Posted by
"Mind and Morals" Michael Coyne on Monday, July 13, 2009 11:25:00 AM
Well, damn.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/07/12/politics/main5153575.shtml
Okay, so just when I thought the Republican Party’s biggest
problem was about to go away… I was a victim of my own wishful thinking.
It’s worth pausing here to explain in better detail my
feelings regarding Governor Sarah Palin.
In a strictly personal/political point-of-view sense, I have
no problems with her. I likely agree with her around 85% of the time
politically, and I think that she has a relatively good ability to rally both
the Republican base and the “everyman” small-town independent voter. Good for
her. However, even with all this, I desperately want her to disappear from the
national stage. And the sooner, the better. Here are the two big reasons:
1) Perception is everything. Sarah Palin may, in fact, be
capable of great things. But as far as the media, the late-night comedians, and
the segment of the general public that still depends on NBC as an honest news
source are concerned; Sarah Palin is George W. Bush 2.0. That’s bad. Really
bad. As much as I respect and hold a favorable opinion of Bush 43, I’m also
smart enough to know that much of America is not on board with that. And if the
Republican Party appears to be led by an army of plainspoken, small-town
values, big-government conservatives (henceforth known as The W Army), then we
are officially dead as a party. The good conservatives and capable Republicans
that actually make up 99% of the party will be a nonissue because the
prevailing face of Republicanism will be distasteful to the American public at
large.
2) Palin is a loose cannon. Unpredictability is dangerous,
just ask Vice President Biden’s press secretary. While there was a time that I
would have thought that the honesty and shoot-from-the-hip bluntness that
hallmarked both of the 2008 Vice Presidential candidates would have been
beautiful for the party’s leadership, it is the wrong thing for us right now.
Much like perception above, the issue here is marketing. Let’s play a little
game: pretend that the Democratic Party is Pepsi and the Republican Party is
Coca-Cola. We are in the middle of the 1980s, right now, where Pepsi sales are
up and we are trying to figure out how to get back some profit margins. The
temptation is to create New Coke—i.e. recreate the Republican Party into
something totally new, abandoning much of what made us the party of Reagan,
Goldwater, Nixon, Bob Taft, Coolidge, and Lincoln. But we must remember that
New Coke was a colossal failure, as evidenced by the resurgence of Coke sales
with Coca-Cola Classic’s triumphant return. It’s not that people are opposed to
our party’s belief systems; we merely failed to sell it over the past six years
or so. It was a marketing issue. Governor Palin represents a lateral move from
Bush-era marketing. Those things that we love about Sarah Palin are largely the
same things that we loved about George W. Bush circa 1999-2000: small-town
appeal, simplicity, honesty, straightforwardness, etc. But we need to sell our
message in the inner cities, in black and Hispanic communities, on college
campuses, in bookstores, and most importantly on television and the internet.
Sarah Palin may be a fantastic woman, but she is completely the wrong face for
Republicans and conservatism in general.
I believe that Republicans are beginning to come to this
conclusion about Palin, as well. The party subconsciously knows that everything
that made us like her as Senator McCain’s running mate would cause her to slip
a noose around the party as a leader. This is likely why she is even doing the
bipartisan shtick regarding her new political committee; she knows that
Republicans may very soon develop the tendency to avoid her like the bubonic plague.
The one and only thing that might have saved Palin from
harsh judgment regarding resignation was an explanation for why. Why did she
resign? Was it merely to evade the corruption charges that were beginning to
swarm? She would have needed to make it look like a sort of self-sacrifice, as
it was for the resignation of President Nixon. Nixon saw that the Watergate
mess was distracting America from functioning properly, so his resignation has
the historical flavor of almost falling on a sword. Palin could have used to
take notes from the video below. Fortunately for the Republican Party, Palin doesn’t
have Nixon’s savvy.