Two disconnected quotes...

[elfs]

"I think Sarah Palin is the most exciting new personality we've seen since John F. Kennedy." - Newt Gingrich, FOX Radio, Sep 1, 2008.

And

Q: Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance^[?]? Why or why not?

SARAH PALIN: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Bwa hah hah hah hah hah hah!

Comments

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

A republican candidate with no actual knowledge of history? How rare! *snorts*

[solarbird]

I swear it's like she's intentionally riffing on the "English was good enough for Jesus" canard. But.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

And then she rips off the rubber Mission Impossible mask to reveal she's really Michael Palin...

Then I wake up.

Damn.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Sarah Palin will soon announce she is going to withdraw from the race in order to spend more time with her family. I haven't made up my mind yet about whether or not that was the plan all along. Are the Republicans really capable of this level of incompetence? All the evidence points to "yes," but for some reason, deep down I have trouble believing it.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[solarbird]

I've had relayed via my friendslist members watching MSNBC that the GOP - as opposed to the McCain camp - have rushed a lot of people (incl. lawyers) up to Alaska to try to do the actual vetting Senator McCain's campaign clearly did not actually do. And there is starting to be some significant suspicion that she will not make it to November.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder who would replace her? Would Romney or Pawlenty take the job after being passed over (assuming they weren't in on it to begin with)?

I can't see this playing out well for McCain no matter how it ends. Replacing Palin with a more moderate (read "sane") candidate will alienate the fundamentalists who were drooling over the ticket for the first time (I wonder how many of them were secretly hoping that McCain wouldn't make it through his term?). And I think the damage is already done when it comes to the independents -- even if McCain replaces her with someone more to their liking, his judgment and credibility have been severely compromised.

[solarbird]

She was chosen mostly to bring the fundamentalists onboard. Since McCain clinched, he's been running to the authoritarian to try to bring the neoconservatives - who historically have not trusted him either - onboard, and has largely succeeded. He has utterly failed to make inroads to the deeply alienated (from him) fundamentalists who make up the other half of the party, and picking her was designed to do that.

This is why he couldn't pick Romney, ever, because many if not most of them will not vote for a Mormon, because they consider the religion a "cult." They couldn't pick anyone who wasn't stridently anti-abortion and rather strongly anti-gay. The Creationism, on the other hand, just has them spooging themselves with delight, and the ties to Joel's Army are just the cherry on top.

(She's not perfect, tho'; it's going to take a bit of work to get a lot of them to vote for a woman. You should've seen the American Family Association's sockpuppet news organisation One News Now trying to deal with that. It was funny, by which I mean horrible.)

That all said, the reasoning behind it makes a little more sense if all you care about is trying to unify your party and not about who you'd actually be putting into a position of power. To everyone else, the choice is, I hate to say, "deeply unserious."

[(Anonymous)]

They couldn't pick anyone who wasn't stridently anti-abortion and rather strongly anti-gay. The Creationism, on the other hand, just has them spooging themselves with delight, and the ties to Joel's Army are just the cherry on top.

Aye, but there's the rub -- she's just too perfect for the fundamentalists. If he replaces her, it's going to have to be with someone a little closer to center, and that's going to make the religious right feel alienated and used as they perceive McCain to have abandoned them out of political convenience.

And if he does keep her, then we're going to see the shenanigans of this weekend extended for another two months; she's looking like a worse and worse candidate with each passing day. That can't be what he wants, either. If this was some sort of grand plan, then I think it's backfired badly.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[solarbird]

I don't know. I really don't. I do know now that he could drop in Mike Huckabee and the fundamentalists would continue to be thrilled, and everyone else would go "oh, that's much better," when really, he's not. But he'd be perceived as such.

I don't have any idea what he's planning to do, mind you; I'm just saying.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but that begs the question of why he didn't go with Huckabee to begin with and avoid all this headache. I halfway suspect Huckabee was already asked but chose to decline.

Anyway, I think McCain will have some difficulty finding a viable alternative now. It may be my own biases showing, but my impression is that Palin has hurt his campaign among all but the fundamentalists, and nobody wants to be veep on a losing ticket.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I do wonder if anyone with serious hopes of running of President in the future would want to be associated with McCain.

It does look as though a Democratic President, lumbered with the post-Bush mess, could be an easy target in 2012. How many Republicans are looking back at Carter's term, and laying plans to rescue the country?

[danceswithlife]

Yes. I posted in another blog that I think she will withdraw after the debate. They hope she will make Biden lose it during the debate and lose points for "beating up" the pretty little woman. This nomination is a total joke.

[norincraft.livejournal.com]

I know Anon above put the idea out first, but I have to say that I really don't see her withdrawing. All that has to happen it to say how good Sen Biden is and how experienced and so on. Then Poor Gov Palin goes against Sen Palin and does a mediocre job staying on message using the canned phrases she memorizes a few days to weeks prior to the debates. Boom, she's a plausible choice.

Just like it was done with the current chimp in charge when he debated VP Gore.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Are the Republicans really capable of this level of incompetence?

You know, I really do think so. If Dubya didn't already demonstrate that in spades, something else that's become blazingly clear since the inception of FOX "news", has been that even if Satan himself were somehow voted into GOP presidential candidacy, half of the American public would still vote Republican, for no other reason than because they support *their* Grand Ol' Party, right or wrong. This has apparently created within the party an attitude that they can do *anything*, and they would still keep their voters. And out of that, comes the utter incompetence we're seeing on the stage at this moment.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I believe they are that incompetent. Or at least that callous. She's a token to appeal to the evangelicals - and those even more intense, like the Joel's Army extremists. And, sadly, I think it might work - she hits the hot buttons for them.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

We have a Quayle!


...except, ya know, without the qualifications...

[urox.livejournal.com]

Quayle "did not recall." Palin's hubris keeps causing her to continue to make multiple statements which are outright lies and contradictions.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

No.

NO.

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.

Um, can you source this quote? Please? Because if this is bona-fide... I'm going to make it my personal mission in life to BURY this woman.

[(Anonymous)]

It's from the Gubernatorial Candidate Questionnaire she completed in 2006.

http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/2006/07/2006-gubernatorial-candidate.html

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[elfs.livejournal.com]

2006 Eagle Forum questions to Alaska Gubenatorial candidates (http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/2006/07/2006-gubernatorial-candidate.html).

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

that url appears to be 404-compliant.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

The Wayback Machine is Love (http://web.archive.org/web/20070430110729/http://eagleforumalaska.blogspot.com/2006/07/2006-gubernatorial-candidate.html).

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

d'oh, I should have thought of that myself.

And um. Wow.