Please, Just Go Away
HotAir blog has a clip a former John McCain campaign staffer Steve Schmidt trashing Sarah Palin.
“I think that she has talents, but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican candidate in 2012, and in fact, were she to be the nominee, we would have a catastrophic election result.”
“In the year since the election has ended, she has done nothing to expand her appeal beyond the base. … Th[e] independent vote is going to be up for grabs in 2012. That middle of the electorate is going to be determinative of the outcome of the elections. I just don’t see that if you look at the things she has done over the year… that she is going to expand that base in the middle.”
What is it with liberal Republicans? They have a perfect record of losing elections. The McCain camp pretty much handed the election to The Obama.
And we’re supposed to take advise from him? Give me a break.
Here’s a nice repudiation of Schmidt’s sagacity from the 24ahead blog:
Steve Schmidt – former chief strategist of the John McCain campaign – was interviewed by Ana Marie Cox about the various failures he was involved in and presumably he tries to defend himself against charges that he’s completely incompetent; I didn’t bother reading the whole thing (link) since this bit is all we need:
If you look at the returns from the southwestern and mountain west states, with rising Latino populations, it’s clear that Latinos are repudiating the party, their anger about the tone of the immigration debate, and the party has to figure out a way to communicate that wanting to have a secure and sovereign southern border and respect for Latinos are not mutually exclusive. But if the party does not figure out a way to appeal to Latino voters, it will become increasingly difficult, and maybe impossible, to ever again win a national election.
If McCain couldn’t win over Latinos, one wonders which Republican could. McCain cost himself a large part of the GOP base due to his support for illegal activity in order to obtain votes. He spoke to the racial power group NCLR and, instead of taking them on for being far-left supporters of illegal activity, he went there seeking votes.
And, his Hispanic outreach director is a former cabinet-level official with the Mexican government.
Other than picking Vicente Fox as his running mate, it’s unclear what he could have done different. No matter how much the GOP tries to pander, the Dems will always be able to buy more votes.
What the GOP has to do is stop putting crooked businesses ahead of their own self-preservation. And, they need to stop being Dem Lite by opposing corporate pluralism and by discrediting far-left supporters of illegal activity rather than capitulating to them.
Schmidt couldn’t even beat the furthest-left major party candidate in history and someone whose past is partly unknown and partly very questionable. He should do us all a favor and find a new line of work.
Truly.
Palin drives “sensible” Republicans and liberals of all stripes insane (enough reason right there to support her).
From Conservatives4Palin, quoting Charles Cooper:
Ever since John McCain catapulted Sarah McCain onto the national stage in the summer of 2008, I’ve watched my lefty friends here in San Francisco threaten to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge if the former Alaska Governor ever became president.
[...]
Palin has this knack for sending the liberal-left into knee-knocking spittle-inducing convulsions. More than any other Republican, Palin stirs passions. Most important, she has the sort of sass that attracts big crowds of true believers willing to open their wallets for her. Can you say that about the likes of Tim Pawlenty or (gasp!) Bobby Jindal? Not with a straight face.
[...]
Here’s the key point: For them, Palin is not another wishy-washy, faux conservative on the John McCain model. She speaks their language on issues that are central to their sense of who they are as Americans: gun rights, religion, abortion, patriotism and the role of government in their lives. They also remember the insults. And each time the left and Democratic media apologists (like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow) caricature Palin as a dumbbell hick from the sticks, that just reinforces their conviction that they must be doing something right.
Read the whole thing here.
One measure of Palin’s effectiveness and strength as a candidate is the level of vitriol hurled at her by her political enemies on the left. If she was as useless as the rest of the Republican establishment, you can be she’d be getting media tongue baths, like the style section puff pieces most moderate Republicans, or really any Republican who acts like a Dem-lite, get from WaPo or NYT.
But this time around, we’re not letting the media and the left choose our candidates. Remember how John McCain famously said the media was his constituency? That is, until they turned on him and jumped off the cliff for The Obama.
I don’t really care what the press or liberals, whether Democrat or Republican, say about Sarah Palin. They can say she’s as dumb as a bag of rocks, but judging by the antics of the current bipartisan clown posse running things in Washington right now she a regular genius.
And I’ll take a common sense, conservative dullard over the whiz bang, psuedo-intellectuals in office or on TV right now.
They, like Schmidt, and really anyone associated with the John McCain campaign or the Bush administration, can simply STFU.
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