Now that the election is over, what positive thing is gained by smearing Sarah Palin?

Right now, the Republican party is split between those who really loved Palin’s ability to fire up the crowds and those who feel that she was a huge mistake and want her to disappear from the national scene forever.

My bet is that most of the Palin bashing is now an effort to encourage her to do exactly as you suggest and go back up to Alaska and stay there.

Kicking her while she’s down should be unnecessary now. Barack didn’t mention her name. Why don’t we follow that lead? Let the phenomenon die away. It was a mistake.
Goodbye.

grins and giggles

1. It’s really only a smear if it isn’t true. She didn’t realize Africa wasn’t one nation. Not a smear, the truth.

2. She was almost a heart beat away from the presidency. The heartbeat of someone who had already had life threatening cancer and only had something like a 66% chance of living through his first term. We need to know about her.

3. Most importantly: we need to make sure she is never able to make a name for herself nationally and that means exposing her for what she is. Because I view her as a danger to the nation, I really do.

A good ol’ fashioned schadenfreude laugh.

No, you know what? Even beyond that—anything that discredits her in the public eye is okay with me because she was the one with the frenzied rallies. She was the one who encouraged people to hate our president elect, call him a terrorist, and make threats against him. She should have stopped that behavior and she did not. When McCain heard it, he stopped it. When she heard it? She did nothing. And that is incredibly damning to me.

We need to make sure the monster doesn’t come back to kill again.

she’s hiding under my bed now. Bitch better stay there too.

I am happy to see the change in this site:
http://www.palinaspresident.us/

She also thought that South Africa was simply the southern part of the country Africa. Really scary. The minute she accepted Mccain’s offer (which was certainly not a well-thought-out one), she opened herself up to scorn and ridicule by her limitations and compensatory behavior.

I don’t think anyone needs to do anything to make her look silly. She does a perfectly adequate job of that herself! She’ll get tired of the bright lights and big cities soon, especially now that the spotlight won’t be shining on her.

@gailcalled: I totally agree that McCain’s offer was not well-thought-out. In addition, his Joe the Plumber riff was also not thought through, nor was Joe vetted before he went with him.

This made me very afraid of him running foreign policy. I felt he was likely to do some stupid thing in a knee-jerk fashion just because he likes to go with his hunches.

@daloon; and yet, he showed the earlier, smarter, kinder, more moderate side of himself during his concession speech. SP wasn’t even allowed to blow kisses.

So she’s laughed back to Wasilla when the crazy ass religious right tries to shove her down our throats in 2012.

I found out on Charlie Rose that not only was she responsible for the 130,000 worth of cloths purchased she took a campaign members card and started charging a lot more.

I say let her pay.

I think people need to know that the crazy, divisive, hate rallies are not tolerated by “real America”—all of America. You will get called on it.

For some reason, Anchorage has 3,000 more registered voters than they have citizens over the age of 18, which is interesting. The other thing that’s interesting is that in Alaska, 136,585 voters voted for McCain, 80,585 for Obama and 6,168 voted “other”.

Registered Republican voters in Alaska number 126,583,Democrats are at 76,729, fewer than those registered as non-partisan (77,227) or undeclared (185,587). Of the 495,731 registered voters, only 224,057 cast votes.

That’s not a whole lot of people. No wonder the state can afford to give everyone money every year.

I say expose her, before she flips open that towel and exposes herself!

No, let her expose herself.
Even Tina Fey said she was a whole lot of woman.

The smears seem to be coming from the Republican campaign staff who have been working with her for the last couple of months so she is either really a clueless diva or the inner circle of the party wants to make sure she gets out of town and can’t come back in 4 years.

I think moderate Republicans have had it by far right domination and we may see a real fight for leadership over the next couple of years. As a Democrat the only thing I get out of this is entertainment

I’m bored by the republican party. War bores me.

Palin performed pretty well on the second half of her SNL thing. She’s got a mind of her own and I don’t think she’s a complete idiot as regards her own success. The benefit of a “prominent,” politician possible being nail-able – especially a republican – can’t be denied. She can represent Alaska if she wants in congress, eventually…...when she becomes a moderate republican friendly to the media. The republican parties last breath. LOL

I voted a 98% Dem ticket in OH. I think i voted for one republican (it was local coulter look-alike judge who grew up in indonesia).

That said, Palin had the PRESUMPTION to hold that office. and for that I will shit kick her with words for another decade.

Also the women paying for their own rape kits thing doesn’t fly by me.

This article is total bullshit, but look how sexy the republican endorsed site is!

http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/09/11/the_palin_rape_kit_myth

I’m not so sure that much of a lesson was learned here; 48% of the electorate still voted for her.

The question was, “what positive thing is gained by smearing Palin”. So right that we
have every right to criticize and take careful note of her sins. Smearing is making stuff up and looking as bad as the smeared.

Btw, George Bush also said, in 2000 I think, that Africa was a very troubled country, or a very poor country, something idiotic like that.

Who ARE these people?

The positivity comes in the form that there are people who are out there who really thought that Sarah Palin was capable of running the free world. This is unthinkable. Unthinkable. Un-think-a-b-l-e.

She cannot connect the dots, and doesn’t care that she cannot connect the dots. She does exactly what she pleases. That may be fine if you own a business, and your decisions only sink yourself, your family and your employees (who have free will regarding employment with you) but when you are in charge of not only a whole country, but essentially control the destiny of the whole world because of American exceptionalism, you better 1) not need a handler to get through an interview, 2) be able to answer tough—and not-so-tough* questions on your feet 3) you better be cognizant that what you personally “know to be true” living in a microcosm, may actually be false in a broader perspective.

Really, the true reason to stay on her is that conservative Republican leadership are still enthralled by her, probably because they thinks she makes a good puppet, and because she is an unintelligent, attractive woman, people who also don’t connect the dots for themselves can be manupulated. The problem is, even from that perspective, she’s not a good choice, because she doesn’t seem to understand that she doesn’t understand how the world really works. Otherwise, she never would have said that “the only ‘real’ Americans” live in small towns.

If Sarah Palin is the best that the Republican party feels that they can offer the country in terms of female political leadership, then heaven help the Republicans, and heaven help the Republican women who are okay with their party of choice thinking this.

I may not have an accurate definition of “smear”
I think during the election it was important to know the facts. If and when she leaves Alaska, it will be important again. Right now, I wonder if it’s time to live out an wise admonition, ” if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Oh it will die down, and she will fade back into being relevant only to Alaska, until she surfaces again. And the “smears” are not really directed at her, but at Republican party leadership. They need to not think seriously about trotting her out as a presidential candidate in 2012. Surely the Republicans can offer up a better choice for national leadership.

As they say in this neck of the woods, “this dog can’t hunt.”

She just comes across to me as a show pony.

I actually see this as the way for the Republican party to distance themselves from her. She was an unfortunate mistake and an embarrasment that they now have to “handle”. Her ego may dictate that she has any business running in 2012, but I just don’t see her having the backing of her party.(they aren’t that blind are they?). Even if, (with God’s help) she made it to the ticket, I don’t think she has a snowballs chance in Alaska of winning the popular vote. There aren’t that many lunatics in the country.

In was just asking my husband this very question this morning. He started bagging on her and I told him that McCain had given a very eloquent concession speech and it’s time to move forward. We need to take the high road and be as gracious n victory as McCain was in defeat.

She went to Chicago thinking she was going to give a speech before McCain according to the paper I just read. There was a lot of fighting between the camps.

Hi Judi! Been wondering where you been.
I agree about the McCain concession speech and was so impressed in the immediate emotional aftermath. My admiration has been tempered somewhat in the last few days. I mean realistically, do we expect otherwise? Did we think he was going to get up there and pull a tricky Dick? I guess I realized three things.
1. Someone a lot smarter (and even tempered) than McCain had written the speech.
2. He isn’t about to commit political suicide by exposing his true feelings and reactions while the whole world watches.
3. He simply could not divide the country any further by saying anything that could be construed as negative towards Obama now that he had won.

Newsweek has a HUGE seven part article on the election and both campaigns up. It’s full of juicy tidbits, like yes, she wanted to give a speech. But importantly, the concession was written by Person 1 while Person 2 was responsible for a lot of the direction of the campaign.

1 = Salter.
2 = Schmidt.

Anyway, go read it! It’s a super article.

@ EmpressPixie – Thanks for that link!!

As soon as anybody steps into the spotlight they have to be willing to accept that they are going to be subjected to scrutiny. There will be lies, truth’s, and malicious attempts to ruin your reputation for a lifetime. The press will do anything they can to expose anything and everything about your life just to get an increase in ratings.

With that said there is nothing positive to come of smearing anybody else. IMO the accusations which are being made against Palin are malicious and serve no other purpose than to ruin her reputation.

Slightly off topic but Faux News reported that Joe the Plumber has been on welfare-TWICE (well it does fall under the topic of what happens when you invite public scrutiny, doesn’t it?)

I was looking at his website.

Apparently Joe has never heard of the Patriot Act… he’s taken umbrage to a background check.

(umbrage—swoon)

Unnamed members of Mcc’s campaign staff have been criticizing Palin recently. Here is her comeback; ”“That’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.”

Would you like a VP who speaks like that? (Parse the second half of that very confused statement. I can’t dignify it with the rubric of “sentence.”)

@gail: But whether you wanted her or didn’t want her to be vice president, has nothing to do with smearing her on the national news. I don’t think she was ready for VP but attacking her in order to destroy her reputation just doesn’t seem right to me…..I don’t have a problem with criticism but these attacks are malicious in intent.

What Sarah Palin is experiencing is the Peter Principle, which in a nutshell, is that in a hierarchy (in this case politics) individuals rise to the level at which they become incompetent. She is not viewed as competent of national leadership by the analytical portion of the Republican party. She needs to return to the level at which she does function competently, and perfect her skills, if she is interested in doing so.

In the meantime, it will die down, but her unabashed obtuseness makes her a moving target, and until Britney Spears bubbles up to distract us, she’s going to have to live with the consequences of her actions. There is very little privacy in public life, for any type of public figure. Whatever right to privacy you have comes with the responsibility to make good choices while you have attention focused in on you. Troopergate is between Sarah and Alaska. The shopping spree was on national time. If she is asking for your vote, she better be able to act and speak in a manner that shows she deserves it. If she owns up to her incompetence people, will leave her alone, and move onto the next topic.

I liked her response when someone asked her if she would consider running for Senate if Stevens was made to step down:

“Not planning on that. Nope.”

critter: This isn’t about the people who voted for the other candidate (except as amused onlookers). What it has to do with the PTB in the Republican party who DO NOT want her on the national scene. The campaign insiders who are smearing her are professionals who will be looking to serve on future campaigns and political staff positions between elections. They would not put their careers in jeopardy just because they didn’t like her. Some important people want her to go away. I think it is because the party is going more centrist to win back the voters they lost this time.

Hopefully this means they’re done with trying to grab the fringe far right because it didn’t work for them. I won’t be holding my breath though.

But really didn’t this seem a bit like McCain’s camp was trying to play both sides. He would have happily taken any votes she brought his way from her rallies, but he’s seen as not the fringe element because he’s seen as respectful and not the one conducting rallies of racist crazies. So he’s connected with her when it does him some good and not connected with her when she’s seen whipping people into a frenzy in a way that’s harmful to his campaign. It’s just like he is with Bush when it’s doing him some good and then distancing himself when he figures out that’s not helping.

I really hope the voters remember that he picked her. That was his choice for VP. I hope this means his career is basically over, too.

I don’t really think that was his choice for VP.
I heard that even a week before she was selected, he was still fighting his advisors because he wanted to choose Lieberman as his running mate.

They convinced him it would be political suicide to bring in a Democrat/Independent.
I wonder how it may have turned out differently if he had gone with his gut.

They convinced him, but he chose.

Oh, I hear you.

OMG Lieberman as VP. Actually I think he is going to announce as Republican before long. Duh…might as well because he is one in everything but the name already. He better enjoy the next 4 years cause with his liberal constituency he won’t be back.

The GOP better not put too many eggs in his basket because he will only piss off the far right and NOBODY is going to reach across the aisle to him. Bye Joe, don’t let the door hit you in the butt on your way out.

Sarah Palin may be Alaska’s problem at the moment, but we’re not done with her yet.

This blog, Mudflats, was created by an Alaska months before Palin’s nomination, in response to the Alaska state legislature’s attempt to do away with Mother’s Day.