Christiane Amanpour led a round-table discussion about the 2012 Republican candidate for President. The discussion on "This Week," yesterday, began with talk of Sarah Palin:
George Will said that there is no "undecided" vote for Palin to pursue. People have already made up their minds about her. Will also said that people would answer a "Should Palin's finger be on the nuclear trigger?" question negatively.
A senile, old-man quip may occur to you after learning that John McCain said that Palin can beat Obama in 2012.
A good introduction to film editing can be found on the Blu-Ray of Bullitt. After seeing that, you may understand how all films -- successful ones, anyway -- are manipulative. So is Andrew Sullivan testing Godwin's Law? He's implicitly compared Palin's The Undefeated with Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of The Will. Sullivan claims to be "terrified" for America, and, again, makes a Triumph of The Will comparison at the end of this video:
That feature-length video on the Bullitt Blu-ray has some footage of Riefenstahl's film, along with some of the same film's footage after being edited by an englishman to make a point quite different than Riefenstahl's.
Are you miffed at the notion of "Sarah Palin Is A Social Conservative?" But before anyone tries to make hay out of this, it might be wise to recall that some thought that when Bristol Palin's pregnancy was announced that it would be a disaster for McCain/Palin. It wasn't; convention goers understood and sympathized with Palin's "plight." Levi Johnston's life with the Palin family was told in a Vanity Fair story, "Me and Mrs. Palin." If you read carefully, you may realize that Levi's story was fact-checked.
Update: The L.A. Times has an interesting story about Palin's ride, with video. "I love the smell of emissions" -- in the morning? -- is reminiscent of "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" (from Apocalypse Now). Does that scare you? If so, why? Frankly, I think that raw fear of Palin isn't a rational response to her.
Update: George Will responds to Palin with what may be, instead of raw, emotional fear, a rationalization of Palin's unfitness for the presidency. He doesn't need to say he's "terrified."
The L.A. Times' Matea Gold and James Oliphant write:
While her just-announced national bus tour would seem to place Sarah Palin a step closer to a 2012 presidential run, her bosses at Fox News are not yet ready to cut ties with her.
“We are not changing Sarah Palin’s status,” Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming for Fox News, said in a statement Thursday.
Fox News, where Palin earns $1 million a year as a commentator, does not appear convinced that she is making plans to run. The network, which has suspended other political pundits once they started pursuing presidential bids, is keeping her on the air — for now. ...
It's possible that Palin has told her employer that she isn't running.
... A Palin confidant said he is 95% certain she won't run. Ms. Palin's image among the broader public has dimmed in recent months, polls show, particularly after she used the term "blood libel" to rebut accusations from critics that attempted to link her assertive rhetoric to the Arizona shooting rampage that killed six people and seriously injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.).
The April Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 25% view her favorably while 53% view her unfavorably. Only 9% of those polled felt very positively toward her, a low in Journal polling, while 41% viewed her very negatively, a new high.
The confidant said Ms. Palin is well aware of those numbers. She doesn't want the negative scrutiny that would come from a run, and she doesn't want to jeopardize the lucrative speaking, broadcasting and book-writing career that has followed her unsuccessful run for the vice presidency, this person said. ...
The Journal's article also mentions Palin's upcoming tour of the "historical sites that were key to the formation, survival and growth of the United States of America. The tour will originate in Washington, D.C., and will proceed north up the East Coast."
ABC News may have some more information about Palin's tour. It's said to be a bus tour. Palin may be more interested in publicity than in American history, but it could be entertaining. Who but Sarah Palin could go to Philadelphia and say something like, "I just love that this old liberty bell cracked as Ben Franklin rang it to warn folks in Massachussets the British were coming."
At any point in 2009 or 2010, news that Sarah Palin was taking "concrete steps" toward launching a presidential campaign would have sent the political world into an absolute frenzy, with Democrats rejoicing, Republican leaders panicking, and cable news channels shifting into "all Sarah, all the time" overdrive.
But things are a little different now, and while a report in Thursday's New York Times that Palin is sending fresh and unmistakable signals that she may join the GOP's 2012 field is certainly generating conversation, this hardly feels like the earth-shattering, campaign-altering development we once assumed it would be.
What's changed? ...
Kornacki argues that Palin has alienated many in the Republican party, and he links to a lot of supporting material.
Republicans may have realized they had a problem when Palin (correctly) blamed the Bushes (and implicitly Ronald Reagan) for wrecking the economy.
... Palin faces a lot of challenges in a potential candidacy, says CBS News Political Correspondent Jan Crawford. On "The Early Show," Crawford said the fact Palin quit as governor is problematic even for some of her staunchest supporters.
"What does that say, kind of, about her fire in the belly to lead going forward -- whether she was able to win the presidency?" Crawford remarked. "You know, this really reminds me, though, when we're all looking at these clues, and of course people since 2008, November '08 after the election, have been wondering, 'Is Sarah Palin been going to run for president?'
"When you start seeing all these clues, it's kind of like those ink blot tests, where one person can look at all these dots and see a face and another person can look at them and see, you know, a vase. We have all these clues today that, yes, she's going to run. So it makes some people think she is. ...[emphasis added]
A rorschach test is a projective test. A lot of what people think about Palin is nothing more than a projection of their own hopes, expectations, fears and anxieties. It's how some come to think, for example, that she's a fiscal conservative when she's not.
I don't think she'll run, because I expect her to do what is in her own interest.
There are several stories about Sarah Palin's new movie. The first from Real Clear Politics,"Palin's Secret Weapon: New Film to Premiere in June," revealed that the film-maker is paying, and that Palin doesn't have any editorial control, and, interestingly, that the film-maker obtained the audio rights to Going Rogue (Palin reading the book). So far, the only winner is Palin, who must have received something for the audio rights, right? But will the film turn Palin's poor reputation around?
I don't think any of this means that she is going to run, and, today, The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart doesn't think so either. In "Palin movie: ‘The Undefeated’ or ‘Hangover 3’?" Capehart writes:
Y’all are well acquainted with my view that Sarah Palin will not run for president, despite doing little things here and there to make the political press corps think otherwise. The latest example is the news broken by Real Clear Politics that a feature-length flick on Palin’s life and career will premiere next month in Iowa. “The Undefeated” is the stirring title. “Hangover 3”might be more apt. ...
As usual, Capehart has stuffed his column with a lot of links in support of his view, and concludes with a chart showing that Palin's unfavorable/favorable is in a long-term trend that doesn't bode well for Palin. People have made up their minds about her, politically. When would she quit as President?
The movie is titled, "The Undefeated." Undefeated champion of whining?
... The reality is that Palin is as much celebrity as she is politician — call her a “celebritician” — and only by evaluating everything she does in that light is there a possibility of properly understanding the motivations and goals of her actions.
Viewed that way, the Palin movie is not a radical departure but rather entirely consistent with her transformation from small-state politician to worldwide celebrity.
Dating all the way back to her decision to resign from the governorship in 2009 with 18 months left on her first term, Palin’s life choices seem to be dictated far more by a desire to build a personal brand in the culture at large than to carve out space for herself in the political world. ...
Update: The New York Times' "Signs Grow That Palin May Run" mentions the movie and offers some starting points for speculation about what may be motivating Palin.
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