There Is No Plan

Sarah Palin either didn’t have the stomach for the fight or she listened to the wrong advice, and paid attention to the polls, and commentary from the lazy lamestream media. I find it hard to believe it was the former and almost certain she felt she couldn’t win, because she believed she’d enter the race as a second tier candidate. But the rise of Herman Cain, an utterly flawed, intellectually inadequate and often loopy candidate, from the third tier to first (temporarily) shows just how discombobulated and incoherent the GOP base truly is. They don’t know what they want.

All of which tells Thereisnoplan, that far from being settled as a race, this thing hasn’t even started yet. There’s hope for everyone in the game, from Newt to Huntsman too, although Cain probably has more chance of scooping the nomination than Huntsman has. Palin would have entered the race last, the way she probably wanted it, and would have risen up the ranks fast. Why? Because she’s a celebrity in a media-saturated world, and she actually gave a stump speech in Indianola, Iowa, that made a lot of sense – that’s not a misprint. It tapped into the America-wide turbulence that every other candidate has failed to understand.

I admit that I watch Palin like other people watch the hip-swinging of the Kardashians. But I feel she made a genuine mistake, and what was a really boring contest, is now about to become utterly soporific.

Sarah Palin had plenty of opportunity to jump into the ring, and make hay in Iowa at the expense of her lookalike Michelle Bachmann. But with the Iowa Straw Poll this Sunday in Ames, IA, it looks like she’s gonna continue to be a no-show in this race, despite the fact that poor Barack just can’t seem to catch a break, and Sarah is running second without running at all. It’s beginning to look like she’s not stepping up.

Thereisnoplan is surprised. Not because she’s missing a golden opportunity to show us the ‘real’ Sarah Palin, but because this campaign was a great big BP fastball for a rampant egotist like Palin, and the consequences of not running might seem to be too horrific to imagine for someone like the ‘cuda. A retreat to post-celebrity status for an ego like that would seem to be fate worse than death.

We’re going to have to make do with Bachmann, it seems. But at least we have her outrageously not gay husband to keep us all amused in the coming months.

The Tea Party is one unhappy camper.

The fuse was lit on Tuesday night, when the Tea Party prevented the GOP from taking the Senate even though Rubio, Paul, and Johnson are now in one way or another Tea Party Senators who trashed some pretty stiff Democratic (or in the case of Florida, Independent, opposition).  Regardless of that. the Republican Senate leadership was more than a little unhappy about not getting all those juicy chairmanships, and they began to grumble. It’s small comfort to them that the co-opting of Tea Party energy by GOP leaders was a critical part of the independent switch from Democrat to Republican that led to the hurt on Obama on November 2.

Sure, their House counterparts can claim what looks like a pretty profound short-term victory out of it,  But the writing is on the wall.  Underpinning this ‘success’ is a sacrifice that will ultimately doom the GOP. I predict that by 2016, the Tea Party will begin to field its own candidates fighting Republicans and Democrats, splitting the right wing vote and consigning the GOP to the dustbin of history.

What makes me so confident? Here are a few reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

me very smart

With her celebrity dwindling by the hour, Sarah Palin must be auditioning for a talk show.. There really is no other explanation for why Alaska’s Number One lightweight would be prancing around the media. Or is the media prancing around her. One media outlet called it “The Sarah Show”. I know the average GOP Governor is a serious non-entity, but still that seems just a tad unfair. A lot of these guys might even be called competent on a good day. Of course the reason that it was her show is that without her ‘celebrity’ the event would have been as much fun as a country club fundraiser for John McCain.

Palin’s pronouncements at the GOP Governor’s Conference had all the newsworthiness of the Conference hotel lunch menu but that didn’t stop her every vacuous word being splashed on every news outlet. Parsing her statements is a like panning for gold on the town beach. There ain’t nothing there, but in the interregnum before Obama’s inauguration, this is what I suppose passes for news. One only wishes that there was at least a little irony left in the world.

Tim Pawlenty, the put upon Governor of Minnesota called Palin’s speech “interesting”. The media seemed to agree – albeit in a slightly different way – by jamming into the conference to get close to last week’s political celebrity. What they got was no-thing, except empty headlines.

The media’s ability to understand a story is dwindling to the point of absurdity. She’s history. She’s yesterday’s news. What she thinks does not matter. Enough already.

Sarah Palin got a taste of the big time and she clearly liked it very, very much. One can only imagine how painful it was to step off the campaign plane into the frigid gloom of Wasilla, AK. For all her talk of small town values, it seems to be the last place she wants to be. And you can understand her reticence. Sorting through her Valentino and Versace as an eagle-eyed GOP lawyer holds a clipboard behind her. Returning to an Alaska where oil prices (and therefore her popularity) are sinking. It’s no coincidence she’s doing interviews with just about everyone with a camera or microphone to talk about her future.

As if she has one. Read the rest of this entry »

Every week we’re presented with a new word du jour. This week it’s “Transformative”, as in, “wow, that election was way transformative.” The herd of sheep that used to be the Press have made it their own and now it’s everywhere, replacing such gems as “game-changer”, “meltdown”, and “bailout”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as happy as anyone that the GOP brats can no longer continue trying to drown the puppy that is the United States. But let’s not be too hasty about how “transformative” this election was. Perhaps a little trip down memory lane might help. Read the rest of this entry »