From time to time, I'll get into a debate with a right-winger about whether Sarah Palin is actually stupid or if liberals are just hopelessly biased against her. They claim this bias comes from the fact that liberals are scared of her electability, her charm, her looks, her femininity, her Christianity, her ability connect to the common man and her overall wonderfulness. So, the theory is that we have all collectively decided that she is the best Republican candidate in some secret liberal meeting and are conspiring against her because we are afraid of how brilliant and electable she really is.
Now, there are a couple of problems with this theory. There are no opinion leaders on the left with Rush Limbaugh-like authority who can command all other progressives to think the same thing and use the same arguments against one person. In other words, we all think she is stupid because she is in fact stupid, not because some liberal cabal told us to think that.
How come we don't call Newt Gingrich stupid? Or Dick Cheney or Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Elizabeth Dole or Dennis Hastert? And the list goes on and on of heinous and deplorable right-wingers who are not stupid. We don't make those charges against those people, because as much as we might not agree with them or like them, we know that they are not dullards. They're all clever in their own way. Mitt Romney is greasy, Michael Steele is a clown and Tom DeLay is dirty, but we don't go after their mental acuity like we do with Sarah Palin because they're not as dumb as her (not even Steele).
So, finally we get to the evidence. I thought I'd just do it here and be done with it. Then I can just point people to this post from now on and end this senseless argument.
Now, there are a million examples of this, but I thought I'd go with three knockout punches here. In the first video, we have the classic Bush Doctrine answer, where she does not know the basic foreign policy of the Republican president at the time. How could she possibly be running for vice president and not know this? The only thing more unconscionable is the sad excuses her supporters make for this terribly botched answer.
In the second video, we have a largely overlooked example of her pathetic lack of foreign policy knowledge. She has no idea what Hamas is or what they have to do with the Gaza Strip. If your next door neighbor or plumber doesn't know this, that's fine, but they weren't running for Vice President of the United States. This should be game set and match for anyone, especially self-respecting conservatives, thinking of supporting her. This is when you have to walk away embarrassed.
But remarkably, they didn't slink away embarrassed after this answer, so we have the latest example of her buffoonery. In this interview with Bill O'Reilly, he asks her if she is smart enough to be president. Her answer has to be seen to be believed. Don't get me wrong, just because you see it won't mean you'll understand it. So, I put a transcript of her answer below so that you can try to decipher it in your spare time.
Bill O'Reilly: Let me be very bold and fresh again, do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have I believe the values that I think are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the uhm, the ah, a kind of spineless, spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite, Ivy league education and, and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans are could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I'm not saying that that has to be me.
Can anyone really be biased enough to think that was a smart answer? The great irony is that he asked her if she's smart enough to be president and she gave what might be her dumbest answer yet. That answer was so bad it almost made George W. Bush look smart. Can anyone in good conscience defend that answer and say with a straight face that she should be this country's leader?
If you say yes, then there is no sense in talking to one another anymore because we are not operating in the same reality, or planet. We'll never be able to agree on anything if we can't agree that was just about as incomprehensible and stupid an answer as you can possibly come up with. And that settles the debate, because you either live in the reality based world and realize she is obviously not qualified, or in the immortal words of Stephen Colbert you believe that "reality has a well-known liberal bias" and she would make a great president.
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"spineless
I defy anyone to create a coherent English sentence that contains the words "that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of " in it, in that order. That's eleven words, ten of them with one syllable, that simply cannot occur in any thinking person's speech. And it did not. $arah said it.
Read the book "Sarah Palin: An American Nightmare,
We can all agree that she doesn't know the facts, and that a half-term governor with the experience of running a Petrostate with a lot of pollution (so much that you are more that twice as likely to be born with a defect, sardonical
This is nothing new with SP -- she wants to be seen as identifyin
The "values" point is based on the assumption that the Christian values and morals SP espouses are superior to Obama's or those of Liberals, when in fact her own hypocritic
The problem with this kind of populism is the inherent destructiv
can you imagine our country being run like our local school board and out neighborho
yikes !!!!
The problem was not what she was trying to say, shallow and meaningles
Your summary was coherent and well expressed. But the fact that she cannot properly present her own "ideas" (even with hand-writi
/ɪˈliːt/ n [C + singular or plural verb]
the richest, most powerful, best educated or best trained group in a society From the Cambridge Online Dictionary
elite
The choice part . . . a superior group: The Merriam-We
Correct me if I'm wrong, but do we not want the best trained, the best and the brightest, the most well-educa
Is there a reason why the Republican
Is Barak Obama a member of the elite? You betcha, and I for one am glad he is our president, and if the dullards on the right will allow him to do his job, I am confident he will lead us out of the quagmire in which the last administra
Elite is not a bad word; It's not even a four-lette
elite is not necessaril
elite in society and politics has the connotatio
in our "free market" based social structure the idea exists that we always have to compete and always have to perform.
the best could later not be the best and can coast on success. and potentiall
a multi millionair
or shrubie, he is elite because he went to a top university and got his degree and then executive jobs and came from a extremely wealthy family. but is he the superior skilled and intelligen
it is impossible to separate class structure from elitism. if you try to separate the ":best" people it will eventually end up including the ugly side of elite because who is judging who is elite and not ?
I want the best and brightest to run my country, not the richest or those from the so-called "best families."
Nixon at least had a brain.
repeated time and again. The Democrats portray
their opposition as legitimate
labeled their opposition as morally handicappe
Democrats seemed sure they are intellectu
Republican
and apple pie.
The MSM parroted the Democrat daily line and the
Internet and FM radio provided the only opposition
Only once recently, at 911, did we act as a united country.
We need more togetherne
Maybe that's what Palin was trying to say in her third example above. But she's not clever enough to be simple and humble, and her ego is far too big.
1) If we just ignore Sarah Palin, she will go away. These articles do nothing but help her popularity
and
2) All this attention to Sarah Palin must mean she's got something going for her. We wouldn't bother writing or commentati
Well...
1) She won't go away. She's proven that. And she shouldn't be ignored--h
2) I pay attention to SP the same way I pay attention to icy patches in the road--they represent danger, and I want to avoid them. If I can, I will also warn others that the roads are bad.
she is photogenic and an amusing story, so she gets coverage. but the reality is that her fans are at most something like 25% of the population
we should let her be and let her rise to be nominated for the presidenti
they think they can win with her, but they are fooling themselves
i want her to stay prominent and successful
I personally think nothing can top her Resignatio
Regards
i'm glad to hear she has party support
she needs to stay prominent and popular so she gets nominated for the 2012 race.
she has no chance of winning. absolutely none. they are fooling themselves
show me one poll or any piece of evidence that suggests she has the numbers necessary to compete in national politics. no more than 25% of americans and tea party types and i'm being generous with that number
what national race have the repubs won since she has been on the scene. she lost the prez race for mccain. she quit the gov job. she lost the ny rep race when she got involved.
they can't win with her. she gets 25% excited, but she turns of another 20% of the population that may be open to voting repub. combine that with dems that can't stand her and you get republican losses all around
DO NOT FEAR !! ........ sarah is here !!! ....... for us dems !!!