Palin Makes GOP Look Stupid, Easily Manipulated

[babylonsister]

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124716984620819351.html

A Farewell to Harms
Palin was bad for the Republicans—and the republic.
Peggy Noonan


snip//

"Turning to others means the media won!" No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn't the media want to keep that going?

Here's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.

We are going to need the best.

[tanyev]

1. How's the weather up on top of that great big high horse of yours, Peggy?

Peggy uses her criticisms of Palin to slam an entire generation:

For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

I guess the whole world is just going to implode once Noonan's generation is gone, hey?

[madaboutharry]

2. I will repeat what I often say about Peggy Noonan:

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

This article is brilliant.

[Voltaire]

3. Good article by the Nooner

at this time, I am going to go and wash my mouth out with soap

[mwb970]

4. She's right, but they won't listen, so it's OK.

The wingnuts will continue to destroy themselves and their credibility by backing loser/quitters like Palin. This is a group, comprising about 20% of Americans, which is EXTREMELY LOUD and will not brook any dissent, will not listen to expert advice (as offered here), will not make any corrections, and will not display the slightest self-awareness at any time. They are neurotic at best; psychotic at worst. Reality means nothing to them.

Wingnuttery is well and truly doomed, entirely as a result of their own self-defeating nature. This article makes that clear, but the only people who will read it are the ones who already know.

[Berry Cool]

10. Peggy may be ditzy when it comes to her Reagan-drooling, but she ain't dumb.

Her perception of how dangerous Palin is to her party is razor-sharp...but many men in the party won't listen because they are thinking with the wrong body part, and that's the joy of it for us.

My favorite parts:

"She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough."

"I think intellectuals call her working-class because they see the makeup, the hair, the heels and the sleds and think they're working class 'tropes.' Because, you know, that's what they teach in "Ways of the Working Class" at Yale and Dartmouth."

"Sarah Palin graduated in the end from the University of Idaho, a school that happily notes on its Web site that it's included in U.S. News and World Report's top national schools survey." (Oooh. Loooow blow.)

"'The elites hate her.' The elites made her....It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon."

"'She shows our ingenuous interest in all classes.' She shows your cynicism."

"Mrs. Palin's supporters have been ordering her to spend the next two years reflecting and pondering. But she is a ponder-free zone."

"'The media did her in.' Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in."

"What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand...Why wouldn't the media want to keep that going?"

Everything she says at the end of the piece about the dire state the country is in may not be true, but I have no doubt that it's a very accurate picture of how conservatives see things--and if that's your perception of which way the country is going, well, you DO need somebody to represent the Republican Party who can THINK in order to turn things around. What the Nooner is saying is that the party has to give up its blubbering romance with the idea of expecting that someone arising from the swamp of its phony, inauthentic "jes' plain folks" is going to be its next leader. It needs someone with a BRAIN, who can think. But at the rate it's going, it's not going to find one or appreciate that person should he/she appear.

Which is all the more good news for us.

[Tansy_Gold]

21. You make an excellent, excellent point that bears repeating

Everything she says at the end of the piece about the dire state the country is in may not be true, but I have no doubt that it's a very accurate picture of how conservatives see things.

I've said for a long time that the key to defeating the RW is first to understand them. And the first thing to understand about them is that they do not think like us and they do not see the world the same way we do. When we accuse them of lying, of not telling the truth, we fail to understand that their perspective is so skewed from ours that they do indeed believe they are telling the truth. (Not the upper echelon ones, of course; they are the manipulators of the rest and they know what's true and what isnt, but THEY don't care.) They see a very different truth.

[saltpoint]

5. I think Peggy drives the station wagon into the ditch right here:

"The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so."

--and then concludes by insisting that conservative leaders can save us: "It is time for conservative leaders who know how to think."

The 'thinking' part would appear to exclude Sarah Palin from consideration for the presidency. She couldn't even hold on to one term as Governor of Alaska.

If we exclude Palin because she's thick, we're left with the rest of the GOP pack. They don't seem quite as clueless as she is, but their politics are no better. Peggy doesn't say which conservative leaders she means who can think. The evidence is strong that they don't have anybody who matches that criterion.

Peggy evidently still turns heads inside the Beltway. But I don't think she's taken deep root in the truck stops and cafes of the far Southwest or in Evansville, Indiana. She appears to be a continuing presence in the lives of Beltway players who are influential, which is something, but most Americans don't know who she is. They don't read her.

Recommended.

[izquierdista]

6. How to think conservative

Conservatives don't really think, not in the analytical reasoning, deductive sort of way. They spout drivel which has been disproved a thousand times over, thinking that the thousand-and-first time it will achieve its deserved acceptance. Dogma has great weight with conservatives, simply because it weighs down actual thinking with preordained results. When not echoing such drivel, they "think" by starting with the conclusion they want and working backwards to make the logic fit the desired result.

[saltpoint]

7. Agree. They can fire off a talking points slogan at the drop of a hat but

actual analysis with a view toward problem-solving appears to elude them.

I always wonder if it is a deliberate blurring of obvious facts or if most of them are as thick as Palin to start with.

[izquierdista]

8. Most are clueless

There are a few conservatives capable of analytical thinking, William F. Buckley comes to mind, but they have such a vested interest in the outcome of maintaining the status quo, that they contort the logic and then beam that they could twist it to their end. Most though, are like Palin, dumb as a stump and twice as thick. They don't even realize that they just don't get it.

There was a research paper that came out a few years ago where these psych professors tried to distinguish the clueless from the rest. They found that there was a distinct subpopulation of students who thought they aced a test when actually they did very poorly. They were also clueless in other areas, and just didn't seem to get it. For them, education became all rote learning, for they could never think something through from basic principles. They blend in with regular people in everyday life, but once they open their mouth to express an opinion -- Watch out! -- it's PalinBlabber™

[saltpoint]

9. I'd like to see studies like that on as wide a scale as possible.

Agree that the Right sculpts debate to adhere to its terms and goals as opposed to using public discourse to resolve conflicts or to ameliorate suffering.

I think of Paln's catty taunting of candidate Obama regarding his community organizing work in metropolitan Chicago. She ridiculed community organizing, setting it against being the mayor of Wasilla (!), adding that the difference between the two involved a mayor's having "actual responsibilities."

That kind of back-of-the-hand dismissal is one of the characterizing features of conservatives, it seems to me. The cute line or slogan versus addressing the need for community work.

[Berry Cool]

11. It's also very common for insecure people to belittle others for experience they lack.

One of the great flaws of conservatives is that the ones who are actually capable of using their brains turn them to the wrong end: thinking of justifications for maintaining and upholding the status quo. The other flaw is that they are highly vulnerable to mistaking ignorance and a lack of sophistication for "refreshing authenticity," so long as the package it comes in is a) attractive and b) spouts their philosophies. They tell themselves that all the package needs is some education and polish, and voila!! An unbeatable political god(dess) will be theirs!!

What some never realize, but Nooner does, is that a) there is a difference between ignorance (which can be cured via education) and lack of intelligence combined with stubbornness (which can't) and b) not everyone who spouts their philosophies does so because he or she is smart--even "common sense smart." Sometimes they're just parrots. Sometimes they don't know any better.

And that, my friends, is Sarah Palin. An attractive Republican philosophy-spouting parrot who is ignorant, unintelligent and stubborn--and doesn't know it. She also finds it a breeze to blame everyone else but herself for her problems--and if that "everyone else" isn't the Dems and the media, it will be anyone who tries to change her or tell her she's wrong.

[saltpoint]

12. Yes. I have the feeling that she is keenly interested in the White House

and that she thinks it is going to be a relatively easy path getting there.

I think she's mistaken on the easy path part.

[TrogL]

13. Palin in one sentence "She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough"

(irony - misspelled)

It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Here's a video explaining it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y

[izquierdista]

14. Thank you!

That's what I was looking for! I was wondering how I was going to find that, and you came up with the two names I needed. Yes, this explains at least half of the Republican base. Well, the part of the base that's not the haves and the have-mores.

[Myrina]

15. OMG I know SO MANY Republicans like that!!!!

It must be on the allele with the gene that decides their political leanings!

[Big Orange Jeff]

16. While Noonan may be on the mark here, she could've said the same things about Dubya...

Unfortunately, she either drank the Konservative Kool-Aid or was blinded by ambition. Her exact same intellectual critiques of Palin could be applied to W and, to a lesser extent, Reagan and Bush the Smarter (h/t to Bartcop for that moniker).

In fact, the last GOP president whose intellectual capacity could fill a thimble was Nixon. I fully believe that he was doing what he truly thought was best for the country. He was wrong about what was best for the country, but at least that was his top priority. For the three "conservative" presidents since, their first, second, and third priorities were enriching their friends.

It's fun to watch the Neo-con talking heads - who worked so tirelessly to elect Bush 43 - try to distance themselves from him now.

[Robbie88]

17. A decent Op-Ed, I suppose, but...

...this part in particular looks like more of the same old victim complex that so many conservatives seem to possess and that Sarah Palin so well represents:

"Turning to others means the media won!" No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn't the media want to keep that going?

The media would love to keep the Palin saga going because of the train wreck that it is- it has nothing to do with the media wanting to "fracture" the Republican Party or "hurt its brand."

[Big Orange Jeff]

20. Agreed. The media are NOT liberal, nor are they conservative...

Well, with the exception of News Corp.

The goal of the media is to raise the stock prices of the conglomerates that own them. Period.

[Politicalboi]

18. It's good for Sarah that

It's not hard at all to make the GOP look stupid. They deserve each other.

[Arkana]

19. Heh. Peggy Noonan was one of Raygun's chief speechwriters,

and it's no shock to see she disliked the woman who was being called the heir to his "legacy".

Not that Noonan isn't right, of course. Sarah is a waste of ape sperm.

[Fearless]

22. StupidER and MORE easily IMHO.

:nopity:

[bemildred]

23. Tools get used. nt

[niceypoo]

24. When anyone reacts to her, she cant resist the impulse to react back...

Thus eliciting further reaction to her, hence the endless drama. A second grader could bait her.