I think it would be a huge mistake to underestimate Palin. While I also chuckled over the couple of diaries on the rec list and clearly share their sentiments, we need to be paying attention to this phenomena.......
..........because what we are watching is the re-invention and re-creation of Sarah Palin. And SP v2 is slightly better than the original and v3 will be slightly better than v4. And pretty soon, we will see a fairly serious candidate. And she still connects to a pretty active and vocal base.
If you watched any part of her interview on FNS this morning and then compared it to the Couric interview, you would see an improvement. Now granted, Chris Wallace lobbed softballs at her and those questions were all geared towards re-casting SP into v2, she handled them better than before. Even under the assumption that she knew the questions in advance. And, she was on the offensive and her base loves her for that. The questions were designed to allow her to rebut charges of quitting mid-term, Todd's active involvement while she was Governor etc. etc.
And so her transformation and re-casting will continue and it will continue right in front of our eyes. And we would be foolish to ignore this as merely a temporary phenomena. She is not going away soon.
Here's Andrew Sullivan making the same point from a different perspective.....
If you are one of those people who think this person cannot become president of the United States, think again.
Two lines stood out for me. The first is a sign that she believes and her followers believe that she has a divine destiny. She is Esther, with a touch of martyrdom:
"I will live, I will die for the people of America."
The second was the Dolchstoss attack on the duly elected president of the United States:
"We need a commander-in-chief not a professor of law."
Here's the link http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...
And here's what the NYT has to say about this......
WASHINGTON — Without leaving home, Sarah Palin will be able to reach much of her political base, courtesy of a soon-to-be-built television studio in her living room paid for by her newest media patron, Fox News......................She reads daily e-mail briefings on domestic and foreign policy from a small group of advisers who remained loyal after her tumultuous vice presidential campaign in 2008. And though she has fashioned an image as an antiestablishment conservative, she also speaks regularly to a bipartisan nobility of Washington insiders who have helped enrich her financially and position her on the national political stage......................Her growing cast of advisers and support system could be working in the service of any number of goals: a presidential run, a de facto role as the leader of the Tea Party movement, a lucrative career as a roving media entity — or all of the above.......
So this is the intellectual training on policy issues. And remember, her active base is not expecting her to become a policy wonk. They just expect her to know "enough" so as not to embarrass them and herself like she did last time.
The NYT goes on....
...Ms. Palin represents a new breed of unelected public figures operating in an environment in which politics, news media and celebrity are fused as never before. Whether she ever runs for anything else, Ms. Palin has already achieved a status that has become an end in itself: access to an electronic bully pulpit, a staff to guide her, an enormous income and none of the bother or accountability of having to govern or campaign for office.
"Few public figures not in office have leveraged the nexus between media and political positioning as Sarah Palin has," said the Washington lawyer Robert Barnett......
This is a new way of politicking. While it doesn't ignore new media, it clearly extracts much more out of traditional media like TV. This is what I call "Reality" politics. And Scott Brown was perhaps the first example of that. If you look at his personal history, his wife's personal history, one of his daughters on American Idol etc. etc., all their lives were led in the glare of spotlights. I'm not indicting them, merely making an observation.
So, we will now be invited into Palin's home and actually watch the transformation take place, in front of our eyes. We will actually be a part of it. This is "Reality" politics and should not be ignored. After all, we can argue all we want about why, but it did get Scott Brown elected in Mass. While it may or may not result in Palin actually running in 2012( she is after all already hinting at it), it will provide her with a very effective bully pulpit from where she can continue to lob grenades and fire up her very vocal and active base. As she just did last night and this morning.
More from the NYT....
...........Beyond what her Fox-watchers and Facebookers can see, Ms. Palin is quietly assembling the infrastructure of an expanding political operation.....Ms. Palin has also enlisted a small team of policy counselors to guide her through the substantive areas in which many deemed her to be lacking in 2008. Randy Scheunemann, a foreign policy adviser to Mr. McCain who also clashed with the campaign leadership, got $30,000 from Ms. Palin’s PAC in the second half of 2009............
So this is not someone who is NOT preparing, in case God opens a door. She will be prepared and the transformation is happening in front of us. In fact, we are being invited to be a part of it.
"I’m disappointed by her endorsement of Paul," said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and one of the conservatives credited with "discovering" Ms. Palin in 2007. "But they always disappoint you."
Anytime he is disappointed, I wanna know about it.
God would help her recognize "the next open door" (a favorite Palin refrain).......
.........."She has expanded her house and turned it into a compound," said Rebecca Braun, who edits the nonpartisan Alaska Budget Report. "She is basically invisible in Alaska but as big a celebrity as Princess Di everywhere else."
Here's the link http://www.nytimes.com/...
So while we should all ridicule her having to write these speaking points on her hand, let us not underestimate this new "Reality" politics. Like I said, it did get Scott Brown elected, even if is partially because of that.