So why are the Democrats seeing militiamen under every rock, and Oklahoma City comparisons around every corner?

Not because of any evidence, of course; the rallies themselves are so peaceful that some police departments hold them to a looser standard than the loopier anti-war demonstrations.  And the fact remains that every known act of actual political violence in the past several years has been left-on-right.

No – as with anything else Bill Clinton does, it’s about a poll:

Dig past the headline of the Pew study and one discovers why Bill Clinton is insinuating that “demonizing” government could cause another Oklahoma City bombing. If these numbers are at all close to reality, something one can hardly doubt just now, the American people have issued a no-confidence vote in government, at both the national and state level. To the extent one believes in the “consent of the governed,” consent is being eroded.

This report isn’t bad news for the Democrats. It’s Armageddon.

Remember – the Democratic Party’s big platform is “Government Brings Good Things To Life”.

The survey compares views sampled in 1997 with now. The “now” is the Democrats’ problem. The survey took place this mid-March. After one year of the charismatic, ever-present Barack Obama, after passage of the party’s totemic health-care bill, after spending zillions on Keynesian pump-priming, the American people—well beyond the tea partiers—have the lowest opinion ever of national government.

A year ago, 54% said government should exert more control over the economy; a year later it’s 40%.

Some 58% say Uncle Sam is interfering too much in state and local affairs; 53% want “very major reform” of the federal government. After health care passed in March, Pew re-sampled in early April: Trust in government rose—to 25% from 22%. Inspector Clouseau would call that a “bmp.”

Barack Obama’s speeches are filled with the Democrats’ core claim to legitimacy: Government must and will do good. It must “act.” But in a crucial period when voters across the political spectrum were losing faith in that core claim, the Democrats lost any self-protective sense of what they were doing with public budgets. Barack Obama took a rising reservoir of public trust for his party (62% said they liked the Democrats in January 2009), and emptied it. Since he took office, the percentage of people who want smaller government and fewer services has risen, to 50% from 42%.

Better late than never – although be watching for the pundits to start scolding the American people about “Schizophrenia” for voting for a statist one cycle and a bunch neo-libertarians the next.

If that doesn’t help, start looking for pieces on how “the American people don’t deserve Barack Obama!” shortly after.

Look –  polls three years before an election are meaningless.  I doubt Reagan was doing all that well in April of 1982, to pick a pointed example, and we all know how that turned out.

As we get closer to the Presidential election, incumbency, a full-court press by a biased mainstream media and the GOP’s lack, to this point, of a barn-burner candidate may well even things out for Obama, if things don’t go even further south (as they very well may).

But today’s Gallup results show that maybe, just maybe, P Americans are waking up and finding that they spent 2008 with electoral beer goggles, and they’re not crazy about what they woke up with, and they’re starting to gnaw their arm off to get away, just maybe:

Americans anxious about unemployment and the economy increasingly blame President Obama for hard times, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, amid signs of turbulence in November’s midterm elections.

Last week’s jubilant signing of the health care overhaul, Obama’s signature domestic initiative, seems to have given the president little boost. Instead, his standing on four personal qualities has sagged, and 50% of those surveyed say he doesn’t deserve re-election.

“People are still hurting; a lot of people are still struggling, and I think a lot of what we’re seeing in the polls reflects people’s views on the economy,” says Rep. Chris Van Hollen, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Note to the GOP:  betting on  your opponent to “keep screwing up” is not a “strategy”.  Get out of the lesbian strip clubs and get a message together.

That is all.

Speaking of  Quinnipiac polls…

The health care deform bill has already lit up the tea partiers…which could be good…or could be bad for the GOP.

It depends.

…on how (truly) conservative the GOP wants to be next time around.

Americans say they’ll vote for a Republican over a Democrat in the November elections by a 44 to 39 percent margin.

But the addition of a Tea Party candidate to the ballot changes the dynamic: The Republican candidate drops dramatically to 25 percent and the Democrat only slightly to 36 percent, while 15 percent would back the Tea Party candidate.

It strains the imagination to think that there are still 36-39 percent left that would still vote for a Democrat yet at the same time this data shows it’s the GOP’s race to lose and a right leaning candidate won’t fly (again).

In light of this data, loyal readers, who do you think is our (Wo)Man?

(SCENE:  President Obama is leaving the White House after signing the “Obamacare” bill into law)

ANNOUNCER:  “Mr. President!  You’ve just signed a bill that didn’t actually “solve” a nonexistent “problem” [1]!  What are you going to do now?”

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m going to solve another one!”. [2]

After a hard-fought victory on health care reform, President Barack Obama’s allies in Congress are setting their sights on climate change — but some on both sides are already crying foul.

AMERICA [speaking Patrius ex machina]: “Er…how about going to Disneyland instead?”

(more…)

President Obama polishes a turd:

“We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people,” the president said late Sunday, beginning his sales pitch from the White House one hour after Congress passed the sweeping measure.

It works “for the people” – 55% of whom oppose the bill.  That’s two percent more than his final vote total in ’08.

He’s like the Cheshire Cat; “”For the people” means what I say it means.  Ummm, no more and, aaaahm, let me be perfectly clear, no less!”

Remember when Obama was going to “restore” America’s respect around th world?”

Either do most Americans:

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

Democracy Corps and Third Way lean just a tad to the left, which makes this next bit absolutley hilarious:

“This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

It was surprising – the the same way it shocked us that Milli Vanilli wasn’t all that talented.

But the numbers apparently were bad enough that even DN/3W couldn’t whitewash ’em:

On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.

“The erosion since May is especially strong among women, and among independents, who now favor Republicans on this question by a 56 to 20 percent margin,” the pollsters said in their findings.

A dedicated lefty might respond “yeah, but that’s just polling Americans”.  True – which is something the poll has in common with Presidential elections.

More importantly, though?  The whole “America lost respect during the Bush years” meme also pretty much polled only Americans.  Most foreigners who answer public opinion polls hate America, while a significant subset simultaneously hope to immigrate…

I started out my “adult” life, at least to about halfway through college, as a liberal.

But starting in high school, I had doubts; the Dems were a disaster on national security; the economy was falling apart; I started to have doubts that “giving everything to everyone” was anything more than a good campaign promise to people who didn’t think all that hard in the first place.

Those doubts culminated in looking furtively about the polling station in November of 1984 and pulling the lever for Ronald Reagan.  And then lying to my parents about it.  For the time being, anyway; I obviously stayed conservative; within two years, I was hosting a conservative talk show in the Twin Cities.

So here’s a question: was my political evolution, which was a  considered result of a whole lot of reading and thinking and discussion, a sign of growing up and finding myself when it came to my political worldview?

Or a sign that I was just incoherent?

The latter, claims Jacob Weisberg in a Newsweek article called “Why the Public Is to Blame for the Political Mess”

In trying to explain our political paralysis, analysts cite President Obama’s tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for important legislation. These are large factors to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit of all: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.

That’s a fairly big thought, there.  We’ll come back to that.

Anybody who says you can’t have it both ways hasn’t been spending much time reading opinion polls lately. One year ago, 59 percent of the American public liked the economic stimulus plan, according to Gallup. A few months later, with the economy still deeply mired in recession, a majority of the same size said Obama was spending too much money on it. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind, of course, but polls reflect something more troubling: a country that simultaneously demands and rejects action on unemployment, deficits, health care, and other problems.

They neglect one other things; polls don’t exist in a vacuum.

A year ago, “the public” was wracked with Bush fatigue.  With the full connivance of a media that was completely in the bag for Barack Obama (painting him as a centrist, for crying out loud), they had a brief fling with radical liberalism.  Then they saw the price tag, and the rot that would set in if Obama’s agenda passed, and changed their minds.

They may be demanding action – but not the action that Reid, Pelosi and Obama want to bring them.

Weisberg is half right. The public had a moment of immature incoherence.  It lasted through all of 2008.

We’ll see if people grow up by 2012.

Over at his new gig at Politics in Minnesota, former City Pages and Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko – who is as a rule one of the smarter bloggers in the regional Sorosphere, and I promise you I don’t mean that in the “Jessica Simpson is smarter than Anna Nicole Smith” sense of the phrase, so don’t go there – has what he believes is bad news for Governor Pawlenty:

Fewer than 5 percent of likely Republican voters want Gov. Tim Pawlenty to be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, according to a new Zogby poll.

Zogby? 

You mean, the same Zogby that said Martha Coakley was still winning  the Massachusetts special election the day before the vote was held?

The same Zogby that might be the only poller in the business with a worse record, and a better record at telling Demcrats what they want to hear, than the Star/Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll”?

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the most popular choice, with support from just over 22 percent of those surveyed. Tracking closely behind was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was the top pick of nearly 20 percent of likely Republican voters.

Pawlenty is just shy of five points, says Zogby, who is presumably out golfing with with Senator Coakley, helping OJ find the real killer.

A seemingly grim sign for Pawlenty’s presidential prospects: He received less support than Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown (5.2 percent). On the plus side, he topped former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (3.9 percent). Of course, those difference are statistically meaningless.

Of course, the polls a year before the 2008 election showed Barack Obama a 27 point dog to Hillary Clinton, too. 

W’e’ve got almost three years ’til the election.  And while I’m far from throwing my gear on the Pawlenty bandwagon, crowing about Pawlenty’s showing at this point smacks more of sour grapes over Minnesota’s current legislative situation than detached analysis.

Brown’s numbers will drop down to where a junior senator’s should be (unless he gets himself deified by the media, like a certain former junior Senator);  Romney and Palin have the same two years of campaigning to do that Pawlenty does. 

Anything can happen.  And this is going to be one hella exciting couple of years.

“Air Force One made an emergency trip to Logan field…”

“when theres trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured, there’s trouble everywhere and they know it.”

-Scott Brown tonight

Senator Ben Nelson – one of the crucial votes the Administration bought last week to win the Health Care vote in the Senate – isn’t up for re-election this term.  But he’s bleeding from the ears, and he’s currently down by around 30 points in a hypothetical race against Nebraska’s Republican governor for his normally-secure “blue-dog” seat.

But Nebraskans aren’t amused:

As a fresh poll measured the political cost of Sen. Ben Nelson’s health reform vote, he prepared Tuesday to take his case directly to Nebraskans during Wednesday night’s Holiday Bowl game.

Nelson will air a new TV ad in which he attempts to debunk opposition claims that the Senate legislation represents a government takeover, and he makes the case for health care reform.

“With all the distortions about health care reform, I want you to hear directly from me,” the Democratic senator says in the ad.

That’s a great idea, Senator Nelson.  Why don’t you hear directly from your constituents.

At a statewide series of town hall meetings?  Where you can hear from them, too?

Or are all those peasants just too…pesky?

A while ago, codified all of the various Berg’s Laws in one place.  These laws – an encyclopedic survey of several small but fairly universal truths – include perhaps one of my most trenchant observations, captured for posterity as Berg’s Seventh Law:

Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are projecting.

Critics have misguidedly assailed this law; “you’re basically saying you’re rubber and we’re glue”, which may sound satisfying on a superficial level, it ignores the fact that the Seventh Law is entirely true.

For example – liberals constantly tell conservatives they’ve “gotten too extreme” for the American people.  This is at a time when the American people are rejecting Obama’s far-left overreach in droves, even to the point of the once-unthinkable; conservatives organizing and going to demonstrations. 

In the meantime, some Democrats – the ones that have to live in the real world outside the Beltway – are starting to get nervous.

This might be the only time you ever see me call  Chicago mayor Richard Daley a moderate.  He’s got an op-ed in the WaPo:

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party — my lifelong political home — has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.

Rep. Griffith’s decision makes him the fifth centrist Democrat to either switch parties or announce plans to retire rather than stand for reelection in 2010. These announcements are a sharp reversal from the progress the Democratic Party made starting in 2006 and continuing in 2008, when it reestablished itself as the nation’s majority party for the first time in more than a decade.

That success happened for one major reason: Democrats made inroads in geographies and constituencies that had trended Republican since the 1960s. In these two elections, a majority of independents and a sizable number of moderate Republicans joined the traditional Democratic base to sweep Democrats to commanding majorities in Congress and to bring Barack Obama to the White House.

Daley is leaving out a few things, of course; Obama and the Dems made those “inroads” against the legacy of a deeply unpopular outgoing Administration, with the full complicity of a media that made a rigid agenda point of showing Obama as a moderate, to the point of actively stifling any discussion of his far-left past, associations or record.  I think the left accepts that as a given, by now.

But wait! (I’ve added some emphasis):

This call was answered not just by voters but by a surge of smart, talented candidates who came forward to run and win under the Democratic banner in districts dominated by Republicans for a generation. These centrists swelled the party’s ranks in Congress and contributed to Obama’s victories in states such as Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado and other Republican bastions.

But now they face a grim political fate. On the one hand, centrist Democrats are being vilified by left-wing bloggers, pundits and partisan news outlets for not being sufficiently liberal, “true” Democrats. On the other, Republicans are pounding them for their association with a party that seems to be advancing an agenda far to the left of most voters.

The political dangers of this situation could not be clearer.

Or more fun!

In particular, I love Daley’s probably-offhanded admission – that the left wing smear machine actually is as venal, smug and divisive as they’ve always alleged hosts like Limbaugh, Hannity and the Northern Alliance – whose messages are actually relatively closer to the center of American politics – to be.

Witness the losses in New Jersey and Virginia in this year’s off-year elections. In those gubernatorial contests, the margin of victory was provided to Republicans by independents — many of whom had voted for Obama. Just one year later, they had crossed back to the Republicans by 2-to-1 margins.

Witness the drumbeat of ominous poll results. Obama’s approval rating has fallen below 49 percent overall and is even lower — 41 percent — among independents. On the question of which party is best suited to manage the economy, there has been a 30-point swing toward Republicans since November 2008, according to Ipsos. Gallup’s generic congressional ballot shows Republicans leading Democrats. There is not a hint of silver lining in these numbers. They are the quantitative expression of the swing bloc of American politics slipping away.

The Mayor still knows his audience:

Despite this raft of bad news, Democrats are not doomed to return to the wilderness. The question is whether the party is prepared to listen carefully to what the American public is saying. Voters are not re-embracing conservative ideology, nor are they falling back in love with the Republican brand. If anything, the Democrats’ salvation may lie in the fact that Republicans seem even more hell-bent on allowing their radical wing to drag the party away from the center.

Of course, the biggest second-tier danger facing the Democrats is believing their own talking points about the GOP and conservatism; just because you relentlessly intone that everything to the right of Olympia Snowe is “extreme” doesn’t make it so. 

The real conservative case – limited government, individual and economic liberty, security, family – is the American mainstream.  And when Republicans act like conservatives rather than beltway lobbyists-in-training, it shows at the polls. 

Read Daley’s entire op-ed.

Mark McKinnon at The Daily Beast indulges in the wonk’s favorite weekend pastime – putting together lists.

This one – the top ten GOP contenders.

He’s got Mitt at the top of the list, followed by Palin and Pawlenty.  Not a bad start.

Moving down the list, though, you get the impression he’s trying to gin up some discussion (and apparently it worked, since I’m linking him…).

4. John Thune

If he would run, John Thune could be the Bob McDonnell of the 2012 GOP field.

In a field as deep with center-right conservatives, John Thune is impressive – but in a field where “center-right” includes Romney, Pawlenty, I see Thune – a freshman Senator, let’s not forget – being far down the crowd.  

5. Mike Huckabee

Put a fork in him. While I agree with McKinnon – the clemency decision on Clemmons, who got a life-plus-life sentence for crimes committed when he wasn’t even of legal age; statistically, it wasnt’ a bad bet, although that’s no comfort for the families of the four cops he allegedly killed.

Much worse, in a just world?  He’s no more fiscally conservative than George W. Bush was.

6. Joe Scarborough

Make it stop.

Next – evidence that McKinnon spends too much time among wonks:

7. Haley Barbour

Don’t laugh. Haley’s as wily a fox as anyone out there prowling the political countryside these days. He’s smart, strategic and has been around the rodeo a very long time. Sure he’s a caricature of the classic Southern politician: old, large, white, honey-lipped, and a former lobbyist to boot. But if voters are really tired of Obama, they’ll be looking for the mirror opposite of the man occupying the Oval Office. And that would clearly be Haley.

Barbour is a highly-qualified candidate; he’s an opposite of Obama in more than just the cosmetics that seem to enthrall McKinnon.  He’s a blazingly capable executive; he’s accomplished things – his record as governor of Mississippi stands next to Romney’s and Pawlenty’s in their states.

But is he the opposite of Obama?  Not in the way voters, especially voters who’ve genuinely soured on Obama or Republicans who want to right the ship, will care about.

8. Newt Gingrich

It will never happen.  Please stop talking about it.

9. Mitch Daniels

Daniels has been an extraordinarily successful and effective governor in Indiana, a state that has been recently more blue than red. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-is conservative, Daniels cruised to re-election by 18 points last year when Obama was winning the state.

I’d not thought about Daniels much – and I think his name recognition is, if anything, lower than Pawlenty’s (and Governor Pawlenty’s been working hard on raising his, in a way Daniels has not, at least at this point in the campaign, for what that’s worth, which isn’t much).

But here, I think McKinnon’s onto something:

10. Rick Perry

The only real question about Texas Governor Rick Perry is why he hasn’t been on any lists until now. He’s already the longest-serving governor in Texas history and may be headed for his third term next fall. Veteran Texas political observer Paul Burka makes a compelling case for why he should be considered:

1. Unlike Huckabee, Romney, and Palin, he is still in office.
2. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history.
3. He is governor of the biggest red state that sends the most delegates to the Republican convention.
4. He has the best conservative record of any contender.
5. He has assiduously courted key figures in the Republican establishment.
6. The Murdoch news empire loves him. He is the beneficiary of puff pieces in The Wall Street Journal and softball questions on Fox News.
7. He has an extensive fundraising apparatus in Texas that is capable of raking in enough cash to make the race, and he is now in charge of finance for the Republican Governors Association, giving him access to the GOP’s big national donors.
8. He has not one but two strong messages. The first: Washington is corrupt to the core and out of touch with Main Street. The second: the Texas economic miracle.
9. He was quick to understand the significance of the tea party movement and attended many of the early gatherings.
10. With rare exceptions (such as the HPV vaccine controversy), he almost never deviates from the conservative line.

We can go on from there: he’s got huge cred among the Tea-party (aka “Real American”) crowd, and he’s got two-plus successful terms as governor of a huge state.  He’s a “Tenther”, who exudes just the right tinge of “don’t tread on me” that a big chunk of this country wants (and gets from Sarah Palin), combined providing an undeniable conservative alternative that, with a little work, can convince the center to move right (rather than vice versa – which is what people like Huckabee and Scarborough are all about).

Perry’s moved onto my personal long list over this past month or two.

Beyond that?

Watch List:

• Ron Paul: Where are you? The environment is ripe for a libertarian like Paul to stir the tea party pot in 2012.

When you can have a Rick Perry – who brings most of the “libertarian”, and none of the “loose cannon”, why even mess with Paul?

• Jeb Bush: The first son of George H.W. Bush was supposed to be the 43rd President. He is widely respected by conservatives and it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that he could be the 45th, or 46th. And there’s always his telegenic Hispanic son, George P., who could keep the job in the family as 47.

Let’s give this generation a rest, and maybe give P at shot at it someday.

Keep up the good work (emphases added):

Less than a year after Inauguration Day, support for the Democratic Party continues to slump, amid a difficult economy and a wave of public discontent, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The findings underscored how dramatically the political landscape has changed during the Obama administration’s first year. In January, despite the recession and financial crisis, voters expressed optimism about the future, the new president enjoyed soaring approval ratings, and congressional leaders promised to swiftly pass his ambitious agenda.

I remember that.

Fortunately, so do a lot of people:

In December’s survey, for the first time, less than half of Americans approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing, marking a steeper first-year fall for this president than his recent predecessors.

I’ve been cautious about the polls – partly because it’s almost three years ’til the next election, but mostly because the bellwether for bad first-year polling is still Reagan in ’81. I was waiting to see if Obama would undercut even that dubious record.

It seems he has.

I’m feeling much better, thanks.

Palin contra Shatner.

Bad wins.

50% of voters now say they prefer having [BHO] as President to George W. Bush, with 44% saying they’d rather have his predecessor. Given the horrendous approval ratings Bush showed during his final term that’s somewhat of a surprise and an indication that voters are increasingly placing the blame on Obama for the country’s difficulties instead of giving him space because of the tough situation he inherited.

I’m not a huge Bush fan being a far-right fiscal conservative so count me out, but Change is coming. Soon.

Obama’s approval ratings are the lowest of any president at this point in their first term, since they started keeping records:

President Obama’s job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.

Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama’s immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush’s support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s best not to get too excited; Ronald Reagan’s numbers were only two points better at this point in 1982, and Bill Clinton was only five points better – and we know how both of those turned out. 

Yes, we do.  Reagan had a solid plan for solidifying our tanking economy and fixing the foreign-policy nightmare of the seventies.  And Clinton was well on the road to getting chastened for his overreach on healthcare, after which he triangulated so far to the right that he actually ran a more fiscally-responsible adminsitration (with the aid of GOP majorities in both houses) than his successor.

Obama?  So far, we haven’t gotten to that point yet:

President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to “spend our way out of this recession” until more Americans are back at work.Without giving a price tag, Obama proposed a package of new spending for highway, bridge and other infrastructure projects, deeper tax breaks for small businesses and tax incentives to encourage people to make their homes more energy efficient.

Great news if you’re a highway worker!  Or a window installer!  Not so much elsewhere, of course.

I’ll await details on how Obama next plans to spend his way out of deficit.

Sarah Palin appeared at the Mall of America yestrday, signing copies of Going Rogue for a crowd that drove from all over Minnesota, started gathering at 5AM, waited for over six hours, and generally comported themselves well.

I said generally:

Not everyone shared that sentiment. While most who waited were orderly, Jeremy Olson, who police said has no permanent address, was arrested and jailed after a tomato he threw at Palin hit two Bloomington officers on the stage.

Who does Mr. Olson blog for?

On behalf of the 45-odd percent of Minnesotans who are demonstrably sane, I apologize for the State of Minnesota.  But this is nothing new, if you’re a conservative in Minnesota.  Their hatred deranges them; they think “my ends justify my means, no matter how dim and stupid my means are.  If I hate someone, then anything I do to them is justified, because they are teh icky”. 

Fortunately, he throws like a Minnesota leftist:

He was charged with fourth-degree assault on a police officer, a gross misdemeanor, and disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor. Mall spokeswoman Erica Dao said the tomato landed nowhere near Palin and did not disrupt the signing.

So many metaphors. So little time.

 Two reviews of Sarah Palin’s book – sort of.

On the one hand, we have local leftyblogger “Penigma” from, well, Penigma.  You’ll recognize him from this blog’s comment section; after years of telling him to “start his own blog”, he went and did it a while ago.  And while this may be taken as damnation by the fainest emanation from a penumbra connected to “praise”, it does in fact suck less than most regional left-wing blogs. 

Anyway, Pen writes:

Bob Schieffer, long-time CBS newsman, political conservative, and host of “Face the Nation”, has described her book as, “This is Sarah Palin’s turn to get even, as it were.”

He goes on to describe her national political future and the book as, “I think she’ll be a great attraction as an amusement. She’s interesting, she’s a celebrity. But I can’t imagine that she has much future in politics, I really don’t.”

While I give mad props to Schieffer – who is indeed one of the rarest critters in the world, a conservative in the upper reaches of the mainstream media – his very status makes him the wrong person to ask about a populist phenomenon like Palin.  His perspective – like that of George Will, to pick a not-entirely-random example – is that of someone who’s more time talking with Presidents and Congresspeople than, say, plumbers and ranchers.

I bring this up because it’s the same mistake the nation’s “elites” made about Reagan.  He’d never played the paper chase; his BA was from an undistinguished college in the middle of nowhere – he couldn’t be as capable as a Yalie, could he?  His “credentials” didn’t involve any time at Columbia School of Public Policy! He’d never worked for a think tank!  How could he have a future in politics?!

The “elites” were wrong about Reagan.  Are they wrong about Palin?  We’ll see. 

We’re going to meet someone familiar next:

A little more than a year ago I told a local conservative blogger (just after the Republican National Convention) that Sarah Palin was an albatross, that her political star was ascending temporarily because she was an unknown who had given a fiery speech, but as her past and especially her comments became public, she would be a boat anchor on McCain’s campaign.

If memory serves, I’m that “conservative blogger”.   Memory may not serve, but the conversation (a comment thread, if memory serves, and more and more it does not) rings a bell.

I was told by that blogger that I was mistaken, that Palin “was exactly what the campaign needed right now.” His point was of course that to the “tea party set” McCain was too liberal, and so to get the ‘base engergized” an issue light-weight, but ultra-conservative photogenic candidate like Palin was needed.

Well, no.  For starters, I have never said that Palin was a lightweight.  Indeed, I repeatedly expressed that I believed she was vastly more qualified to be President that the one we got.

It should go without saying that, being a conservative, a woman’s photogeneity is secondary to her accomplishments and talent, of which more in a bit here.  And while I realize that “from Sacramento, Denver is way out east”, Palin is no “ultra-conservative” in any sense that matters to, y’know conservatives. 

But he got the rest of it right; Palin was what the campaign needed; indeed, Palin was the only reason the 2008 election wasn’t a 15 point debacle.

Perhaps that was the case for the right-wing base, but as the election bore out, it was the undecided and independent voters, not the base, who would ultimately decide the election and who needed to feel ‘safe’ with the VP candidate, and Sarah Palin made virtually no one feel safe thinking she was John McCain’s heartbeat away from being President.

I think it’s highly monumentally implausible that, as bad a year as it was for Republicans and as polarizing a person as Palin was, that a single voter anywhere in the country felt “safe” with Joe Biden. 

In the year (plus) since, Palin has time and again proven herself to be a goof-ball, a daffy ill-informed, fire spewer ready to mouth idiocy like death panels,

(Show of hands:  Anyone tickled pink that a Democrat – someone from the party of Saul “Frame Your Opponent!” Alinsky – is complaining that a “dumb” conservative has out-framed them on their pet issue?)

and one who talks about having to ‘work for a living’ (as compared to a ‘community organizer), but who then went and quit her job because she was not seeking re-election.

Which, at this remove, is a move that makes more and more sense.  Had she stayed in office, the Democrat Smear Machine (R) would have kept lobbing an endless series of phony, borderline-defamatory “ethics complaints”, whose only purpose was to provide grist for the chattering classes’ mill, at Palin.  It was a risky move, and we’re three years away from knowing if it’ll pay off, but it gave Palin one key advantage; it allows her the time and bandwith to define herself, especially with that most important of tasks for any conservative – to outflank the media and define herself directly to the people.  Again, it’s a risk – but what did she have to lose?

She berated Levi Johnson – who maybe even deserved derision, but she appeared cheap and petty

Really?

That’s an interesting “but…”.  Levi Johnson knocks up her daughter, and then goes on a defamatory spree in the media attacking not only her (no big whoop if you’re a public figure) but her daughter?  And responding is “cheap and petty?”

The mainstream media and the Sorosphere (pardon the redundancy) have observed a fascinating double standard in re the Levi Johnson “scandal”; while most people agree that Johnson is a disgusting low-life, Palin’s response (which has been both low-key and fully proportionate to what any parent should do in defense of their children and grandchildren) has been pilloried for no better reason than “she’s a family-values conservative, she deserves what happens to her”.

 and got into a national TV fight with David Letterman – a stupid move that could have resulted in her becoming the same kind of clown Dan Qayle proved himself to be with “Murphy Brown”/Candace Bergen.

“Could have?”

Leaving aside the fact that the two episodes were utterly different (Quayle was criticizing a fictional character, albeit quite correctly; Letterman told a disgusting joke about a child; if I were A-Rod, I’d have bitch-slapped Letterman long before Palin’s fairly mild response got on the air) – it didn’t. 

That this women continues to enrapture the right-wing tea-party crowd speaks only to their enormous ability at self-delusion (rivaled by Palin’s own ability in that regard).

Ah.  Really?

“Self-delusion” means “to decieve oneself into believing something that isn’t true”.  I’m not quite sure what “Penigma” means by calling either Palin or the “Tea Party Crowd” “self-deluded”, and he’s not helpful enough to elaborate. 

But here’s the part that got my dander up:

She appears to be a petty and shallow back-biter, looking more like a mean-spirited and dishonest hick queen dressed up in Versace than a serious and educated candidate and this books seals that impression in gold-plated tell-all tin-foil hats.

“Hick Queen dressed in Versace?”

For starters, the term “Hick” is less onerous than “Nigger” in one, and only exactly one, way; lower-class rural whites were never formally enslaved, never had their rights systematically stripped away due to that status and their skin color, and got the slur due to a condition applied by society rather than birth and ethnicity alone.  It is a thoroughly disgusting, demeaning slur that deserves no less approbation than, say “dirt-worshipping heathen”.  It demeans and dehumanizes based not only on the most trivial, surface aspects of personality, but aspects that are in Palin’s case completely inaccurate and wrong. 

And what does “Hick Queen in Versace” mean?  That them backwoods wimmins should know their place and not pretend to be above their station?  Feminists, you wanna take this one?

Can anyone imagine a liberal referring to, say, Mike Huckabee as a “Hick King?”  Of course not – because Huckabee, being male, is not an apostate.  And it’s to apostates that all the worst punishments are reserved.

And when Pengima says “s books seals that impression in gold-plated tell-all tin-foil hats”, my first question is…

…well, it’s “Huh?”  I have no idea what that means.  I even tried to diagram the dependent clause; I got hung up on the concept of the “tell-all hat” before giving up.

But my second question is “Really?  How does it “seal” that impression?  What part of the book did you read to get that impression “sealed?”  Did you actually read  the book?”

Of course he didn’t.  The “book” didn’t “seal” anything; Penigma’s preconceptions, like those of most of her critics, did.  And it’s about the Big Left’s canonical line (at one point, I’d have called it a “talking point”) about Palin, or indeed about any conservative woman (Latino/Afro-American); she’s “teh crazee/extremist/out of touch not “elite” enough/a hypocrite”.

But retired Brigadier General Anthony Tata did read the book.  And A he “sealed” an entirely different impression, to say the least:

When I got about halfway through the book I set it down, stepped outside of my Washington, DC townhouse and went for a run around the U.S. Capitol. Listening to the Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, and Lil Bow Wow (my daughter slipped that one in there) on my iPod, the recurrent thought in my mind was that this woman is far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant of the White House.

Which is something an awful lot of us noted before the election – and in which this Administration’s hapless first year has borne us out.

When I completed the journey that is Going Rogue, I wrote down five things:

–She is a positive role model for all Americans
–She is an executive, takes on hard problems and makes tough decisions
–She has tremendous energy, balance and intellect
–America shafted itself in this last election
–Alaska is lucky to have her

Oh, and a sixth, Sarah Palin could be the next president of the United States.

She certainly could.  And not just because Obama set the bar so low Jimmy Carter must even be feeling good right about now.

Her book washes away all doubts that any reader might have had about her readiness to be president. She comes across as exceptionally bright, dedicated, and passionate about public service. Her moral compass is strong, pointing true North in this case. And she has a wicked sense of humor.

Which are a slew of things that liberals dislike under any circumstances; when they occur in a woman  (or a Latino, or Afro-American)? They must be destroyed.

The most salient take-away from Going Rogue for me was what I admired most in her campaign, which was that she had been in charge as either a mayor or a governor whereas none of the other candidates on either ticket had. Having been a commander several times in the military I know that there is a huge difference between being a hardworking and important staff officer and an ‘alone at the top’ commander. No matter how fancy the title, executive officer or Senator, at the end of the day, you are recommending to someone who actually makes the decision.

As a Governor, mayor or commander, you have the unparalleled responsibility to actually make decisions that have ramifications. There is little training that can prepare you for all those heads turning in your direction when it is decision time. You can’t blithely abstain on a vote or hide behind the guy in front of you, because you own the decision.

Remember all those “present” votes during the two whopping years Obama spent in the Senate?  Did you think it was just an abstract thing?

Case in point is Obama’s inexcusable delay in making a decision on Afghanistan. His indecision, cloaked as ‘sleeves-rolled-up-pensiveness’, is an indicator that he was, at a minimum, unprepared to be commander in chief…Palin, on the other hand, demonstrates decisiveness and vulnerability. Is she prepared for the enormous breadth of responsibility of president? I think she’s ready for the hard part, which is making tough decisions. She’s no “Ruminator-in Chief”, that’s for sure, and if the American people think a second year back bench senator was ready to be president, I’m not sure we’ve got the right rubric out there.

Palin’s got warts; of course, so does every other person in the world.  It’s one of the reasons many of us love Palin, political aspirations notwithstanding; we have kids who givegive us hell; we got through college in fits and starts, and didn’t have time or resources to play the “paper chase” game; most of us tried a couple of different courses in life before settling, at least for now, on what we are.  And she’s not the “perfect” candidate, whatever that is.  But  Conservatism does not expect politicians to be the revealed font of perfection.  Quite the opposite; the imperfection of people and the temptation of power are two of the many, many reasons we advocate limiting government power.

Palin is real. She takes counsel of her fears and continuously comes back to her foundation of family, God, state and nation for reassurance and guidance. She has strong moral guideposts that she uses to navigate the shark infested political waters. Reading about the decisions Sarah Palin faced at multiple levels of government reminded me of something my command sergeant major in the 82nd Airborne Division used to say when we faced a tough decision together: “Sir, when you’re right, don’t worry about it.”

Palin is right on many issues such as energy policy, defense, business, and size of government.

And underneath the carefully-arranged slime jobs, the impeccably-unflattering editing of her first, ill-advised round of interviews with Couric and Gibson, and the endless torrent of hatred disguised as “humor” from the left, that’s what many of us still love about Palin; she’s right.  Above and beyond her personality and history and record, she stands for what I stand for“.

As her father said, “Sarah’s not retreating; she’s reloading.”

We should hope so, because she’s precisely the kind of leader America needs.

Need I repeat that Gen. Tata read the book?

Read the rest of the review – which includes a Hillary Clinton story that sets this whole thing off perfectly.

While Democrats and Republicans battle it out, most Americans have lost no love for either party and may be lining up behind…neither.

Main Street America has entered an era of populism that embraces neither party. People are tired of government bailouts, spending and unchecked corruption, as well as the media’s perceived lack of curiosity or investigation into all three.

They are really tired of being told their values and way of life are not politically correct.

America is pissed off. Unless an independent candidate can connect with enough Americans to garner a majority, Republicans probably have a chance to end Obama’s Reign of Pain. But, thanks to George W. Bush’s invention of the modern liberal Republican, there are no guarantees.

Americans lost faith in Republicans as evidenced by their willingness to vote a charismatic, well-spoken but otherwise completely unqualified decoy into the White House.

While President Obama enjoyed a brief honeymoon, since about June more Americans think we’re moving in the wrong direction; less Americans believe we are moving in the right direction. Obama’s popularity is sinking like a lead zeppelin. Clearly the honeymoon is over for the Democrats.

But Republican’s don’t have to outrun the bear as the saying goes, they just have to outrun the other guy the bear is chasing. Thanks to Obama, Reid, Pelosi and their ilk, Democrats have a lot more ground to cover when it comes to the issues America will soon hold most high.

“Elites like President Obama see government as a force for protecting the little guy,” explains University of Arkansas political scientist Robert Maranto. “But regular folks on Main Street see government as incomprehensible and unpredictable.”

Even with the best of intentions, government almost always does more harm than good.

When President Obama orders corporate bailouts, a stimulus plan that costs a quarter-million-dollars a job, or talks more about expanding government than reducing unemployment, folks are naturally skeptical, Maranto says.

Most Americans are Jeffersonians: They want limited government – totally at odds with Obama, who wants government without limits.

Let the footrace begin. The first party to fiscal sanity wins. Unfortunately for them, the Democrats don’t even know where the starting line is, and with unemployment above ten, a series of failed bailouts and stimuli, dithering on defense, and foreign policy gaffes, they’re wearing concrete boots.

Meanwhile, the bear smells blood. Blue blood.

Via Andrew Malcolm; Sarah Palin’s numbers are rising as fast as The One’s are dropping:

Not that it matters politically because obviously she’s a female Republican dunce and he’s a male Democrat genius.

But Sarah Palin’s poll numbers are strengthening.

And Barack Obama’s are sliding.

Guess what? They’re about to meet in the 40’s.

A very wide variet of polls are showing Palin’s numbers are moving up:

Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her new book, “Going Rogue,” and the accompanying promotional tour, Palin’s favorable ratings are now at 43%, according to ABC. That’s up from 40% in July.

One poll even gives her a 47% favorable.

And this includes the big one…:

Most recent media attention has focused on the 60% who say she’s unqualified to become president. Her unfavorable rating is 52%, down from 53%, which still doesn’t ignite a lot of optimism for Palin-lovers.

On the other hand, 35 months before the 2008 election, that Illinois state senator was such a nobody that no one even thought to ask such a question about him. Things seem to change much more quickly these days.

So we have a candidate who was swept into office on a wave of uncritical – dare I say, “know-nothing” – media adulation, versus a candidate whom the media framed from the word “go”; every move the media made with regard to Palin was intended to show her as “dumb”, a “hick”, a scatterbrain, in way over her depth, who is having to earn approval one vote at a time.

And she’s approaching those voters, one at a time and in big crowds as well…

Everybody thinks 2012 when they think of Palin, who last week pushed Oprah’s show to….

… its highest ratings in nearly three years. Remember, though, in 2012 the first hurdles a rehabbed candidate Palin would face are her own party’s primaries, where diligent conservatives conscientiously come out to play.

…and all of a sudden, leaving the Alaska governor’s office is making more and more sense.

Indeed, something jumped out as me as I was writing this:

That same ABC poll finds Palin’s GOP approval right around 76%, 45% among independents and a surprisingly substantial 21% among Democrats. Among self-described liberals she’s seen favorably by a slightly larger 22%, among moderates 38% and among conservatives 60%.

This past year has seen an epic resurgence in bottom-up conservative – not necessarily Republican – sentiment around the country.  You can tell it’s working, because it’s being met with top-down media condescenscion intended to, again, frame the discussion as one of “smart people” versus “teh dum ReThugLiCons” in the media’s mind’s eye. 

The phenomenon is so organic and grass-roots that it doesn’t have a leader yet; there is momentum, but nobody to ride it.

Palin’s campaign book tour might change that.

and…in a surprisingly early concession…

“You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry during an interview in China.

You may not run for a second term?

[insert dramatic orchestral exclamation here]

…because a resounding Jimmuh-like expulsion from office might leave your self esteem a wee bit bruised you mean?

It’s all about you, isn’t it, Sir?

It’s The Unemployment, stupid.

The announcement a week ago of 10.2% unemployment is a significant political event for President Barack Obama. It could well usher in a particularly serious crisis for his political standing, influence and ability to advance his agenda.

Double-digit unemployment drove Ronald Reagan’s disapproval ratings in October 1982 up to a record high 54%. It was only when unemployment dropped to 7.3%, roughly two years later, that he was able to win a landslide victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election.

Alas, Barack Obama will not have the same opportunity that Reagan did – he doesn’t have the tools (the ideology)…or the people.

Barack Obama is all-in already with his “Stimulus Plan” in the sense that

1) He wants us to think that it’s working, and it is not.

2) As such, he doesn’t want us to think that his Stimulus Plan made things worse, which it did.

Had Barack Obama given America the message that they should have had, that they deserve, it would have been something like this:

Dear fellow Americans: You’ve lived beyond your means and so has your government, and now we must all pay the painful price as our economy returns to a more normalized state. We in the federal government will do what we can by extending unemployment benefits and such, but beyond that, as much as you will hear otherwise from those on the far left, stimulus programs and other gargantuan government spending programs will only worsen and extend the inevitable pain we must all go through to right the ship.

Instead, he doubled down on the failed fiscal policies of George Bush and simply dug the hole deeper.

Now the hole is filling with water and Barack Obama can’t get out.

Obama’s only option politically is to lobby for more stimulus spending and sell the American people on the efficacy of the last one. The former will fall on deaf ears as the deficit becomes an issue with the American people; the latter as the din of high unemployment washes over Obama’s Teleprompterings^™.

His dithering on Afghanistan and misappropriated focus on health care “reform” will be transferred to his economic impotence, and so on and and so on.

A look at more detailed data shows why Mr. Obama’s ratings are likely to drop even further.

A CNN poll released Nov. 6 found that 47% of Americans believe the top issue facing the country is the economy, while only 17% say its health care. However, the bulk of the president’s efforts over the past six months have been not on the economy but on health care, an issue in which he continues to draw negative ratings.

In a Rasmussen Reports poll taken after the House of Representatives passed health-care reform by the narrowest of margins last Saturday night, 54% of likely voters say they are opposed to the plan with only 45% in favor. Furthermore, in the all-important category of unaffiliated voters, 58% oppose the bill. That’s one of the reasons why so many moderate Democratic House members opposed it.

The CNN poll also shows that in addition to health care, a majority of Americans disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, unemployment, illegal immigration and the federal budget deficit. Put simply, there isn’t a critical problem facing the country on which the president has positive ratings.

The only way the President gets out of this alive is to willfully and publicly abandon the failed liberal approaches to virtually every issue that has presented itself in his short Presidency.

What are the chances?

Mr. President, Mr. Rock.

“Hello, nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Mr. President.”

Mr. President, Mr. Hard Place.

“Hello, nice to meet you as well.”

“It’s an honor, Mr. President. Thank you for inviting us into your Presidency. Should we get started?”

2012.

Indeed.

Remember the key dictum in Media-Republican Party relations – which is such a truism I may codify it as another Berg’s Law: any Republican can be “the good Republican” , until they’re a threat to the Democrats.

So the piece the other day by Dan Balz in the WaPo might actually be good news for TPaw, in a backhanded way; if you interpret it that way, it means he is a contender the Dems are nervous about:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party’s rising national leaders. The runner-up to Sarah Palin to be John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, he is a conservative whose blue-collar roots, amiable personality and two terms as governor of a traditionally Democratic state would seem to make him a natural to help his party attract the kind of swing voters who are always fought over in presidential elections.

So far so good.

But the Pawlenty who has stepped onto the national stage in recent months has said and done things that have other Republicans wondering about his instincts and his sure-footedness as a prospective 2012 presidential candidate. Pawlenty could learn from the earlier mistakes of one of his potential rivals for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Last week, during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Pawlenty was asked repeatedly whether he welcomed Sen. Olympia Snowe, the lone Republican to vote for the Senate Finance Committee health care bill, in the GOP.

And he ducked it.

Because it’s a stupid, stupid question.  Tim Pawlenty has no say over whom the voters of Maine send to Congress and under what label.

At a time when some conservatives are insisting on purity within the ranks and others say the party must truly be a big tent, Pawlenty ducked the question. He hemmed and hawed, but couldn’t bring himself to say “yes” — suggesting that he believed “no.”

What Pawlenty should have said was “get real, Scarborough.  “Purity” and “Big Tent” are both abstract ideals that don’t exist in the real world, and those (invariably) unnamed Republicans on both side are talking about abstruse principles of “purity” and “inclusion” that mean very little to real voters.  What we need – and I plan – to talk about is making conservatism speak to those in the middle.  Which is, indeed, how I became first the nominee, and then governor, in my state; convincing voters, after decades of irresponsible spendthrift DFL and pseudo-DFL governors, that fiscal resoponsibility was a good thing.  So – is that “purist”, or is that “big tent”, you over-promoted gasbag?”

(I’ll forgive Pawlenty for leaving that last bit out).

Balz’ big problem seems to be that Pawlenty – whom Balz labels a “conservative” early in his piece – says and does things that are “conservative”:

Most recently, he endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd congressional district, but he acted only after former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had turned the special election into an intraparty test of strength.

Pawlenty said there is no deliberate effort to move to the right. “In general, I’ve governed as a conservative in Minnesota, so being conservative isn’t like a new development or a revelation,” he said.

Now, let’s step back a bit.  Balz thesis is that Pawlenty, in saying things that deliberately court the resurgent conservative movement, is acting like Mitt Romney.

Romney, of course, was accused of being a stealth liberal for having socialized medicine in Massachussetts, among other things; being nearly the sole Republican in office in a state can, and usually will, mean “non-conservative” stuff has to happen.   Pawlenty’s conservatism has flaked around the edges under the pressure from two DFL-controlled chambers in the Legislature; he’s had to adapt, giving way on some peripheral issues (ethanol subsidies) while staying largely true to the big-picture (holding the line on tax cuts and, as much as reasonably possible, the budget).  He’s had to compromise, which is why it’s called “politics” and not “dictatorship”. 

Balz eventually cuts to what passes for a chase – the comparisons with Romney:

Still, there is something Romneyesque in all this. Four years ago, Romney lurched to the right in preparation for his presidential candidacy. He did it on social issues, where his prior support for abortion and gay rights left him vulnerable on his right flank.

Right.  Romney put on the Big Bad Conservative suit to go for the nomination.

But if you can say one thing about Governor Pawlenty, it’s that he’s never “lurched”.  The closest we’ve come is the 2002 nomination race against Brian Sullivan, where he had to put aside his pragmatic, legislative persona (he’d been the House Minority leader) which was slightly moderate by nature and necessity, and run to the right to get the nomination from Brian Sullivan.

Since then – for seven years – Pawlenty has been very consistent on a policy and rhetorical level – which is pretty astonishing, considering the changes in the Minnesota legislature since he took office (in 2002, the GOP controlled the House and made it close in the Senate; today the MNGOP is in the minority in both chambers).

Pawlenty has a consistent record of opposition to abortion and gay marriage. In his case, he appears to be catering to the conservative, populist anger on the right, which is challenging the party establishment and attacking Obama in sometimes extreme language.

The real risk for Pawlenty, as Romney learned in his unsuccessful 2008 campaign, is losing his true voice and his authenticity.

Answering that particular bit requires accepting a few yawning gaps in reason.  First, that opposition to Obama is primarily rooted in “anger”.  There is anger, to be sure – but the vast majority is a thin veneer of pique atop a mass of reasoned disagreement.  Obama’s tax and spending proposals will be ruinous; the healthcare reforms will destroy our healthcare system; the President’s foreign and war policy is pusillanimous.  One may be angry or reasonable in addressing this – or a little bit of each.

Second – that it’s “inauthentic” for Pawlenty to acknowedge this.  It makes no sense; it’d be akin to asking John Kerry to ignore all that post-2000-Florida-recount angst.  No serious person suggested it – because it’s a stupid idea. 

But for a Republican to acknowledge anger, to the media as represented by Dan Balz, means to be consumed by it, as if conservative thought is an on-off switch with only the bandwidth for one message. 

And John Kerry said Republicans were bad with nuance…

That’s the kind of politician Pawlenty has been up to now. The question is whether, at a time of turmoil within the Republican Party and with a need to raise his own profile, he can prepare himself for a possible presidential campaign without sacrificing the best qualities that brought him to this point in his career.

Dan Balz probably doesn’t realize it – but he’s showing Pawlenty’s best qualities for the job.  He’s just still looking at it from Joe Scarborough’s perspective.

And that’s always a mistake.

Drudge, early this morning, reflected the first question of a fair chunk of whatever portion of the landed punditry follows these sorts of things, with a front-page photo of TPaw with the headline “CAN THIS MAN CONQUER OBAMA?”

The Strib noticed, and elaborates on the story:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty filed paperwork today with federal regulators to form the Freedom First PAC, a national fundraising committee he can use to aid GOP candidates in upcoming elections.

Simultaneously, he was featured — with a photo — at the top of the Drudge Report this morning with a headline asking, “CAN THIS MAN CONQUER OBAMA?”

The headline linked to a Politico.com story that reported Pawlenty “has been quietly assembling the blueprint of a presidential campaign even as he has stayed “under the radar of D.C.’s political community”

Now, Barack Obama is shaping up to be a pretty dismal president so far; many of us who on January 21 were resigned to eight years in the wilderness are making mental notes not to throw out the drape measurements, just in case. 

But can TPaw do it?

Let’s go over the strengths and weaknesses of a Pawlenty bid for the White House:

Weakness:  He’s from Minnesota.  Minnesota’s salad days as an incubator of exciting politicians and interesting races are long behind it.  Jesse Ventura, by the way, was more a “freak show” than “evidence of a vibrant culture”.  Minnesota’s only real significance is its ten electoral votes; not chump change, not a kingmaker.

Strength: On the other hand, TPaw has been working diligently on raising that profile.  If slow and steady wins the race, TPaw has got the first part down.

Weakness:  His profile is very low among the conservative base.  Pawlenty has a reputation, not so much as a “moderate” as as a “pragmatist”; he’s no movement conservative.  His showing at the last CPAC – about 2% – showed that he’s not especially well-exposed to the conservative base.  Some Minnesota conservatives call him (wrongly) a RINO.

Strength: But he’s right on the “conservative” issues that do matter to people outside the base – especially in a season where independents are getting serious buyer’s remorse over the neosocialist baggage that came with all the Hope and Change (TM).  His Thermopylae-esque stand against a two-chamber press (the DFL, Minnesota’s Democrats, control the Senate and have a prohibitive supermajority in the House) on two successive state budgets, battling back against a spending-crazy DFL phalanx, should be getting conservatives’ attention nationwide.  While TPaw does run to the center on the occasional issue – global warming, ethanol subsidies – these are “B” and “C” list issues, “nice to haves” compared to the bread-and-butter pocketbook issues. 

A story, for those of you who don’t follow Minnesota GOP trivia: when Pawlenty sought the nomination to run for governor, he faced a very stern challenge from conservative businessman Brian Sullivan, who ran well to Pawlenty’s right.  The state convention in 2002 came down to many, many ballots – and was finally clinched when Pawlenty broke down and took the Taxpayers’ League’s “No New Taxes” pledge.  And for the past six years, come hell or high water, he has held to that pledge, at fearsome political risk, and against the kind of pressure that would have made a real RINO buckle and scamper for cover.

Weakness:  I don’t know that the American conservative “base” knows the above.  They should.  Of course, the national media will follow the lead of the Twin Cities’ media to do their best to obscure this from the legions of moderates and independents who are bailing on the Democrats today.

Strength: Pawlenty is, in theory, the kind of “conservative” who should be able to reach out successfully to independents.  For all the Minnesota left’s incessant whining, he’s not a dogmatic conservative.  He’s focused less on conservative dogma, and more on results in his six years.  His results, unless you’re employed by or addicted to the state bureaucracy, are excellent.  If the American independent street knew the truth about Pawlenty – who’s branded his politics “Sam’s Club Republican” – they’d see there’s a lot to appreciate.

Weakness:  Remember the last time we had a Republican that the media anointed as the “Republican who can reach out to Democrats?”  Remember when Democrats would intone with straight faces that “McCain is the one Republican I’d ever consider voting for?”  Of course, once McCain became a threat, that all changed; the knives came out; the media and left (pardon the redundancy) began finding a “radical conservative” John McCain (whose American Conservative Union lifetime rating is a point to the right of Jim Ramstad, and down there with Chuck Hagel) that had eluded even us on the center right for his entire career. 

Strength: The media matters less than it used to.  Not enough less, but we’re getting there.

Weakness:  Of course, the main vehicle for the weakening and outflanking of the mainstream media – the conservative and center-right alternative media – is an area where Pawlenty has traditionally gone slower than a lot of other candidates.  Along with the Minnesota GOP as a whole, Pawlenty’s been very much a traditionalist in dealing with both the major media (who will eventually turn on him) and the conservative alternative media, talk radio and the blogs. 

Strength: The Minnesota GOP shows signs of being able to change that.  We’ll see if they do, and if TPaw follows suit.

Weakness:  He’s chasing some powerful frontrunners; Palin, Romney and Huckabee have big name recognition and established machines.

Strength: I’m not sure that a machine established in 2008 is all that much to brag about anymore.  To be sure… 

Weakness:  …Pawlenty lacks the name recognition of a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney.  But…

Strength: …he’s got some strengths, too.  Since about 2001, I’ve called Pawlenty “the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today” – and although Rep. Tom Emmer may have taken that title in-state, Pawlenty has formidable stage presence.  He’s much more polished onstage than Sarah Palin – but can fairly be said to match her folksy bonhomie; he plays the “Son of a meat-packer” card with consistency but grace.  As important, he exudes the same sense of gravitas and competency that Romney does – he has paid his dues with interest – without sounding like a CEO in the process. 

I’m not saying Tim Pawlenty is the next “Great Communicator”.  I am saying that enough raw material is there that you can’t rule it out out of hand.

It’s going to be a fun couple of years!

Sarah Palin on why socializing healthcare is just plain dumb:

Common sense tells us that the government’s attempts to solve large problems more often create new ones. Common sense also tells us that a top-down, one-size-fits-all plan will not improve the workings of a nationwide health-care system that accounts for one-sixth of our economy. And common sense tells us to be skeptical when President Obama promises that the Democrats’ proposals “will provide more stability and security to every American.”

With all due respect, Americans are used to this kind of sweeping promise from Washington. And we know from long experience that it’s a promise Washington can’t keep.

Well, we thought “we” – the nation – knew it.  And yet the Dems are in power. 

For now, anyway.

Let’s talk about specifics. In his Times op-ed, the president argues that the Democrats’ proposals “will finally bring skyrocketing health-care costs under control” by “cutting . . . waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies . . . .”

First, ask yourself whether the government that brought us such “waste and inefficiency” and “unwarranted subsidies” in the first place can be believed when it says that this time it will get things right. The nonpartistan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doesn’t think so: Its director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Budget Committee in July that “in the legislation that has been reported we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

In fairness to the Administration, anything’s possible when you’re in fantasy world and/or making Chicago-style campaign promises.

Now look at one way Mr. Obama wants to eliminate inefficiency and waste: He’s asked Congress to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council—an unelected, largely unaccountable group of experts charged with containing Medicare costs.

In other words, empanel a new bureaucracy to tame a bureaucracy… 

In an interview with the New York Times in April, the president suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost . . . the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives . . . .”

Ah. That statement the Dems keep trying to stuff down the memory hole.

Read the whole thing.