Joe Scarborough is attempting the impossible dream–he is admonishing is fellow Republicans to man up and confront Sarah Palin. Today, on Morning Joe, he desperately tried to get Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona to admit that Sarah Palin was simply not qualified to be president. The good congressman talked around the question and Joe kept asking. Shadegg never would say it publicly. Mika and Joe both insist that every Republican they talk to off set says Ms. Palin simply isn’t qualified. However none will publicly state their opinion:
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Here is what Joe Scarborough said in his opinion piece in Politico today:
Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private.
Scarborough outlines the problem until he begins to discuss President George Herbert Walker Bush. Then Scarborough takes on a more personal tone:
Palin was perturbed that a former president and his wife would dare to answer a question about whom they preferred for president in 2012. Perhaps her anger was understandable. After all, these disconnected “blue bloods” had nothing in their backgrounds that could ever make them understand “real America” like a former governor from Alaska who quit in the middle of her first term and then got rich.
Maybe Richards and Palinwere right. Maybe poor George Herbert Walker Bush was born witha silver spoon in his mouth. Indeed, he was so pampered growing up that on his 18th birthday, the young high school graduate enlisted in the armed forces. This spoiled teenager somehow managed to be the youngest pilot in the Navy when he received his wings, flying 58 combat missions over the Pacific during World War II. On Sept. 2, 1944, “Blue Blood” Bush almost lost his life after being shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire.
With his engine shattered and his plane on fire, Bush still refused to turn back, completing his mission by scoring several damaging hits on enemy targets. His plane crashed in the Pacific, where he waited for four hours in enemy waters until he was finally rescued. For his bravery and service to this country, Bush was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, three air medals and the Presidential Unit Citation for bravery while in combat.
What a spoiled brat.
I suppose Palin’s harsh dismissal of this great man is more understandable after one reads her biography and realizes that, like Bush, she accomplished a great deal in her early 20s. Who wouldn’t agree that finishing third in the Miss Alaska beauty contest is every bit as treacherous as risking your life in military combat? Maybe the beauty contestant who would one day be a reality star and former governor didn’t win the Distinguished Flying Cross, but the half-termer was selected as Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants.
And now a point of personal privilege. I work hard every day to assume the best of Americans who engage in public service. But I am offended by Palin’s attempt to build herself up by tearing down great men like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Palin is not a stupid woman. But like the current president, she still does not know what she does not know. And she does know how to make millions of dollars, even if she embarrasses herself while doing it.
That reality hardly makes Palin unique, but this is one Republican who would prefer that the former half-term governor promote her reality shows and hawk her books without demeaning the reputations of Presidents Reagan and Bush. These great men dedicated their lives to public service and are too good to be fodder for her gaudy circus sideshow.
If Republicans want to embrace Palin as a cultural icon whose anti-intellectualism fulfills a base political need, then have at it. I suppose it’s cheaper than therapy.
But if the party of Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubiowants to return to the White House anytime soon, it’s time that Republican leaders started standing up and speaking the truth to Palin.
It appears that it’s the “in thing” to bash the Old Guard of the GOP. Corey Stewart did it early in the week. His remarks will not go unpunished. Neither will Sarah Palin’s. Regardless of how Tea Party and against the establishment in Washington these 2 upstarts want to get, there is just something about honoring those who have paved the way. Dissing Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush or even George Allen isn’t the ticket to ride to higher office. It is political naivete on a scale that simply disqualifies these 2 for public office.
Good for Joe Scarborough for saying what needed to be said. His opinion piece can be read in full at Politico.com.
Let me rephrase…it isn’t about gender with most democrats and independents. It is about qualifications. A male Sarah Palin would meet with the same response from them.
Afraid I can’t say the same for Republicans but I wouldn’t speak for them anyway.
Check out this opinion piece.
And Wolverine, may I give you the same advice I give Mr. Howler? (I don’t ask him permission.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120304485.html
Apparently it IS about race though. Obama didn’t get elected on his qualifications. Hilary had more than he did. Which still wasn’t much.
Moon, you’ve got to realize that this gender thing is comparatively new for the Repubs, which is why they are handling it so gingerly with Palin. The conservative elements of the Repubs were largely feet draggers and came very late to that game called “Break the Glass Ceiling.” It was mostly liberal Dem women and a few moderate-to-liberal Repub women who were the first to start wrestling in earnest with that ceiling, with the principal non-liberal exceptions being in the business world rather than the political world. Consequently the Repubs are, in my opinion, on sort of unfamiliar ground and are trying to avoid mistakes here because, for the first time in years, there is a larger percentage of the female vote which tends to be conservate or moderate-to-conservative and is available if the strategy is right. The Tea Party opened this box, and there isn’t a man jack in the Repub leadership who should be stupid enough to try to close it back up now.
If the Repub “leadership” starts firing artillery salvos at Palin in any other way than what is clearly a gender neutral political contest, many of those salvos will start going past Palin and landing in the very area where you do not want to lose support. There seems to be no point in taking such a risk this far out from the next election. Where the gender neutral opposition kicks in is when the conversations and subsequently the debates turn for real to the issues and require more detail. That is when Palin will have to show if she has the right stuff. We are still in the soundbite stage, with more concentration focused on the new Congress. Until we see what that Congress does and how Obama handles the new set of circumstances, the public debate will remain, in my view, largely soundbite — as in “cut the damned spending” rather than providing a detailed list of cuts from the perspective of those outside the Congress and Administration. But, when the next phase does arrive, it is very plain that Palin will no longer be able to depend on the soundbites and will have to learn to swim or she will sink just like any other pol who can’t cut the mustard when the devil is in the details..