Ahh, Wlady, you cut me deeply. Huckabee? Well-aimed shot. It
smarts. No, I would not prefer Huckabee. Then again, I would not
prefer Huckabee for president even if the only other choice were,
oh, I don't know, Tony Romo in a depression if whatsername Simpson
dumped him.
As for her "irresistible charm," I'm resisting it. Actually, I
don't even see it. What I see is a lady with good values who
doesn't even know what it is that she doesn't know, but who insists
she knows everything. If I had a neighbor like that, I'd build a
higher fence.
As for delusion, I see nothing wrong with people liking a
candidate. What's wrong is when their rooting for a candidate gets
in the way of being able to honestly assess the candidate's faults,
and therefore to honestly assess the relative strength of their
cause. What has bothered me in recent years is the inability of
people to simulataneously approve of a politician on one issue and
disapprove on another. Case in point: When I first returned to
Washington in early 2006, President Bush was still, for whatever
odd reasons, a hero on the right. I wrote a couple of columns and
blog posts critical of him, and I was subjected to absolute
vituperation for not supporting "our" president. A year later, when
his popularity was in the tank, I was subjected to utter
vituperation from the same set of conservatives for having dared to
defend such a traitor to our ranks! Again, it's like people are
choosing a sports team to back: They're either all for it, or all
agin it, and nothing in between.
The key thing is that if conservatives do this too much, they
fail to recognize when their side is in trouble. I dare say that
the one demographic they would want Palin to appeal to would be the
rather apolitical but conservative leaning women in the 30s and 40s
who I watched the debate with last night. If conservatives don't
realize there is something about Palin that comes across as
"calamitous" to that demographic, they are in for a rude
awakening.
Meanwhile, I report now on another rather apolitical guy, this
one in his 40s, very bright, again conservative leaning -- a guy
whose immediate response to the introduction of Palin five weeks
ago was to email me to tell me he was "pumped" and hadn't been so
excited about politics for a long, long time, because with Palin
the GOP finally had come up with the real deal.
Now, here's what he wrote me this morning: "I don't get all this
Republican talk about Palin 'winning' last night.... It was kid
gloves. Biden won because he didn't lose. She lost because she
didn't win."
My point is not to slam Palin. I want her to do well. But if
conservatives don't understand why she and McCain aren't closing
the deal with more people, well, then, they never will be able to
close the deal.
topics:
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