George Will Doesn't Understand Sarah Palin

Conservative columnist George Will has a column out today called 'Sarah Palin and the mutual loathing society' in which he essentially compares Governor Palin to 1964 republican nominee Barry Goldwater and suggests that if she gets the GOP nomination, she'll meet with similar results:

The Republican presidential nominee, an Arizona senator, was a maverick, which was part of his charm. He spoke and acted impulsively, which was part of his problem. Voters thought his entertaining dimensions might be incompatible with presidential responsibilities. For example, he selected a running mate most Americans had never heard of and who had negligible experience pertinent to the presidency. This was 1964.

Yet Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.

Conservatives, who rightly respect markets as generally reliable gauges of consumer preferences, should notice that the political market is speaking clearly: The more attention Palin receives, the fewer Americans consider her presidential timber. The latest Post-ABC News poll shows that 71 percent of Americans -- including 52 percent of Republicans -- think she is not qualified to be president.

This is not her fault. She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced to take a walk on the highest wire in America's political circus, she showed grit.

She also showed that grit is no substitute for seasoning. She has been subjected to such irrational vituperation -- loathing largely born of snobbery -- that she can be forgiven for seeking the balm of adulation from friendly audiences.

Ahhh, Mr. Will. You just don't get it, do you?

Think about this..in Sarah Palin, we have someone who a year ago was a ridiculed figure, the failed vice-presidential candidate of one of the most inept and poorly run presidential campaigns in memory. Normally, one would have expected her to fade away like most losing ex-running mates into respectable anonymity. With your average losing VP candidate, most people scarcely remember their names a year later.

Yet in Sarah Palin, we have someone who has shown the ninja political skills to transcend this and become arguably the most watched and famous political figure in the entire country. And she did it entirely her own way, outside of the GOP establishment.

That should give an astute observer a clue that we're not simply talking about some semi-literate chillbilly with a pretty face and a few nifty slogans.

Although when she does adopt a slogan, notice how well she uses the language - death panels for instance, the all-too-accurate phrase that perfectly defined the contempt for human life and Orwellian nature of of ObamaCare and stuck to the debate like superglue.

And as for the bit about her seeking friendly audiences...Will unfortunately remains trapped in the mindset of the Old Media he is so much a part of. After what she observed first hand on the campaign trail ( and even afterwards) Governor Palin was simply astute enough to realize that most of Will's Left-bent, Obama worshiping colleagues were never going to give her or any other conservative candidate anything like a fair hearing - so she's bypassed them entirely and is concentrating on solidifying her base and winning over the swing votes by going to them directly.

That's what her op-eds, FaceBook page,the appearance on Oprah and her book "Going Rogue" are all about. If I were her, I'd do it exactly the same way and let the polls take care of themselves. Two years is an eternity in politics.

Also, respectfully, the Goldwater analogy stinks.

Barry Goldwater, unlike Sarah Palin was relatively unknown when he got the nomination. He was known for one book that was only read in select circles, "Conscience of a Conservative" and one speech, the one about extremism in defense of liberty being no vice. As an unknown, he was also ripe for smears and attack campaigning, like the Democrats' famous daisies TV ad accusing him of being a nut case liable to bring on a nuclear war.

He was also a Republican running in the wake of the assassination of an extraordinarily popular president, JFK, who'd been murdered only a year earlier. And to add to the mix, Goldwater was running against Kennedy's Vice President who had already assumed the mantle of the presidency, hadn't yet implemented any of the questionable Great Society policies that came later and was assuring the voters that a Lyndon Johnson administration would be carrying on Kennedy's legacy.

None of this is true about a prospective Palin candidacy in 2012 if she runs.

Assuming Obama is the Democrat's candidate, the American people will have had plenty of opportunity to sample the fetid odor of his policies and their results, and his popularity is not going to be anything like what it was in 2008. He no longer has the advantage he had of being a blank slate for people to write their own fantasies on.

Palin on the other hand is not only well known, a mega-bestselling author and hugely popular, but she's a known quantity who has already had the equivalent of a nuclear war launched against her and her family and come up smiling. There's not much more the Donkeys can really say about her after throwing all that into the mix.

As for 'seasoning', she had much more hands on executive experience than Obama had when they both ran last year and she has something far more important that he lacks..principles, common sense and a gut level gift for connecting with average Americans because she's essentially one of them.

That's what people are really responding to, George, just because it's so rare. And don't be surprised if it takes her all the way to the White House, if that's where Sarah Palin decides she wants to go.

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