The Sarah Palin Project: Eye of Newt & RINO Tails
April 28, 2009
by Jennifer Kaye
|The New Agenda welcomes blogger Afrocity. This post was cross-posted from her blog, Autograph Letter Signed.
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,-
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
William Shakespeare: Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15)
The above line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth is spoken by three witches. Three points about the witches are noteworthy: they wreaked havoc; conjured spirits; and manipulated Macbeth to his eternal demise. How many politicians have shared a similar fate as Macbeth? I can think of one in particular that comes to mind; however, in her unfolding tale those witches have morphed into evil warlocks.
During a recent interview with Christianity Today magazine, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sat down with journalist Sarah Pulliam and was asked, “Who do you see as the emerging leaders in the Republican Party: Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin?”
Newt’s answer:
Bobby Jindal is certainly brilliant and has a great future. Tim Pawlenty has a great future. There are a lot of people who are terrific. The fact is, I think that you can look at [governor of South Carolina] Mark Sanford, Paul Ryan in the House, [California congressman] Kevin McCarthy, or Eric Cantor [in the House]. I just think we’re likely to have a dramatic resurgence. We have two great candidates in Ohio, John Kasich for governor and Rob Portman for the Senate, who are likely to be very, very effective.
Thank God (no pun intended) that the female interviewer noticed that Newt mentioned not one woman in his list. She asked the former speaker to expand on his answer: “Do you see any women emerging in the GOP leadership?”
I would start, frankly, with Linda Lingle in Hawaii, who was a terrific governor who got re-elected in very difficult circumstances. You have Kay Bailey Hutchinson running for the governorship of Texas. If she wins that, she will automatically be a national figure because she’ll be the governor of the second largest state.
Is it me or are we missing someone? Notice how he started that answer with “frankly.”
It was then in her capacity as a fantastic, tenacious journalist that Ms. Pullium stated the obvious. “You didn’t mention Sarah Palin.”
Yes, Newt you didn’t mention Sarah Palin…
Sarah Palin has an obvious role if she wants it. The question for her has to be, are she and her family willing to go through another couple of years of the kind of media coverage that they currently get? Is she willing to do the kind of development of national issues and development of a national profile that would be required? She is a celebrity in her own right. She is probably the most successful figure in the party right now, and she’s a formidable figure. I think to go from there to becoming a national leader would take a significant amount of work.
(Afrocity rolls eyes)
Uh-Oh, Sarah get your gun!!! Saddle up the caribou. The warlocks are around the cauldron and tightening their stranglehold on the 2012 GOP primaries. I see ghosts, and RINO tails…smoke and plenty of it. You betcha.
Speaking as someone who remains a loyal supporter of Sarah Palin , there remains for me an open ended question of whether or not her bid for the presidency in 2012 will be sincerely supported by the GOP. Especially by the many elephants and RINOs that pee standing up.
Newt’s carefully crafted responses suggest a continuing pattern of the Republican patriarchy that is dismissive towards Sarah Palin. Newt’s interview in particular presents a more obvious attempt at her marginalization. On its face Newt’s opinion of Palin has to be taken with a grain of salt, as it is one that comes from a man who has historically questioned the authority of women. He mentions Sarah’s appeal to media as one possible limitation to her bid in 2012. If I were Newt, I would not bring up personal relationships and media scrutiny (cough, cough).
Newt’s recent slight of Palin is not an isolated case. When interviews among other GOP males are examined collectively, their responses towards Palin tell a similar story. Palin’s former presidential running mate, John McCain, exhibited a common air of discomfort and unresponsiveness when questioned about Palin’s political future within the Republican Party. On one Jay Leno appearance McCain failed to even mention Palin’s name when asked who were the “rising stars” of the GOP.
Such vagueness will only serve as fodder for the mainstream media, as they will surely see any answer, especially an ommitance, as intrinsically negative and connected to Tina Fey-constructed stereotypes of Palin.
The election of 2008 proved that we have pitifully too few outstanding female politicians of either party with the potential to “go all the way. Once we have identified such candidates, we as women collectively must be careful how we allow her to be publicly defined. To paraphrase, we have to speak up fast and loud when the patriarchy attempts to send such women down a path towards failure and political destruction. As the past demonstrates, we did not get mad enough when Hillary and Sarah were demoralized in 2008. Democrat, Independent, Green, or Republican makes absolutely zero difference. There are no political boundaries when it comes to sexual discrimination and misogyny.
If Sarah Palin hopes to run for president in 2012, she may do better to assemble a support network that goes beyond SARAH PAC. This network should include her staunch political allies (if there are any besides Rick Perry (R-TX) Ugh) and possibly any willing PUMAs. Unfortunately, we have not seen much evidence from Palin in this regard.
I would hate to get media tickets to another political tragedy at a woman’s expense.
Autographed Letter Signed,
Afrocity
I would love to see Gov. Palin come back into the ring in 2012 and I have every confidence that she can come back into the race a fierce competitor. She has already felt the double standard in the media and her own party regarding how women are positioned. Secretary Clinton has seen this first hand for years and years. The sexism facing female candidates is a given and will be as long as individuals like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are allowed to pretend they are journalists.
Secretary Clinton was able to move forward “despite” the vitriol flung at her from the media and her own sexist party. If it wasn’t for the “dysfunctional” Super Delegates and Caucus systems (yes, I am being kind with the use of that word) of the Democratic Party she would be the One.
Sexist individuals who have something to lose will downplay a woman’s strengths. Gov. Palin connects with people, she is genuine, she is committed to her state. Certain “higher ups” in the media, DNC, and the GOP want to continue to minimalize her because they see her as a threat now. This is the exact behavior that Secretary Clinton saw when she ran for Senator from NY and when she was preparing to run for President. Gov. Palin and her family survived 2008 and I know that when she decides to enter the race again she will be more prepared with a strategy that will leverage all of her assets.
Thank you, Afrocity! You’re right, it’s deeply ironic for Newt to imply that the media digging up “scandals” should reflect on a person’s actual qualifications for the job. Hey Newt, if you think Sarah’s media coverage is bad, how about standing up against it?
I do agree with Newt on one thing, though. Linda Lingle and Kay Bailey Hutchinson are women to watch.
Afrocity,
It’s great to see you here!
All the negative buzz STARTED with the GOP anyway! Then Palin gobbled up all the bait.
Sadly, fo Sarah, it´s OVAH!
My hunch is she won’t want to put her family through the ringer again but I hope she will stay in the race.
Compare the treatment: David Vitter gets caught soliciting sex in a MN men’s room, and we hear GOP cries of “lay off, think of his family.” Sarah Palin and her family endure contrived scandals dug up by a suddenly intent media. Where are the cries of outrage? Nada.
Just as bad as the 1990s fingerpointing by “pious” Dems such as Joe Lieberman and John “my wife has cancer, want to have my baby” Edwards. When the Dems should have been yelling to high heaven to quit wasting congressional time and the taxpayers’ money with constant, ridiculous investigations.
I guess when you want to take down politicians like Palin and the Clintons who actually want to do positive things for the average American, no hypocrisy is too much trouble. Especially when “uppity” women are involved.
Hmmmm…. Do you think Newt mentioned other GOP women before Palin because they have less of a chance? To get to the highest level?
I’m just wondering why Palin seems to be LAST on his list. And Bobby Jindal – ugh – is first on his list.
Afrocity,
Thanks for the bi-partisan comments and for giving us the NEWT heads up on his lukewarm to none support of Governor Sarah Palin. Please let the Republicans know that I wouldn’t vote for Newt, because I saw his ‘FAMILY VALUES’ when he had an affair with his staffer, while his wife had cancer. If you can’t stand with your family during a life challenging illness, you won’t stand by your fellow citizens.
Afrocity, I look forward to reading more from you in the future. Good going!
Afrocity–thanks, a great post.
Yes, I heard the Newtie, “frankly…” It’s clear all the boys have decided to “do away with” Palin.
By the same logic, any other woman who would run most likely will get the Hillary or the Sarah treatment (bitch or bimboified).
And that restroom at the Minneaplis airport is a tourist attraction now, as so many people request to see it.
Does anyone remember how Elizabeth Dole was treated when she was running in the primaries?
Good post. It will be great to see Palin campaigning again. Our misogynistic media needs a feminist smackdown in order for those girls in RunningStart(see post above) to realize their dreams of leadership. thanks, Afrocity!
Sexism is certainly a problem for any woman who wants to serve the people by being elected to public office, considering the swine who run our political parties and the corporate media. However Sarah has several bigger problems than being a woman. Those problems are she was not born rich, she doesn’t live on the east coast, she isn’t a lawyer, she didn’t go to one of the three east coast snob approved universities for corporate or government leaders. She will never get past that with the ethnocentric elitists who run this country.
So you criticizing Newt Gingrich for what exactly? Im no fan of his, but you are simply putting him on blast because he doesn’t agree with you that Gov. Palin may be the “future of the GOP”, whatever that means. Nowhere does he make any kind of sexist remark, but by looking through the comments and general tone of the piece you’d think he handed her an apron. Its fine to call out sexism, when it actually happens, but here you’re just mad he doesn’t see the same potential (and rightly so) in Gov. Palin as you do.
Great post! I’lm a Palin fan also. Keep in mind, in addition to being a woman, she is a reformer, a true reformer, and reformers have lots of enemies. In terms of organizations, she has Team Sarah and there are several Pumas who blog there. Team Sarah is pro-life and most of the people are quite conservative, but pumas are welcome. They welcome anyone who supports Sarah. I also think she needs to start expanding her base, but right now she is battling within her own state all of these ethics complaint whose primary purpose seems to be to drive her out of office and to bankrupt her family. I think there’s some Chicago politics involved here, no doubt coming from the white house (Rahm, can you hear me).
To get the real story on what’s going on I go to Convervatives 4 Palin; they seem to have access to lots of info and the writing is in the style of Hillbuzz.
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/
re. comment by Bes at 6:47 p.m.
Bes, our country’s eastern seaboard is a mighty long coastline with many different states, each with a unique history and character etc., as well as excellent colleges and universities, to be sure.
But are you sure you’d like to lump together, for example, Camden County College in the town of Camden NJ, with Princeton University in that same state? That’s how much geography alone means.
IIRC, in at least one previous comment by you about MSM mistreatment of Palin, you lay blame on the entire east coast by making a similar negative and unfair over-generalization about the people, their beliefs and institutions. Let me tell ya, Bes: Americans living on the east coast are neither that powerful nor hateful.
If you’re referring to Yale and Harvard, possibly Princeton or Columbia as the 3rd, they are indeed well represented by the most recent presidents. BHO attended Columbia, so far as we know. The Bush father & son team attended Yale, more or less (#41 was there only 2 years and didn’t really earn his degree, but what the heck). Bill Clinton went to Georgetown University in D.C., earned a Rhodes Scholarship for Oxford, then went to Yale.
But what about the rest? Focusing just on presidents here– not on Supreme Court justices, and all the current/recent members of Congress– the Ivy League schools fade into the background:
acc’g to “Biography of Jimmy Carter”
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary......io_p.phtml
He was educated in the public school of Plains, attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and received a B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946.
[continuing with quick Web searches]
Ronald Reagan earned a B.A. from Eureka College in the small midwestern town of Eureka, Illinois.
LBJ worked his way through college at Southwest Texas State Teachers’ College, after which he actually taught school for several years– nothing of the northeast elitist in him, though he usually is described as a liberal.
Richard Nixon attended his hometown school of Whittier College in California for his B.A., then got his law degree at Duke University in North Carolina. Does Duke count as one of your east coast snob schools?
The other colleges certainly do not.
TI: What powerful people in government or corporate America, which are really now the same thing, went to school ONLY west of the Mississippi? We in the west and our culture are simply not represented in the federal government or the corporate media NOW. Open your eyes. And as could easily be predicted, we don’t like it. We also don’t like watching people like Palin get mocked because she doesn’t fit the narrow definition of the type of people who think they were put on earth to run this country. Do you feel that you would be represented by a government made up of people who were only educated and lived in Alaska, Washington, Oregon or California? How would you like it if the only TV stations you could get, and in fact were forced to subsidize came from those same western states. I know you can’t begin to fathom it. But I do not see the relevancy of the Federal government to me. It seems just as foreign as the British ruling the United States. I am not alone in my attitude, and I am not a fringe element, of course no one on the East coast is aware of this because attitudes in the west are not reported. Regardless Palin does not have a hope in hell before you get around to the fact that she is female and I like Palin.
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Bes at 11:41pm
Bes, you’ve only descended into ranting at me, and toward anyone here who happens to ever have lived or attended school in a geographical spot in the USA other than what you describe as “west of the Mississippi”– as if Lewis & Clark were about to row up to us and ask us for directions. Howsabout “West of the Pecos” or…
what if I just ask you to write a concise outline in which you instruct me about all the places where I’ve lived, how I think, what schools I’ve ever attended, and last but least, how any of those things determine my pov on Sarah Palin.
In your own words, perhaps “you can’t begin to fathom” the millions of Americans like me– who move at least once every 5 years, who are independent thinkers as well as independent voters, and simply call ourselves Americans– please hold the hyphen and the violence too, because we’d rather just have some R-E-S-P-E-C-T with Equal Pay on top (each woman can name her own social appetizer and political dessert).
You claim,
“We in the west and our culture are simply not represented in the federal government or the corporate media NOW.”
Just FYI, I’ve lived there, Bes. I worked and was admitted to school there. I’ve worn out my boots on the highways of the west. I have exactly the education + experience to instruct you on what Culture means.
But here’s a more relevant lesson for you: the federal government + the corporate media are run by the same powerful elites. They, themselves, think regional distinctions really mean diddley. Where do they live? Where did they attend school? Sheesh, they typically have multiple homes, some of which aren’t even in the USA! They own facilities in multiple locations.
Some are in Texas (think of James Baker and Laura Bush among the ones with recognizable names). Some are in Nevada (think Sex Slavery masked as prostitution). Others are in Mississippi (think of Cokie Roberts, and her oily brother, Thomas), Idaho and Oregon (think of J.R. Simplot). Why not?
Pick a state. They don’t care if you do. So the Koch brothers are HQd in Kansas. So what. They have oil refineries in Texas and Oklahoma. So what. One of them is married to Dorothy Bush. Where did she go to school? Probably in Texas, but heck, it makes no difference.
They laugh at us all for allowing simplistic, false assumptions of “The American Heartland” and “The Liberal Northeast” etcetera to drain and divide us.
Similarly, partisan politics is yet another way in which the power of We, The People, is being wasted. Now more than ever, we have to set aside our differences, whether real or perceived, and join together to stop those who, as you say, indeed do not represent us.
* How to Really Throw Parties in a Sleepy Banana Republic
Three-part commentary dedicated to all country-loving independents and party exiles in hell. Part {1} is a "corny" patriotic Statement of Grief & Grievances; {2} tells why & how we should get the Two-Headed "Duopoly" Party Monster off our backs; {3} pragmatic and symbolic reasons to Impeach Obama Now, with non-partisan ideas for real-world action from us keyboard commandos.
excellent post
and to those who say that Newt and McCain have made a concerted effort to do away with Palin, I say yes, that is for certain!
I worry that the damage done to Palin is so widespread that she can never recover and frankly, I would love to see a Snowe or Collins or Hutchinson take women forward in the republican party. But I also worry that women will simply sit back and allow a repeat to unfold over and over as women march up to bang heads on the glass ceiling that now contains a winners throat caught in it.
Thank you so very much for this report. I thought well of Newt, but his response dismissing Governor Palin was unacceptable. The GOP may be no better than the DNC when it comes to seeing and treating women candidates equally and seriously.
The only reason I will get involved in the 2012 presidential run will be if Palin runs. I agree with some of the commenters above that the media damage to Palin presents an enormous hurdle, but I have every confidence that if Palin wants it, she will get out there and make it happen (without the good ole boys). I really wish Hillary had kicked her party to the curb and run independent . . . but that is a dream gone by.
On the Morning Joe show earlier this week Michael Crowley of the New Republic was a guest. A comment was made about Sarah Pain and he immediately said “Oh, that freak show”. Joe Scarabough and others on the program immediately said …”not on this show” meaning they did not approve of his comment.
I have sent Mr. Crowley an e-mail regarding his comment. I would ask that if any of you saw that program you would also send him an e-mail with the appropriate comments. In my e-mail I told him I didn’t think that was an appropriate comment for a man to make towards another man and certainly for a man to make towards another woman. I commented further about his education and vocabulary that should allow him to express his
displeasure for Sarah Palin in a better way.
Newt needs to learn that his place is in the kitchen. The Republican kitchen that is, cooking up ideas behind the scenes that can be implemented by the GOP’s rising stars like Palin.
Unfortunately, Newt just can’t seem to give up on his oval office pipe dreams. He’s a creative thinker, but his less than wholesome personal history won’t be palatable to a large segment of voters. I think he believes his only chance is to undermine other potential 2012 candidates, and he’s starting with Sarah Palin, first by trying to disappear her from the public eye by not mentioning her, and then by dismissively seeding doubt about her ability to win.
Note that Newt had to bring Sarah’s family into the discussion. Would he have targeted Rudy or Mitt by asking if they were willing to have their families endure media scrutiny? Of course not. But just as dozens of male and female columnists did during the campaign, Newt is all too happy to subtly discredit Sarah by pointing to that ball and chain family of hers. Despicable.
Hey, now. Lots of libertarian and conservative bloggers rallied to Sarah. Even now, the rank and file she brought out to vote for John McLoserpants support her (as do I). Please remember how the rank and file supported Reagan far more than the Republican establishment ever did: this is not all sexism.
Yes, her early interviews were mismanaged and she needs to immediately reverse that damage. She is not (yet) Ronald Reagan who, when not Governor or President, criss-crossed the country giving marvelous speeches of political truth and clarity (see here for a pellucid example). Nor would I recommend a slavish imitation, but a close study of the Gipper would help her.
And look: her greatest weakness, aside from little experience in foreign policy (shared by all governors), is the abortion question. Only women who disapprove of abortion (regardless of its legal status) can give her the popular support she needs to be mainstream.
My $0.02, for what it’s worth.
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