{"id":1857,"date":"2009-07-08T08:21:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T13:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/?p=1857"},"modified":"2009-07-08T08:21:53","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T13:21:53","slug":"the-palin-puzzle-by-michael-s-smith-ii-schotline-contributing-edito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/the-palin-puzzle-by-michael-s-smith-ii-schotline-contributing-edito\/","title":{"rendered":"The Palin Puzzle: by Michael S. Smith II, SCHotline Contributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Palin\u00a0Puzzle<\/a><\/h2>\n

July 8, 2009<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\"MichaelSSmithII\"<\/p>\n

The Palin Puzzle<\/span><\/a>By Michael S. Smith II, SCHotline Contributing Editor<\/a><\/p>\n

On July 6, I enjoyed a nice lunch with an old friend and mentor of sorts. My friend, who shall remain nameless, is a Charleston transplant \u2014 or \u201ccomeyah\u201d if you must \u2014 of D.C. origins. He was very involved with the Reagan, Bush and other Bush administrations\u2019 efforts, both in formal and informal capacities. He is also the author of one of the most significant pieces of legislation which outlines the tenets of one of the most significant U.S. foreign-economic policies for the Western Hemisphere \u2014 that bill shall remain nameless, too.<\/p>\n

Despite his decampment from D.C. several years ago, my friend\u2019s relationships with the most insider of insider conservatives from within the Beltway have remained intact. Time and time again, events prove my friend has more than just a prescient feel for the pulse of the Republican Party\u2019s heartbeats. Given such, I was delighted by his brief inclination to address the news of Sarah Palin\u2019s decision to resign her post as governor in order to, ostensibly, pursue a Reaganesque stump tour about the Lower 48.<\/p>\n

While our conversation was mostly limited to conjecture, here is a summary:<\/p>\n

To begin, Gov. Palin has been bombarded by a maelstrom of muck of all imaginable form since John McCain added her to his ticket last year. She was not prepared for the fallout that would ensue.<\/p>\n

(Mention of the appointment stirred my memories of a question directed to John McCain during the pre-event event part of his last major fundraising appearance in South Carolina in 2008. A member of the crowd of 50 or so of us who gathered for the private reception Sen. Graham hosted for John McCain asked something along the line of, \u201cCan you tell us who your vice presidential pick might resemble?\u201d The honored guest bullied his host a bit as he replied: \u201cAnybody but Lindsey Graham.\u201d How true those words ring in retrospect.)<\/p>\n

If wearing Sarah Palin\u2019s shoes, boots or whatever (just don\u2019t get too carried away with your imagination!), most in their right minds would seriously consider resignation a worthwhile option. However, most aspiring to ascend to a higher office would quickly clear that option from the table \u2014 at least if they\u2019re planning to run for that office in the immediate future.<\/p>\n

My friend, waxing typical academic wonkishness, asserted: The resignation makes sense if Palin is planning to move south in order to pursue a master\u2019s or doctorate degree in foreign affairs or some other area of study that will strengthen her ability to position substantive comments on bigger issues that matter to our country. Still, we agreed that\u2019s as unlikely an If as a Palin appearance on David Letterman\u2019s show since Letterman called her daughter a quiff.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s driving Sarah\u2019s latest move? Probably the same sorts of things that diverted John McCain\u2019s attention away from the economy last year, not to mention the same sorts of things that prompted Gov. Sanford to divulge the details of his tryst in Argentina in the utterly bizarre manner he did two weeks ago \u2014 bad advice from too many clueless \u201cpolitical consultants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simply put, it may be that Palin has surrounded herself with too many yes-(wo)men. If this is true, the lenses of her political glasses may be becoming so blurred by the steaming piles of sycophantcy surrounding her that the ship of Palin-post-governor-of-Alaska has been rendered rudderless. In other words, the same sort of group-thinkish approaches to determining \u201cnext steps\u201d that proved so poisonous for the Bush-Cheney foreign policy establishment\u2019s endeavors appear, from a distance, to be sabotaging Palin\u2019s political future.
\n\u201cCan she become president in 2012?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d my friend replied, adding: \u201cShe won\u2019t even win the primary.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to him, when it comes to having what it takes to debate with someone like Barack Obama, the Empress of \u201cVictory 2008\u2033 would quickly discover she has \u201cno clothes,\u201d figuratively speaking that is. The only way she\u2019d stand a chance of making the White House her family\u2019s future home in 2012 would be for tragic events to position Joe Biden as her competitor \u2014 and that\u2019s if, by some miracle, Palin can pull off a primary win.<\/p>\n

One\u2019s ability to back-door their way past the others who lined up for the Veepstakes last year is hardly something that will position that person as a serious candidate for the presidency three years from now.<\/p>\n

If she\u2019s as calculating and rational as we presume she may be, Sarah Palin will not position herself as a big-ticket item for at least another six and a half years.<\/p>\n

-#####-<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Palin\u00a0Puzzle July 8, 2009 The Palin PuzzleBy Michael S. Smith II, SCHotline Contributing Editor On July 6, I enjoyed a nice lunch with an old friend and mentor of sorts. My friend, who shall remain nameless, is a Charleston transplant \u2014 or \u201ccomeyah\u201d if you must \u2014 of D.C. origins. He was very involved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-tX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}