And while talking to some furriner from Old Europe™, to boot! Treason!!!1!
Expressing the strongest public reservations about the conservative star made by any senior Republican figure, Mr Rove said it was unlikely that voters would regard someone starring in a reality show as presidential material.
[...]
Mr Rove, who remains a major force on the US political scene, also implied that Mrs Palin lacked the stomach for the rigours of a presidential primary campaign, which will begin early next year before the first polls in 2012.
[...]
He said Mrs Palin had done a “terrific job” in 2008 when Senator John McCain took her from near obscurity to the vice-presidential nomination, but added: “Being the vice-presidential nominee on the ticket is different from saying 'I want to be the person at the top of the ticket’.
“There are high standards that the American people have for it [the presidency] and they require a certain level of gravitas, and they want to look at the candidate and say 'that candidate is doing things that gives me confidence that they are up to the most demanding job in the world’.”
As for Herself, the Holly Bailey post referring me to the above also offers this quote, the latest helping of word salad served up in response to the question of whether she'll be running:
"For me, Mary, it's going to entail a discussion with my family -- a real close look at the lay of the land -- and to consider whether there are those with that common-sense, conservative, pro-Constitution passion. Whether there are already candidates out there who can do the job -- and I'll get to be their biggest supporter and their biggest helpmate, if they will have me -- or whether there's nobody willing to do it, to make the tough choices and not care what the critics are going to say about you, just going forward according to what I believe the priorities should be," Palin told Hart.
That would be Mary Hart, as in Mary Hart, host of Entertainment Tonight.
Gravitas!
So far, it doesn't look like the 101st Fighting Keyboardists have been made aware of this. Except for the Freepers, the only thing I see right now is Hot Air's Allahpundit trying to spin this as Rove strategery, maybe, but I look forward to the coming internecine flame wars.
(h/t: KK, via email | pic. source)
10 comments:
Oh man, shut up Karl. You'll make her run out of spite.
Don't you want her to run? Mostly, I do. The only worry I'd have is that she might have the effect of making Willard or someone like him look reasonable by comparison.
If she ran I would be wrong wrong wrong in my assessment of her as a simple profiteer and we can't have me being wrong.
Heh. Point taken.
In your own defense (and in mine, because this is also how I assess her), I would see the run as primarily another excuse to get the spotlight pointed at her, to serve the end of increasing her speaking fees, selling another quickie book, and FSM help us, perhaps even another "reality" show: Mama Grizzlies on the (Campaign) Trail. (It gets worse: I expect it will featuring that old PUMA ROAR™.)
I predict she will play it as coy as possible, and then with a wink and an "aw, shucks, so many people have asked me, how can I not?," she'll declare. She would doubtless like this to occur sometime well past the "start" of the main campaign, giving the other candidates a chance to beat up on each other (but not her), and more importantly, avoiding crowds filled with NotRealAmericans, avoiding the media, and avoiding stories about how she's avoiding the people and the media. Then she'll just swan in, in some heavily publicized event in some arena filled with carefully screened fans. She'd probably like it if it were Three Days before Super Tuesday or some such, so she could really work the resurrection angle, but I expect state filing deadlines will hamper that a bit. (Or maybe she'd like it better if she could force "Washington insiders" to declare her ineligible in a few cases. Victimhood sells almost as many books and DVDs as hate does, to her target demographic.)
She may use the stalling time to see whether it'd be a better bet to come out as the new Third Way candidate, or to double down on the teabaggery.
And then when the hysteria of adoration and double-reverse contrarianism from everyone Althouse and Broder to the slate of Double X dies out, and she is ground down by the GOP machine (whose amount of desire for her to be their nominee has been made plain by Karl Rove), she will withdraw in a speech that will outdo her resignation speech as governor for sheer babblosity. "I can serve the American people better by serving them while serving my family Trig fishing values small-town commonsense conservatives," etc.
And then she will look to get a second regular paycheck from Fox, by "commenting" "live from the campaign trail" while the primaries continue. Not to mention the regular election. And in between those appearances, she'll be making paid appearances at pro-GOP events. She will not endorse another candidate until the last minute.
In hopes that, maybe, one of them will asks her to be his VP running mate, a day or two before the GOP convention.
So that she can rewind to late August 2008, and repackage and resell the whole thing again.
Bottom line is, there is no way in the world she wants to do the work that it takes to get elected president (which may be the only positive thing I'll ever have to say about her sanity). She'll take it, sure, if it's handed to her, but no one, even the most amoral people in the GOP, is going to do that.
I predict she will play it as coy as possible, and then with a wink and an "aw, shucks, so many people have asked me, how can I not?," she'll declare.
Well, there's gotta be a clothing budget in it.
LOL!
Actually, I expect that there will knife fights among major labels to be the Exclusive Wardrobe Provider.
Brendan said, "I predict she will [...] declare. ... She'll just swan in, in some heavily publicized event in some arena filled with carefully screened fans."
I completely agree with you that she intends to run for president. You might find this interesting:
Next for GOP leaders: Stopping Sarah Palin
Thanks for that. I am glad to hear they're so worried. Perhaps not every senior member of the GOP is a faux-populist bonehead after all.
They're just worried she can't win, that's all. If she gets the nomination, they'll be behind her 100%.
They weren't in 2008.
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