Slate..Sarah Palin's brand of populism is dangerous and deceptive.

[Ichingcarpenter]

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant "independent." (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn't disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some of it. She hadn't exactly said that God was on our side in Iraq, only that God and the United States were on the same side. She says that she left the University of Hawaii after only one year because the climate was too sunny for an Alaskan; her father (whom she considers practically infallible) tells her most recent biographers that she quit because of the preponderance of Asian and Pacific islanders: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous. So she came home." And so on. As I tried to summarize the repeated tactic:

So there it is: anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be "deniable") to the paranoid fringe element who darkly suggest that our president is a Kenyan communist.
Last week, the new darling of the right did her best to vindicate me. She appeared on the radio show of a certain Rusty Humphries,

What price the courageous frontier huntress now—an empty-headed echo chamber for rumor-mongers and freaks who shoots from ambush and then runs away? Some condescending right-wing intellectuals are calling her style "populist" and comparing it with Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan. The true name for it is demagogy, descending from Joseph McCarthy, Robert Welch, and the nastier elements of the old Nixon gang—people to whom slander and defamation was second nature.

http://www.slate.com/id/2237638/pagenum/2

[barbtries]

1. excellent article

my favorite part:
She appeared on the radio show of a certain Rusty Humphries, another steaming and hearty slice of good-old U.S. prime, and was asked whether she would make an issue of President Barack Obama's birth certificate. Her response: "I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I think it's a fair question." That was on Thursday, Dec. 3. On Friday, she had published a second "thought" on her Facebook page, reassuring all and sundry that: "At no point have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate, or suggested that he was not born in the United States."

Well, exactly. Of course she hasn't. She just thinks it's a good idea for others to do that, in their "rightful" way, since, after all, it is "a fair question."

Could anything be more cowardly and contemptible?

[SergeStorms]

2. Unfortunately many Americans......

can't, or won't, see it that way. She reinforces their prejudices, their ignorance and hate. They see her as a straight talkin', pistol packin' Mama. :puke: That she's as ignorant as a basket full of clam shells escapes them. She's one of them, she tells them what they want to hear.
What a sad, sad world we live in.

[AusDem]

3. this guy is awesome

too bad he missed. would've made good photos.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30334.html

[Aragorn]

4. she's just late:

Wallace/Palin might have got the nomination too.

[blue97keet]

5. We need some ECONOMIC populism

and social cultural gloppy-goop just doesn't register. Palin is irrelevant.

[Danascot]

6. Jay Leno had it about right:

She quit her job as governor, she has a book out she didn't write, she's doing her bus tour by private jet and her main complaint is that politicians aren't real enough.

[Myrina]

8. ... and she dropped out of - what - 3 colleges?

Big L for Loser.

[Moostache]

7. "President Palin" would signify that the USA has gone down for the count.

IF this country were ever stupid enough to elect that moron to anything ever again, then I guess we would actually be deserving of the disastrous consequences. Canada - especially Montreal or Toronto - would be looking VERY good!