Sarah Palin's foolishness ruined US politics

[xchrom]

http://www.nationofchange.org/sarah-palin-s-foolishness-ruined-us-politics-1332076655

At some point while watch­ing HBO’s ab­solutely smash­ing (and ter­ri­fy­ing) movie “Game Change,” it oc­curred to me that Sarah Palin has ru­ined Amer­ica. The movie has been scal­loped out of the book by the same name and fo­cuses on Palin, rather than on the en­tire 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. The de­ci­sion to do so was ab­solutely cor­rect. With her se­lec­tion as John Mc­Cain’s run­ning mate, Amer­i­can pol­i­tics lost its way — and maybe its mind as well.

The movie por­trays Palin as an ig­no­ra­mus. She did not know that Queen Eliz­a­beth II does not run the British gov­ern­ment, and she did not know that North and South Korea are dif­fer­ent coun­tries. She seemed not to have heard of the Fed­eral Re­serve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden” and she thought Amer­ica went to war in Iraq be­cause Sad­dam Hus­sein, not al-Qaeda, had at­tacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Not only did she know lit­tle, but she was de­ter­mi­nately in­cu­ri­ous and supremely smug in her ignorance.​At the same time, she was a liar. In the movie, she was called ex­actly that by Mc­Cain’s cam­paign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to re­al­ize — a bit late in the game — that one of Palin’s great tal­ents was to deny the truth. When con­fronted, she sim­ply shuts down — petu­lant, child-like — and then sulks off.

Palin ob­jects to this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion — as does Mc­Cain — but the movie has been en­dorsed by too many of Palin’s top cam­paign aides to put its ve­rac­ity in doubt. Some of them had come to re­vile the Alaska gov­er­nor — enough to leak some awful facts but not quite enough to go pub­lic. Had the elec­tion been re­ally close, I won­der if they would have run out into the street yelling that Palin — a heart­beat away from the pos­si­ble pres­i­dency — was a mon­ster. Every­body loves their coun­try. Some peo­ple love their ca­reers even more.

[LeftishBrit]

1. I think Palin is a symptom rather than a cause

and indeed her very obvious foolishness may have helped Obama defeat McCain.

If anyone ruined US politics, it may have been Reagan, or rather his handlers. And all the nuts on the Religious Right.

I have no doubt that Thatcher was the ruin of British politics.

[liberalmike27]

4. I agree

We can't blame Palin for the repeal of the fairness doctrine, the worsening of education, the globalization of jobs away for the profit of the few. We can't blame her for this stupid, long experiment with Milton Friedman's ideas, and Chicago Boys philosophies that have ruined the world for the majority of us, can we.

She is just one of many who has been victimized.

[Turbineguy]

7. +1

[progressoid]

17. She was the pus from a long festering wound.

[Skidmore]

2. I finally saw that film this week, and what impressed me was how

emotionally unstable she is. And the other thing that struck me is how much these paid political consultants contribute to the destruction of our election process. The utter callousness of creating a reality show rather than informative political dialogue is evven more evil.

[Mz Pip]

3. I saw the flim

I thought it was prety good but for me it failed to fully capture Palin's mean girl snarkiness.

She's also incredibly arrogant. Even now she seems to be of the opinion that she can waltz in to a brokered convention and the GOP will hand her the nomination. She seems to see herself as some modern day Joan of Arc, riding in to save the country from the imagined terror that is Barack Obama.

[PatSeg]

8. I see her as a 14-teen-year-old emotionally

I have known so many women like her - self-absorbed, petty, mean-spirited, lacking any depth or attention span. She is quite common, it is just uncommon for someone like her to rise to the level of a Vice President candidate.

[intaglio]

19. It ain't just women n/t

[The Wielding Truth]

12. She is the face of a dilusional movement that was manufactured by

the same people who constructed the destructive selfish movements in history which took the simple concerns of a privileged
group and ramped those groups into fearful reactionary mobs. As her ego is fed she is given power that she is not prepared nor capable of handling.

When the wealthy think they can play God and they place these fools in places of power and they think that as long as the rich get their dreams full filled everything else will take care of itself. The 99% suffer. That is why we have to be careful to not elect local fools who can be pulled up to higher positions and used as personal favor links for the 1%.

[lunatica]

5. I blame Steve Schmidt and the other handlers

Presidents come and go and so do Congresspeople, but these campaign handlers are lifers. They unleashed Palin and her bizarre spawn, the Teabaggers, on this country because they didn't do the most fundamental first thing every staffer knows. First you vet the candidates. Period. You do not pass go unless you've done this.

They wanted to win at any cost. ANY COST! Because even after they found out the horrible thing they'd done they continued anyway, lying and cheating and doing anything and everything just to win. They should apologize to the American people instead of getting jobs as pundits on MSNBC.

[Historic NY]

6. The problem is lots of people like her have such minuscule knowledge of the country & the world

that they believe her and the things she spouts as gospel truths.

[Avalux]

9. Palin is representative of a large segment of the American population.

Her selection was a gamble by the powerbrokers; that what she represented would pay off for them electorally. It didn't. What her selection did was open a pandora's box of foolishness, ignorance and stupidity that they can't close.

[randr]

10. No one in the Republican leadership dismissed her

OOPS, forgot there is no Republican leadership.

[ewagner]

11. Agree with the OP

The "foolish" element of the Conservative Party has always been out there but Steve Schmidt and McCain gave it legitimacy by putting Palin in the #2 spot. After that....it was open season for Crazy! We're still suffering from it today but hopefully, November will bring and end to the madness...hopefully...

[Motown_Johnny]

13. She may have helped it along but they were already on this path

They already had people like Bachmann and Gomert in office. Palin is just the one who got picked for the VP slot. The rest tend to be kept off the national stage.

[on point]

14. Seems like a common character description of most wing nuts

[peace frog]

15. Palin lowered the bar so far down

it was floating in the gutter. The GOP 2012 election season has continued this deplorable trend and we haven't seen the worst of it yet.

[Quantess]

16. Sarah Palin ruined American politics? That's nothing.

Sarah Palin ruined my life!

[opihimoimoi]

18. 5 day vetting inadequate....violation of Vetting 101.07....prepare with adequate time frame

she was an answer to a foggy question...who best to make a difference....but the vetting was too little...

shoulda went with Pawlenty

[Odin2005]

20. Palin is what the vast majority of Americans are like.

Shallow, ignorant, and clueless about anything outside their everyday reality. Incapable of logic and unable to express ideas coherently.