Sarah Palin: Going Rogue All the Way to the White House?

Sarah Palin in 2012? Some are chuckling, but they might want to rethink their take on the first woman on a GOP presidential ticket.

Conservative pundit David Brooks laughed out loud at the suggestion, calling her a "joke". Her former running mate John McCain called her "irrelevant."  Others point to 2008 wannabes Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee as more qualified and doing better in polls than Palin when people talk about GOP Presidential hopefuls. Of course, most thought that quitting her day job as Alaska Governor was the death knell for her political career, but I think this is just the beginning of Palin's national political career. After all, she was just on Oprah!

Seriously, as I have to remind some who've accused me of being a closet Republican, I'm no political fan of Palin. But when people dismiss her out of hand, I keep thinking one thing -- remember the last politician we scoffed at as not even close to being competent enough for the White House?

Where are all the Republican Women?

Personally I avoid Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh like the plague. If I’m in the mood for hypocrisies, conspiracy theories and hate rhetoric I can usually find a good Hollywood blockbuster that will not only deliver but be much more entertaining and much easier on the blood pressure. So when I heard about both hosts referring to United States Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La) as a prostitute, as much as my blood pressure did rise, it wasn’t exactly a huge surprise. Being respectful and showing regard to common decency have never been strong suits for either man.

What gets me is the reaction from Republican women. I know you’re probably asking yourself, what reaction? Which is my point. There hasn’t been one. Not a thing. Conservative women, specifically Republican Women who actually serve in Congress have nothing to say about blatant sexism against one of the few female colleagues they have? How about Sarah Palin? She has been at the losing end of some of the worst sexists treatment from media in recent history, yet she has nothing to say about calling a Senator a Prostitute?

The reason Senator Landrieu is being called such offensive names is because she offered to vote in favor of moving ahead with health care debate on the Senate floor, (she did not promise to vote for the bill itself, just the vote to move it along) in return for $300 million in federal aid. Federal Aid for Louisiana. Is there really one person in this country who doesn’t think Louisiana needs federal aid more than we need to put off the debate on health care? I wonder how all the people in New Orleans who are still trying to rebuild, who are still without a home, who are still looking for help after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina feel about comparing Senator Landrieau's deal with a whore? I’m guessing not good.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, after all it was last month that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was told she needed to be “put in her place” by the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Huffington Post tried in vain to contact fifteen female lawmakers (fourteen from the House or Representatives) as well as two Republican women's issues groups to get their response to the very sexists statement made about Speaker Pelosi. Not one was willing to provide a statement.

Yes, there were many Democratic women who refused to stand up for Sarah Palin during the media frenzy that occurred during the 2008 Presidential election and the year since because of her politics. But there were many who did. There were many women who put politics aside and made sure their voices were heard when sexism came into play.

But where are female voices from the right? Is sexism not an issue for all of us? Doesn’t Senator Landrieu deserve the respect and defense of her fellow female lawmakers regardless of what side of the aisle they’re on?

Don’t all women?

This is a cross-post from the WomenCount blog. 

Meghan Harvey is the New Media Producer for WomenCount and can also be found blogging at Meg's Idle Chatter.

NEWSFLASH: Governor Sarah Palin Resigns From Post, Effective July 26, 2009

Right now speculation is swirling. I'm sure more will emerge in the next few days as to the particulars of her decision. [Updated to add: the full text of her resignation speech is here.]

We mostly focus on Democratic women here at MOMocrats, but as this relates to the likelihood that Palin will run for higher office in 2012, as many in the GOP have thought she should, we provide this update. There's currently no way to know if this abrupt departure prior to the end of her term increases or decreases the chances she'll enter a national race. She's also been said to have told confidants that she's "out of politics" altogether.

(Video of the press conference after the jump.)

A '10 Senate Race to Watch: Democrats Gillibrand and Maloney Vie in NY

                   

Left, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY                 Right, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, D-NY

For liberal New Yorkers mulling the fall 2010 special election race to fill the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by  Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the declaration of Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney's (D-NY) campaign for it represents an interesting wrinkle. Under state rules governing a vacated Senate position, Governor Paterson chose Gillibrand to fill what had been former Senator Hillary Clinton's seat for a portion of the time remaining in her term when Clinton joined Obama's cabinet. In 2010, the U.S. Senate seat goes wide open to both major political parties, and there's tremendous interest among Democrats in retaining the seat with, naturally, the strongest possible challenger to whoever the Republicans put up.* In this case, it's generally accepted that the Democratic aspirant will likely be a woman. What's unusual is that in addition to the question of who's more "electable" (and why), there's the additional question, who has the better feminist record?

Sarah Palin: When Reality is Irrelevant

There have been so many comments about this post on Facebook, that I decided to copy and paste them in here.  Look below the fold.

By now you've all heard about, and possibly read, this month's Vanity Fair piece about Sarah Palin by Todd S. Purdum, It Came from Wasilla.  (If you haven't, go read it!)  It's an expose about the train wreck that was the McCain-Palin campaign in the final few months.  But this time, we hear a bit more than leaks about Sarah Palin being a "whack job," a "diva," or "going rogue."  My favorite revelation?  Apparently Palin's handlers started calling her the "Little Shop of Horrors" within a week.

There's a nice follow up article in Politico today about the Republican infighting generated by the Vanity Fair piece.  Bill Kristol, an adviser to the McCain campaign and someone rumored to have been responsible for McCain's selection of Palin as a running mate, started off the bitch fest with a post on The Weekly Standard's blog criticizing the Vanity Fair article.  Since then, he and Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager, have basically traded school yard insults, dragging in Randy Scheunemann, a McCain foreign policy adviser.  Keep it up, boys.  We really don't care who leaked all the stuff about Palin during the campaign or whether one of you suggested she might have post-partum depression.  It's all good for the Democrats!

Here's a sampling of the pissing match:

“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.”

Responding to Schmidt’s counterattack, Kristol directly fingered Schmidt: “It’s simply a fact that when the going got tough, Steve Schmidt trashed Sarah Palin, both within the campaign and (on background) to journalists. This was after Steve took credit for the Palin pick when, at first, he thought it made him look good. John McCain deserved better.”

At this, Schmidt unloaded in a lengthy telephone interview, suggesting that Kristol was carrying out a personal vendetta based out of anger over the attempt to fire Scheunemann in the final days of the campaign.

Man, it doesn't get much better than this.

Funny, G. Gordon Liddy Doesn't Look Like An Expert on Women's Health

This is G. Gordon Liddy.

Yesterday, G. Gordon Liddy said on his conservative talk radio show that SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a member of La Raza, "which means in illegal alien, 'The Race.'"

WOW. There's now a language called "illegal alien."

And then he said:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Now, take a second look at the picture above. Does that look like a man who knows anything about Latinos, women, or Latinas? Female reproductive cycles? Common sense?

Obviously, no.

A few conservative politicians have issued tepid reprimands.

What I want to know is--where are the conservatives who howled that Sarah Palin was being treated in sexist fashion? Where are the conservative women--Republican Latinas, even, if such people exist--who are decrying this ridiculous Neanderthal racism and sexism as something that should crawl back to the stone age where it belongs?

Feel free to leave any examples of right-wing outrage at what Liddy said in the comments. I'm curious to see if there are any.

They don't even have to be wingnuts. They could be members of the media.

For example, if anyone sees Campbell Brown declaring "Free Sonia Sotomayor," like she did for Sarah Palin, please let me know.

So far?

I mostly hear crickets.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Go read it: Top posts from around the 'Net: Tssking and Tasking Palin, Explaining S-CHIP in states

There have been some fantastic blog posts recently about topics you may or may not be familiar with. If you can, take a few minutes and read these fantastic posts that I highly recommend:

"Let’s talk Emmenak, Sarah"---OmegaMom, an Alaskan resident, takes Sarah Palin to task for ignoring the humanitarian crisis in the Alaskan village of Emmonak. The crisis is due to extreme cold and high fuel prices. A local resident says his community needs heating fuel and food. OmegaMom writes:

Dear Sarah:

I understand that you currently have more public relations than policy people on your administrative payroll.  Perhaps it’s time to review how well they’re doing?

I know you’ve been awfully busy giving interviews lately wherein you chastise “anonymous bloggers” for spreading lies and innuendo–I’m guessing related to the whole “is she really Trig’s mom?” question, which is only being followed by hardline nutcases–but don’t you think your PR people might mention Emmenak to you?  It’s been big news in the Alaska blogosphere these past few days, but there hasn’t been a peep out of your office about it.

I would think this would be an excellent chance for you to show your “Alaska mom” instincts, being Mrs. Compassion and Mama Bear, fighting for the health and welfare of the people of your state.

Go read it!

And what else do I suggest that you read?

Sarah who?

I know we are still celebrating Barack Obama's historic election, but I have to pause for a moment and acknowledge just how close we came to putting Sarah Palin—that "hillbilly" from Wasilla, according to an angry McCain aide—into the White House. /shudder

Folks, I've been waiting two months plus change to repost this gem. With one caveat: I originally said she was chosen to pander to women and that turned out to be only partly true. She was also chosen to energize the Republican base, but now it seems that she—along with Rove and Bush—has done serious damage to the GOP. In the end, many Republicans could not and did not endorse their own party's candidate because of her shocking lack of preparedness and experience for the job. In the end, she was just too stupid.

Yes, the Palin pick was a slap in the face to progressive women everywhere (oh, and to smart people), but it was an even bigger slap in the face to the old school GOP leadership. Let's hope that the crackpot evangelical right-wingers split off and form their own party.

There was a brief moment when I thought I would be proven wrong and I'd have to eat my post, but on September 15, when John McCain said, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong," I knew he was done.

So once again, I'd like to thank the Democrats—especially David Plouffe and David Axelrod who ran the most brilliant campaign in modern presidential history—for forcing McCain to pick a "hail Mary,"  unvetted (much to our delight) Vice-Presidential candidate who would ultimately ensure his loss. A candidate who once greeted McCain staffers wearing nothing but a towel. A candidate who didn't know Africa was a continent, not a country.

I shudder to think...

Okay! Back to celebrating!

—Stefania Pomponi Butler

Still undecided? A vote for John McCain is a vote against women. Let us count the ways.

The MOMocrats along with Feminists for Obama want to make sure everyone has the facts before they vote. If you know someone who is still undecided or are undecided yourself, we ask you to consider how the two candidates will address women's issues. John McCain doesn't even have a women and families section on his website. Why? Perhaps it's because the facts show that John McCain has consistently failed to protect women in myriad ways.

For example, McCain voted against funding breast cancer research if it meant taking away from military funds.  Breast cancer affects all women, even the 370,000 women currently serving in the US Armed Forces.  Since breast cancer attacks 1 in 8 women, that means 46,250 members of the US military will deal with breast cancer. And John McCain voted NO.  It is not a niche issue, it’s America’s issue.

If McCain and Palin win, Women Lose. 

Eleanor Smeal, President of Feminist Majority, says, “Obama/Biden are running on the strongest platform for women’s rights of any major party in U.S. history”. 

That’s why Feminist Majority launched www.FeministsForObama.org, a side-by-side comparison of the Democratic and Republican nominees on four major women’s issues: Violence Against Women, Abortion and Contraception, Women and Work, and Breast Cancer and Health Care.

That's why, as soon as McCain announced Sarah Palin as his VP pick, we examined her stance on women's issues and found that like her runningmate, Palin--a woman--has not been a strong advocate for women.

To reach as many people as possible, Feminist Majority created three striking PSAs that illuminate some of the grave truths about the McCain/Palin record on women’s issues. If you have a moment, these are worth watching and sharing. 

One in Six
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChyeoMJc3U
“John McCain voted against funding to fight violence against women.”

Unholy Trinity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RFrEzQAOvM
“McCain voted against a program funding breast cancer research.”

Violation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w7ZZ5huKMk
“John McCain and Sarah Palin are running on a platform that seeks to outlaw a woman's right to an abortion even in cases of rape and incest.”

McCain on Breast Cancer

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  You deserve to know where the candidates stand: http://www.feministsforobama.org/Issues_breastcancer.htm

McCain voted against funding breast cancer research if it meant taking away from military funds.  Breast cancer affects all women, even the 370,000 women currently serving in the US Armed Forces.  Since breast cancer attacks 1 in 8 women, that means 46,250 members of the US military will deal with breast cancer.  And John McCain voted NO.  It is not a niche issue, it’s America’s issue. 

He voted against a bill that changed the course of breast cancer research. 

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RFrEzQAOvM

Rachel Maddow calls Sarah Palin a "liar" because she is one

This is Maddow gold, I tell you.