Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Starbursts No More

Wow. He used to sit up straighter, but now Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, has fully detumesced:

In all the speculation about why Sarah Palin quit the Alaska governorship, no one — right or left, supportive or critical, rational or conspiratorial — has credited her stated reason that she had to do it for the sake of Alaska.

It’s just too absurd. Palin mentioned Alaska or Alaskans 34 times in a 17-minute statement that must be a new record in the history of protesting too much. Palin says she hates politics as usual, and true to her word, on July 3 she staged a spectacle in politics as unusual. But she still proved adept at the traditional political art of extreme disingenuousness.

[...]

Sarah Palin’s words served only to throw a tissue of rationalization over a calculated choice made in her personal self-interest. [...]

[...]

[...] Conservatives loved her for the same reason. She had a true magnetism. The more she repelled one side, the more she attracted the other.

This push-pull dynamic will hold Palin up for a long time, but it can’t propel her into the presidency. For that she needs substance, not the hackneyed sound bites she clings to for dear life. For that she needs a positive program, not just the hatred of conservatism’s favorite enemies. On this score, her premature exit from the governorship makes her task all the more arduous. As the soon-to-be-former half-term governor of a small state, she makes that other prominent populist social conservative, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, look formidably credentialed in comparison.

(h/t: Sara K. Smith/Wonkette | x-posted)

1 comment:

Kevin Robbins said...

I feel his pain and drink it in like sweet wine.

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