Showing posts with label Republican news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican news. Show all posts

Thursday, August 07, 2014

My New Dick — Sarah Palin channels a President

[ATIT reheated, from five years ago]

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor
Illustrations by Jack Brummet, All This Is That Arts and Letters Editor

On July 3, 2009, Governor Sarah Palin announced that she would not run for re-election in the 2010 Alaska election and would resign by the end of the month. Palin stated that since August 2008, she and the state had been expending an "insane" amount of time and money ($2.5 million) responding to "opposition research", 150 Freedom of Information Act requests and 15 "frivolous" legal ethics complaints filed by "political operatives" against her. 

As I watched Palin's strangely jangled and jittery "resignation speech" last week, I was reminded of another speech--Richard Nixon's famous "last press conference" after losing the 1962 Governor's race in California (to Jerry Brown's dad no less). Not unlike Sarah Palin, the press rode Dick pretty hard, put him away wet, and eventually he came a little unglued. The night of his gubernatorial trouncing, he listened to his bitter staffers, and finally snapped. He went out to give his concession speech. It was a rambling sixteen minute affair tinged with bitterness toward the press and his critics. Sound familiar?


"I leave you gentleman now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. . ."
Dick Nixon had been called a user car salesman, red baiter, Ike's lapdog and all the rest. Sarah Palin, after the rogering she received from the press in the election, and following the final, staggering blow of last week's savage Vanity Fair article, and the unending lawsuits and investigations, decided to throw in the towel. On this chapter. Palin resigned as Governor and, like Nixon, did not talk about the future. But keep your eyes peeled. She is running, and resigning from office will only enable her to run stronger, faster, and harder. Like it or not, Sarah Palin has a base. And all it takes to become President is building on that base. Remaining as governor would not help build that base; staying in office will only lead to further diminution of her reputation. Now she needs to do her homework, start campaigning for other politicians, mend fences, collect I.O.U.s, travel, give speeches, and begin nipping at Mitt Romney's bootheels.




The media is wrong. Sarah is making the smart move. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere (well, Georgia) with no base and far less name recognition. And he got to the big seat, trouncing a sitting President. Palin needs major rehab to her damaged political image--the damage caused by media and liberals, and most importantly, her self-inflicted wounds.

Soon to be Ex-Governor Palin will have to go to war with the Republican Establishment. She can easily best the Band of Clowns left to defend the blown husk of the G.O.P.

Compare Nixon's speech -- Listen to the audio of Nixon's infamous speech via the History Channel -- to the Palin resignation speech:






Dick Nixon was elected President of the United States of America exactly six years after his "last press conference."

[Ed's note] Paul Constant wrote in The Stranger on July 29 2014 that "She's a political figure who has spent every last dime of political capital that she earned through her half-term as governor of Alaska and as a failed vice presidential candidate. Politically, she's washed up. She has no power. Nobody who works in Washington, DC, owes her favors. Her fan base has shrunk to a few hundred thousand unfettered loons, meaning she doesn't even have the ability to promote change through petition or boycott anymore...."
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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sarah Palin tidbits from Going Rogue and her Equire interview



By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

Obviously, we enjoy covering the Ex-Governor. Having her very book in our hands, make it even more interesting. I am including some nuggets from her recent Esquire interview, along with passages from her new book: Going Rogue, An American Life (take advantage of the price wars, and buy the hardcover at Amazon and elsewhere for $9).


On bloggers, and pesky journalists:

"Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie annoy me....I'll tell you, yesterday the Anchorage Daily News, they called again to ask — double-, triple-, quadruple-check — who is Trig's real mom. And I said, Come on, are you kidding me? We're gonna answer this? Do you not believe me or my doctor? And they said, No, it's been quite cryptic the way that my son's birth has been discussed. And I thought, Okay, more indication of continued problems in the world of journalism." [Esquire]

On seeing Russia from Alaska:

"You have to let it go. Even hard news sources, credible news sources — the comment about, you can see Russia from Alaska. You can! You can see Russia from Alaska. Something like that — a factual statement that was taken out of context and mocked — what you have to do is let that go." [Esquire]

How Alaska and NYC are the same:



"I would think we all tear up during the national anthem at the beginning of a baseball game, don't we? That's an alikeness between Alaskans and New Yorkers." [Esquire]

How she'd have run the campaign:

"If I were giving advice to myself back on the day my candidacy was announced, I'd say, Tell the campaign that you'll be callin' some of the shots. Don't just assume that they know you well enough to make all your decisions for ya. Let them know that you're the CEO of a state, you're forty-four years old, you've got a lot of great life experience that can be put to good use as a candidate." [Esquire]

On Saturday Night Live:

"I'd been a fan of SNL for decades, and I have a lot of respect for the present talent. I knew it would be a good thing to be a part of. And also, of course, to let Americans know that I can laugh at myself, too." [Esquire]



On McCain strategist Steve Schmidt:

“Schmidt issued a threat that was veiled enough for deniability but clear as day if you were on the receiving end: if there were are any more leaks critical of anybody in the handling of Sarah Palin, then a lot more negative stuff would be said about Sarah Palin.” [Going Rogue]

On the prank call from "the President of France":

“One of the first calls was Schmidt, and the force of his screaming blew my hair back. ‘How can anyone be so stupid?! Why would the president of France call a vice presidential candidate a few days out?"

“Good question, I thought. Weren’t you the ones who set this up?

“As Schmidt’s rant blazed on, I pictured cell towers between D.C. and Florida bursting into flame. I held the phone slightly away from my head.”
[Going Rogue]

On Karl Marx and big business:



"In national politics, some feel that big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy," she writes. "Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is bad for people. (That's what Karl Marx thought too.)" [Going Rogue]

Quoting her father on her decision to resign as Governor:

"Sarah's not retreating, she's reloading." [Going Rogue]

Sarah waxes poetic:

"It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. With the gray Talkeetna Mountains in the distance and the first light covering of snow about to descend on Pioneer Peak, I breathed in an autumn bouquet that combined everything small-town America with rugged splashes of the Last Frontier. Cotton candy and footlong hot dogs. Halibut tacos and reindeer sausage. Banjo music playing at the Blue Bonnet Stage, baleen etchings, grass-woven Eskimo baskets, and record-breaking giant vegetables grown under the midnight sun." [Going Rogue]

On the "Free Sarah" movement, and the devastating Couric interview:

"By the third week in September, a “Free Sarah” campaign was under way and the press at large was growing increasingly critical of the McCain camp’s decision to keep me, my family and friends back home, and my governor’s staff all bottled up. Meanwhile, the question of which news outlet would land the first interview was a big deal, as it always is with a major party candidate.

"From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.

“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn't have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.

"Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”

"I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?

"Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”

"Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.

“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.”
[Going Rogue]

On the media "blackout" (from Chapter 4):

"Meanwhile, the media blackout continued. It got so bad that a couple of times I had a friend in Anchorage track down phone numbers for me, and then I snuck in calls to folks like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and someone I thought was Larry Kudlow but turned out to be Neil Cavuto’s producer. I had a friend call Bill O’Reilly after I was inundated with supporters in Alaska asking why the campaign was “ignoring” his on-air requests for a McCain campaign interview. I had another friend scrambling to find Mark Levin’s number. Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press. At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, Tracey or Tucker would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, “No! Absolutely not- block her if she tries to go back.” [Going Rogue]

Selected articles on Sarah Palin appearing in All This Is That:

http://bit.ly/17SLDv
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/palin-resignation-bombshell-not-really.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/01/sarah-palin-explains-how-obama-won-with.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/11/sarah-palins-fuming-again-this-time.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/04/two-bobs-from-office-space-interview.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/05/sarah-palins-new-heater-nra-gives.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/09/auto-tune-news.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/governor-sarah-palin-unelected-herself.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-new-dick.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/sarah-palin-for-president.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/07/transcript-of-sarah-palins-resignation.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/06/clown-wars-pablo-fanque-reports-on.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2009/01/and-race-is-on-2012-presidential.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2008/12/chicago-artist-brude-elliott-is-at-it.html
http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com/2008/11/palin-phone-cll-prank.html
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009

My New Dick — Sarah Palin channels President Nixon

By Pablo Fanque, All This Is That National Affairs Editor
Illustrations by Jack Brummet, All This Is That Arts and Letters Editor

As I watched Sarah Palin's strangely jangled and jittery "resignation speech" last week, I was strongly reminded of another speech--Richard Nixon's "last press conference" after he lost the 1962 Governor's race in California (to Jerry Brown's dad no less). Not unlike Sarah Palin, the press rode Dick pretty hard, put him away wet, and eventually he came a little unglued. The night of his gubernatorial trouncing, he listened to his bitter staffers, and finally snapped. He went out to give his concession speech. It was a rambling sixteen minute affair tinged with bitterness toward the press and his critics. Sound familiar?


"I leave you gentleman now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. . ."
Dick Nixon had been called a user car salesman, red baiter, Ike's lapdog and all the rest. Sarah Palin, after the rogering she received from the press in the election, and following the final, staggering blow of last week's savage Vanity Fair article, and the unending lawsuits and investigations, decided to throw in the towel. On this chapter. Palin resigned as Governor and, like Nixon, did not talk about the future. But keep your eyes peeled. She is running, and resigning from office will only enable her to run stronger, faster, and harder. Like it or not, Sarah Palin has a base. And all it takes to become President is building on that base. Remaining as governor would not help build that base; staying in office will only lead to further diminution of her reputation. Now she needs to do her homework, start campaigning for other politicians, mend fences, collect I.O.U.s, travel, give speeches, and begin nipping at Mitt Romney's bootheels.




The media is wrong. Sarah is making the smart move. Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere (well, Georgia) with no base and far less name recognition. And he got to the big seat, trouncing a sitting President. Palin needs major rehab to her damaged political image--the damage caused by media and liberals, and most importantly, her self-inflicted wounds.

Soon to be Ex-Governor Palin will have to go to war with the Republican Establishment. She can easily best the Band of Clowns left to defend the blown husk of the G.O.P.

Compare Nixon's speech -- Listen to the audio of Nixon's infamous speech via the History Channel -- to the Palin resignation speech:






Dick Nixon was elected President of the United States of America exactly six years after his last press conference.
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Monday, March 16, 2009

Senator David Vitter: "Do you know who I am?" Security worker: "Sure, you're that senator who likes to wear diapers with hookers, right?"

By Pablo Fanque,
All This Is That National Affairs Editor


Senator David Vitter missed a flight and tried to open a jet way door after the gate had been closed. He then got into a broil with security (Do you know who I am?). Read the full story here, and/or watch the video clip below:



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