It all started with a letter written by two women (Lyra and Quinn) that they emailed to 40 of their friends.“We are writing to you,” wrote Lyra and Quinn, “because of the fury and dread we have felt since the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Republican Party.. She does not represent us.”
Within one week 100,000 women responded with their own impassioned stories and statements about why Sarah Palin should not be Vice President.
Join us on October 30th, 2008, when performers from all walks of life (unknown and celebrity) will lend their voice and human presence to the thousands of women across America who responded to Lyra and Quinn’s letter across America by reading their comments LIVE.Where?Right here!
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If anyone thought Sarah Palin was going to go back to Alaska, moose-hunting and consignment shops after a possible defeat next week might be missing the forest for the trees.
Many are seeing the rise and fall of Sarah Palin this campaign season as the ultimate rise of a political figure who will mobilize the defeated Republicans in 2012 (out of the ashes). The NY Times makes the following compelling points as to why Sarah Palin is here to stay:
She’s tremendously ambitious (what other reason would one attribute towards her decision to step into the vice presidential candidacy with NO experience whatsoever?);
She’s beginning to give policy speeches which is a message to her supporters that she is thinking well beyond McCain’s political demise. It’s also an attempt to make her appear more substantive.
She’s been bitten by the foreign policy bug. She’s aggressively trying to fill those huge holes in her understanding of foreign policy (she met with the Isreali ambassador on Monday and will continue pushing for such meetings in the near future);
She’s actually speaking and thinking for herself (prepared, McCain-approved speeches be damned!); and
According to campaign insiders, she’s clearly breaking away from McCain.
But she has a lot of work to do if she plans on being a heavy-hitter in the party. Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd sums it up bluntly:
She’s an attractive woman who can give a great speech, but the American public doesn’t view her much beyond that. She’s vastly unpopular among moderate and independent voters, and while she could be in a position to be popular among an increasingly smaller Republican Party, she’s got to figure out a way to extend that and figure out a way to strengthen her weaknesses.
Something tells me, as driven as she is, she will figure it out and we will be hearing and seeing a lot more of Sarah Palin whether she is elected Vice President or not.
According to The New York Times, Sarah Palin’s makeup artist was the highest paid staff member in October fetching $22,800 for two weeks of primping Palin’s pucker.
I would’ve done the same job for half the price. Next time they should just call me.
Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic makes a compelling argument for the possibility of Palin setting her sights on a presidential run in 2012.
According to Ambinder, Sarah Palin (out of sheer ambition and probably because she at the very least recognizes a sinking ship when she sees one) has turned against John McCain.
Says Ambinder:
“There’s a suspicion in some McCain loyalist precincts that Gov. Sarah Palin is beginning to play the Republican base against John McCain — McCain won’t let her campaign in Michigan…McCain won’t let her bring up Jeremiah Wright… McCain doesn’t like her terrorist pal talks….
Think ahead to 2010…2011…2012
And if she wants the job, she’s easily the frontrunner to become THE voice of the angry Right in the Wilderness.”
This is not totally inconceivable, of course (considering her initial popularity). Although Republicans historically choose the next person in line for the throne (rather than pick unknowns or wild cards), it could be that in 2012 the Republicans will want someone who would go after Obama’s jugular with the vigor of… a pitbull. Anything could happen (and this historical election has certainly shown us that).
Read Ambinder’s argument for why he believes Palin might run for President in 2012 here.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is making his way to Ohio to campaign for Senator John McCain (good luck with that). During an interview yesterday with Campbell Brown of CNN, he stated that Govonor Sarah Palin was a great choice. Below is an excerpt from the interview:
CAMPBELL BROWN: Do you think she’s qualified to be president?
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER: I think that she will get to be qualified.
BROWN: She will get there? What do you mean? She’s not ready yet?
SCHWARZENEGGER: By the time that she is sworn in I think she will be ready.”
It seems Govonor Schwarzenegger believe Sarah Palin is NOT qualified to be President but that, within the next two weeks, she will be magically imbued (perhaps by a leprechaun) with years of experience, sound judgement and vision needed to be President. He goes on to explain why he feels McCain made the right choice below:
An NBC/WSJ Survey did a far better job of polling Americans than we did with our poll in gaging how people feel about Sarah Palin’s readiness to lead the country.
Sarah Palin being sworn in as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (courtesy of Faye Palin)
What do the good citizens of Wasilla, Alaska, think of Sarah Palin’s environmental policies? According to MSNBC, townfolk in Wasilla found her to be far too pro-business. Given the choice between development and environment, she chose the latter more times than not as evidenced by her record.
She helped kill a ballot initiative that would have blocked a massive new gold and copper mine from being built near the world’s most productive wild salmon fishery.
She challenged the listing of the polar bear and Cook Inlet beluga whale as endangered species. The listings might have threatened the state’s oil and gas industry.
Her administration helped kill a bill banning water pollution near where fish spawn.
She started a committee to address global warming. But with oil companies contributing the largest percentage of the state’s greenhouse gases, her committee set no goal for reducing emissions. Unlike other states, Alaska’s climate change priority is focused on ways to adapt to warmer temperatures.
Her battles with environmental agencies are near-legendary. In the early days, she decided to make amends and invited environmental groups to meet with her. But for many of the environmental organizers, it was a disappointment. One of them, a gentleman named Troll who was an adviser to the climate change committee (no snickers about his name please), Palin took her a pro-business/anti-environment agenda with her from Wasilla to the governors office.
But not everyone blames her. Garvan Bucaria (a retired Forest Service biologist who supports a hard line on creating environmental codes in Wasilla) thinks Palin is blame-free for the development. He believes that she was only one of many pro-development mayors who contributed to the over-development of the town and its subsequent environmental problems. His biggest problem with Palin: “There was no vision.”
Troll is a bit more philosophical about Governor Palin:
“She errs on the side of development. Would she carry that forward to being vice president? Yes, more than likely. She is who she is.”
Not only is McCain losing the endorsements of newspapers over his decision to keep Sarah Palin on the ticket, but he has also lost the endorsement of Republican heavyweight and godfather Colin Powell as well who this morning gave Obama his blessing on Meet the Press.
Although he and McCain have been good friends for over 25 years, he found that Obama “has met the standard of being a successfull president — of being an exceptional president…” in both “style and substance”. He considers Obama to be a “transformational figure.” High praise indeed.
He offered up several reasons as to why he parted with his Republican roots to support the fresh-faced senator including McCain’s lack of solutions to our nation’s economic problems, running an increasingly negative campaign and McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his Vice President running mate of whom he said:
Now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.
When is it not okay for a politician to make an appearance on Saturday Night Live during a campaign season? Surely, there are exceptions.
I propose that Sarah Palin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live where she starred in, not one, but two skits is that rare exception of an appearance on Saturday Night Live doing more harm than good. I present as evidence, Exhibit A:
And Exhibit B:
Personally, I found this skit painful to watch. What Lorne Michaels and the writers of Saturday Night Live don’t seem to realize is that the fun of watching Fey illuminate and dissect the persona of Sarah Palin is in the simple fact that Palin was not in on the joke. Quite the contrary, her odd answers to journalists’ questions, crying foul when those answers are thrown back at her and the way the McCain campaign has sheilded her from any serious media scrutiny that any other vice presidential candidate would have to endure feeds the Tina Fey portrayal endlessly. It is as if, through Fey’s spot-on portrayal of Palin, we are being given a glimps into Palin that McCain’s campaign has denied us thus far.
She wasn’t completely horrible. She was just as wooden as most politicians who make an appearance on the show. But her skits fell flat because (i) it is offensive and a sign of mismanagement by the McCain campaign that they will not allow Palin to have serious interviews to answer real, hard-hitting questions that the American people have a right and need to know but they will, however, allow her to do sketch comedy on tv; and (ii) she is no longer seen by the media (and even respected members of the Republican party) as a serious, experienced candadidate who is qualified to be Vice President (much less President and leader of the free world), which makes her being on the show that highlights that very point just seems sad.
In the end, I think the best way to sum up her odd and cringe-worthy appearance on Saturday Night Live is: we have enjoyed laughing at the rediculousness of Sarah Palin’s candidacy but laughing with her… not so much. It’s just not funny anymore (and, for that matter, neither is her candidacy).
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