nhboy
07-31-2012, 03:12 PM
Link to original article. (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/31/why-sarah-palin-s-reputation-has-plummeted-as-bill-clinton-s-has-grown.html)
Once the darling of conservatives, the former vice-presidential candidate is now seen as something of an embarrassment—even as the previously vilified 42nd president has grown in stature. The reassessments show the perils of hyper-partisanship, says John Avlon.
Time cools passions and adds perspective. This seems especially true for the tumultuous Republican love affair with Sarah Palin. It was intense, it was irrational—and it’s over.
Dick Cheney is just the latest conservative icon to join the chorus of voices who recognize that the selection of Sarah Palin for vice president was a major-league mistake. The man who first brought Palin to John McCain, Steve Schmidt, famously came to that conclusion before the 2008 campaign even ended. Now Team Romney doesn’t even want her to be seen at the same podium in Tampa. And in perhaps the unkindest cut, Mindy Meyer, the Legally Blonde-inspired 22-year-old conservative New York State Senate candidate known in the tabloids as “the Magenta Yenta,” dismissed Palin by saying, “She's just so oblivious to the issues.”
There’s a reason for this broad-based cooling of affections. In the past four years, something like an organic consensus has emerged. Doubts that began with talk of “death panels” only grew with mutterings about “blood libel.” Over time, the reflexive Republican impulse to defend her honor became replaced with exhaustion and embarrassment.
Even some of the most devoted Palinites are left wondering what they were thinking.
Take David Kelly of Colorado Springs, the one-time treasurer of the Draft Sarah 2012 committee. In 2009, when I interviewed him, Kelly believed that Palin “represents the silent majority of this nation ... she invokes what conservative America’s all about: God and Country.” Now he’s come to a different conclusion.
“You may be shocked to hear that I am no longer a Palin supporter,” he told me over the phone. “I think what attracted me to her in the first place was the fact that she’d say things that you’d hear at the Thanksgiving table when your relatives are there and go, ‘There’s my crazy aunt, but she nails it every time.’” "
Once the darling of conservatives, the former vice-presidential candidate is now seen as something of an embarrassment—even as the previously vilified 42nd president has grown in stature. The reassessments show the perils of hyper-partisanship, says John Avlon.
Time cools passions and adds perspective. This seems especially true for the tumultuous Republican love affair with Sarah Palin. It was intense, it was irrational—and it’s over.
Dick Cheney is just the latest conservative icon to join the chorus of voices who recognize that the selection of Sarah Palin for vice president was a major-league mistake. The man who first brought Palin to John McCain, Steve Schmidt, famously came to that conclusion before the 2008 campaign even ended. Now Team Romney doesn’t even want her to be seen at the same podium in Tampa. And in perhaps the unkindest cut, Mindy Meyer, the Legally Blonde-inspired 22-year-old conservative New York State Senate candidate known in the tabloids as “the Magenta Yenta,” dismissed Palin by saying, “She's just so oblivious to the issues.”
There’s a reason for this broad-based cooling of affections. In the past four years, something like an organic consensus has emerged. Doubts that began with talk of “death panels” only grew with mutterings about “blood libel.” Over time, the reflexive Republican impulse to defend her honor became replaced with exhaustion and embarrassment.
Even some of the most devoted Palinites are left wondering what they were thinking.
Take David Kelly of Colorado Springs, the one-time treasurer of the Draft Sarah 2012 committee. In 2009, when I interviewed him, Kelly believed that Palin “represents the silent majority of this nation ... she invokes what conservative America’s all about: God and Country.” Now he’s come to a different conclusion.
“You may be shocked to hear that I am no longer a Palin supporter,” he told me over the phone. “I think what attracted me to her in the first place was the fact that she’d say things that you’d hear at the Thanksgiving table when your relatives are there and go, ‘There’s my crazy aunt, but she nails it every time.’” "