crap out of its system having Thatcher as PM and having the Queen as head of state.
Andrew Sullivan is a classic case. You can bet that he believes that his sexist rants were quite O.K., and were quite reasonable.
The US media is so fucking crap it is beyond description. Having bought a quality newspaper every day in the UK for 20 years, I came to the US and can’t buy one. There are no quality newspapers in the US. The print media is just fucking bullshit.
Palin is an accomplished woman and politician who has been MSM assault. The US ‘feminists’ joined in.
| 2 July 2009, 5:49 pm |
Gene -
we get it. People that don’t go to Ha’vah’d need to be gassed. For the good of Gaia, or some such…
For everyone else:
POLITICS: The Integrity Gap, Part I of III: Gov. Sarah Palin
http://www.baseballcrank.com/archives2/2008/10/politics_the_in_1.php
POLITICS: The Integrity Gap, Part II of III: Sen. Barack Obama
http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2008/10/politics_the_in_3.php
POLITICS: The Integrity Gap, Part III of III: John McCain and Joe Biden
http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2008/10/politics_the_in_2.php
| 2 July 2009, 5:51 pm |
Hey, Adriane, I’m just quoting Palin’s fellow Republicans. I would never call her a diva.
| 2 July 2009, 6:33 pm |
Sarah Palin is a genuinely interesting person compared to a cardboard cutout like the present Vice-President ["Joe somebody, I think..."] but what do we know of her ethics and character?
Well, she ran unscrupulously as “the Christian candidate” against an opponent with a might-be-Jewish name [he wasn't Jewish, and she knew it] and she contrived to drag the abortion issue and the legal-gun-ownership issue into elections which had nothing to do with abortion or gun laws.
| 2 July 2009, 6:39 pm |
I briefly read that as “among Palin supporters like Kill Bristol”…
!
| 2 July 2009, 7:07 pm |
DocMartyn:
“Palin is an accomplished woman and politician who has been MSM assault.”
I don’t disagree but she clearly has some significant failings and is unable to speak clearly on a lot of important issues, including foreign policy. Clearlry she was unwilling or unable to be prepped on these matters as well. She was taken for a ride and let herself be taken on it – possibly because she comes across as somewhat narcissistic.
She was not the right material for VP, she should never have accepted that role.
| 2 July 2009, 7:56 pm |
Ah, yes. Nothing like GOP circular firing squads
| 2 July 2009, 8:05 pm |
Andrew Murphy, You are right, once again the Republicans have organized a firing squad by forming a circle.
Adriane: Naw, just as long as they are sterilized so they cannot reproduce.
Do you suppose the Republicans can get Sarah Palin and Nicolle Wallace to mud wrestle in order to raise funds for the GOP?
(Talk about Sexist Remarks!)
| 2 July 2009, 8:09 pm |
Meir: You are right. Pallin was not ready to handle being the VP candidate. Her pick by McCain was affirmative action at its worst.
| 2 July 2009, 8:34 pm |
I don’t think for a moment that the UK press and sphere of political debate got misogyny out of its system through Thatcher. For a start the level of personal viciousness that comes up about her by some commenters on this blog goes into the pathological, especially the ones about wanting to urinate on her grave when she dies. None of these charmers will ever express such wishes about any of the great mass murderer politicians of our time, even though some of their graves are freely in place for pissing on.
If David Cameron were a Davina Cameron and about ten to fifteen years older, you’d hear exactly the same sort of vicious visceral hatred. The particular terms of hatred expressed towardds Margaret Beckett (almost always about her looks, unlike those paragons of beauty, older male MPs, takes some beating.
And of course the other female who brings out the worst misogyny and visceral hatred amongst male HPers is Melanie Phillips. She’s routinely described as Mad Mel, not an epithet you see being applied to Seumas Milne, although his political outlook and analysis is arguably a great deal less sane.
What brings out the most vicious language and intense hatred is a successful right wing politician. A successful woman older than 20s politician who’s right wing is never going to be discussed by the left with less than hatred, unless she can be written off as a character, figure of fun, like Ann Widdecombe.
A successful, intensely popular, good looking, well-dressed woman politician who’s right wing and addresses first and foremost her own constituency–absolutely unforgiveable, and our best left journalists must be sent out to see what they can find to discredit her. Think about the way the US left journo community covered up for Kennedy and then Clinton W in their times. Think about the easy ride that Charles Kennedy got when he was leading the Liberals. Imagine what they’d have done with an older woman Tory leader with such a problem.
I don’t share Palin’s pollitics but I’m totally scornful of the attacks on her, especially those from the left. She has really superb political communication power and an instinctive empathy for the values of the majority of Americans; the fact that the Labour Party thinks it’s an acceptable choice to have as leader someone with Brown’s lamentable powers of imagination and communication says everything about the lack of imagination and even the lack of the most basic understanding of what makes voters feel enthusiastic about political parties.
US Presidents have been showing ignorance on foreign poiicy matters for years. Being an expert on foreign policy or any other policy is not what being President (or PM) is really about. I don’t think Clement Attlee was any great foreign policy expert, but he made some very good choices on some very dramatic political options the UK was faced with in the immediate post war years
The President has to be a politician–a person who makes good judgements between policy options put forward by professionals. The good judgements are based on the extent of his/her sound understanding of his country’s interests and what he/she understands of the insights/wants of the array of interest groups in his country.
I think Palin is up to the mark on what a lot of mainstream middle class Americans think. It doesn’t compare with Obama’s remarks about people who cling to guns and bitterness, a remark which shows his scorn for and distance from large sections of lower and lower middle US white society. The real test is however not just knowing what people feel and want, but how to find ways to lead them where they’ve never been when change is needed.
| 2 July 2009, 8:52 pm |
“David All
Do you suppose the Republicans can get Sarah Palin and Nicolle Wallace to mud wrestle in order to raise funds for the GOP?
(Talk about Sexist Remarks!)”
Yes, do you think you would make a joke about Brown and Blair having a dick sucking contest?
Why the fuck do you sexualize a middle aged married mother 4? A. Because you are an asshole.
As for the famous Palin being unable to answer foreign policy questions; you do know that the majority of her replies were never broadcast. They treated her like the savage in Brave New World.
Before he run for the nomination I didn’t like Hillary as all; watching the treatment of her I changed my mind, the MSM were dreadful, an absolute disgrace. If it had been race, and not gender, that was under attack half the US political journalists would have been imprisoned for hate crimes.
| 2 July 2009, 10:14 pm |
DocMartyn:
Please chill out.
| 3 July 2009, 12:19 am |
David All: You made an obnoxious sexist comment, get called on it, and you tell other people to chill out??? At least be big enough to admit your were wrong and then move on.
| 3 July 2009, 12:20 am |
your = you
| 3 July 2009, 12:43 am |
“Gordon
2 July 2009, 6:33 pm
Sarah Palin is a genuinely interesting person compared to a cardboard cutout like the present Vice-President ["Joe somebody, I think..."] but what do we know of her ethics and character?
Well, she ran unscrupulously as “the Christian candidate” against an opponent with a might-be-Jewish name [he wasn't Jewish, and she knew it]”
Palin never once said anything or did anything that could be in any way, shape or form Anti-Semitic.
“she contrived to drag the abortion issue and the legal-gun-ownership issue into elections which had nothing to do with abortion or gun laws”
Other than the fact that the Democrats claimed that McCain/Palin were going to pick right-wing nomonees for the supreme court and reverse Roe vs. Wade and Biden has a record of voting against gun ownership; including the new way to get rid of guns by allowing people to sue gun manufacturers for deaths that result from their products.
| 3 July 2009, 1:11 am |
Palin never once said anything or did anything that could be in any way, shape or form Anti-Semitic.
She’s a big friend to Israel.
| 3 July 2009, 3:00 am |
If the acid test is simply one of friend or foe of Israel, Hillary scores higher than Obama but so far Obama’s ‘olive branch’ policy seems to be holding things together. The U.S.A. is now far less hated than it was a year ago.
The U.S. and its gallant minor ally, the ever-dependable and taken-for-granted British, is/are trying to find a fast exit from Iraq, which is good enough, but the news from Afghanistan – Pakistan [the two 'problems' seem to have turned into one big insoluble problem] is anything but reassuring.
Since nobody has any clear idea what to do, we’d probably all like the Allies simply to dump Afghanistan – Pakistan and let the Afghans and Pakistanis sort matters out as best they can.
| 3 July 2009, 6:15 am |
If Palin was a such a drag on the McCain camp, why did she attract bigger crowds?
And why are these “McCain insiders” not named, the ones making the most silly accusations.
Face it. Like her or hate her she is a force many fear. Among republicans and the democrats. And besides, she had more experience than Obama for the presidency and she buried Biden in the debates.
Funny how all that is forgotten while Biden spits one idiotic statement after another almost every week.
| 3 July 2009, 8:12 am |
Sarah Palin – has anybody seen the Eminem video for “We Made You”? Hilarious. His lines:
“I’d invite Sarah Palin
To dinner,and nail her”
| 3 July 2009, 11:06 am |
If Palin was a such a drag on the McCain camp, why did she attract bigger crowds?
The crowds she attracted wouldn’t vote Democrat if Jesus himself was on the ticket. Being able to draw a large crowd of your own base to an echo-chamber rally isn’t terribly useful unless you can also attract swing voters, or at least make them not vote for the other guy, as Neil Kinnock sadly learnt.
McCain ran a semi-successful, albeit not successful candidate, by not being a Rove-ite `Republican Base’ candidate. When it became apparent that the strategy wasn’t working, instead of moving further to the centre on the assumption that ultimately his base would vote for him anyway (or at worth stay at home) he (or his handlers) decided to shore up his base. That means that the far right vote for him the same as they did, but you lose swing votes. At best, it’s a strategy that wins red states more solidly than you otherwise would, but makes swing states unwinnable.
Palin was a side-show. Any other red-state governor with conservative social views would have had the same effect.
| 3 July 2009, 1:20 pm |
xyzzy is wrong about Palin; the woman has that elusive star quality that is so very rare in political life.
It isn’t necessarily good; Hitler had it. Nasser had it.
Thatcher had it. Reagan the Great Communicator had it, despite his age, and even grinning Tony Blair had it before the sheeple cottoned on to the fact that there was nothing much there.
I’m racking my brains to think of someone in British public life who has it at the present moment but I’m stumped. Cameron has a teeny bit of it on occasion but the real thing just isn’t there.
Nick Griffin doesn’t have it.
It’s fairly obvious that Palin was a gimmick and not a potential VP, but a lot of this just smacks of desperation from the people responsible for McCain’s failure.
McCain was never going to win, but he was hampered by a campaign that did not allow him to be himself.
What was it Time Magazine said after the election? “A better man than his campaign”?