Palin 2012

Sarah Palin continues her bid to be the Nativist Party candidate for President in 2012.

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign. 

[snip]

Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012.

A leading Republican consultant said: “A lot of conservatives are grumbling about what a poor job McCain is doing. They are rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Yes, a miracle could happen, but at this rate it is all over’.

“Sarah Palin is no fool. She sees the same thing and wants to salvage what she can. She is positioning herself for the future. Her best days could be in front of her. She wants to look as though she was the fighter, the person with the spunk who was out there taking it to the Democrats.”

[snip]

A McCain official confirmed that there was dissension in the campaign. “There is always going to be a debate about the costs and benefits of any strategy,” he said. 

Who knew that the strongest attack on McCain’s manhood and honor was going to come from his running mate? 

If I didn’t believe McCain deserves the headache he has with Palin, I’d almost feel sorry for him.

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  1. MadDog says:

    Sarah Palin continues her bid to be the Nativist Party candidate for President in 2012.

    Then Dan Quayle could run again as her VP choice for a match “made in heaven”.

  2. Neil says:

    How much fun would that be, Sarah Palin running in the primaries 50 times. I consider this move the first step. Blame McCain.

  3. TheraP says:

    mcShame will end up nailing the dame to the cross of Shame. He’s not going down without taking her down too. That’s my prediction. These two will end up destroying one another. Bound to happen, say I. How? Nobody’s guess right now!

  4. Rayne says:

    He nourished a viper at his chest. What did he expect?

    That goes for the rest of his party, too; these two, wife and husband, are successionist extremists, who give not a fig for the United States or its Constitution.

    • skdadl says:

      I wish that, after all we’ve been through, one of the debate moderators had asked the candidates to talk about their understanding of their duty to the constitution and the Bill of Rights. (I wish the same had happened here, where it would have been the constitution and the Charter.) I feel I know who could have spoken well to that question, however unexpected, and who would have stumbled.

      • Petrocelli says:

        Happy Thanksgiving, Skdadl and everyone else !

        Did you watch Bill Maher on Friday ?

        That Ocean of Wisdom, Steve Moore (WSJ) said that Palin gave Biden an ass-whupping in their debates … guess that was after everyone left …

        • Neil says:

          yes, I found Steve Moore contemptible.

          Who was the guy from the Simpson’s? He was great. Maxine Waters held her own with Moore waving his hands and touching her on the shoulder repeatedly.

        • skdadl says:

          Happy Turkey Day, Petrocelli and all other Canucks present.

          I’m going to have to look for a YouTube of that, Petrocelli. skdadl does not take kindly to people who diss Biden.

        • Petrocelli says:

          Steve Moore got his *ss handed to him by Dana Gould. Maxine Waters had a coupla great one liners but mainly treated him with silent contempt.

          His constant pawing her shoulder was eerie …

  5. JaneWade says:

    Many folks in Alaska are VERY angry at Palin right now. She hasn’t really done much for the state except bleed the oil companies (which raise our gas prices to pay the tax bill). Having McCain operatives take over state government in hopes of stopping release of the Troopergate report didn’t help. What do you think it would do for her chances in 2012 if she returns home after this election to a recall effort?

    • Mauimom says:

      What do you think it would do for her chances in 2012 if she returns home after this election to a recall effort?

      Go for it!!

      Folks could start the ball rolling by making sure AK goes for Obama, and that Stevens & Young are kicked to the curb.

    • jayt says:

      But her bid to have the whole thing investigated by the Legislative Counsel just blew up in her face:

      Some weeks ago, the McCain team devised a plan to have Palin file an ethics complaint against herself with the State Personnel Board, arguing that it alone was capable of conducting a fair, nonpartisan inquiry into whether she fired Monegan because he refused to fire Wooten, who had been involved in a messy custody battle with her sister. Some Democrats ridiculed the move, noting that the personnel board answered to Palin. But the board ended up hiring an aggressive Anchorage trial lawyer, Timothy Petumenos, as an independent counsel. McCain aides were chagrined to discover that Petumenos was a Democrat who had contributed to Palin’s 2006 opponent for governor, Tony Knowles. Palin is now scheduled to be questioned next week, and the counsel’s report could be released soon after. “We took a gamble when we went to the personnel board,” said a McCain aide who asked not to be identified…..

      http://www.newsweek.com/id/163465

      oh btw, Sarah’s claim of having been cleared won’t work on anyone who has read the report. To the extent that it “cleared” her, it was only in the sense that Monegan was an employee-at-will, who could therefore be fired for any, or no, reason at all.

      • Neil says:

        Good to know there’s another round of investigation coming out soon. Palin and the wingnut right websites is claiming victory and innocence.

    • chrisc says:

      ZOMG…those reporters must be banging their heads against the walls.
      She is in her own made up universe.
      Someday I expect to hear a scientist prove that fundies brains are structurally different.

      I’ve been wondering if Palin and McCain were getting on each other’s mavericky nerves.
      My first clue was that Sarah and her kids pretty much disappeared from Meghan McCain’s blog after the convention. Meghan posted pics from her father’s debate, but none from Sarah’s. Of note is that Rudy Guliani and his wife were supportively there for the McCains in the first debate. In the second debate, it was Joe Liberman who gave McCain his hug before he went on the stage.

      In fact, Meghan and a bunch of friends are now riding around on the Straight Talk Express sans her parents and are amusing themselves by giving tours to boy scouts and the curious, now that her celebrity book tour is over.

      How’s a girl to get herself fashionably noticed with her daddy nosediving and that pitbull in lipstick getting all the attention?

      • bmaz says:

        Um, did you miss this?

        Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

        In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

        Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

        • chrisc says:

          Ha! I knew it. Thanks for the link.

          The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

          And then again, blocking out the reality you don’t want to deal with could lead to unnecessary wars, lack of preparation for natural disasters and global financial meltdown. It is the “shut-up” syndrome. Fox and hate radio have perfected it.

        • R.H. Green says:

          Save your money. This view of human behavior, that the brain, its structure and its functioning, is the CAUSE of behavior is a modern variation of the age-old nature/nurture debate. In my nurturitive view, these studies are flawed and will peter out when the funding becomes more competitive. You have a stimulative situation (an independent variable) such as reading a written problem, say interpreting some political statement, or an arithemetic problem, or even eating a bowl of cereal. Then you take a measure of some activity, such as pet scans of glucose or blood flow, or EEG waves, as a dependent variable. What you can get is a correlation between these variables and the interpretation that the ind. variable induces the activty of the dep. var. However, it’s just as easy to work it the opposite, to suggest that engaging in the behaviors of eating or thinking cause the brain activity.

          Thinking, whether complexly or simplisticly, is learned behavior. If it is noted that those meeting the criteria of being labed as Conservatives think differently than those labeled Liberals, it is much more probably a fuction of learned socio-cultural patterns of verbal and emotional behavior than of how the neurons are connected or some such structural argument.

        • MadDog says:

          I’m a firm believer that lizard-brains are real and have far more influence than nuture supporters seem willing to give credence.

          Both nature and nuture are powerful drivers of behavior. Divining which is more at play in any given situation is likely not possible.

          Heisenberg uncertainty principle and all, doncha know? *g*

        • R.H. Green says:

          “Uncertainty and all…” Funny you should mention “lizard brains”, because that’s exactly the term I was going to use in my next paragraph above. I got interrupted so only sent what I had thought through at that point. Yet the notion of “lizard brains” is only a metaphor; it describes how respondent behavior (that is, reflexive, and more emotional than “intentional”) dominates a behavior pattern. More verbally oriented behavior (while eliciting various emotional reactions) is still operant behavior that is oriented to its consequences, and thus can be viewed as instrumental toward some end, whether that end is solving a puzzle in a lab experiment, or weighing political rhetoric; it can be simplistic or nuanced, as one has cognitively developed. Sure, lizards have lizard brains, but humans do not, and what they “do with what they have” makes all the difference.

          What I was attempting to inject into this conversation (as I have previously)is to discourage people from accepting as truth what scientists say they have proved or demontrated, especially when this “proof” about “human nature” predicts political behavior. The jury is still out with regard to such nature, and data from that discussion has no place in political dialogue. The attempt to assert that superior “brains” accounts for more admirable social and cognitive behavior has been seen before. The Nazis did it, and more recently one Arthur Jensen (an Educational Psychologist) tried to palm off this view in promoting a racist interpretation of human potential.

          Boy, I sure seem to be in a ranty mood today.

        • MadDog says:

          Boy, I sure seem to be in a ranty mood today.

          No problemo, rant away! *g*

          I’d rather hear and read what folks “think”, than what their lizard-brains are telling them.

        • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

          Actually, you are correct in the sense that eating and reading DO cause neurons to fire, etc.
          But as someone with a fair amount of background in how people read, learn, and process info, I can report that it’s clearly the case that people have different ‘cognitive styles’.

          I’ve done some work with kids and adults with learning disabilities. They often have a lot of trouble processing linguistic, written information and it’s incredibly frustrating for them. It takes a LOT of [metabolic] energy and focus for them to learn new things, especially written information. They are often heroic in their efforts to master what most adults would regard as simple tasks: reading an article in the Sports section of a newspaper, or filling out a form.

          For all you know, that personable barrista who poured your latte doesn’t actually read well, so may vote for McCain simply because the amount of metabolic energy required to learn about Obama is so huge for him/her that they actually can’t manage it.

          So someone like that has enough trouble processing information in the first place that if you add ambiguity on top of it, they can behave in hostile, aggressive ways because they feel threatened and think that they ‘look stupid’.

          Ambiguity requires a larger bandwidth than they have.
          So they can sometimes get defensive and think the rest of us are full of sh*t and trying to pull a fast one on them.

        • Hmmm says:

          Thank you very much for that, rotl, it provides a highly understandable model for a dynamic that’s always puzzled and troubled me.

          Hmmm, thinking long term: brain differences + migration/grouping + inter-group enmity = speciation?

        • RevBev says:

          That trouble processing view reminds me exactly of the village idiot from TX….so scary that these folks get hyped and promoted for God know what reasons….or, maybe we do know.

        • cinnamonape says:

          Actually Frank Sulloway is a major proponent of neural response to the environment. His view is that biology is the result of the interaction of genetic potentialities with environmental imputs. His work on personality indicated that birth order, not genetics, had the greatest imput in outcomes. Many of these environmental factors may occur in early childhood, however. Reorganization may become increasingly difficult as one ages, although hormonal shifts may actually create substantive changes.

  6. rosalind says:

    ot: LAT up with an article on Lt. Col. Darrel J. Vandeveld, the Gitmo prosecutor who resigned.

    Vandeveld, who was prosecuting seven tribunal cases — nearly a third of pending cases — has declined to be interviewed about the particulars of the Jawad case. But he did engage in a series of e-mails with The Times about his general concerns, before being “reminded” last week that he could not talk to the press until his release from active duty was final. In the future, he said, he plans to speak out.

    • james says:

      He should look over his shoulder at all times, stop flying immediately, and place a written record of his concerns with lawyers just in case he suffers Bush modus operandi life-ending event to forestall his speaking out. Bush and his accomplices are still liable to prosecution for crimes committed while in office if they leave office.

  7. radiofreewill says:

    This looks like her historical pattern, repeating itself all over again.

    1 – Wink and get close.

    2 – Step-on with contempt.

    How ironic that her ‘crush’ move for McCain begins with planting her heel on his ‘Honor’, when her own ambition knows no bounds.

    I’m with TheraP (that was an excellent Oxdown on Ethics, iidssm!) – the Bush Revolution of No Morality other than Loyalty to the Top is busy Devouring its Children.

  8. Petrocelli says:

    Hey Marcy … a taste of the NeoCons’ ability to establish roots in Canada … A friend of mine is running for M.P. and she visited some projects where disadvantaged minorities were voting for Harper … sad and funny at the same time …

  9. klynn says:

    Just remember her Philly appearance. She WAS booed. And laughed at.

    If she runs in 2012, we can only hope that The Peter’s Principle will come out in an updated edition.

  10. Palli says:

    And now we learn that it was that pompous William Kristol who suggested & convinced the powers that be to install Sarah as the perfect representative of the masses. Talk about “inside the beltway” contempt for the rest of the America’s citizenry! Continuing investigations will lead to everyday corruption: the Wasilla $25 million deficit; the empty hockey arena (built on land she, as mayor, had forgotten to purchase) a stones throw away from the Palin Macmansion her dear hubby and construction “buddies” built; government religious “retreats”, and, probably, the surreal baby fiasco.
    No, I think she is auditioning for FOX.
    But that doesn’t mean I don’t know how dangerous people like her are.

  11. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Who woulda thunk it? Anyone who’d spent five minutes looking at Palin’s climb. She’s proud of those pointy high heels; she wears them with snow shoes and ice climbers, jeans and little black dresses. The way she uses and discards her mentors would give Claudius back his stammer.

    If McCain wins — because scores of Tim Griffins have counted the vote or because we’ve succumbed to another bout of electoral masochism — McCain had better add a few arachnologists to his Secret Service team, and keep an eye out for McPalin’s wristwatch, lest it morph into an hourglass.

  12. WilliamOckham says:

    I know that presidential campaigns are often insular, but Palin must be delusional if she thinks she has a chance in 2012. Two weeks after the election, the conventional wisdom will be that Palin cost McCain his chance at the presidency. The press will go back to swinging on McCain’s tire swing and Palin will go back to Alaska to be an unpopular governor. Even though she’ll still be popular with the Republican base, she’ll get waxed by Huckabee in the primaries in 2012. Palin will be lucky to finish out her term as governor.

  13. freepatriot says:

    Princess pandora, back for more abuse in 2012 ???

    thank you goddess

    to know her is to be repulsed by her

    and she’s gonna be a lot better known in 2012

    a viper in their midst

    goddess knows IRONY

    the repuglitards got their very own “Hillary”, and she’s a doozy …

  14. MadDog says:

    Food for thought:

    Was the McSame/MsBull…winkle campaign chosen/designed to administer that final coup de grâce to the Repug party that Junya and Deadeye threw over the cliff?

    If so, play on McSame/MsBull…winkle! Play on!

  15. wilhoit says:

    I will rephrase what I have said elsewhere: Sarah Palin will inherit the Republican Party without a split second of hesitation or opposition. There is no one, there can be no one, with the combination of the narcissism to want to try to displace her and the ruthlessness to actually do it.

    Her campaign for President will begin on the afternoon of 20 Jan. 2009. Rallies like the ones we have seen in the past couple of weeks, based purely on incitement, will occur nearly every day. It is entirely possible that she will try to set up a sort of shadow Government-in-internal-exile in some of the Red states — no secession, mind you, just pushing the (very wide) limits of what our exhausted system will tolerate. If that succeeds, there will be a substantial self-selecting migration of population, until both camps are sharply defined geographically. Then state borders will begin to close.

      • freepatriot says:

        Petraeus?

        really ???

        Petraeus ???

        the guy who told the world that there is no victory in Iraq ???

        the freepi are really gonna LOVE him for that

        look for macaca allen to make a come back if Obama takes Virginia, or an “up and comer” from one of the red states won by Obama, to contend with princess pandora (if she makes it that far). I’m pretty sure the next front man for the monied repuglitards will be micro-focused on the electoral map

        I don’t have much faith in goddesses chosen vessel. I just don’t think princess pandora is smart enough to destroy the repuglitards. she just might be spiteful enough though

    • bmaz says:

      Naw. Except for some fundies, who themselves may not quite appreciate the futile effort this time out, none of the GOP money centers will give Palin one lick of support. Petraeus.

    • freepatriot says:

      maybe you missed my post about “Burning Atlanta”

      go read Sherman’s letter to the leading citizens of Atlanta (and the letter about “sowing the wind” too)

      just cuz these stupid freepi ain’t capable of remembering the past, that don’t mean I forgot it

      let these freepi migrate somewhere

      if that “somewhere” is within the territorial borders of the United States Of America, get ready to burn

      we burned Atlanta to establish peace, and we burned Columbia South Carolina just for shits and giggles

      what most people don’t understand about the Civil was is that Massachusetts is JUST AS FUCKING CRAZY AS SOUTH CAROLINA

      cept that the rest of the Nation agrees with Massachusetts’ ideas, and we don’t agree with South Carolina’s ideas

      let the freepi gather their 15% of the population with no manufacturing base or independent economy. Let them replace “King Cotton” with “King Oil”

      we all know how this story ends

      which cities do we get to burn, that’s the only question (Anchorage, Boise, I’m lookin at you)

      if you wanna succeed, do it with your fucking feet. you ain’t takin ANY of our territory

      based on the repuglitards past performance, and the presence of fookin nuts like me, the freepi might have a problem findin a new host city …

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Freep, I actually think you’re unfair to Boise.
        Evidently, you’re not aware of the huge Hispanic population there, nor the fact that the Boise has quite an interesting history related to America’s immigrant Basques: http://www.boisebasques.com/

        San Francisco, Chicago, LA, or NY it ain’t.
        But you might be surprised at the demographics of Boise these days.
        And FWIW, I know of more than one ‘Red State Republican’ who went to Obama’s rally in Boise in the past year.

        LIke the rest of the nation, it’s changing.

      • whataretheysmoking says:

        Hey, freepi, I’m from Boise and we vote Democrat. as for the rest of the state, they love the koolaid. Try Pocatello instead.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      Agree with bmaz @35.

      In addition, people need things like jobs, medical care, safe neighborhoods.
      Palin can’t deliver jobs.
      Palin can’t deliver medical care, nor health care policy.
      Palin can’t deliver a worldview on which to base a foreign policy.

      For McCain not to have vetted her was irresponsible, reckless, and shallow.
      Those two deserve each other.

      chrisc – fascinating insights.

  16. rkilowatt says:

    “Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business,” concluded America’s leading 20th century social philosopher John Dewey, and will remain so as long as power resides in “business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press, press agents and other means of publicity and propaganda”.

    Noam Chomsky at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20992.htm

  17. MadDog says:

    Via Think Progress:

    …After Obama criticized the McCain campaign for “riling up a crowd by stoking anger and division,” McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace attacked Obama for “insulting” their supporters:

    “Barack Obama’s assault on our supporters is insulting and unsurprising. These are the same people Obama called ‘bitter’ and attacked for ‘clinging to guns’ and faith. … Attacking our supporters is a new low for the campaign that’s run more millions of dollars of negative ads than any other in history…”

    Only the total delusional, alternate universe, fantasy world residents could swallow this, much less come up with it.

    Oh the stupid…it hurts!

    • bmaz says:

      Hey Nicold, perhaps you should suck on this:

      John McCain’s new message about running a respectful campaign is not filtering out to the troops. Yesterday, I visited the field operations of both campaigns in Virginia, as part of a longer story that I am doing for dead-tree TIME. I arrived at McCain’s new field office in Gainesville just in time to witness this scene, which I wrote about in a dispatch for TIME.com:

      With so much at stake, and time running short, [Virginia Republican Party Chairman Jeff] Frederick did not feel he had the luxury of subtlety. He climbed atop a folding chair to give 30 campaign volunteers who were about to go canvassing door to door their talking points — for instance, the connection between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: “Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon,” he said. “That is scary.” It is also not exactly true — though that distorted reference to Obama’s controversial association with William Ayers, a former 60s radical, was enough to get the volunteers stoked. “And he won’t salute the flag,” one woman added, repeating another myth about Obama. She was quickly topped by a man who called out, “We don’t even know where Senator Obama was really born.” Actually, we do; it’s Hawaii.

      The McCainiacs couldn’t find the truth or honor with a topographic map and a freaking GPS unit.

    • MadDog says:

      You are right! I noticed the same thing when Petraeus last testified before Congress (a couple of months ago?).

      Being a “political” General, and he is all of that, Obama might be wise to take his military advice with a grain of salt.

      Stuff like nod one’s head a lot, and then do what is right.

  18. wilhoit says:

    I have always said that if it ever came to a straight fight between the corporations and the churches, the corporations would lose, instantly and overwhelmingly. Palin represents the triumph of the churches. Business is drawing its last few breaths, like the man who was cut in half and did not realize it.

    Petraeus would probably like to be President if the job were handed to him, very ceremoniously and deferentially, by the regime of the 1787 Constitution, as its last act. I do not think he wants to fight for it and I do not think that he has a hundredth part of Palin’s glove-like fit with the churches.

  19. mkls says:

    Probably too late (knocked on 91 doors today) but still — Palin is the ultimate coyote date.
    McCain dare not lose her (he would lose the base == along with his arm and more) but he can’t win with her attached at the knees and ankules.
    So sad.

  20. yonodeler says:

    Todd should start vetting Sarah’s Cabinet choices now. He is such a thorough guy, and he may may want to do some emailing and stuff, so she should allow him plenty of time and leash. O how handy to have an alpha male who can get down and dirty in the cage.

  21. jdmckay says:

    Who knows what 2012 will look like?

    Watching video on various news services of McPalin campaign events, I’m struck by their dual-microphone back and forth… as much her gestures & body language as her nonsensical content. She consistently reminds me of exploitive evangelicals I’ve seen on the pulpit, pumping up witless listeners w/bull shit in the name of faith (or something). I’ve also seen stuff that leads me to conclude she does this consciously (eg. manipluates) rather than by some delusional religious motive obscurring her awareness of the same.

    Her seriousness in flaming the what-we-don’t-know-about-Obama meme is one sequence.

    I saw another one, which (to best of my knowledge) didn’t get parsed on the liberal blogs: a seemingly sincere questioner @ one of their events said she thought bulk of Alaska oil (I think 3/4 was the # cited) was being “shipped to China”. Palin was visibly taken aback, went off on some nonsensical blabbery… said “there’s laws against that” (or some such vaguery), then Palin concluded by saying something like “the # is less than that” (which it’s not). Her awareness of the disconnect between “drill baby drill” and “export baby export”, and subsequent calculated bull shitting around said disconnect was troubling… in the same way I’ve seen evangelicals pray of particular parishioners in open church meetings to “believe on God” for their new Honda Accord.

    I think blind ambition (thanks John Dean) charactarizes this woman well… The Hockey-Mom-From-Hell AFAIC.

    My visceral response after seeing Rev. Conrad’s invocation @ McPalin’s Davenport rally was: this must be Palin’s influence on planning for these things.

    Right after McCain announced her as VP pick, there was “stuff” on some of the Alaska blogs… interviews w/local waitress and a couple others if I recall, saying she was known to let the racial epithets fly. From what I’ve seen, I suspect that’s true.

    As US/World econ situation deteriorates, in ruminating moments considering how I wish things would turn out and how we got here, I can’t help thinking of disconnect between what Reagan actually did vs. Repubs invocation of his mystical legend: eg. they remember the tax cuts, but not them being revoked. They remember revived economy, but forget it was driven by refrigerator sales/junk bonds & hostile takeovers that raped and pillaged good companies leaving a lot of empty, worthless carcasses. And they attribute to Ronnie dismantling the Soviet Union, while ignoring the nearly incomprehensible “bloodless coup” that happened from w/in… seemingly not really giving a rip about even attempting to comprehend how that happened. (That particular historical manipulation led directly to US losing faith w/Russian’s trust in “capitalism”, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story…)

    All this made up mystique has contributed greatly to GOP motivations that have led to current precipice of disaster.

    However, regarding Palin and her viscous religiosity, I’m reminded of Reagan/Falwell nexus and Ronnie’s welcome and inclusion of religious fundies masquerading as God’s people into a critical mass moving politics in toxic directions. I mention this because both during Falwell’s political days and during tributes after his death, his well documented bigotry was conveniently ignored. A commentary in midst of Falwell’s post mortem “tributes” illustrated the disconnect:

    Like many Southern white ministers, Falwell didn’t sit on the sidelines at the outset of the modern civil rights movement—he joined the opposition.

    “Decades before the forces that now make up the Christian right declared their culture war, Falwell was a rabid segregationist who railed against the civil rights movement from the pulpit of the abandoned backwater bottling plant he converted into Thomas Road Baptist Church,” Max Blumenthal writes in an insightful article in The Nation magazine. “This opening episode of Falwell’s life, studiously overlooked by his friends, naively unacknowledged by many of his chroniclers, and puzzlingly and glaringly omitted in the obituaries of the Washington Post and New York Times, is essential to understanding his historical significance in galvanizing the Christian right. Indeed, it was race—not abortion or the attendant suite of so-called ‘values’ issues—that propelled Falwell and his evangelical allies into political activism.”

    Four years after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education outlawing segregated public schools, Falwell gave a speech titled, “Segregation or Integration.”

    His message was unmistakably clear:

    “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn the line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”

    The argument that God ordained segregation and white supremacy was advanced by many southern white ministers. We should not forget that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was written to his colleagues of the cloth. The letter, written April 16, 1963, said, in part:

    “I have been disappointed with the church… When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies.

    “Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”

    Everything I’ve seen from Palin reminds me of this… a bigoted and self-seeking wolf in sheep’s clothing masquerading as a purveyor of the faith. Very dangerous woman IMO.

  22. perris says:

    aha, bmaz just reminded me of this thead from the lake

    it is hard to believe mccain does not have the balls to just dump this moron

    that might be his only chance right now too, he might actually get a bump if he picks somebody credible

    she has been his biggest liability, losing far more votes then she gained on his behalf, he already has the finances she was able to gain for him

    if he has an ounce of manhood he dumps this moron

  23. brendanx says:

    Nativist Party

    Yes. This is what neoconservatives are really afraid of, a Buchananite heading the party. See David Brooks or Charles Krauthammer.