"I have, of course, all my life read. I'm a lover of books, magazines, and newspapers."
- Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin
"Sometimes, big shot, you don't seem to give me credit for very much intelligence at all. I've been to school in my life - and I'm a magazine reader!"
- Baby Doll
Sarah Palin took her book tour to the Rush Limbaugh Show this morning. The Oprah and Barbara Walters interviews have been fun, because they mostly just asked her about Levi Johnston, and it's gratifying that God sent him to ruin her life and save the Republic. (Sometimes God opens a door. And it leads to Bristol's room.) But the Rush interview was different. To Rush's credit, he actually asked her about politics.
Policy. That's where she shines.
See if you can pick out a theme to her answers.
Unemployment?
But those commonsense solutions there, especially with the cutting taxes on the job creators? That's not even being discussed.
Healthcare reform?
Not when there are commonsense solutions to meeting health care challenges in our country... So lots of commonsense solutions that need to be plugged in before ever considering federal government taking it over.
The 2010 elections?
It's all about Americans who are hurting right now and what those solutions are that are so obvious, so commonsense that need to be plugged in.
The recent special congressional election in New York State?
They are seeking commonsense, conservative solutions to all the challenges that we're facing. I'm glad to see this.
Independent voters?
Todd's not a Republican and yet he's got more commonsense conservatism than a whole lot of Republicans that I know... But in answer to your question, I don't think that the third party movement will be what's necessary to usher in some commonsense conservative ideals... In Alaska, about 70% of Alaskans are independent. So that's my base. That's where I am from and that's been my training ground, is just implementing commonsense conservative solutions.
The Future of the Republican Party?
Let's go back to what Reagan did in the early eighties and stay committed to those commonsense free market principles that worked.
The overall message of her book?
It was just a lot of hard work and it was a lot of very commonsense measures that I undertook politically and practically speaking, and the book is about that, and hopefully people will read it and enjoy it and learn something from it.
In answering about a dozen questions, Palin said some combination of "solutions," "conservative" and "commonsense" twenty-five times. Is this an interview or a drinking game? Was Rush rewarding her by tossing her fish?
Her excitement got the better of her when she said, "But those common sense solutions there." This was a shoehorn too far, as the correct form, in Hillbilly, is obviously "Those there commonsense solutions."
Mencken identified those-there as a perfectly good hill country adverbial pronoun. (His example, from everyday use: "Those-there wops has all took to the woods.") But he warned that the adverb promised to coalesce with the pronoun so completely as to obliterate all sense of its distinct existence, even as a false noun or adjective. Little did he know.
But splitting an adverbial pronoun, just to squeeze in one more "commonsense?" That's just wrong.
To be fair to Barbara Walters, she did ask Sarah Palin at least one political question: Did Palin think President Obama deserved a Nobel Prize?
Palin replied:
Maybe someday there will be some deserved event, and issues that he tackles that will allow that presentation of Nobel Peace Prize, and I'll be the first to applaud that but two weeks into office and he's already nominated? That's premature. -- Sarah Palin, Author
H.L. Mencken, your move.
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Think about it... You'll see the problem with common sense.
"Common sense has been defined as that body of knowledge one accumulates before the age of sixteen."
Besides, you have just performed a very valuable public service, as we will all look for DETAILS on them thar "commonsense conservative solutions" in her, hmmm, public office platform.
That's the punchline.
Common Sense is all to uncommon.