Palin & I late to the game
Over Labor Day weekend, Sarah Palin gave a speech in Iowa with some formidable pieces in it. I’m a bit late to the game on cmmenting about it. She’s a bit late to the game on giving it. If she had given this speech eight months ago, I might be a bit afraid. I want to highlight two quotes below that were in a little piece in the Atlantic a week ago. They’re exactly the same type of thing that made me so afraid of a potential Mike Huckabee candidacy. Though I think it’s too late for her to change her image much for the 2012 campaign season and too late for her to have a shot at the nomination right now, this could be her way of starting to re-position herself for 2016. Palin doesn’t quite have Huckabee’s knack for populist economics or anything approaching his authenticity as someone who lives and serves the doctrines of the religious right. She doesn’t have his charm or affable manner. She does have 100 times his charisma, though, and an army of adoring fans. Based on the two quotes that follow, she’s got someone very savvy working for her. This is the kind of fake populism that could sell. I mean, hell, I have trouble arguing with most of what she says as a block. You really have to start picking apart individual words and phrases to unravel it. It’s not something that’s just flat out wrong on its face. There’s definitely something about Palin’s appeal and her ability to change and mutate while claiming absolute, immutable truth that also ties in well with Andrew Sullivan’s piece today in The Daily Beast.
“The President’s big campaign donors got nice returns for their ‘investments’ in him to the tune of billions of your tax dollars in the form of ‘green energy’ stimulus funds. The technical term for this is ‘pay-to-play.’ Between bailouts for Wall Street cronies and stimulus projects for union bosses’ security and “green energy” giveaways, he took care of his friends. And now they’re on course to raise a billion dollars for his re-election bid so that they can do it all over again.”
“Some GOP candidates also raised mammoth amounts of cash, and we need to ask them, too: What, if anything, do their donors expect in return for their ‘investments’? We need to know this because our country can’t afford more trillion-dollar “thank you” notes to campaign backers. It is an important question, and it cuts to the heart of our problem. And I speak from experience in confronting the corruption and the crony capitalism since starting out in public office 20 years ago. I’ve been out-spent in my campaigns two to one, three to one, five to one… But the reason is simple: It’s because like you, I’m not for sale.”
