You can bet the “how to stop Palin” columns will keep proliferating. There’s one in the Daily Beast today, warning the GOP establishment “to treat her with respect, and to avoid any hint at all of a patronizing attitude.” Not bad for platitudinous advice, albeit a little late. Tunku Varadarajan asserts that “the party cannot ‘manage’ Sarah Palin unless she agrees to manage herself.” Actually, if she were managing herself, she might advise herself not to be managed by the people who backed Charlie Crist. He then opines:
Palin knows her own strengths. In all likelihood, she knows her own weaknesses even better. The Republican Party must flatter her for her strengths, all the better to use them well in the next year. Equally, it must be diplomatic about her weaknesses, alluding to them in private and not blaring them out to the nation in the incendiary manner of a Karl Rove. Palin will come to concede her electoral limitations—sooner than most people expect. And when she does, she will leave the presidential field open to a candidate better able than she to tackle Obama in 2012. That would be her finest contribution to the Republican Party. In not running herself, she will make the party electable.
How does he know all this? He certainly hasn’t talked to her and cites no source (he couldn’t even manage a blind quote or two) for his “upon clear reflection, she’ll not run” view. The problem with most of these “managing Palin” stories is that they are based on nothing more than the wishful thinking of her skeptics and potential adversaries. They tell us a lot about them, but nothing about Palin.
Far more helpful and certainly more reliable than peering into the Palin crystal ball is to analyze what she has done and said. The 2010 midterms show the promise and the peril of Palin. She spotted some unique talent (e.g., Nikki Haley), knew enough to stay away from Charlie Crist, and encouraged the Tea Party to remain within the two-party system. She also has been a consistent voice for a robust foreign policy, providing an important counterweight to neo-isolationist strains on the right. But there was also plenty to raise concerns. Mike Gerson explains:
Palin’s endorsement of Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Republican Senate primary revealed a preference for a shallow ideological purity above achievement, qualification or electoral success. And on Monday, Palin issued a robocall for Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado, one of the most divisive figures in American politics.
Gerson is dismayed by what he calls an ”odd mix of Tea Party Jacobinism and feminist grievance.” If Palin is inclined to run, she should take these concerns and the lessons of 2010 to heart.
And the pundits would do well to stop playing Carnac the Magnificent. There’s plenty of news to opine on without making up fanciful scenarios.
Linda, this was a chilling reminder of the disaster awaiting us next year,but I want to point out something. Recently,on this forum, the mere mention of Ayers produced 500 replys,seething with good ole sanctimonius venom. I think some of that energy is long gone. We’ll see. Here’s a talking point,Obama is as lethal to the body politic as were Ayer’s explosives. Maybe that will play in saint louis.
Was this an attempt to write the word “Ayers” as many times as possible in a post? If so, it succeeded.
As polemic, not so much.
The Chavez post from 3:29 is obviously not intended as a polemic.
I wonder what Johnetta Cole’s son Che Cole is doing? What a nice name. I know that Johnetta is working on the Obama campaign, and that Che has a lot in common with Barack.
As a teacher, though one who had the good fortune not to come through a grad school education program, I can testify to how deeply entrenched “social justice” hobby horses and thinking are in school training programs and curriculum.
McCain’s team really missed an opportunity to nail Obama on his relationship to Ayers by not highlighting Ayer’s subversion of American values and institutions through his “education reform” work.
Linda is also, sad to say, probably right that Ayers will play, behind the scenes, a big role in federally directed education programs.
If Obama wins, sensible minded moderates as well as conservatives, will have to continue the work of exposing all the threads in Obama’s tried-before-and- failed progressive plans for this country. At the very least, we need to make his presidency, if Americans are ignorant enough to elect him, a one term one.
“Ayers ideas will have a place at Obama’s table.”
Ayers’ ideas will have a place at Obama’s table because Obama’s ideas are the same as Ayers’.
In addition to Ayers, Obama has mentioned Lugar as one of his advisers. Lugar is probably the most anti-Israel of all senators.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/08/will_ayers_and_obama_radicaliz.html
Why should we be concerned? One of Barack Obama’s goals as President will be to “overhaul” our graduate schools of education, according to today’s New York Sun. This is precisely the “playpen” that Ayers has used to continue his own revolution.
Ayers looks at graduate schools of education as incubators for his own radical ideology and as a very effective means to reach the minds of our most vulnerable population, our youth.
Barack Obama seeks to “overhaul” our graduate schools of education. The current budget for the U.S. Department of Education is sixty-eight billion dollars and change.
There are 25,000 university teachers in education schools. They just elected Ayers their leader, as president of the American Educational Reserach Association. Consider this fact: 48% of all blacks who get PhDs get them in education, and evidently enough of them are in sync with Ayers’ views to elect him their professional leader.
That can buy a lot of change — and Barack Obama is all for Change.
I’m dubious about your premise: “As readers of this blog surely know” — has it been proven that anyone actually reads Contentions?