The woman is clever and smart.
Yes, and no. She is a brilliant opportunist in the sense of being able to leverage the emotions of her party. This definitely requires skill and the Left should give her credit. She has game.
However, she is functionally illiterate when it comes to policy and history. Granted, she would be surrounded by policy advisors in the White House. She would make very few decisions. But she doesn't even have Reagan's policy knowledge, and Reagan was notorious for being under-informed on complicated issues. He was a brilliant leader. He was a brilliant politician. He knew how to
move people - and this cannot be underestimated. In fact, it is arguably more important to find a leader who can move people than a wonkish nerd like Carter (who wrote serious policy papers but could not lead people. FYI: had Reagan tried like Carter to get us off foreign oil, this country would have been saved from what is going to be a very hard landing).
Palin fails the most basic intellectual requirements of the job, despite the fact that she has a wider skill set that is quite impressive and not acknowledged by the Left.
Ron Paul seems to be the only person on the Right that is not a servant of Big Government Conservatism. He is the only guy who wants to stop bankrupting our children and grandchildren with the costs of running the globe. He understands that Washington can't control everything, and when it tries - bad things happen.
The Right has always trusted Washington too much. This is why they gave it the power to remake the Greater Middle East.
Their trust in government bankrupted us. When will they learn? Washington can't run a laundromat on budget, but they want Wahsington to rebuild the Arab world. Reagan did the same thing. He talked about small government, but in the back room he created an uber-Pentagon which is now bankrupting us. He tried to control South America and the Middle East militarily (so he could build a global market system on behalf of the transnationals who funded his ascendancy). . . but, sadly, the bills are coming due and we can no longer afford the tax burden of stabilizing the 3rd world (so large corporations can have access to cheap materials and sweatshop labor).
We are finally bumping into Ronnie's borrowed against future; the tax burden of a militarily stabilized global capitalism - especially when you factor in how much it costs to stabilize the Mideast - is killing us. We have to rebuild this country, not Iraq. And now the wingers want to bomb Iran . . . which will lead to a costly rebuilding/stabilization. When will Republicans learn? Washington is not competent enough to control, or rebuild, or police, or improve the world. If you give it more money and power, Washington will only make things worse.
Attention GOP Voters: stop giving Washington so much money and power to control world events. Stop trusting Big Government so much. We know Dems like to control the world, but we need you to do the opposite because that is
your traditional role.
We can no longer afford your faith in Big Government.
(Don't you get it? Reagan used the Cold War as a context to put military bases around the globe. He did this in order to stabilize the market system, which increasingly benefited a smaller and smaller number of Americans. In the old America, when productivity rose, so did the American standard of living. Wages tracked economic growth. In the new Reaganized global model, when productivity goes up, wages and benefits remain stagnant. Only the profits of a few go up, and they go up wildly. Wages no longer track economic growth. This was the point of the global system. To give capital access to cheap labor, so large corporations didn't have to share their gains with workers in this country. Of course, when the system was initially put in place there was a problem. How would Americans consume if their wages didn't keep up with inflation? Answer: credit cards and household debt. It worked for a while. . . but we broke the bank. Game over.)
