Sarah Palin: Giving Her Away

The Young America's Foundation's "Conservative Marketplace" has a FREE poster of Sarah Palin. (Other bargain-basement items include a copy of Wit and Wisdom of Conservatism for 18 cents and a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for a quarter.)

Apparently they didn't get the message that she's no longer popular, even among conservatives. Yesterday TPM reported that a new CBS poll shows only 41 percent of self-identified conservatives want her to run for President in 2012 and 50 percent said they didn't want her to run.

Cross posted.

Sarah Palin: So Rogue, She's Unpopular

(Flickr/Bruce Tuten)

On the campaign trail last fall, Sarah Palin, with her Alaskan accent, said, "Our opponents think that they have the women's vote all locked up, which is a little presumptuous. A little presumptuous since only our side has a woman on the ticket."

A year later, not only did Palin never make it to the vice presidency, but on the advent of the release of her book, Going Rogue, she is more unpopular than ever – at least, politically. In a Washington Post poll today, Sarah Palin has remarkable unpopularity ratings.

Respondents were asked if they would vote for Palin in 2012 if she ran for president; 53 percent said they would definitely not vote for her. Only 9 percent said they definitely would.

Another question asked, regardless of whether respondents would vote for her, was did they think Palin was "qualified" to run for president. A full 60 percent said she was not qualified to run for president, with only 38 percent thinking she was qualified.

Palin seems to like to paint herself as a popular, charismatic woman that simply gets attacked by the left wing, but far more people identify with her lack of qualifications than they do with the left.

Cross posted.

In It to Quit It

The news that Sarah Palin quit is old, but she certainly hasn't disappeared from the public eye. It's like we're reliving the last few months all over again, An article in today's New York Times examines her reasons for tossing the towel in on the Alaska governorship, and it seems to be exactly what I thought it was. A mess of low-level scandals got to be too much.

Yesterday Frank Rich seemed to say that it is precisely because she is quitting (and is so much more "real" than other potential Republican stars out there) that she's qualified to run for the Republican nomination in 2012. I'm not totally sure that's the case. He points out that she's more popular among the GOP then ever these days.

What's most strange about Sarah Palin is that she, unlike other failed vice-presidential nominees, didn't fade into the background: she continues to live out loud in the news. Palin stories generate more hits than other political stories. People are, in some weird way, fascinated by her.

Dahlia Lithwick, who incidentally I got to meet last week when she keynoted the Campus Progress journalism conference, insists that Palin is both charismatic and unintelligible. This is perhaps the root of the fascination. She's both successful at drawing attention and a mess at the same time. We can't wait to see what she will do next, certain it will be predictably more outrageous than the last thing.

I'm not one to gaze into the crystal ball, but I think we'll see Palin pop up every now and again. She'll continue to raise money for Republicans, especially among pro-life groups. But Palin's place on the public stage as an elected official is nearly over. This fact is perhaps best illustrated by a nugget found at the end of the Times story:

At the governor’s Anchorage office, staff members are struggling to roll with Ms. Palin’s surprise announcement. Last week, a clock on the wall continued its countdown. Under a “Time to Make a Difference” placard, the clock ticks away the days, hours, minutes and seconds until the scheduled end to Ms. Palin’s term. As of Friday, it had 513 days left.

Palin Appoints Pro-Choicer to State Surpeme Court

So Sarah Palin surprised everyone again by appointing a former Planned Parenthood board member to Alaska's Supreme Court. From the Anchorage Daily News:

Last week, without explaining why, Palin took the unusual step of asking the Judicial Council to send her all information it had on the two finalists, Christen and Palmer Superior Court Judge Eric Smith.

The council nominated them from a slate of six applicants. It takes four council votes for a candidate to be sent to the governor. None of the other candidates received any votes.

The head of the Alaska Family Council -- a Christian pro-family, anti-abortion group -- on Wednesday sent an e-mail to thousands of people asking them to urge Palin to pick Smith, not Christen.

Perhaps I'm being far too cynical, but I tend to think that Palin selected this woman, only the second to ever sit on Alaska's Supreme Court, to reinforce her "mavrickyness" and paint herself as more moderate for a potential 2012 run.

Sarah Palin, Only Funny When Made Fun Of

After watching the Saturday Night Live skits featuring Sarah Palin (the real one, not the Tina Fey one) I realized, she's mostly just sitting or standing there. In other words, Palin plays the same role on SNL that she does in real life, that of an accessory.

Here she is on the opener to the show. All the (what passes for) funny lines are those of Alec Balwin's.



And here she is on the Weekend Update segment, where she sits and dances to a rap that Amy Poehler performs.



I have to say, though, kudos to the Arctic Cat shoutout with the snowmobile gear. I'm from the home of the Arctic Cat snowmobile.

Traister: 'Cry me a freaking river'

Rebbecca Traister, yet again, nails the Sarah Palin sympathy game:

I don't want to be played by the girl-strings anymore. Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness. It's a disservice to minority populations of every stripe whose place in the political spectrum has been unfairly spotlighted as mere tokenism; it is a disservice to women throughout this country who have gone from watching a woman who -- love her or hate her -- was able to show us what female leadership could look like to squirming in front of their televisions as they watch the woman sent to replace her struggle to string a complete sentence together.

I admit that occasionally I feel bad when I see disgusting shit like those horribly sexist t-shirts. No woman should have to go through that. But to sympathize with Palin because she gets beat up on the national stage -- like any candidate does who runs for national office -- it's an insult. The point of all those years of feminists fighting for equality wasn't so that women get treated preferentially. It was so that women could be treated equally.

That means that when someone isn't qualified and people point that out, it's not sexist just because that person is a woman. Very few of the criticisms leveled against Sarah Palin these days are sexist, especially those leveled in serious political writing. The criticisms are more that she doesn't seem prepared to take office, that she spouts incomprehensible answers, and that she accidentally agrees with her opponents because she can't keep all the talking points in her head. This doesn't mean she's a bad person, but it does mean that she's not qualified for office.

Campbell Brown: McCain Campaign is Sexist Against Palin

CNN’s Campbell Brown has a really good point about how the McCain campaign has done a really good job of denying interviews or responses to the press–suggesting that she’s a “delicate flower” unable to stand up to the big mean press. I have to say I agree. Let Palin answer questions. Doesn’t seem hard.



Cross posted on Pushback.

The Icky Palin T-shirts

While Ann at Feminsting and Tracie at Jezebel said pretty much everything on those disgusting Sarah Palin t-shirts, I was struck by how I just don't get it. Palin is pretty much the opposite of feminist on nearly every issue. Isn't that was misogynists out there want? All the feminists to just shut up and follow the Palin model? But instead these sexists go ahead and target Palin with the same disgusting behavior they try to use to denigrate feminists.

Women are just sex objects, no matter what their actual role in life. So then it occurred to me: it doesn't matter if Palin reinforces the virgin/whore stereotypes that misogynists thrive on -- you piss them off just by virtue of your having a vagina. In other words, even though Palin has been working really hard to placate these ridiculous people, there's no way she can ever placate them. She exists in life as a woman, and that is enough.

Too Many Women

Awesome headline, New York Observer editors. In an intense presidential election, of course people are tiring of political stories, but it's not that people are tired of politics or the campaign season, it's because America is tired of feminism. Because, you know, we have too many women running around. And furthermore, there is just no difference between Hillary Clinton and Cindy McCain. You can lump them all into the same lady-parts category. Ugh. I'm really hating this new trend of equating Republican women like Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin with feminism.

Nice Try, Camille

So according to would-be feminist Camille Paglia, Sarah Palin is a "a powerful new feminist -- yes, feminist! -- force." She goes on to call Palin a "tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor" and says Palin has "made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment."

Uh huh. Of that I can only say this:

Dear Ms. Paglia,

We have received your application to be a leading feminist thinker. Unfortunately, we're not able to accept you at this time. Best of luck in placing your thoughts elsewhere.

Sincerely,
Real Feminists Everywhere

Orders to the Alaska National Guard Not from Sarah Palin

When Republicans introduced Sarah Palin to the audience at the RNC, they touted her executive experience -- something no one else seems to have. To show how capable she was to lead, they said that she is commander-in-chief of the Alaska National Guard.

But a recent McClatchy report shows that Palin never issued any orders to the National Guard in her state. As long as troops are called up for federal service, Palin has no authority over the troops. Her authority over the state's National Guard extends to in-state national disasters and emergencies. In the two years that she has been governor, Palin hasn't commanded the troops in such an instance. So I guess her executive experience commanding troops is a bit oversold.