It is a sober day indeed in which Robert Stacy McCain, he of the Front Page fedora and vulpine grin (where?s Lee Tracy when we need him?), sounds like the Voice of Reason.
But in the baby alligator pool of postmodern conservatism, any glimmer of common sense and rational analysis seems like an intruder, and so it is with McCain?s objection to Sarah Palin stringing her fans along and stoking them into a frustrated frenzy like Madeleine Kahn working the stage in Blazing Saddles.
This reality ? that the clock has run out on any realistic prospect of a Palin 2012 campaign ? is one I hesitate to mention, for fear of offending those of her supporters who continue to hold out hope that Palin will mount a last-minute blitz campaign for the White House. While I don?t doubt that Mama Grizzly could do that, I have seen no indication that she will do that, and have been puzzled by her refusal to say definitively that she won?t do that.
Consider this: With all the assets at his disposal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent more than two months building the campaign machinery necessary to officially launch his presidential campaign in mid-August. So if Palin were to begin such an effort tomorrow ? and there is no tangible evidence she?s planning anything of the kind ? the earliest she could jump into the 2012 race would be mid-October, by which time many of those grassroots volunteers who might have supported her will have already committed to other campaigns.
By continuing to keep alive a tiny glimmering hope of her 2012 candidacy, long after the point when the whole ?testing the waters? time-frame has passed its sell-by date, Palin is setting up her True Believers for a bitter disillusionment whenever the time comes for her to officially admit that she?s not running [my bolding].
Although McCain had a few trifling details wrong in his post (which he concedes), it?s clear that a Palin presidential campaign is pure vaporware at this point and probably forever. Michele Bachmann has stepped into Palin?s role and so far looks like a steadier trouper, demented as her incandescent eyes and ideas may be. This doesn?t perturb Palin?s gullible base, whose open mouths await the fisherman?s hook. Organization, media relations, volunteer offices set up in the primary states, who needs ?em? Palin is running a new kind of ninja stealth campaign that leaves the past behind, one that is a big-screen projection from her mind onto the American political canvas. Or as one true-blue puts it in the comments section:
1) Palin is unlike any political personality ever to exist. She doesn't need the months of putting together a political organization others do. Between her own followers (Organized and otherwise) and Tea Party Groups (Organized and otherwise), she has hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of ready-made "boots on the ground" throughout the nation.
2) When has Palin ever told us anything which has proven untrue about her intentions? She said , when she resigned, that she was going to keep fighting and bring that fight to the lower 48. She has done so. She said that she woul no longer give interviews to the LSM. [LSM: Lame-Stream Media, for those who don?t speak Palin.] She has not. Etc. Now she tells us that she will enter the race if there is no sufficiently conservative Republican alternative. The field is only NOW, with Perry's entrance, fully shaped.
3) She is aware that she is a polarizing figure. My God, how could she not? She knows that it will be difficult for her to win the general election - even against Obama/Carter. What she doesn't know is whether Mitt or Rick can - or Michelle, for that matter - and, of them, whom will jump to the front of the primary pack. So, she's doing just what she said she would - watching, waiting, and making up her mind.
And then she?ll strike! Like a cobra on a mission from God!
What gets me is how fickle the Tea Party bloggers and conservative pundits are. You?d think that with Rick Perry now in the race, their dance card would be filled. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney--that?s as right-leaning a roster as the Republican Party has ever fielded, with only varying degrees of fervency and ideological rectitude between them. Perry?s campaign isn?t even a week old and already the righties are bored with their new toy, clamoring for yet another Jesus on horseback or a fresh pair of dreamy eyes or a substitute for Tony Soprano. This week alone we?ve seen renewed hard-ons for Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, a continuing saga that Daniel Larison has ably disposed of here and here (Christie). In a followup post, Larison writes:
Jon Huntsman hasn?t gained any traction for many reasons, but it didn?t help that he had to throw together a campaign at the last minute after he returned from China. It would be even more difficult for Christie or Ryan to pull together an organization on such short notice. The organizational challenges for any candidate are considerable. Urging Christie or Ryan to get into the race at this point is to invite them to humiliate themselves. Of course, if Republicans want someone with Romney?s reputation for executive competence without quite so many egregious deviations from the party line, and if they find that they can?t abide Rick Perry?s brashness and policy blunders, Huntsman would seem to be an obvious alternative, but he was ruled unacceptable even before he entered the race.
[snip]
Ross [Douhat] challenges critics of Christie and Ryan boosters to offer an alternative, but what I am saying is that there is no more time for an alternative to emerge. More to the point, both Christie and Ryan would disappoint their former boosters almost as soon as they entered, and in another few weeks we would be treated to a new round of columns calling for Jim DeMint or Sam Brownback (or whoever) to ride to the rescue. This brings us back to [Jonathan] Bernstein?s observation that Republicans are stuck with the field they have and the field they have is a reflection of the party. Whether or not it is the absolute best that the GOP can do, the field is now as good (or bad) as it is going to get.
And yet the burning yearning churning refuses to subside. As Eric Boehlert tweeted, encapsulating the Republican antsy pants:
POTUS is widely despised and cannot win in 2012. But yes, we're still auditioning candidates cuz we can't find 1 who beats him
*Pun courtesy of the late Jill Johnston
It is a sober day indeed in which Robert Stacy McCain, he of the Front Page fedora and vulpine grin (where?s Lee Tracy when we need him?), sounds like the Voice of Reason.
But in the baby alligator pool of postmodern conservatism, any glimmer of common sense and rational analysis seems like an intruder, and so it is with McCain?s objection to Sarah Palin stringing her fans along and stoking them into a frustrated frenzy like Madeleine Kahn working the stage in Blazing Saddles.
This reality ? that the clock has run out on any realistic prospect of a Palin 2012 campaign ? is one I hesitate to mention, for fear of offending those of her supporters who continue to hold out hope that Palin will mount a last-minute blitz campaign for the White House. While I don?t doubt that Mama Grizzly could do that, I have seen no indication that she will do that, and have been puzzled by her refusal to say definitively that she won?t do that.
Consider this: With all the assets at his disposal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent more than two months building the campaign machinery necessary to officially launch his presidential campaign in mid-August. So if Palin were to begin such an effort tomorrow ? and there is no tangible evidence she?s planning anything of the kind ? the earliest she could jump into the 2012 race would be mid-October, by which time many of those grassroots volunteers who might have supported her will have already committed to other campaigns.
By continuing to keep alive a tiny glimmering hope of her 2012 candidacy, long after the point when the whole ?testing the waters? time-frame has passed its sell-by date, Palin is setting up her True Believers for a bitter disillusionment whenever the time comes for her to officially admit that she?s not running [my bolding].
Although McCain had a few trifling details wrong in his post (which he concedes), it?s clear that a Palin presidential campaign is pure vaporware at this point and probably forever. Michele Bachmann has stepped into Palin?s role and so far looks like a steadier trouper, demented as her incandescent eyes and ideas may be. This doesn?t perturb Palin?s gullible base, whose open mouths await the fisherman?s hook. Organization, media relations, volunteer offices set up in the primary states, who needs ?em? Palin is running a new kind of ninja stealth campaign that leaves the past behind, one that is a big-screen projection from her mind onto the American political canvas. Or as one true-blue puts it in the comments section:
1) Palin is unlike any political personality ever to exist. She doesn't need the months of putting together a political organization others do. Between her own followers (Organized and otherwise) and Tea Party Groups (Organized and otherwise), she has hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of ready-made "boots on the ground" throughout the nation.
2) When has Palin ever told us anything which has proven untrue about her intentions? She said , when she resigned, that she was going to keep fighting and bring that fight to the lower 48. She has done so. She said that she woul no longer give interviews to the LSM. [LSM: Lame-Stream Media, for those who don?t speak Palin.] She has not. Etc. Now she tells us that she will enter the race if there is no sufficiently conservative Republican alternative. The field is only NOW, with Perry's entrance, fully shaped.
3) She is aware that she is a polarizing figure. My God, how could she not? She knows that it will be difficult for her to win the general election - even against Obama/Carter. What she doesn't know is whether Mitt or Rick can - or Michelle, for that matter - and, of them, whom will jump to the front of the primary pack. So, she's doing just what she said she would - watching, waiting, and making up her mind.
And then she?ll strike! Like a cobra on a mission from God!
What gets me is how fickle the Tea Party bloggers and conservative pundits are. You?d think that with Rick Perry now in the race, their dance card would be filled. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney--that?s as right-leaning a roster as the Republican Party has ever fielded, with only varying degrees of fervency and ideological rectitude between them. Perry?s campaign isn?t even a week old and already the righties are bored with their new toy, clamoring for yet another Jesus on horseback or a fresh pair of dreamy eyes or a substitute for Tony Soprano. This week alone we?ve seen renewed hard-ons for Paul Ryan and Chris Christie, a continuing saga that Daniel Larison has ably disposed of here and here (Christie). In a followup post, Larison writes:
Jon Huntsman hasn?t gained any traction for many reasons, but it didn?t help that he had to throw together a campaign at the last minute after he returned from China. It would be even more difficult for Christie or Ryan to pull together an organization on such short notice. The organizational challenges for any candidate are considerable. Urging Christie or Ryan to get into the race at this point is to invite them to humiliate themselves. Of course, if Republicans want someone with Romney?s reputation for executive competence without quite so many egregious deviations from the party line, and if they find that they can?t abide Rick Perry?s brashness and policy blunders, Huntsman would seem to be an obvious alternative, but he was ruled unacceptable even before he entered the race.
[snip]
Ross [Douhat] challenges critics of Christie and Ryan boosters to offer an alternative, but what I am saying is that there is no more time for an alternative to emerge. More to the point, both Christie and Ryan would disappoint their former boosters almost as soon as they entered, and in another few weeks we would be treated to a new round of columns calling for Jim DeMint or Sam Brownback (or whoever) to ride to the rescue. This brings us back to [Jonathan] Bernstein?s observation that Republicans are stuck with the field they have and the field they have is a reflection of the party. Whether or not it is the absolute best that the GOP can do, the field is now as good (or bad) as it is going to get.
And yet the burning yearning churning refuses to subside. As Eric Boehlert tweeted, encapsulating the Republican antsy pants:
POTUS is widely despised and cannot win in 2012. But yes, we're still auditioning candidates cuz we can't find 1 who beats him
*Pun courtesy of the late Jill Johnston
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/content/vanityfair/online/wolcott/2011/08/gullible-s-travels
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