{"id":2258,"date":"2009-07-04T10:05:14","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T18:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2258"},"modified":"2009-07-04T10:05:14","modified_gmt":"2009-07-04T18:05:14","slug":"sarah-palin-reculer-pour-mieux-sauter-%e2%80%93-or-just-another-mess-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/sarah-palin-reculer-pour-mieux-sauter-%e2%80%93-or-just-another-mess-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin: Reculer Pour Mieux Sauter \u2013 or Just Another Mess-Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the absence of some sort of scandal about to come crashing down on her head, I simply don\u2019t know what to make of Gov. Palin\u2019s resignation. I can buy the argument-just<\/em>-that if she is going to be campaigning intensively for national office, it\u2019s in many ways a more honest thing to\u00a0step down\u00a0than to neglect the\u00a0duties for which she is currently being paid by Alaska\u2019s taxpayers. That makes her value-for-money, not a quitter.<\/p>\n

However, if the reason she is resigning now is\u00a0indeed a run in 2012, it looks wildly premature. Her base is already in the bag; she now needs to convince the skeptics that she could be an effective president \u2013 and the best way to do that would have been to make a good job of running Alaska, to shed the flakiness, and, dare I say it, to read up on a few things. She\u2019s an intelligent person, and she\u2019s an individual\u00a0who has been treated to a degree of media vilification that goes well beyond\u00a0any reasonable\u00a0norm, but she has yet to demonstrate that she has what it takes for the White House. Doing the rounds of the rubber chicken echo chamber (there are no metaphors that I will not mix\u2026) to the hosannas of the faithful is not the way to go.<\/p>\n

As for whether yesterday\u2019s news represents just the latest stage in a wider \u2018crack-up\u2019\u00a0of the religious right, Heather, I doubt it: Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin. Sure, she appears to be\u00a0a somewhat religious woman, but, unlike, say, Mike Huckabee, I never detected a great deal of\u00a0evidence that she had\u00a0much interest in imposing those specific views (or their derivatives) on the population as a whole.<\/p>\n

Finally, we should not be afraid of candidates with the populist touch. In the end, it\u2019s what<\/em> a candidate says that should count, not how<\/em> he or she says it. If it takes a bit of aw shucks to defeat Obama-a clever populist in his own right-in 2012, so be it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the absence of some sort of scandal about to come crashing down on her head, I simply don\u2019t know what to make of Gov. Palin\u2019s resignation. I can buy the argument-just-that if she is going to be campaigning intensively … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2259,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2258\/revisions\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}