Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Pat Buchanan: Johnny's got a "new girl"

A girl?

2 comments:

sportsone234 said...

This is the only name on your list that I disagree with. Pat Buchanan is a strong supporter of McCain.

One off hand remark, shouldn't put him on your list.

Jstant said...

Actually, the admittedly sexist phrase "Johnny's got a 'new girl'" is the only part of his op-ed that has proven to be accurate. If you want to see sexism in regards to Pailn, look no further than why she was chosen in the 1st place. 50% had to do with her ideology which was meant to solidify the GOP base (translation: keep the far right happy) and the other component of her selection was her appearance (translation: get a milf to keep the huntin', Playboy readin', NASCAR, Joe 12-pack crowd all worked up). Just as McCain found "new girl" Cindy when he returned from Vietnam, he found himself another looker for GOP, although to be fair, apparently she wasn't his 1st choice.
Check out how very off base Buchanan was though in the rest of his analysis...
"a speech that vaulted him from a 2-point deficit early in the week to an 8-point margin. Barack had never before reached 49 percent against McCain"

Well, being that she had experience as a newsreader, it's not surprising that her speech at the GOP convention was the apex of her stint as VP nominee. When left to her own devices, she proved to be shall we say, less impressive.

"By passing over his friends Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, and picking Palin, McCain has given himself a fighting chance of winning the White House"

When all was said and done, the choice of Palin helped to sink his chances. Her disastrous interviews, which any impartial observer would attest to, were not the kind of "gotcha" questions that she and her defenders have claimed them to be. Mike Huckabee's recent remarks concerning this are a breath of fresh air compared to the myth, spin and revisionist history being put forth by SP and her (largely male, star-struck) defenders.

"But the lady has more executive experience than McCain, Joe Biden and Obama put together."

This is so laughable it doesn't bear a reply. But, hey, what the hell...I'll lower myself and do it anyway, so as not to be looked at as avoiding the question...after all it wouldn't be intellectually honest if I said something like "well, maybe I'm not going to address the points in the article the way some of you readers and bloggers would want, I'm just going to speak directly to the American people, wink-wink..."

I come from a small town in western PA of about 7,000 people. Even if they were governor of the state for a short while (which would not happen, trust me...PA is not Alaska) can you honestly say that the mayor of our town would be more suited to run the country than McCain or Obama? Please...

"from the day she takes office, Palin will get daily briefings and sit on the National Security Council with the president and secretaries of state, treasury and defense.
She will be up to speed in her first year."

As the campaign went on, it became abundantly clear that Palin had no use for real preparation. Like with George W.Bush, she has no intellectual curiousty, only scorn for those that pause to think, learn, and condsider. She basically thought she could just wing it and get by on personality, charm, and looks. She soon found out though, that running for VP wasn't like being in a beauty contest. The big fish in the smallest pond imaginable was suddenly thrown in at the deep end and was revealed to be woefully out of her depth. Even casting aside the disastrous interviews with Gibson and Couric, after the GOP convention, one could fairly claim that her next best moment was her debarte against Biden, where her flacks hailed her as being triumphant, basically because she managed to survive without completely imploding. It's like saying that a prize fighter won because although they took an incredible beating for 12 rounds, they were never knocked out. She hung on to the guy pummeling her and was still standing at the end, but that isn't exactly a victory, at least not in the real world.

"The Palin nomination could backfire, but it is hard to see how."

It did, by merely letting Palin be Palin. She sunk herself, not the media. And then she complains that she was reined in too much. Could you imagine what it would have been like if she were completely left to her own devices?

Until the GOP figures out that they have to serve the people first, and not their party and special interest groups (yes, the GOP has them, just the Dems do), they will continue their slide into irrelevance.