Sarah Palin does not have the gift of the gab. She is not glib. It was to a large extent Obama’s glibness that got him elected. But what Palin has that Obama doesn’t are policies based on sound principles well worth carrying out, and the competence to do so. She knows how to value and use freedom, and she is honest, decent, and efficient. These are qualities of gold. Obama has none of them.
The speech she made Sunday July 26 when she stepped down as governor of Alaska was not well crafted. It probably sent no thrills up anybody’s leg. She struck no poses. She did not give the impression of being ‘above it all’. (The Huffington Post sneered at it.) But it testified to her strong character, her bold vision, and her solid achievements.
She listed the promises she’d made – and fulfilled: ethics reform; a fair return for Alaskans on the exploitation of their natural resources; protection of the environment; increased funding for, and improvements in education, including better opportunities for special needs students; managing fish and wildlife for abundance; producing energy solutions, getting a natural gas pipeline underway; and defending the constitution. She was able to report in truth to Alaskans, ‘WHAT I PROMISED, WE ACCOMPLISHED.’ (Notice the ‘we’ – she gives credit to the many who helped her achievement.)
She went on:
So much success! And Alaska there is much good in store further down the road, but to reach it we must value and live the optimistic pioneering spirit that made this state proud and free. We can resist enslavement to big central government that crushes hope and opportunity. Be wary of accepting government largesse. It doesn’t come free , and often accepting it takes away everything that is free. Melting into Washington’s powerful “care-taking” arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us, and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free.
I resisted the stimulus package. I resisted the stimulus package and we have championed earmark reform, slashing earmark requests by 85% to break the cycle of dependency on a stifling, unsustainable federal agenda, and other states should follow this for their and for America’s stability. We don’t have to feel that we must beg an allowance from Washington, except to beg the allowance to be self-determined. See, to be self-sufficient, Alaska must be allowed to develop – to drill and build and climb, to fulfill statehood’s promise. At statehood we knew this. At statehood we knew this, that we are responsible for ourselves and our families and our future, and fifty years later, please let’s not start believing that government is the answer. It can’t make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise. What can? It is the wisdom of the people and our families and our small businesses, and industrious individuals …
Alaskans will remember that years ago, remember we sported the old bumper sticker that said, “Alaska. We Don’t Give a Darn How They Do It Outside?” Do you remember that? I remember that, and remember it was because we would be different. We’d roll up our sleeves, and we would diligently sow and reap, and we can still do this to carve wealth out of the wilderness and make our living on the water, with strong hands and innovative minds, and now with smarter technology. It is what our first people and our parents did. It worked, because they worked. We must be prudent and persistent and press for the people’s right to responsibly develop God-given resources for the maximum benefit of the people.
And we have come so far in just 50 years. We’re no longer a frontier outpost on the periphery of the world’s greatest nation. Now, as a contributor and a securer of America, we can attain our destiny in the promise of our motto “North to the Future.” See, the pressing issue of our time, it’s energy independence, because there is an inherent link between energy and security, and energy and prosperity. Alaska will lead with energy, we will prove you can be both pro-development and pro-environment, because no one loves their clean air and their land and their wildlife and their water more than an Alaskan. We will protect it.
Yes, America must look north to the future for security, for energy independence, for our strategic location on the globe. Alaska is the gate-keeper of the continent…
She vowed ‘to fight harder for what is right’. She never felt, she said, that it was necessary to have a title to do that.
True, she needs to learn more about foreign affairs (as do Obama and Hillary Clinton). And she needs a good speech writer. But these are lacks that can be supplied. She already has what is essential for a great political leader – vision, confidence, competence, integrity, an ability to inspire others, and a profound understanding of what has made America the greatest and freest nation, along with the determination to keep it so. And that means she could be a worthy candidate for the presidency.
___________________________
Jillian Becker is editor-in-chief of The Atheist Conservative.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Jillian,
Welcome aboard to you and Kristen!! We’re not such a motley crew after all
July 29th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Is Jillian…a girl? Ahem *fixes tie*
July 29th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Palin quit 18 months early. I have not heard a credible explanation. It is obvious she bugged out early to run for POTUS. Too bad, Alaskans.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
She already has a pretty good speechwriter, she needs an off-the-cuff writer.
Also, welcome aboard!
July 29th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
The best thing Palin can do is study up on the issues and then take on one of the liberal news anchors. If I were advising Palin, I’d tell her to go on CBS against Katie Couric. That would generate huge buzz “Couric vs. Palin round 2″. She should go on CBS and wipe the floor with Couric. It would show that Palin has matured in experience and has a keen grasp on the issues. It would also make her opponents pause and say “this lady is serious”
That is what Palin needs to do… if she is running for President.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I don’t think Palin needs any tweaking. She is already a grown woman, and a fine one at that. Being herself may not lead to her being the leader of the entire free world, but I honestly think there is plenty of good she can do for the conservative cause in other ways. She started out in media, and I think she, like Huckabee, would still be fantastic in media. By the way, I think she is much more genuine than Huckabee, but like him she is charismatic and gives great sound bites.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Palin presents a problem for the GOP. On the one hand, she is beloved by many in the base. They WANT her leading, and are adamant that she is The One. On the other hand, many of us in the party see her as either deeply flawed, or fatally flawed. And then you have the left who simply can’t stand her and will never take her seriously or stop ridiculing her. She is also unpopular with indies and moderates, and a majority of Americans do not believe she can be POTUS.
What to do? I don’t know, but the polarization seems to be getting worse, not better. She is not fading away, but gearing up. She seems to be splitting the GOP right in two.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Maher rips Palin
Comedian Bill Maher attacks former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2009/07/27/tsr.maher.palin.cnn
July 29th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Frank Luntz gave Palin a C+ for her July 3rd speech tendering her resignation and an A for her actual resignation speech. Most pundits gave it a rave review and you dump on it like it was a F. You says her speech was not well crafted while after the speech both Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer of Fox News appeared to walk back from their original assessments in early July that Sarah’s political career was finished: Fred has seen the light and now calls her a star while Charles apologizes for sounding condescending that he recommended that she bone up in the next 2 years. I wonder if they noticed that Sarah has been reading Mark Levin’s book Liberty and Tyranny. I think his book would qualify for advanced studies. As to her speech Luntz remarked on the alliteration and thought it was brilliant. Jillian, I don’t know which speech you were watching, or are you attacking it because Sarah wrote the speech herself and that destroys the Far Left and RINO meme that Sarah is an idiot or stupid.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Not many TV personalities I hate more than Bill Maher. Oh, James Carville and Ann Coulter, for being the biggest partisan hacks in existence.
And Martha, perhaps her and Romney can split with 15% apiece and give Pawlenty the nomination
Kudos to Palin for the speech though, this must have been the sort of Palin that drew McCain’s attention prior to the nomination. She seems far more in her element here.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:40 am
bob,
Charles didn’t apologize. In fact, he reiterated his admonition to Palin, that she must learn the issues if she wants to be considered a serious presidential candidate. And while Barnes no longer believes it was a mistake for her to resign as governor, he recognizes stardom will only get her so far, and that she needs to stop repeating vacuous platitudes and talking points, and truly gain a better grasp of national issues in detail.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:57 am
I’m not sure what kind of Republican Palin is, and what kind of GOP Leadership would support her if she ran for the Nomination. Candidates do need a lot of State Party Leadership support to get anywhere. They are the ones who do most of the organizational and fund raising that Candidates need.
I like Palin and I know that she is a good person, but when she gets on the news cycle, good or bad, the constant top story news alerts and abnormal attention she gets is mentally draining, especially when the stories aren’t exactly breaking news events or for that matter even that interesting. She knows how to keep herself out there for sure, but becomes in danger of becoming overexposed, and people get tired of hearing about her.
Palin’s every move is not news worthy and too much attention is not good for her if she becomes a serious Candidate. She should learn to balance the media she gets.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Quit Whining 4
http://www.newmajority.com/quit-whining-4/#comments
“Not so long ago, it was liberals who fretted that the sinister authoritarian personality of their fellow Americans would crush constitutional freedoms. It was conservatives who expressed a generous trust in the goodness of the American nation. As Ronald Reagan asked in his first inaugural address: “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen?” You will know that the conservative comeback has begun when conservatives talk like that again.”
I thought Frum wanted to get away from Reagan? Now he cites Reagan’s rhetoric as an example of what we should emulate? It appears that some conservatives took Frum’s initial advice to move beyond Reagan by creating “fear” in the electorate regarding expansive centralized government and deficit spending.
If the intended effect of this rhetoric that Frum is so lukewarm towards was to move Obama from a highly popular President at the beginning of his adminstration to a below-average President in terms of public approval just six months into his adminstration, then I’d say the new rhetoric is working magnificently.
July 30th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Romney’s most recent Op-Ed on Healthcare . . . does some defending of the MassCare Plan.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/07/mr-president-whats-the-rush.html
July 30th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Tommy,
It’s working at downing the Democrats and Obama, who are increasingly viewed with skepticism (as they should be), but the Republican Party itself has hardly rebounded from ’05-’06 even. Last I checked it’s best-liked public figure was John McCain, but he’s of course hardly the face of the party – should be, but isn’t, alas. We’ve still got incredible amounts of rebuilding to do, to regroup and strengthen our forces, before we can take on even weakened Democrats and Obama himself.
I agree with Frum’s sentiment and see exactly where he is coming from. He’s looking at it from the perspective of “what went wrong?” and trying to reassemble the broken components, what has been lacking. Conservatives like to blame Bush’s tendency for big spending for much of the issue, but debt wasn’t too much more of a problem for him than it was for Reagan himself. In both cases it was largely defense-related. I think it’s more a convenient excuse. We hated DeLay and Co for being big-government Republicans, but it was really because big government meant corrupt, in every which way. That’s what chased them from office – not Bush’s compassionate conservatism that had him riding decent popularity all the way to 2001. What we need are Republican leaders of high character, ones we can be proud of again.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:04 am
Interesting article about Sarah Palin.
July 30th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Here is real leadership, not platitudes.
(see link in #14 above)
Also, for the miss-informed, RomneyCare is not socialized medicinal, it is the Free enterprise system.
July 30th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Very, very good article to champion Sarah Palin!
July 30th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Welcome aboard Jillian, Nice article.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Nice article.
This is another good read:
Why Sarah Palin Threatens The “Establishment”
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2009/07/29/why-sarah-palin-threatens-the-%E2%80%9Cestablishment%E2%80%9D/
July 30th, 2009 at 8:25 am
If Gov. Palin runs for POTUS in 2012, she will win the GOP nomination, hands down.
The issue is what the Dem machine and MSM will do in the general campaign.
We already know they are terrified of her as they easily see she has
the biggest potential to defeat Obama.
My guess is she is gonna help those right of center politicians if they
want her help, finish her book, put out op-eds on current issues, and
fundraise.
Being she is a western libertarian/conservative, she is the perfect
candidate to be endorsed by the Tea Party Movement, and her attacks
on Obama/Dem big government should secure her as the anti-Obama.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:44 am
We need bigtent conservatism again, not bigtent moderation.
We need to rebuild the Reagan Coalition of limited government,
strong defense (not necessary an interventionist one), fiscal
sanity, socons, and respect for the Constitution.
Frum is DemLite. He thinks that pulling to the left will solve the
problem. It won’t. That would ensure the GOP will not stand for
anything different from the Dems.
The GOP needs brand differenciation and bigtent conservatism
will clearly give an alternative that Americans can choose as opposed
to the statist Dems.
July 30th, 2009 at 9:12 am
3. Martha, save your false crocodile tears for Alaskans. You don’t speak for us.
Most Alaskans supported Palin and will miss her as our governor, but we understand why she resigned. We’re all tired of the ankle-biter’s drama and their never ending drummed up ethics complaints.
And it was costing us REAL dollars (almost 2 million!)having the Department of Law (Alaska’s attorney general’s office) and the Department of Administration respond to all the FOIA requests and ethics complaints.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:33 am
At least Palin had the decency to resign.
Mitt Romney spent his final year in office as an absentee governor, spending the majority of his days outside the state. More interested in being President than governing.
Shame on Mittens.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:47 am
24 – Why, cause he was head of the RGA? Yet you think its okay for Pawlenty.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
23. I read somewhere that the cost to Alaska for the ethics investigations have only amounted to just under $200,000 so far. Do you have a source?
July 30th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
26. There’s a link to an article by the Anchorage Daily News inside this article at C4P:
http://www.conservatives4palin.com/2009/07/stop-presses-palin-administration-is.html
Another good reason for Palin to resign early when she knew she wasn’t going to run for re-election, is to give Sean Parnell a leg up when he runs for the governorship in 2010. He is a convervative, but is not a shoe-in, especially if pitted against a strong, popular democrat.
July 30th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Several sources have debunked the $2 million price tag propaganda. The real price tag is about 300k. I know I saw Fox report on it, but here are links from two Alaska newspapers.
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/070109/sta_457304159.shtml
http://www.adn.com/palin/story/810570.html
July 30th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Gov. Palin farewell speech was almost great. The speech had a little of everything in it. Parts of it
read like poetry. This woman is truly gifted and can become an exceptional speaker if she so desirers.
I wanted to listen and listen and believed in her every word. The last part of the speech brought tears
to my eyes. This is one truly strong woman.
Almost great – She did sway at one point in the speech when she took on a hacker but recovered quickly.
The MSM keep asking who wrote the speech. Gov. Palin wrote the speech. In order to discredit the speech
the corrupt MSM targeted in on 14 words “So, how about in honor of the American soldier you quit making
things up” and left out the best part that went along with the 14 words.
“Together we stand with gratitude for the troops who protect all our cherished freedoms. This includes
our First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech – which, par for the course – I shall exercise. First,
with some “straight talk,” I will address some, just some, in the media because another right that is
protected is the freedom of the press. You have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the
electorate and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected and honest
profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you. That is
why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how about in honor of the American soldier you quit making
things up.”
Then the meme from the corrupt MSM started – Gov. Palin’s farewell speech was all about attacking and
blaming the press. One paragraph out of a 19 minute speech and Palin hates on the press.
I would trust Gov. Palin with my life. Are you starting to understand?
The power of words and most importantly – the POWER to deliver them.
July 30th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Jean. Yes we understand. Palin has some supporters who are immune to anything negative about her. Saying Palin has a grasp on the power of words is pretty comical, though.
July 30th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Imagine the country trusting their lives to Palin. Then Kim Jong Il launches a nuke and Palin quits. Fantastic.
July 30th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Martha, You are the comical one.
If people had a choice to go and see Romney or Palin give a speech. Who to you think they would pick?
July 30th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
32 – I’d pick Romney but that’s just me. I’m sure more people would pick Palin.
July 31st, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Jean, I’d love to see both of them. I don’t deny Palin’s ability to draw a crowd.
But remember, in one of the recent polls, only 12% of republicans wanted to see Palin run for POTUS, even though she has a very high approval rating. She is an interesting character, for sure, but most people don’t think she should be president.
July 31st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Palin’s not speaking at the Reagan Library after all. This is now the third time since the election that Palin has either changed her mind about speaking at an event, or sent mixed signals about whether or not she could attend. First CPAC, then the NRCC fundraiser, and now this. She continues to solidify the impression that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Add that to the big quit, and you have a person whos seems to be very unreliable or unsure about what to do.
July 31st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Martha, From what I gather the folks in CA were told weeks ago to stop using Gov. Palin’s name.
Hint-Hint. Going forward any speaking engagements will be paid events for the good Guv. The woman is
$600,000 dollars in debt and growing. The nut jobs can continue to file complaints two years out.