’)Sarah Palin told a news organization she’d be interested in taking over the GOP after a possible McCain loss. That left the McCain folks speechless.
Man, Sen. Biden may stick his foot in his mouth, but you don’t hear him going around plotting Machiavelli style to take over the party.
Is this a joke?
I’d love to play poker against Sarah Palin since she apparently cannot keep a secret.
I’m still going to go and vote though. No matter how badly the GOP implodes upon itself.
Palin as head of the RNC? Awesome. Yes. Please.
Apparently smoking the Matanuska Thunderf@$k creates delusions of adequacy.
Palin and Thompson 2012.
“I will make Joe Vogler proud”-Sarah Palin
Yes, Palin in 2012. Pleeeeeeeaaaaase.
Even if he was he wouldn’t be stupid enough to say it out loud.
Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please!
If she ran in 2012 and won the nomination, it would kill the GOP’s chances. I truly don’t think the problem is a lack of understanding of most political subjects. I truly think she doesn’t give a damn. She’s interested in becoming president for the power, not because she wants to lead.
Just like George W. Bush.
This is not a problem that will be cured with four more years of experience.
…
Fucking hell… I just thought of something. If Stevens loses next week, she might take on Lisa Murkowski in 2010 mid-term elections to get into the Senate. That would be doubly awesome if she did because Alaska could lose a Republican Governor and a Senator at the same time.
I could see her running again in 2012 or takign Stevens place if for some stupid reason he wins.
Imagine……… if she gets in the Senate she will actually know what the Vice Presdients job is plus she could be shown to be the fool she truly is.
Angry Johnny might want to have someone taste his Metamucil for him for a while. Lucretia Borga apparently has big plans.
McCain doesn’t say things such as this because he’s not the glory hound she is (which is why he wouldn’t harp on his POW laurels when he ran in 2000, and was reluctant to this time). Old Navy should have peeped that trait when he vetted her.
Oh wai
What exactly did she say? The very brief clip OW links mentions her “quote” but doesn’t include what it is.
Speculating at this stage about Palin 2012 is similar to all the good news Rudy enjoyed in 2006.
Sean
Duros, Thanks.
OK, so what is the big deal here? Is it just that she’s acknowledging the possibility that her team might lose, something that I assume just “isn’t done” until time for the concession speech actually arrives?
Having risen to national attention and becoming a prominent figure in the Republican party she says she expects to remain one. Would there be any “speechless” gasps if Hillary were to say something similar in the event Obama loses?
Would there be any “speechless” gasps if Hillary were to say something similar in the event Obama loses?
Hillary Clinton was already a leader in the Democratic Party before Obama had even won his Senate seat in 2004. (A useful measure: did Republicans use her name to scare up fundraising dollars?) Palin was a nobody in the lower 49 until she won the governorship in 2006, and even between then and August 2008, the only people who had heard of her were some heavy-breathing conservatives on cruise ships and blogs. 65 days ago, Palin was too much of a nonentity among Democrats for them to use her name to scare their base. (Though she is a fear factor now, albeit among sensible Republicans like Charles Fried who have been forced to vote Obama despite disagreeing with him on everything from constitutional interpretation to tax policy.)
Also, if Sen. Clinton said such a thing BEFORE the election, there would be immediate outrage about how she was betraying the party by saying that Obama might lose. So even buying into your poor comparison, the answer is: yes.
Palin was a nobody in the lower 49 until she won the governorship in 2006…
And who’d heard of Barack Obama before his keynote speech in 2004? And here he is poised to be Pres just 4 years later. By 2012, Palin will have had 6 years as a non-nobody.
Also, if Sen. Clinton said such a thing BEFORE the election, there would be immediate outrage about how she was betraying the party by saying that Obama might lose. So even buying into your poor comparison, the answer is: yes.
OK, so to be clear, the shocking part is that she admits the possibility of defeat before the election is over, not that she expects to be a player in 2012.
“And who’d heard of Barack Obama before his keynote speech in 2004?”
Um, anyone who read the profiles of him in national and metropolitan newspapers (NYT, LAT, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Washington Times) when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990? Or the profile of him in Chicago Magazine’s January 1993 issue after his successful voter registration drive? Or read about “Dreams from My Father” in the N.Y. Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Virginian-Pilot and L.A. Times in 1995? Or saw his cases at the 7th Circuit?
Try running a Lexis news search on each of them, Sarah (Heath) Palin and Barack Obama, for the years before each ran for elected office (she for mayor, he for IL legislature), and you’ll see a significant difference in the size of their public record. I don’t mean this as derision of Palin — her education and geography did not afford the same opportunities as Obama’s, and she has made a hell of a lot out of what she has. But the idea that they are similar unknowns is ludicrous.
Yes, the reason a McCain campaign staffer would be speechless at what Palin had said would not be the suggestion that Palin would be a contender for the 2012 nomination (as failed VPs often are, see Lieberman in 2004; Edwards in 2008), but that Palin is talking about 2012 when she’s still on a presidential ticket. If the GOP goes for Palin over Jindal, though, I feel safe in writing them off as having any desire to govern this country competently rather than simply playing to their base’s worst instincts of anti-intellectualism and xenophobia.
PG: Um, anyone who read the profiles of him in national and metropolitan newspapers (NYT, LAT, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Washington Times) when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990?
I’m not saying there isn’t information about Obama available from before the 2004 Dem Convention. But the general population wasn’t aware of his existence known prior to that. How many people can name the current president of the Harvard law Review, for example?
But, as you say, the surprising thing isn’t that she would consider a run for the Presidency in 2012, but that she’d say so while still running for VP in 2008.
Although (to be devil’s advocate) one could praise her for her willingness to, even for a moment, stop playing games (McCain: “We’ve got them right where we want them”) and acknowledge what everyone already knows: She’s not likely to win.
If several of the nation’s top metropolitan dailies ran an article about the first, say, Muslim president of the Harvard Law Review, that guy probably would have decent name recognition among readers of those papers, which readers are among the more educated and elite members of both parties (especially Democrats).
You’re not getting my point, which is not that Obama was HLR president or wrote a memoir or registered a lot of voters or was a civil rights lawyer; my point is that Obama’s accomplishments got media coverage, and media coverage goes a long way to people’s knowing your name. Four years before the election in which he ran for the presidency, Obama was scheduled as a primetime speaker at the Democratic convention. In 2008, before McCain picked her as VP, Palin was sandwiched between Tom Ridge and Jon Huntsman in the parade of “reform” politicians early in the day. Prime time versus soap opera time — again, it’s all about media coverage and being seen and having your name out there.
That’s why I don’t discount concerns about media coverage as a factor in American politics — it is too big a country for people to know about a newcomer unless s/he gets media coverage.
But, as you say, the surprising thing isn’t that she would consider a run for the Presidency in 2012, but that she’d say so while still running for VP in 2008.
I think it’s a little of both. There’s a very real and vocal contingent of the GOP that will hold Palin’s behavior as the main reason McCain lost, and will not likely be forgiving when she says “Now I’d like to run the whole party.” There’s chutzpah in declaring oneself a viable candidate for the job of party leader when many in that party would prefer she’d not exist in any sphere of influence whatsoever.
But y’know, I’m just fine if the GOP has to rip itself apart to find its soul again. Let Palin go start a new Bull Moose Party with her fundies and wingnuts.
PG: You’re not getting my point, which is not that Obama was HLR president or wrote a memoir or registered a lot of voters or was a civil rights lawyer; my point is that Obama’s accomplishments got media coverage, and media coverage goes a long way to people’s knowing your name.
I think I do get your point, but am not sure you get mine. Yes, Obama was mentioned in the media and media coverage gets people to know your name. Obviously nobody has heard of someone who has never been mentioned. And had anyone wanted to find out more about him, yes there were plenty of places to get the info as you noted earlier.
But just because you have been mentioned in the media, even in a notable position, doesn’t mean you are generally known to a wide audience. Do you know who Peter David is? David Pearson? Asha-Rose Migiro? They’ve gotten significant press coverage and are certainly very well known to those interested in their particular fields of endeavor, but I would not expect the majority of Americans to know who they are.
However much media coverage he would have had for his accomplishments, Obama’s were not of the kind that most people hear/know about or retain if they happen to see an article about them. For example, how many people can name a governor other than their own, Schwarzenegger and Palin?
Whatever media exposure Obama had prior to 2004 he was not widely known.
SpiderJ: There’s a very real and vocal contingent of the GOP that will hold Palin’s behavior as the main reason McCain lost
Without, I’m sure, looking at all at McCain’s ludicrous judgment in providing her the soapbox in the first place.
But sure is the analytical and self-reflective abilities of the right.
I never claimed Obama was known to a wide audience before he ran for Senate. I answered your question “And who’d heard of Barack Obama before his keynote speech in 2004?” “Heard of” is not the same as “retained the memory of.” Aside from some classmates who had crushes on her at the various colleges she passed through, people outside Alaska literally had not heard of Sarah Palin.
Would there be any “speechless” gasps if Hillary were to say something similar in the event Obama loses?
I think there would be if she was on the ticket with him, yes.