It is too soon to decide whether the Republican Party ought to choose Sarah Palin as its nominee next year. She has not made it clear, so far, whether she actually intends to seek its nomination.
Were she to try to run, I think she has exhibited both potential major strengths and weaknesses that give one hope for her possible success, but leave one also uncertain of her ability to succeed. If Sarah Palin fails to convince most of us that she can perform consistently at a higher level of eloquence, I’d say that she ought not to be the nominee.
Palin has already carved out for herself a useful, practically effective, and very prominent role as a political commentator. It is possible that remaining free to be herself and operating in that capacity would be more congenial to her and more compatible with her talents and inclinations than campaigning for the presidency.
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Deciding not to run at this time, I think, speaks very, very positively for Sarah Palin’s good judgment. I think this decision, in fact, proves that she is highly intelligent and is operating politically at a level worthy of respect and admiration.
It is obvious enough why she isn’t running.
She clearly has concluded that running in the second position of a losing ticket does not really give one an automatic ticket to the GOP’s nomination and a firm claim on the presidency.
She undoubtedly recognizes that her resume was impaired by her decision to resign the Alaska governorship and write a book and cash in, in order to avoid her family winding up in bankruptcy as a result of the enormous legal expenses piling up as the result of a endless series of left-wing “ethics” attacks.
Sarah Palin is wise enough to realize that she sometimes appeared inarticulate and unprepared during her previous national campaign, and she has concluded that, before running again nationally, she needs to prove herself. She is only 47 years old, and she has plenty of time to run for the presidency.
Since leaving elected office, Sarah Palin has carved out for herself an extremely useful and highy influential role as national spokesperson for conservatism. She was already, in that role, able to have a real impact on the national debate, and she was, in fact, more effective most of the time than any member of Congress or any governor.
There are a lot of people who have doubts about whether she possesses sufficient knowledge and ability to express herself to serve as president. Serving for years as a national leader of the conservative cause, fighting the good fight in the national political wars, is actually the best way to establish anyone as a credible leader and inevitable candidate. Palin isn’t running for president this year, instead she is proposing to occupy the same national role formerly held in years gone by Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.
Looking on, I find myself wondering why on earth that particular role has been vacant for so long. The reflection is inevitable that, if Newt Gingrich had done, some years ago, what Sarah Palin is doing now, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry would not be the front runners.
You often hear people talk about how bright Newt Gingrich is, and how dumb Sarah Palin is. I think all this proves that exactly the reverse is true. Palin has made the right decision, and there is a pretty good likelihood that she will keep on doing the right thing, and will one day go on to greater things.
Newt Gingrich has been backpedaling and apologizing furiously for his attacks on Paul Ryan’s budget reform proposal on the Meet the Press last Sunday.
What Gingrich’s true and actual positions on the Ryan proposals, Medicare, and Obamacare might actually be these days remains unclear. It seems that Gingrich is basically where one would expect him to be, and on Sunday was only bloviating, and philosophizing, and attempting to differentiate his own more nuanced, sophisticated, and organic approach to budgetary reform from less prudent and more inflamatory approaches.
Gingrich apologized to Paul Ryan and has been making a genuine effort to sound more like a Republican (and to stay a viable candidate).
The latest amusing effort to keep the Gingrich candidacy afloat was this salvo by his press secretary Rick Tyler, attempting to blame the Sunday debacle on a media conspiracy.
The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding. Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.â€
I was down on Gingrich, too, so I guess my invitations to the Georgetown cocktail parties must be in the mail.
Quinn Hillyer filed the best response at the American Spectator.
Methinks if there is any billowing smoke, it is the funny stuff the Gingriches must be smoking if they think he has emerged looking like anything except a shabby, self-important hack with enough egg on his face to feed omelets to the whole nation of Lichtenstein.
Hat tip to Jim Geraghty’s (emailed) Morning Jolt.
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UPDATE, 5/20:
Jon illustrated the entire “Gingrich Emerging” rant here.
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UPDATE, later 5/20:
John Lithgow reads the glorious press release for Stephen Colbert.
On his radio program Monday morning, former Education Secretary Bill Bennett, who knows Gingrich well but is also close to Ryan, reacted angrily to Gingrich’s remarks. Referring to Ryan’s Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering” is, Bennett said, “an unforgivable mistake, in my judgment.” Bennett went on to say that Gingrich “has taken himself out of serious consideration for the [2012] race.”
He has as far as any possibility of support from movement conservatives like me is concerned.
Newt Gingrich made the following prediction on Meet the Press last Sunday:
[Y]ou’ve got $513 billion in tax increases, $470 billion in Medicare cuts. You have a scale of, I think, bribery in the Senate we have not seen in our lifetime, with various senators getting all sorts of special deals in a way that I think the public is just appalled by. I suspect every Republican running in ‘10 and again in ‘12 will run on an absolute pledge to repeal this bill.
The bill — most of the bill does not go into effect until ‘13 or ‘14, except on the tax increase side; and therefore, I think there won’t be any great constituency for it. And I think it’ll be a major campaign theme. This is a bad bill, written in a horrible way, and the most — the most corrupt legislation I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Gingrich’s repeal pledge went largely unnoticed on the right, but it certainly got the left’s attention.
Leftie bloggers are busily spinning today about how impossible it would be to repeal the health care bill (Steve Benen), and Matt Yglesias has even devised an epithet to apply to people like me: we’re Repealers.
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I think those leftwing bloggers are whistling past the political graveyard.
Look at Rasmussen’s latest poll on Ben Nelson’s standing after the health care vote.
The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn’t have to face Nebraska voters until 2012.
If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.
Nelson’s health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan. Overall, 64% oppose the health care legislation, including 53% who are Strongly Opposed.
Back in April of 2007, when Newt Gingrich was still being looked upon as a potential candidate in the upcoming presidential contest, during a debate with John Kerry, Gingrich climbed on board the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) bandwagon and even endorsed carbon regulation.
Distancing himself from AGW-skeptic Senator James Inhofe at the time, Gingrich said:
“My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading of the atmosphere.”
And then proceeded to propose that the rest of the Conservative Movement should follow his own example by knuckling under to a popular delusion and developing a so-called “green conservatism.”
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Campaigning over the weekend though in Illinois’ 14th Congressional District for Ethan Hastert, the son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, it sounded like Gingrich has jumped back onto the right side of the fence on AGW. Gingrich said:
“Copenhagen in its current form is a fraud by the left around the world to take power away from people and give it to government and bureaucrats and is a combined effort by the bureaucrats and the academics to take power away from free people and turn them over to the international organization, and it is going to be a disaster. And we should be committed to not implementing Copenhagen [global warming treaty] in its current form under any circumstances.”
Gingrich was back in good form as well on Health Care Reform, advising democrats in danger of losing their seats that voting with Harry Reid may not be worth it.
“If the left manages to drive through a bill which is opposed by 65 percent of the country on health care, our commitment should be simple — when we get a majority, we’re repealing the whole thing. And I want every Democrat who is about to sacrifice their seat for socialized medicine to understand: after you lose your seat, you’re going to lose the socialized medicine too.”
In the Atlantic, James Fallows recalls an Ethics In America panel discussion on PBS in the 1980s.
First, moderator Charles Ogletree asked a former American officer who had served in Vietnam if he would, in a hypothetical situation in which he could thereby save American lives, if he would forcibly extract the necessary information from a captured prisoner using torture.
The former officer said he would, but other representatives of the US military, including General William Westmoreland, disagreed, and made opposing arguments.
Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening’s panel. … These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings, of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace, of 60 Minutes and CBS.
Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading Jennings and his news crew got permission from the North Kosanese to enter their country and film behind the lines. …
But while Jennings and his crew were traveling with a North Kosanese unit… they unexpectedly crossed the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst the Northern soldiers set up an ambush that would let them gun down the Americans and Southerners.
What would Jennings do? Would he tell his cameramen to “Roll tape!” as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to fire?
Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t,” he finally said. “I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.”…
Ogletree turned for reaction to Mike Wallace, who immediately replied. “I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as another story they were there to cover.” A moment later Wallace said, “I am astonished, really.” He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American” (at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship). “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.”
Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?
“No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”
Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said: “I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had “played the hypothetical very hard.”He had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached.
As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, several soldiers in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force General Brent Scowcroft, who would soon become George Bush’s National Security Advisor, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.”
After a brief discussion between Wallace and Scowcroft, Ogletree reminded Wallace of Scowcroft’s basic question. What was it worth for the reporter to stand by, looking? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something ?
Wallace gave a disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I don’t know.” He later mentioned extreme circumstances in which he thought journalists should intervene. But at that moment he seemed to be mugging to the crowd with a “Don’t ask me!”expression, and in fact he drew a big laugh—the first such moment in the discussion. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given.
“I wish I had made another decision,” Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the past five minutes over again. “I would like to have made his decision”—that is, Wallace’s decision to keep on filming.
A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform. Jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell said, “I feel utter contempt.”
Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell said, Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces—and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. When that happens, he said, they are “just journalists.” Yet they would expect American soldiers to run out under enemy fire and drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield.
“I’ll do it!” Connell said. “And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get . . . a couple of journalists.” The last words dripped disgust.
Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds. Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than he would when he became speaker of the House, in 1995. One thing was clear from this exercise, Gingrich said. “The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have.”
Newt Gingrich reduces Ron Allen to helpless silence.
Tuesday evening on the convention floor in St. Paul… MSNBC’s Ron Allen said to the former Speaker, “But to be fair, her resume is not something we’re familiar seeing with presidential candidates.”
This didn’t sit well with Gingrich who strongly replied:
It’s stronger than Barack Obama’s. I don’t know why you guys walk around saying this baloney. She has a stronger resume than Obama. She’s been a real mayor, he hasn’t. She has been a real governor, he hasn’t. She’s been in charge of the Alaskan National Guard, he hasn’t. She was a whistleblower who defeated an incumbent mayor. He has never once shown that kind of courage. She’s a whistleblower who turned in the chairman of her own party and got him fined $12,000. I’ve never seen Obama do one thing like that. She took on the incumbent governor of her own party and beat him, and then she beat a former Democratic governor in the general election. I don’t know of a single thing Obama’s done except talk and write.
Newt then challenged Allen:
I’d like you to tell me one thing Sen. Obama’s done.
With that, Allen retreated, and said:
Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to leave it there. I’m not going to argue the case. Thanks very much.
Newt Gingrich sent Bill Kristol the following email, which he authorized him to share.
Authenticity is the one word threat to the Obama-Biden ticket.
There is something going on this weekend which traditional pundits, traditional consultants and traditional politicians are simply missing. All of the normal biography-oriented and issue-oriented analysis misses an emotional gestalt event comparable to when Ronald Reagan in 1980 crystalized his leadership in New Hampshire when he seized control of the GOP debate.
In one sudden moment Friday, John McCain fundamentally changed American politics in a manner that transcends issues and details.
The great threat to the Obama-Biden ticket can be captured in one word: authenticity.
There is something unaffected and “unsophisticated” (in the Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and University of Chicago meanings of the word) about Governor Palin. She really was point guard of a state championship basketball team. She really is a competent hunter. She is a hockey mom. She has one son about to go to Iraq.
She has 13 years in elected office
By any practical standard she has done far more in the real world with much more spontaneity and practicality than Barack Obama. And there is something deeply real and courageous about John McCain ignoring most of his advisers and all of the “insider wisdom” to reach out to a younger woman whose greatest characteristic is undaunted courage and a willingness to clean out the corruption in her own party.
This is a moment of stunning authenticity versus a sad collapse on the part of the Obama campaign from ” change you can count on” to politics as usual, as marked by Obama’s choice of a senator first elected when Palin was 9 years old. …
Finally 2008 really has given us “change we can count on.” Ironically, it is the McCain-Palin ticket.
Dick Morris claims that Fred Thompson’s candidacy is in eclipse, and is bragging that nativists like himself got Thompson to fire Spencer Abraham because he was too pro-immigration.
Gosh, maybe there’s a moral here, could circumstance A possibly be related to circumstance B?
But Thompson’s problems go beyond fund raising. Yet to announce his candidacy, he has already fired two campaign managers. His first choice, Tom Collamore, former vice president of Altria, the new name for Phillip Morris, fell to pressure from Fred’s wife Jeri, a self-styled political consultant. Then, the luckless candidate turned to former Michigan Senator and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. But just as bloggers — including us — began to unload on Abraham for his exceedingly pro-immigration record and to cast doubts on his firmness as a backer of Israel, Fred got rid of him, too.
More than anything else, however, it is Fred’s indecision about running that, combined with speculation that he may not want it badly enough, is cooling GOP ardor. After tying with Rudy Giuliani in Scott Rasmussen’s daily tracking polls, he has now fallen seven points back.
Dick Morris thinks we should all support Newt Gingrich instead.
Lots of luck. Newt came out in support of Global Warming back in April. I doubt he is really stupid enough to believe in that kind of nonsense, so I expect it was just a cynical ploy to appeal to wider constituencies of the Great Unwashed. Politicians have to win elections, I know, but there are limits. Global Warming is an especially objectionable sort of popular delusion which intelligent people have a universal duty to oppose. Real conservatives (of which I am one) do not support candidates who truckle to stupidity and pander on such a scale in order to get votes. Newt can go jump in the lake.
Newt Gingrich joins the ranks of what I consider unacceptable 2008 GOP candidates (along with Giuliani and McCain), selling out to climate scare conformism in what-was-supposed-to-be a debate with that skunk John Forbes Kerry.
Bye, Newt! If you’re stupid enough to believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, or cynical enough to pretend to, you are a representative of the kind of politics Goldwater conservatives like myself have been opposing since the early 1960s.
Principle counts. I’d rather lose with Barry than win with Nixon. It is better to lose today, as Karl Hess observed, fighting for “a cause which will triumph,” than to compromise and surrender.
This debate was one of the more enjoyable ones on this subject that I have seen. It was made that way in large part because Kerry and Gingrich did not spend time with pointless arguments over whether global warming was occuring and whether it was caused by humans.
Matt Lewis says it’s time for us Republican conservatives to stop thinking about those safe, liberal 2008 choices, and start supporting someone in our hearts we know is right.
In life, there are times to make a safe choice. Should you go to the gym in the morning or pour yourself a bowl of Miller Lite Cheerios? Should you take the car rental insurance or chance it? Decisions, decisions.
Similarly tough choices inevitably seep into our politics. For Republican voters, it has been: Should you vote for Ross Perot or Pat Buchanan, or go with the Republican standard-bearer? (You probably made the “adult” decision, sucked it up and punched your ticket for George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, even if they were squishy Republicans who were dull as can be.)
For 2008, the safe thing means backing one of the “big three” Republicans, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney or former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Here’s the problem with always doing the safe thing: Voting is supposed to be a bit rebellious. There are times to throw caution to the wind and go for what you really want. (This often happens after a few drinks.) Depending on your lifestyle, that might include buying a motorcycle, following the Grateful Dead, getting a tattoo or just ordering another helping of that sinfully rich chocolate cake.
