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The Palin endorsement of Trump

I usually avoid posting much about campaign stuff, as most of it is foolish childish blather. To me, what is important is what politicians actually do when they are in positions of power, not what they say while they are campaigning.

However, Sarah Palin’s endorsement yesterday of Donald Trump requires a few words, because this is an action by Palin that confirms a great deal about her (not Trump) that I have thought since the day she resigned as Alaska’s governor. To paraphrase one headline, yesterday’s endorsement was a Reality TV Star Endorsing a Reality TV Star.

Sarah Palin, the host of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” and “Amazing America with Sarah Palin,” has endorsed the star of “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice”

This article is more blunt:

Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor; a silly, self-indulgent, shallow age in which Kanye West thinks he can be the president of the United States and the president of the United States thinks he can be Kanye West. That Palin and Trump are together at last is no accident of ideology or timing; rather, it is the inevitable and rational confluence of two ghastly cults of personality — a fat-cutting, cash-saving merger that will serve to increase overall market share. Under their own steam, both figures have convinced a significant portion of the American population that their personal advancement is the key to the country’s success.

When Palin was governor of Alaska, she was in a position of real power and could have had a real influence on the future of her state, and by inference the politics of the country. Instead, she resigned and turned her talents to doing reality television shows. I haven’t taken her political positions seriously since then, and her endorsement of Trump has only confirmed that impression.

By the way, these thoughts are not meant as a condemnation of Trump. I would still vote for him should he become the nominee, as he will certainly be a better choice than any candidate the Democrats are proposing. I just don’t think he will do the kind of things I think the nation desperately needs done to get the federal government back in shape. He remains, deep down, an old-fashioned liberal Democrat, and that is not what we really need right now.

Palin however has now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that her so-called tea party beliefs were never more than showy grand-standing to make her career as a reality tv star more successful.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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21 comments

  • Cotour

    Palin to me is a political lightning rod and Trump will have to be very careful in how he uses her so he does not get politically electrocuted. I have to assume that this is more about nailing down Iowa and setting a winning primary tone. What he does with her after the Bible belt is unknown to me, the reasonable among the unhappy democrats, independents and conservatives will be more repelled by her shrill, aw shucks kind of Alaskan plain spoken hillbilly ism s.

    And its not that what she says is something that can not be agreed with, its how she says it and the baggage that accompany’s her. Palin causes liberals heads to explode upon hearing her (mine also), so from that strategic perspective she is a winner, but she can also be a repellent to the disenfranchised looking for a real American solution to the now massive and mounting problems that face us all.

    If it is announced or rumored that she will be serving an official roll in an administration, cabinet member, vice president etc, etc, it is totally unknown to me how that works out. Now that would be a true test of how much of a leader Trump really is or how lucky.

  • Garry

    You may be right, Bob, and maybe I’m naive, but I think that many people start out with good intentions and get corrupt later. If I were to guess, I would speculate that Palin got in politics with good intentions, either saw that she was in over her head or found something more attractive to her personal interests, which led her to pursue her career as a reality tv star. In other words, rather than following a script for her career she had written a long time ago, she may have started out with good intent and then she took advantage of some opportunities that opened up.

    I agree with what Palin says much of the time (whether she is sincere about it is another question), but I for one can’t stand to hear her shrill rants. I don’t see how her endorsement is a net positive for Trump in the run.

    The only presidential candidate I ever felt good about voting for was Reagan. This is yet another cycle where I’m sure I’ll be holding my nose why filling out my ballot.

  • Wodun

    “And its not that what she says is something that can not be agreed with, its how she says it”

    Her syntax is terrible. Phrases are reversed from their logical order which leads me to believe she is dyslexic. She knew she was going to be giving this speech, she could have prepared better and it looked like the actually did practice delivering the speech so…

    I’d rather she didn’t quit her job as governor but she was being sued and the money for her defense came out of her pocket rather than state coffers. She wasn’t especially wealthy and this was a deliberate attempt to literally destroy her life by the Democrats.

  • Dittrich

    Those 50+% of the Republican voters who support Trump, will support him no matter how shrill the Palin’s voice may or may not be. For me, there are no voices, more pleasant and attractive to listen to, than the voices of Trump and Palin, regardless whether shrill or not. The important things are that both ignore the political correctness (that had already reached complete insanity), both love the American people and the American culture, both use common sense approach, and both say the truth.

  • You are basing your opinion above on what both Palin and Trump have said, Palin in the past (not recently) and Trump during this recent campaign. What they have done however has had little to do with these statements, especially with Trump. While Trump might be a better choice than Clinton or Sanders, he will still be an old-fashioned liberal Democrat who likes using the government to make the American people do the things he thinks are important.

    Right now we need to do exactly the opposite, rein in an out-of-control federal government. I doubt Trump will get that accomplished.

    Nonetheless, if Trump is the nominee he will be far better than any Democrat running at this moment.

  • erkforbee

    Zimmerman is so right about Palin’s endorsement not being relevant to what they have done – however, nobody here is addressing that because the nature of her endorsement is campaign politics rather than accomplishments.
    I will expand upon Wodun’s theme that she is ill prepared: that is her habit. She was not prepared for Katy Couric, or vice presidential speeches in some cases. I fear she would continue so, in any office she might gain under Trump.
    “Shrill” fits, too.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Nonetheless, if Trump is the nominee he will be far better than any Democrat running at this moment.”

    I think you meant to say, “any *other* Democrat,” since you acknowledged in the original posting that he is still “an old-fashioned liberal Democrat.”

    But I still won’t vote for a Democrat. I’m sick of RINOs, such as New York City’s previous mayor, Bloomberg. Trump will continue the degradation of this once-great nation, despite his slogan to make it better.

  • Steve

    Wodun
    January 20, 2016 at 1:28 pm

    “I’d rather she didn’t quit her job as governor but she was being sued and the money for her defense came out of her pocket rather than state coffers. She wasn’t especially wealthy and this was a deliberate attempt to literally destroy her life by the Democrats.”

    ***********************

    Correct, Local radio show was going over that today since the “Quitter” label was making the rounds again. According to the host, George Soros financed dozens of lawsuits and complaints against her, and in Alaska the law required her to personally pay for her defense against these.

    In essence she was forced to choose between being the first sitting Governor to declare personal bankruptcy or take the Fox News job and put money in the bank for her and her family.

    It was a bastard move on the Dems part and it worked. Either way she would be tarred and diminished. Sarah has her faults to be sure, but given what I have heard she really didn’t have much choice.

  • I recognize these issues in connection with her resignation as governor, which is why I have always held back any serious criticism. Nonetheless, I was disappointed when she didn’t hang on and fight.

    Afterward for several years she seemed to hold onto her conservative principles and use her influence to help get some tea party candidates elected. Her endorsements in 2010 and 2014 definitely helped get outsiders and new people elected to Congress. Increasingly in recent years, however, she has appeared to me to be more interested in her celebrity status than those conservative principles. Her endorsement of Trump only seals my declining opinion of her, in the wrong direction.

  • Steve

    I agree, at the time I also wondered why she didn’t stay but now I can see why.

    She was damned either way, 1. Go thru endless court appearances and lawyers fees while trying to run the State and then have new lawsuits filed over every new decision she made for the rest of her term. or 2. Take a very good job w/ a lot less pressure and a much bigger microphone but be labeled a quitter by the press.

    And I also agree that she has at least partially slipped into a caricature of herself lately.

    But it really p****s me off that the left was able to slime her so thoroughly that half of my friends and family believe that crap on SNL was actually true…..

  • Cotour

    I just can not listen to the woman, her piercing voice and style makes me very uncomfortable. Trump has a vocabulary of about 200 words and he makes it work for him, she, and I am not asserting that she is not intelligent, has a vocabulary of about 150 words and uses colloquialisms as her front line rhetoric.

    Listening right now to Cruz being interviewed and it is a pleasure in comparison, unfortunately the general consensus is that he can not prevail. Something big has got to happen for him to remain in play like beating Trump in the coming primaries. I think all other candidates are only waiting for their exit que.

    .

  • danae

    I feel nothing but sorrow for all that’s happened in Sarah Palin’s life since she ventured into deeper water with the McCain cohort and became a lightning rod for the leftwing media’s devastating discharges. Yes, she (and we) would have benefited if she had kept a voice coach on retainer, but I admire her tremendously simply for smiling through.

    I don’t see her endorsement of Trump as a boost for either of them, but it’s weirdly fascinating to watch high-profile “conservatives” move, one by one, into his camp.

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    I’ve never thought much of endorsements no matter who gives or receives them.

  • m d mill

    I agree with some of your criticisms of Palin (she went for the money), but you should not question the sincerity of her political beliefs…she is not the “con man” trump probably is. Would it be difficult to believe that Trump voted for Obama..no (and if so he is in deed a con man). Palin did NOT vote for Obama. Palin would be a much better president than Trump, you must agree.
    You should not let your personal animus get in the way of reason.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “the general consensus is that [Cruz] can not prevail.”

    Combine that with danae’s comment: “it’s weirdly fascinating to watch high-profile “conservatives” move, one by one, into [Trump’s] camp.”

    If people are thinking of voting for Trump because he is “electable,” then they should have voted for Obama instead of McCain and Romney. Voting for the electable one is like choosing the lesser of two evils. You still end up with evil, and you made the one you preferred even less electable. What would have happened in the US Revolutionary War had the poorly trained rag-tag Colonial army chosen the side of the well funded, highly trained superpower of the day? Instead, they eventually won the war despite losing most of their battles.

    The Democratic party has been using the same strategy over the past century. Usually liberty prevailed, but occasionally tyranny won a battle, and now we are in the end game and everyone who favors liberty seems to be giving up, preferring to go with the person who seems most likely to win, despite the tyranny he (or she) brings.

    If you vote for Trump, should he become the Republican candidate, then what do you tell your children and grandchildren when they ask what you did when liberty was being lost? Do you tell them that you voted for the man who gave them the single-payer healthcare nightmare, with its lines so long that patients often give up seeing a doctor or die waiting (kind of like some VA hospitals or the Canadian system that Trump thinks works)?

    Do you tell them that you voted for the man who continued the march toward crony capitalism, in which government regulates and directs industry, rewarding friends and punishing enemies, resulting in government choosing the winners and the losers (which is essentially fascism — http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fascism )? Trump wants to direct companies to make their cookies and iPhones in the US, not overseas, increasing regulation and decreasing freedom, rather than make the economic and regulatory environment in the US so friendly that the companies would *want* to bring their manufacturing back here. So much for freedom.

    Do you tell them that you voted for the man who favored big government as the solution, thus he grew government and added even more to the huge debt that your kids have to repay? This crony capitalist uses government to solve his problems, not realizing — or else not caring — that what he thinks are solutions are problems for others.

    Do you tell them that you voted for the man who put additional liberal justices on the Supreme Court? He is still a liberal Democrat, not a Republican, despite what he put on his voter registration form.

  • Cotour

    Going by the current numbers the general consensus appears to indicate what it indicates. I / we need the most reasonable and electable, conservatively and Constitutionally minded person to win.

    I agree with your observations about Trump and his “proposals”, the government needs to incentivize business returning through taxation or the lack of taxation and not by decree. So I will at this point assume that Trump is pandering to a broad and at this point rabid for change base and I will have to see after, if he is the candidate, how that is refined.

    Trumps focus right now is to start the primaries with wins and you can see how he operates through subtle and not so subtle intimidation, persuasion and “helpful” observation. Thats how he plays the game, you play to win but first you have to win. If that makes any sense.

    Given choices in a pure and wholesome world we would choose the best and most conservative Constitutionally minded person and that person would go head to head with their opponent and through the honest tabulation of the righteously cast votes by the people the true leader would emerge. Now we all know that that is not what happens and that is why people tend to handicap and discount and attempt to project in how they actually choose.

    So in reality the candidates kick, punch, scratch, stretch the true, lie and back stab each other until their is one lone candidate standing because he or she was able to persuade the masses through the force of their personality, likability and finally what appears to be an acceptable philosophy. This is the dirtiest business on the planet, lets not see it through rose colored glasses.

    So when we are asked “what did you do in the big pivotal election?” we will answer, we did the best that we could with what we could figure out and what we had in the end was politics.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “So I will at this point assume that Trump is pandering to …”

    So, you think that he is lying? Is he lying when he says the things that you want to hear, or is he lying when he says the things you don’t want to hear.

    This is the problem with voting for a liar. You really don’t know the result that you are going to get. Will he do what you want him to do, as other candidates have done, or are you going to get something else, as happened in the Republican party after the 2014 elections? Why would you trust a liberal Democrat who runs on the Republican ticket? All you end up with is a choice between two Democrats; you don’t even get to choose a lying Republican, much less a conservative one.

    Cotour wrote: “Given choices in a pure and wholesome world we would choose the best and most conservative Constitutionally minded person”

    As has been pointed out, Trump is not in any way, shape, or form conservative. He does not even claim to be a conservative. He has said a couple of things that conservatives want to hear, but he has backed up his words by saying that he would take liberal actions that are Democrat-worthy, such as adding — on top of the income tax — a wealth tax, so that those who aspire to wealth no longer have an incentive to do so. Not only does the income tax make it harder for us to become wealthy through our hard work, inventiveness, or talent, but a wealth tax slowly degrades that which we had worked for. What is the use of being productive when the fruits of our labors are confiscated?

    Cotour wrote: “So in reality the candidates kick, punch, scratch, stretch the true, lie and back stab each other …”

    At least one candidate has yet to start doing that. He is still calm, kind, and gentlemanly, even as he gets kicked, punched, scratched, etc. Yet he still is on the radar.

    Maybe elections are so dirty because voters reward those who are the dirtiest and punish those who fight the clean fight. Even when the dirty one is the harmful one and the clean one is the one who will do as the voters wanted. Backstabbing the voters and then getting them to say “thank you sir, may I have another” just demonstrates that the voters are poorly informed and vote for the popular guy, not the guy who will do them the most good.

    The big pivotal election was in 2008. Since then, We the People have been 100% defensive and have lost virtually every battle. At best, with this election cycle, we can only hope to stop hemorrhaging our freedom, but the tyrannical enemy is deeply entrenched, and even uses government agencies — such as the IRS — without prompting from higher-ups.

  • Cotour

    To pander in this political instance is not to lie, it is to appeal to the more base desires of others in order to gain leverage or acceptability or likeability with the end goal being to prevail in an election.

    ” To cater to the lower tastes and desires of others or exploit their weaknesses: ”

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/pandering

    They are all “liars” or tellers of half truths Edward.

    The hope if Trump (or any of them) is to prevail is that he / she is able to raise themselves up and become more than and not less then.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “To pander in this political instance is not to lie … They are all “liars” or tellers of half truths Edward.”

    Which is it, lie or not lie?

    If you believe that they are all liars, then how do you choose between them? Is it a popularity contest to you? Do you encourage the dirty politics by your choices?

  • Cotour

    #1. All political candidates are politicians, politicians must first become empowered by the people, in order to become empowered they tend to “pander” (refer to the definition if you do not recall what it is).

    #2. If a teller of half truths is by definition a liar then yes they are *ALL* liars.

    #3. To choose between them is to compromise and find a reasonable and acceptable balance (what ever that means).

    #4. The first rule of politics: It must be assumed and must be the default position that anything an aspiring or empowered politician says is a one hundred percent lie, until you can reasonably establish where truth exists.

    Now I happen to know that you are, and I have called you this before, a very high IQ nerd that is challenged to detect sarcasm, and you have agreed with me. This characteristic, and I truly do not mean it in a negative way, I admire your intelligence, your very technically analytical but that sometimes pushes one who thinks in such a way to only be able to see in the cold black and white terms of mathematics and formulas. Its is a stone cold must if you want to get to the moon, but not to the White House. Right is right and wrong is wrong, 1+1=2. Politics is all about everything but the black and the white, the right and the wrong. Real truth lies in mathematics and physics, not in the words of aspiring politicians. Politics has never been related to those two disciplines what so ever.

  • Edward

    Cotour,

    Actually, the word “nerd” has not come up before. I will agree with you now, so that we can continue to use it in the future.

    Since you consider analysis to be black and white (so much for statistical analysis), I gather that you pride yourself in using emotion to guide your decisions. From what you have written, above, it seems to me, however, that “to compromise and find a reasonable and acceptable balance (what ever that means)” means that you treat elections as popularity contests. You think that Trump is more “likable” than some alternatives. It seems that you don’t choose based upon the one that you most trust to do as *you* wish, as you merely assume that what he says is pandering; the closest interpretation to the definition you presented is ‘promising free stuff.’

    How about trying something new? Why don’t we vote for the candidate who we think is most likely to restore our liberty, then hold his feet to the fire to make sure he does it?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmJrr7yVxJI

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