Over at the National Review my boy Charles C. Cooke puts into words much more elegantly what I said in the post below.
Last year, long before Trump made his ambitions clear, I submitted that if one "wanted to find a figure to which Palin can be reasonably compared . . . it’s not Ronald Reagan. . . . It’s Donald Trump." And so it has come to pass. Like Palin, Trump has mastered the art of the interminable ramble, the purpose of which is not to convey meaning or to advance a useful argument but to stun the audience into dumb submission. Like Palin, Trump has embraced his ignorance and wielded it as a sign of strength and normality against the ever-protean "elite." And, like Palin, Trump has betrayed his desire to fix the political system not by mastering or replacing it, but by becoming it. This isn’t an insurgency, it’s a shakedown. And the conmen are moving in packs.
He's a bit harsh there on Sarah, I've never considered her ignorant. In fact, her political knowledge as a sitting governor is vastly superior to Trump. And a lot of her policy statements and predictions have been quite accurate and prescient. Still . . .
What, we might ask, has become of Palin’s beloved Tea Party? What, too, of her purported admiration for limited government, and of her ostensible hatred of heretics and fakers? The prospect of a mass movement that was earnestly committed to libertarianism was always a little too good to be true, but even I didn’t imagine it ending like this. All that talk of the Constitution and the Declaration; all that energy expended against the cronies and the rent-seekers; all those purifying voter drives — and for what? So that Sarah Palin could add a few zeroes to her bank balance and Donald Trump could go from the purchaser to the bought? Today was the day that Rick Santelli’s famous yelp finally melted into populism and avarice. Today, at about ten minutes past six, P. T. Barnum beat out Hayek for the soul of the insurgent Right. Today, the rebels became the charlatans they had set out to depose. What comes next will be anybody’s guess.
He's 100% right in this last bit, as I said below . . . Sarah has sold out the Tea Party and Constitutional conservatives who have stood by her for 8 years now.
Good luck on the money train, babe. I'm sure you'll get a lot of speaking engagements at Trump's casinos in the future.
Over at the NY Daily News conservative columnist S.E. Cupp chimes in:
If his world-view weren’t enough to make Palin cringe, Trump's inauthenticity as an anti-establishment candidate should be. Palin admirably took on what she called the "good old boy network" to become Alaska’s first female governor. Now, she leaps to support a guy who helped create that network and who thrives in it. In what bizarre world is a billionaire real estate mogul who donates money to Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid "anti-establishment"?
The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008 — the one who campaigned tirelessly and many times thanklessly for John McCain, a war veteran Trump has openly mocked — would have seen through Trump’s charlatan candidacy. The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008, a devout Christian whose faith was constantly scrutinized by the secular left, would have no affection for a man who is constantly scrutinizing the devout Christian faiths of other conservative candidates.
The Sarah Palin I knew in 2008, who was a passionate and fearless voice for hockey moms, mama grizzlies and women everywhere, all while enduring patently sexist attacks from the left, wouldn’t have supported a man who calls other women bimbos and slobs, thinks women who breast-feed and go to the bathroom are "disgusting," and criticizes another candidate for her looks.
That Sarah Palin is gone. Maybe one day, over a beer, she’ll tell me why.
And finally Glenn Beck has an appropriate last word about this endorsement on his Facebook page:
Sarah Palin
Small Government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and the constitution?
Not any more.
Big government, bailouts, executive orders, not just abortion but partial birth abortion, nationalizing of banks, stimulus, pathway to citizenship.
All of these views were held by Donald Trump during this administration. Pathway to citizenship in 2013. Some as recently as last year.
What was the massive pivot point to make him change so fundamentally?
When Sarah and the tea party won a hard fought election and were under attack in 2010, DJT was giving money to Pelosi, Reid and Rahm.
I couldn’t disagree with her more but she has played the game now for years. Perhaps she knows more than those of us still on the outside.
Maybe the press was right about her but for all of the wrong reasons.
2 comments:
I stopped listening to her endorcement after she said he wasn't elitist and hung out with the common man. What bullshit! What happened to her?
I hate to admit it, but her endorsement was exactly what Cooke called it in his article -- rambling nonsense.
She seems like someone who's become addicted to the celebrity of her brand, like the stereotyped rock star who becomes rich and lazy and loses touch with the fire and authenticity that brought him fame in the first place -- Sarah has lost touch with what made her so popular among so many conservatives.
Such a waste :-(
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