September 9, 2011

Why doesn't the word "Alaska" appear in this NYT column perceiving that Sarah Palin has some ideas liberals should like?

Anand Giridharadas seems surprised by a speech she gave recently.
[I]n contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”
Palin's entire political career was built on this very strangeness. Liberals don't know it because they willfully blinded themselves to anything good about Palin, so they could continue to feel good about themselves as they targeted her for destruction.

Here are the comments on Giridharadas's column, and many of them say — I'm paraphrasing — ever heard of the time she was Governor of Alaska?

Giridharadass's last line is: "No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting." She's always been interesting like that. You just weren't looking. 

62 comments:

Fred4Pres said...

It is a shame that she is treated the way she is treated, but then again, the left underestimates her at their own detriment.

traditionalguy said...

Palin would win it too, if the GOP good old boys club would allow for a woman who would be in authority over them.

A token is a token and will always welcome aboard.

But let a woman or an African-American man try to run for the top job and the silence is deafening.

I suspect the Dem Media honchos are now suddenly discovering Palin in order to bloody Perry and divide the GOP.

Charlie Martin said...

The one point I found a little odd is that the author insist that Palin's perception of her own treatment is a "fantasy" in the very paragraph where he says the legacy media actually was ignoring her ideas.

Anonymous said...

A crack in the door?

New life in the cocktail conversations in Manhattan - ones based on observation of real facts not on facts and motives imputed and assumed?

(After all, the modern American left has always claimed the ability to see into the hearts and hidden motives of conservatives.)

(Which begs the question of why they didn't win far more elections by far greater majorities - if reading the hearts of their fellow countrymen was so easy for them.)

veni vidi vici said...

GaryHardAss, if indeed that is his real name, is more dumbass than not.

Lauderdale Vet said...

I dunno. I kind of hope this kind of thing happens more often. Let people like or dislike her on the merit of her ideas alone.

I feel kind of bad that I left a quippy comment there.

X said...

It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

that's the most accurate description of Frank Dodd ever.

Hagar said...

A good part of the reaction against Ms. Sarah may be because she does not fall into any accepted category. She is a registered Republican, but certainly no party loyalist, not particularly conservative, nor liberal, traditional or new-fangled, but with an apparently large appeal to the unorganized multitudes who might just take off and follow her in complete disregard of either set of chattering class leaders.

Hagar said...

or class leading chatterers.

Rose said...

She is a phenomenon. And, unlike Obama, she IS the real deal.

Everyone is always looking for the next Reagan - and they can't even see it when it is right in front of them.

I give this guy credit - and you know he is going to be taking slings and arrows for it - and eye-opening experience, I would bet.

Now, take a look at her OTHER speeches and writings - if the one on the recent labor thing doesn't get you, I'll be surprised. It's spot on.

Automatic_Wing said...

A "strange new respect" for Sarah Palin can only mean that the media has discovered another Republican it would rather dump on.

Geoff Matthews said...

Maguro is correct.

Paddy O said...

I linked to that article on Facebook and got a very surprising, positive comment from a friend who was an extreme Bush hater, extreme Obama lover, and dismissed Palin every other time.

Palin nails a great distinction, and you're right, that's precisely how she actually governed. She's anti-corruption, pushing against it wherever she sees it, and that's precisely the kind of leader we need now.

Of course the establishment doesn't want that.

Anonymous said...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the media was absolutely derelict in their duty as the Fourth Estate in the last election.

For the most part they didn't inform, they didn't analyze, they didn't present all the facts accurately so the American people could make an informed choice. They simply propagandized for the anointed one. Before Sarah Palin had time to give even one speech or say one word after her selection by John McCain, the anti-Sarah meme was already in place and the full-court press to destroy her in the public sphere was off and running. It was breath-taking to watch the press in its naked disregard for any sense of fair play in their role as purveyors of information. As Ann says, Sarah Palin hasn't changed. They simply weren't paying attention. Or even more accurately, they had their fingers in their ears and were chanting "Nah, nah, nah, I can't hear you!" all through the election campaign.

Paddy O said...

I think it was Rick Perry who left the door open on Wednesday night. He did a good job in part, but there's enough problems and rough edges with him, that people would be willing to give a look at another choice.

His death penalty responses (and the applause) is turning off people on the Left that I know, while his pretty unrepentant forced vaccination attempt and squishiness on illegal immigration is turning off people on the right.

Palin can swoop in to claim a lot of people on the right and left who are fed up with government corruption on both sides.

Paddy O said...

Wouldn't it be hilarious if it's the NY Times that helps transform the broader conventional wisdom about Palin?

cathy said...

Probably, that's the biggest problem, cronyism or the collusion between gov't, banks and giant business. I want to like Romney or Perry, but Romney's the inside favorite exactly because he gets the big money. And Perry seems like he enjoys rubbing elbows and talking tough with the insiders. I guess Palin needs good backers who help her get her point across, instead of making her own media.

Rose said...

A great piece here that lambastes the press for their dereliction of duty in the last election - at NoQuarter

Also, have not heard a single accusation of "raaaaaacist" leveled at those who are snorting in derision at Obama's speech last night - It seems EVERYONE knows - this was a transcontinental trainwreck.

Kirby Olson said...

Indian writers seem to me to often have brains. The left hasn't silenced them all yet. It must be the multiculturalism thing. Dinesh D'souza is another Indian writer with a brain. Loved his exploration of Obama: The Roots of Obama's Rage. It seems to me they are often a fifth column among the otherwise crackpot left. For some reason, many people from India can actually think for themselves.

Cheryl said...

It seems that as open-minded as most journalists think they are, their ears are pretty much shut tight.

This is nothing new for Palin, and one of the reasons I really like her. But traditionalguy has a point--Dem media have a purpose in pushing her now in order to divide the GOP. Ugh.

Rumpletweezer said...

Ms. Althouse--

This column approving of Palin gives me an opportunity to ask why you didn't comment on the New Yorker article about Clarence Thomas. So, here goes. How come you didn't comment on the Clarence Thomas profile in the New Yorker?

George said...

What the author of the OP doesn't seem to grasp is that it was Palin's threat to the coastal power structures that demanded she be crushed. That's why people like Brooks and Noonan went after her as well.

A hundred years ago, Palin would have been easily and correctly classified as a populist.

Kirby Olson said...

It would be fun to have her and Bachman on the same ticket just to see what the feminists would write. Of course they would attempt to slaughter them. Because most feminists aren't really about women. They're Marxists: wolves in sheep's clothing. I guess it wouldn't be worth it just to see what the feminists did. We already know what they would do, because they have already done it. They would just do more of it. How many women are up there in the duck blinds and on John Deere tractors anyways? Perhaps we could say that her rhetoric IS male-identified.

coketown said...

The obvious answer to your question is: I don't know. Alaska! LOLOLOL!!!

Tom from Virginia said...

Sarah Palin is often criticized for resigning as Governor of Alaska, as if it is unheard of in American politics to leave one elected position to take up a more important post. Senators Biden, Clinton, and Obama all did this quite recently.

Palin left the Alaska governorship to lead a dispirited conservative middle class (a/k/a the Tea Party) during the dark days of 2009. The Republican establishment was too timid and cowed to take on the ultra cool Obama.

I know I know, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan, but IMO Sarah Palin deserves more credit than any other single person (with one possible exception - BHO) for the conservative ascendancy of the past two years.

Run Sarah Run.

edutcher said...

Maybe the real issue here is that all those tolerant Leftists are so busy hating everyone on the Right, they aren't interested in a Conservative with whom they might be able to work.

They loved the Lightworker as long as he said, "I won".

MadisonMan said...

Why should the work Alaska appear in the column? Maybe for some historical perspective, I guess, but what Palin does now, although it may have started in Alaska, has not much to do with that state.

Anonymous said...

So...let assume Palin runs and gets the GOP nomination. Who does she pick as her VP to run with?

YoungHegelian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YoungHegelian said...

'm sorry, but just how stupid and uninformed does someone have to be to not know that there's a populist wing of the conservative movement? That small and large businesses often have interests that are at loggerheads?

Even when these folks are being nice to Palin, the real story is that the writers needs to get out of their bubble world and smell the fresh air more often.

WV: yeloo -- Old Yeloo -- the saddest movie ever made about an heroic bowl of jello

the wolf said...

She should have also pointed out that it is small businesses that are most damaged by Obama's policies, and crony capitalism is the type most favored by the president. She (and by extension the NYT) is just learning now that removing barriers of entry to business is a basic tenet of true conservatism?

Sydney said...

Kcom said:
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the media was absolutely derelict in their duty as the Fourth Estate in the last election.

Yes. And what really bugs me about this, is that when they changed their minds about supporting the Iraq war, they went through all this pseudo mea culpa business of pretending they were sorry for not vetting the prewar facts enough. I don't expect a newspaper to have the intelligence capabilities of a sovereign nation. No one should. But, I certainly do expect them to be able to report accurately and dig up historical info on political candidates. Big time fail in 2008 to our nation's detriment. Yet not one mea culpa have I heard.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, interesting enough to be a Washington General, thinks the New York Times. A stooge to highlight the talents and feats of Meadowlark Lemon.

Cedarford said...

Tom from Virginia said...
Sarah Palin is often criticized for resigning as Governor of Alaska, as if it is unheard of in American politics to leave one elected position to take up a more important post. Senators Biden, Clinton, and Obama all did this quite recently.

Palin left the Alaska governorship to lead a dispirited conservative middle class (a/k/a the Tea Party) during the dark days of 2009.
===============
That's stretching it. She left to make a lot of money on the book, lecture, FOX talking head, reality TV venues. Not to be appointed Queen of the Tea Party...anymore than that network really accepted the Hyper-ambitious Michelle Bachmann trying to elbow her way in screaming "I'm your Leader, I'm your Leader. I'll Fight-Fight-Fight for you!!" (Or Repub Congressional Leaders accepted either lady as Part of Party Leadership after their attempts)

She quit mid-term, not because she was elected or appointed to a higher office...but because she tired of the legal hassles and had millions of dollars waving in front of her nose.

Hagar said...

or she quit, even though she knew it would hurt her personal career, because she had become a distraction hurtful to Alaska, and she had a known quantity in her lieutenant governor, who could take over and carry out her program and policies unhampered by her own baggage.

SunnyJ said...

@Cedarford...and you're point is what? That leaving a position, any position is failure if it advances your goals in life? And that advancing your goals for the purpose of making money would be outside the norm?

Surely you gest? You show signs of bitter clinger mentality, of the cross variety type.

There's not one candidate on either side that hasn't made changes from one party to another, one job to another, one profession to another, one spouse to another...

Palin had plenty of mitigating circumstances to her decision. For you to frame it the way a 2nd grader frames bad/good is just too narrow for anyone with a life.

But, it's true anything is a door if you're looking for a way out...if this is what it takes for you to rationalize taking your position...so be it.

Carol_Herman said...

Heck, you can't fool me!

The pundits, and the NY Times, wants a place at the head table.

If Palin's name is being floated ... then the "team" the debaters rolled out lacked "something."

So did Perry's finger wave at Ron Paul. Injudicious. He'd have been better off if he just wore a ten gallon hat.

Carol_Herman said...

If Palin's smart, she'll sit this one out!

She'll have four years of giving everyone great observations, ahead! And, presidential condendahs who can really race ... are few and far between as it is.

Why didn't Alaskans fight?

Why did the "good old boys" find it easy to watch Moo-Cow-Ski make it into the senate?

If Palin makes a mistake, she looks to race this time out.

Carol_Herman said...

For the longest time, I did not know why Reagan picked the elder Bush to be his running mate. And, then, after he won, he dumped his California crowd. And, picked James Baker to be his Chief of Staff.

And, then I realized Reagan didn't want to be i Nixon's shoes! He didn't want people who'd try to pocket the silverware and such. Instead, he wanted the pros.

The moderates are a small arm of the republican party. Most of them just live in the Blue States. But they wield power. It doesn't look like they do.

But look what they did with the 2010 win!

Ted Kennedy's seat also proves that these seats can float away ... as soon as the tuchis in them dies.

That's because these pieces of crap lock out better people. So when they go there's no spirit of contest left there. It's as if a hinge falls off the door.

jamboree said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
1775OGG said...

One twist to Palin's statement some time back about running, but not as a GOP'er: When Palin enters the race, she'll swamp her competitors and the RINOs will scream, cry, and twist their tidy-whities into bunches before crying themselves to sleep.

Anonymous said...

"She quit mid-term, not because she was elected or appointed to a higher office...but because she tired of the legal hassles and had millions of dollars waving in front of her nose."

Whether it was intentional or accidental, Sarah Palin did provide a valuable public service by leaving her job and focusing on the national scene. She was one of the few to pick up the ball and run it straight up the middle against Obama (football metaphor, yah!) without fear in those dark days. I still remember the sting she put on Obama with her "death panel" Facebook (wasn't it?) post. It spun him around and suddenly lots and lots of people realized he wasn't invincible. The press thought (were certain even) that they had relegated her to obscurity but with only a few lines she showed that she was a force to be reckoned with. When she did it again and again, through Facebook of all places, it showed it wasn't a fluke. She provided a valuable service when it was sorely needed.

Clyde said...

She's not one of THEM; she's one of US. That's why we like her and they (the permanent political establishment of both parties) don't!

We need someone like that to go in there and kick out the moneychangers.

veni vidi vici said...

Carol said: "For the longest time, I did not know why Reagan picked the elder Bush to be his running mate. And, then, after he won, he dumped his California crowd. And, picked James Baker to be his Chief of Staff.

And, then I realized Reagan didn't want to be i Nixon's shoes! He didn't want people who'd try to pocket the silverware and such. Instead, he wanted the pros."


Pray tell, what does this rigor mortis-inducing nonsense even mean? Bush was Nixon's CIA Director and a lot else during Nixon's time. He bailed on Nixon when the shit hit the fan but c'mon, he was Nixon's shoes, baby!

And as for dumping the CA crowd, I'm sure Ed Meese and the rest of the cabinet might find a hearty guffaw in that fine bulgur bullshit!

Carry on.

viator said...

“Sarah Palin…strongly supports the ideas of Hyde Park economist Luigi Zingales in America By Heart, her second book.

Palin cites Zingales, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor, as a champion of the type of free market principles she supports.

“Professor Zingales makes the crucial point that there is a difference between being pro-market and being pro-business,” Palin writes. “Both political parties are at fault in failing to acknowledge this distinction.”

Zingales said Tuesday, when Palin’s book debuted, that she had accurately captured his theory.

“I’m impressed that she knows me because I’m not sort of a national figure and somebody on the front page of magazines all the time,” he said. “Not only that she knows my name but she seems to have gotten my ideas right seems remarkable.”

Zingales had no idea he would be mentioned and quoted in the book, which follows Palin’s best-selling Going Rogue.

“I sort of am about ideas, not making money out of ideas,” he said. “If that promotes my idea I’m happy. . . . When you are an academic you spend most of your time writing to change the world and nobody notices.”

Wikipedia

U. of Chicago

Synova said...

"So...let assume Palin runs and gets the GOP nomination. Who does she pick as her VP to run with?"

Huntsman? To try to grab more of the moderate independents?

Perry? To double team the election with someone who will act as an attack-dog to her attack-dog?

Not Bachmann. Besides, she's got all that tax law stuff going and might do some good in Congress for a while. And the other Republicans I like better than her, I'd hate to see taken from their present offices just to have to buy a dog to keep them company and give them something to do with their days. Conservative governors or someone like Ryan have important work to do.

Conserve Liberty said...

Funny thing - after all the recent antics I don't think Sarah Palin is all that interesting any more.

Cedarford said...

SunnyJ said...
@Cedarford...and you're point is what? That leaving a position, any position is failure if it advances your goals in life?
======================
Read Tom in VA again. His argument was she quit because she was tapped for higher office, just like Obama, Biden, Clinton.

In her case, he claims, she never quit in mid-term, but left because she was elected or appointed to Head the Tea Party.

My counterpoint was, no, she quit office mid-term to pursue private money-gaining opportunities - not to transition to a higher office.

In America, it is more accepted to resign in a scandal/reasons of health, wait until your term is up to cash in, or leave if elected or asked to serve in a higher or more critical to the nation - position.

exhelodrvr1 said...

"You just weren't looking."

Oh, they've always been looking. They just lie about what they see.

Anonymous said...

Sarah Palin is the real deal, and hasn't changed all this time. The reason Palin is being touted now by the MSM is merely that Perry has recently surged. If Palin surges, then someone else will be the thoughtful one; the GOP frontrunner is always a buffoon in the MSM narrative. The MSM always considers it in its interest to sow division among conservatives.

viator said...

I second everyone's suspicions and questions of intent regarding the NYTs second look at Palin. But, as Ann said, Palin is not just another GOP politician, yet she may have done more than any other single person to recruit and keep disgusted voters inside the GOP tent.

But remember someone has to be the next President of the US and at this point you can easily count those with any real chance on one hand.

For quite awhile I have have gone on left and progressive websites and commented - on some points you might want to take a second look at Palin. It was hard to tell which was louder the laughter or the derision.

I stand by those comments. Some aspects of Palin's policies have universal appeal which will make her a crossover candidate. The revisionist history of Sarah Palin is just begun to be written.

Anonymous said...

Sarah Palin-

Leading Washington establishment around by the nose via Facebook..

Sarah Palin.... party crasher

Synova said...

“Professor Zingales makes the crucial point that there is a difference between being pro-market and being pro-business,” Palin writes. “Both political parties are at fault in failing to acknowledge this distinction.”

In my critical thinking class the text has an example of an argument (pretty standard capitalist ideas) about "free enterprise" being better than "socialism." I said that the term "free enterprise" ought to be understood has having a "stipulated" particular meaning and my teacher (a lawyer, too, actually) said everyone understood what "free enterprise" was since it was a common term. I disagreed and he did let me have the point.

The class is supposed to write a paper taking apart that particular argument from the text and I'm having a sort of "synchronicity" week. There's this quote about Zingales today, and yesterday in the political orientation quiz was the statement, "A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies." It's not precisely the same, (and I do have issues with the statement,) but has the same implications. "Free market" or "free enterprise" or any of the other terms used for approximately the same thing are not defined solely by the lack of intervention/regulation by the government.

Granted, I've thought for a long time that corporations (or any largish company) could function as a nation; one that is not defined by geography. I think I had that notion before reading anything by Charles Stross, but it's not all that odd an idea in science fiction.

Tom from Virginia said...

Cedarford: thanks for your respectful treatment of my thesis. There's more than a kernel of truth in your counter narrative.

I would quibble over the use of the word "tapped" to describe Palin's ascension to leadership in those two wilderness years. Just the opposite.

She led by the force of her character, her convictions, and mostly her courage. I marvel at the courage she summoned in the face of an unrelenting media onslaught, the likes of which I have never seen.

William Wallace said in Braveheart that "men don't follow titles. They follow courage." I think that more than anything explains Palin's rise and staying power.

JAL said...

google ate my comment earlier while it was scavaging for my cell number. (You're jerks, googlekooks.)

A couple days ago I wandered over to SP's Facebook to read her response to Jim Hoffa's vile speech.

Learned some more about her. Talk about crossover ... She can talk the talk because she has walked the walk.

One of the commenters at the NYT article mentions the silence. Silence -- that followed the dissection of 24,000 Palin emails.

There was no "there" there.

So actually, the vetting is done as far as that goes.

Meanwhile, BHO had no emails. And still doesn't.

I'll be watching SP.

section9 said...

Beware "strange new respect" from the New York Times. I've been a Palin supporter for years now and I get the agenda of that paper.

Articles like this get published for a reason, usually having nothing to do with an actual, genuine reconsideration of Sarah Palin.

The Editorial Board of the Times despises her as much as they always did.

MadisonMan said...

In America, it is more accepted to resign in a scandal/reasons of health, wait until your term is up to cash in, or leave if elected or asked to serve in a higher or more critical to the nation - position.

Never thought of it that way.

Why is it more acceptable to quit for a higher office vs. quit to cash in and make money elsewhere. Making money is a lot more American than being a politician after all.

Peter Hoh said...

If you didn't get enough Alaska in Giridharadas's piece, perhaps you'd like this article that ran in The Atlantic. It focused on what Palin accomplished in Alaska.

Here's a snippet:

As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being.

Nora said...

This is a trick from the same textbook as latest Obama criticisms (meida have to obtain at least little credibility, before they once again become Obama's lap dogs the moment GOP has candidate and the race really begins)) We can expect more of the same coming, as media will look anywhere they can to try and reduce profile of the current GOP candidates. Even elevating Palin would do for the purpose. If Palin enters the race, than it well be a different story all together.

Paul said...

She is the very best we have. The real deal...high ethical standards, a real understanding of our founding principals and what government should and should not do and how our free market economy needs to be reinvigorated, and guts galore.

Like one of the commenters remarked to the OP...people are looking for the next Reagan and she's right under their noses.

Ignore C4s ugly diatribes. He's an emotionally stunted individual. He's very much like a leftist in that he always constructs his narratives to support his emotionally realized premises.

Mark said...

I would guess that's the last article Anand writes for the NYT.

Drew W said...

When I'd heard that Sarah Palin made the comment that she thought police officers had better things to do with their time than arrest people for smoking pot, I wanted to start a Facebook page called Tell Sarah Palin to Stop Saying Things I Agree With. (That said, and since I still think she should've stayed in office to try to put her ideas into action, but instead starred in yet another reality show, I don't think she's presidential material.)