A while back I blogged that I couldn’t go back to being a liberal – couldn’t go home again, as they say – because there was no there there. Today, via Glenn, I noticed the following from Ann Althouse, regarding Palin baby coverage in the supposedly liberal New York Times: Did the “belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers” just become right wing? If so, wow! That is perhaps the most amazing political flip I’ve seen in my life.
Well, yes… assuming you think the left wing even exists (in terms of ideas) and is not merely a form of business interest group or hiring hall. Obviously, I’m beginning to question that (the existence). I don’t know where Ann stands in that regard, but if you’re looking for more evidence this is “just business” check out how the lefty gang that runs the Retire Ted Stevens website (as in the Repub. Alaska senator) removed reference to Palin’s opposition to The Bridge to Nowhere from their site. The original cached version is here. (It’s the Internet, guys. Everybody leaves tracks.)
As I said, there’s no there there, in more ways than one.
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17 Comments
1. Larry Also:Actually, they didn’t pull it down. It just has a new URL:
http://www.retireted.com/category/real-estate/gravina-bridge/
Sep 8, 2008 - 12:05 pm 2. Jay:And Palin hasn’t always been consistent in her opposition to the bridge:
http://tinyurl.com/5kdrsy
Sep 8, 2008 - 12:35 pm 3. Pops in Vienna:I imagine that a lot of Alaskan mud was thrown at Palin when she ran for governor. Me thinks they won’t dredge up anything new going through her history. Even if some of the negative stuff is somewhat true, she undoubtledly has fended questions about it before and should have some stock rebutals ready.
I’m not sure directing negative hits against her family is a wise strategy. There are too many Americans dealing with the same issues. When you mock Sarah, you mock most of fly-over country.
Better that the left would sit back and let Dr. Laura continue to slice her up for being an unfit mother rather than some elitist from the New York Times. Michael Savage considers her a bimbo and his opinion resonates far more with conservatives than Campbell Brown.
The crazy right will eat its own. Ask Rudy, Romney and Huckabee.
Sep 8, 2008 - 12:43 pm 4. Lem:Obama’s self-destruct countdown continues. you now have minutes to reach minimum safe distance. (from Aliens)
One day, in what has now become characteristically common; Obama suffers another slip of the tongue on national television and says “my Muslim faith”. If you look at the video it’s obvious that’s not what he meant to say, but the thunderhead said it, making a nice addition to a long farrago of faux pas.
The next day, Obama’s dirt excavation squad in Alaska digs up that Palin’s church has had some sort of controversial revival. I know it’s tempting to do a reverse Wright on Palin; but if you do that isn’t there a danger you would disturb the now quiet resting video called “God dammed America”?
What a bunch of amateurs.
Sep 8, 2008 - 1:05 pm 5. srlucado:“…assuming you think the left wing even exists (in terms of ideas)…”
Oh, they exist, all right. Every surly twelve-year-old who never grew up. They have all the earnest conviction, naivete, and extremism of fifth-graders on too much Mountain Dew who just discovered Karl Marx.
Some have better vocabularies than others, but when come right down to it, regardless of age, level of education, income, or any other metric, they’re simply not adults.
Scratch one, and you get a response that for all its supposed sophistication boils down to “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re a spazz!”
Scott
Sep 8, 2008 - 1:12 pm 6. Godzilla:Regarding Hillary Clinton in Florida, isn’t it almost surreal to see her promoting Obama after the horrible way she had been treated? I mean it was so bad she had to start appearing on Fox, for crying out loud. Unbelievable.
Sep 8, 2008 - 1:40 pm 7. Mike Shuster:I have to say, as someone who has mostly voted for Democrats in the past and probably will in the future, the stuff about Sarah Palin’s daughter and baby has been incredibly disenheartining for me to see– Martin Peretz aghast, for instance, that Palin had the nerve to bring her baby to the convention (when EVERY CANDIDATE brings their whole family), the accusations that somehow it’s ‘hyprocritical’ to get an amniocentisis if you’re pro-life, etc.
But I think it’s wrong to suggest that the left has ‘evaporated’ any more than the right. There are still serious policy differences which underly different ideas about government. See the two candidates health care proposals, for instance. And their tax plans, which are very different (and don’t take McCain’s description of the Obama tax plan at face value, because he’s really distorting it– go to the campaign website and look for yourself), etc.
I mean, all this stuff is pretty policy wonkish and not sexy and not the kind of thing that gets the media or public excited– since everyone would prefer to argue about Oprah, etc. But these issues are very important, because they determine how the county will be run. And as a self-proclaimed thoughtful independent, you should be paying attention to it.
Sep 8, 2008 - 4:23 pm 8. Lem:The most amazing political flip I’ve seen in my lifetime is how you almost never hear liberals saying they are going to raise taxes. Sometimes they even say they will cut them, but rearly raise them.
Before Reagan they argued for raising taxes to make “infrastructure investments” as a way to “jump start the economy”.
Now, it amounts to political suicide. Reagan did that.
Sep 8, 2008 - 4:35 pm 9. Godzilla:In a delayed reaction, Obama had me thinking about something that I hadn’t thought about for years. It was that statement of his, where he said he had considered joining the military but didn’t because there was no war going on at the time. True there was no war then, but there certainly was something going on at a national level that was riling the country up…the hostage crisis…perpetuated by that “tiny problem” country called Iran. I wouldn’t be surprised if enlistments during that period were much higher than what had been the norm prior to the hostage takeover.
Sep 8, 2008 - 4:59 pm 10. Terrye:Jay:
Obama and Biden both voted for the Bridge, McCain did not. And when all that happened in Alaska, no one questioned the fact that Palin killed the bridge. It was not debated until she became McCain’s running mate. After that the left felt the need to revise and rewrite history.
Sep 8, 2008 - 5:50 pm 11. Godzilla:It’s true that the left doesn’t get it, and they may never get it. Even some on the right don’t get it. Boiled down, what’s happening is that Sarah Palin is putting everyone on the TV side of the camera to shame, and is a source of pride to the people on the viewing side. She was a nuclear bomb that went off, and the fallout isn’t even close to being finsihed.
Sep 8, 2008 - 6:10 pm 12. fred:It would appear that Senators Obama and Biden “voted” for the “nowhere” bridge funding a second time — by not supporting a proposal by Senator Coburn that the earmarked bridge funds be used for Katrina relief. To paraphrase Little Bonaparte in “Some Like It Hot”, “you mean you voted for the bridge to nowhere, TWICE!!”
Sep 8, 2008 - 7:11 pm 13. Barry Dauphin:Obama and Biden voted for it before they voted for it.
Sep 8, 2008 - 8:14 pm 14. Sandy P:ChicagoBoyz linked to an article by Conrad Black about The One’s tax plan – jailbird has a lot of time on his hands……
but interesting nonetheless………
Sep 8, 2008 - 8:30 pm 15. Elroy Jetson:fred:
Sep 8, 2008 - 10:37 pm 16. Mahon:That’s right. And if they had voted with Coburn and killed the bridge, Palin would have saluted them for good deeds.
OT:
Coburn was a guy I was hoping McCain would pick. He is a great Senator, and a man who is under review with the Senate ethics committee for delivering babies for free. The Senate thinks its unethical because he works at a for-profit hospital. And Harry Reid can’t stand him, either.
The “left” is another matter, but the Democratic Party remains what it has been since Martin Van Buren invented it under Andrew Jackson – a Spoils System devoted to seizing resources from the productive sectors of society and distributing them to their supporters and themselves. Power for money for power. Thus Fannie and Freddie are jusified as helping people buy houses but really exist to pay huge salaries to the Jamie Goreliks of the world. “Ideas” and “concerns” are pretexts. It was ever thus.
Sep 9, 2008 - 8:10 am 17. Mike Shuster:Roger, per Larry Also’s first comment on this thread that the bridge to nowhere stuff isn’t pulled down, don’t you think you should correct your post so that it isn’t false and misleading?
Sep 9, 2008 - 10:07 am