Some of the theories are that she was destroyed by a liberal propaganda machine that feared her. Yeah, okay keep telling yourself that.
Others think that she simply chose bad advisers who led her astray, or that she could have been great if she had simply hunkered down and studied, or believe that she got distracted by the chance at easy money, and went the reality show/book selling route instead of following her true destiny that they are convinced was to be the 2012 Republican candidate for President.
No seriously!
Often many of these are Right Wingers who I simply dismiss out of hand, because....you know...dipshits.
But there are a few that you would think might know better that are STILL convinced that Palin really had a shot. These are mostly people whose first impression of Snowdrift Snooki was on the convention floor of the RNC in September of 2008.
But here's the thing. For those of us who already knew Sarah Palin, had already seen Sarah Palin, and were used to Sarah Palin, we had NO fucking idea who that lady at the RNC even was! But whoever she was, it was NOT Sarah Palin!
And that was the thing. She was playing the part of Sarah Palin as imagined by the John McCain presidential campaign. You can read about that process plain as day in the book Game Change (Or see it in the wonderful HBO movie of the same name.),
The problem of course is that when the campaign could not strictly control how Palin was perceived, as in those Katie Couric interviews, THAT was when people started to see the Sarah Palin that was much more recognizable to Alaskans (Why do you think we tried so hard to educate you people? We knew what was coming.)
To Alaskans it was almost a foregone conclusion that she couldn't keep up that act for long. We were just concerned that she could keep it up long enough to fool the American people into letting her and John McCain into the White House. (I don't think I ever understood just how low functioning many of the American people really were until Sarah Palin burst onto the scene. These people were literally taken in by a short skirt and a wink. THAT should frighten all of us!)
For the purpose of illustration let me use one of my favorite reporters, Chris Cillizza, who I have a great deal of respect for, but who totally makes my point in his Washington Post article from a few days ago.
After much effusive praise and excuse making, this is how he wrapped up the article:
The Palin story is, in the end, one of tremendous talent misused. Like any number of playground greats who never make the NBA or, when they do, wind up disappointing, Palin had as much natural ability as anyone this side of Barack Obama or John Edwards, but was unable to translate that talent into results once the bright lights came on. That she never made good on her remarkable natural talents is a sign of how the political process can chew up and spit out those who aren’t ready for it.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! Sarah Palin's natural talent was to bullshit people into thinking that she was something that she was not. To play the con woman in a sting designed to take you for everything you've got. To, like a common street walker, charm you out of your pants, and then run off with your wallet while you were peeing in the bathroom.
She was NEVER going to give you what she promised, she was just going to dance on that pole until you had run out of money before picking up her political g-string and moving onto the next mark.
Which, if these idiots were paying attention, is exactly what she did.
Now in Chris's case he actually seems to be one of the few who was seduced by Palin's "charms" even before she mounted that stage in Minnesota.
Here is an interview he did with her in February of 2008. (BEFORE, by the way, she decided to fake her pregnancy.)
As you can see even then, Palin was talking around in circles, and bullshitting her way through interviews, but you can also see how easily Cillizza is sucked in, to the point of actually helping her with the answers and making sure that the questions were dumbed down enough not to embarrass her.
The one thing I will give her credit for is that at least during THIS interview Palin made no bones about wanting to be John McCain's VP choice. Which as we know from our friend Bill Fulton she was convinced she had in the bag only a month later.
So to sum up, will Palin make some sort of political comeback? No!
Could she have been a real political player if she had just made a few different choices ? Not ultimately, no!
Does this mean we have seen the last of Sarah Palin? Sadly probably not.
Will the press jump up like hype active pekinese if she does something in a few months to get their attention? Of course they will.
However for all intents and purposes Sarah Palin is no longer any threat except to the pocketbooks of the most ignorant paint chip eaters on the planet. And hey, SOMEBODY has to take advantage of them now don't they?
P.S. For those who were paying close attention, you might have noticed that the iconic facial expression above is obviously from this interview. I always wondered what made her make that face.
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