Ship of fools
I was listening to a podcast from the economist and came across this article:
Nov 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Political parties die from the head down
JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era. As Lexington sees it, the title of the “stupid party” now belongs to the Tories’ transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.
There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party’s defeat on November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a household income of more than $200,000—many of whom will get thumped by his tax increases—by six points. John McCain did best among uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.
The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill. Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums home. Torture and Guantánamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution (Senator Sam Brownback, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo said they did not).
(Here is some information from the New York Times).
May 11, 2007, 10:19 AM
Romney Elaborates on Evolution
By MICHAEL LUO
DES MOINES, May 11 — Mitt Romney expanded on his belief in evolution in an interview earlier this week, staking out a position that could put him at odds with some conservative Christians, a key voting bloc he is courting.
Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon, surprised some observers when he was not among those Republican candidates who raised their hands last week when asked at the Republican presidential debate if they did not believe in evolution. (Senator Sam Brownback, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo said they did not.)
“I believe that God designed the universe and created the universe,” Mr. Romney said in an interview this week. “And I believe evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”
He was asked: Is that intelligent design?
“I’m not exactly sure what is meant by intelligent design,” he said. “But I believe God is intelligent and I believe he designed the creation. And I believe he used the process of evolution to create the human body.”
While governor of Massachusetts, Mr. Romney opposed the teaching of intelligent design in science classes.
“In my opinion, the science class is where to teach evolution, or if there are other scientific thoughts that need to be discussed,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about more philosophical matters, like why it was created, and was there an intelligent designer behind it, that’s for the religion class or philosophy class or social studies
class.”
Intelligent design is typically defined as the claim that examination of nature points to the work of an intelligent designer, as opposed to the utterly random, naturalistic processes that are taught as part of evolutionary theory. Critics have called intelligent design a thinly disguised version of creationism, which takes a literal approach to the creation account in Genesis, that the earth was created in six days and is less than 10,000 years old.
Mr. Romney said he was asked about his belief in evolution when he was interviewed by faculty members for highest honors designations before his graduation from Brigham Young University.
He told his interviewers that he did not believe there was a “conflict between true science and true religion,” he said.
“True science and true religion are on exactly the same page,” he said. “they may come from different angles, but they reach the same conclusion. I’ve never found a conflict between the science of evolution and the belief that God created the universe. He uses scientific tools to do his work.”
The Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints has no definitive position on evolution, and church leaders have disagreed on the issue over the years.
Mr. Romney said his answer was satisfactory to faculty members. “They teach evolution at B.Y.U.,” he said.
(Back to the economist)
The Republican Party’s divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his “heart” rather than his “head”. He also filled the government with incompetent toadies like Michael “heck-of-a-job” Brown, who bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes’ favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains… (I always thought this was a missed rallying cry for Romney… Bush brought us “compassionate conservatism, and I wanted Romney to bring us competent conservatisms”…
Republicanism’s anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future. The party’s electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order, and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy agenda. The party’s loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a compelling agenda.
This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year, up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69% call themselves “professionals”. McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the number of jobs requiring “tacit” intellectual skills has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The Republican Party’s current “redneck strategy” will leave it appealing to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.
Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many conservatives—particularly lower-income ones—are consumed with elemental fury…
Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed world. The movement has little to say about today’s pressing problems, such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.
Romney on Homophobia:
· “This is a subject about which people have tender emotions in part because it touches individual lives. It also has been misused by some as a means to promote intoleranceand prejudice. This is a time when we must fight hate and bigotry, when we must root out prejudice, when we must learn to accept people who are different from one another. Like me, the great majority of Americans wish both to preserve the traditional definition of marriage and to oppose bias and intolerance directed towards gays and lesbians.”
o Governor Mitt Romney, 06-22-2004 Press Release
· “Preserving the definition of marriage should not infringe on the right of individuals to live in the manner of their choosing. One person may choose to live as a single, even to have and raise her own child. Others may choose to live in same sex partnerships or civil arrangements. There is an unshakeable majority of opinion in this country that we should cherish and protect individual rights with tolerance and understanding. “
o Governor Mitt Romney, 06-22-2004 Press Release
Romney on Xenophobia:
“Immigration has been an important part of our nation’s success. The current system, however, puts up a concrete wall to the best and brightest, yet those without skill or education are able to walk across the border. We must reform the current immigration laws so we can secure our borders, implement a mandatory biometrically enabled, tamper proof documentation and employment verification system, and increase legal immigration into America.”
· “We need to make America more attractive for legal immigrants — for citizens — and less attractive for illegal immigrants. I want to see more immigration in our country, but more legal immigration and less illegal immigration.”
o Governor Romney, AP, June 23, 2006
Romney on Stem Cells:
· “Human cloning for any purpose — whether for research or reproduction — is ethically wrong. Once cloning occurs, a human life is set in motion.”
o Mitt Romney Source: Letter to the Massachusetts Legislature (May 2005)
Why I vetoed contraception bill
By Mitt Romney | July 26, 2005
YESTERDAY I vetoed a bill that the Legislature forwarded to my desk. Though described by its sponsors as a measure relating to contraception, there is more to it than that. The bill does not involve only the prevention of conception: The drug it authorizes would also terminate life after conception.
Signing such a measure into law would violate the promise I made to the citizens of Massachusetts when I ran for governor. I pledged that I would not change our abortion laws either to restrict abortion or to facilitate it. What’s more, this particular bill does not require parental consent even for young teenagers. It disregards not only the seriousness ofabortion but the importance of parental involvement and so would weaken a protection I am committed to uphold.
I have spoken with medical professionals to determine whether the drug contemplated under the bill would simply prevent conception or whether it would also terminate a living embryo after conception. Once it became clear that the latter was the case, my decision was straightforward. I will honor the commitment I made during my campaign: While I do not favor abortion, I will not change the state’s abortion laws.
I understand that my views on laws governing abortion set me in the minority in our Commonwealth. I am prolife. I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in cases of incest, rape, and to save the life of the mother. I wish the people of America agreed, and that the laws of our nation could reflect that view. But while the nation remains so divided over abortion, I believe that the states, through the democratic process, should determine their own abortion laws and not have them dictated by judicial mandate.
Because Massachusetts is decidedly prochoice, I have respected the state’s democratically held view. I have not attempted to impose my own views on the prochoice majority.
For all the conflicting views on this issue, it speaks well of our country that we recognize abortion as a problem. The law may call it a right, but no one ever called it a good, and, in the quiet of conscience people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America.
You can’t be a prolife governor in a prochoice state without understanding that there are heartfelt and thoughtful arguments on both sides of the question. Many women considering abortions face terrible pressures, hurts, and fears; we should come to their aid with all the resourcefulness and empathy we can offer. At the same time, the starting point should be the innocence and vulnerability of the child waiting to be born.
In some respects, these convictions have evolved and deepened during my time as governor. In considering the issue of embryo cloning and embryo farming, I saw where the harsh logic of abortion can lead — to the view of innocent new life as nothing more than research material or a commodity to be exploited.
I have also observed the bitterness and fierce anger that still linger 32 years after Roe v. Wade. The majority in the US Supreme Court’s Casey opinion assured us this would pass away as Americans learned to live with abortion on demand. But this has proved a false hope.
There is much in the abortion controversy that America’s founders would not recognize. Above all, those who wrote our Constitution would wonder why the federal courts had peremptorily removed the matter from the authority of the elected branches of government. The federal system left to us by the Constitution allows people of different states to make their own choices on matters of controversy, thus avoiding the bitter battles engendered by ”one size fits all” judicial pronouncements. A federalist approach would allow such disputes to be settled by the citizens and elected representatives of each state, and appropriately defer to democratic governance.
Except on matters of the starkest clarity like the issue of banning partial-birth abortions, there is not now a decisive national consensus on abortion. Some parts of the country have prolife majorities, others have prochoice majorities. People of good faith on both sides of the issue should be able to make and advance their case in democratic forums — with civility, mutual respect, and confidence that democratic majorities will prevail. We will never have peace on the abortion issue, much less a consensus of conscience, until democracy is allowed to work its way.
Mitt Romney is governor of Massachusetts.
…
Time for reflection
How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses? There are glimmers of hope (MITT ROMNEY!) Business conservatives worry that the party has lost the business vote (MITT ROMNEY 2012!). Moderates complain that the Republicans are becoming the party of “white-trash pride” (MITT ROMNEY 2012). Anonymous McCain aides complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying “whack job” (MITT ROMNEY 2012!). One of the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship of the Republican Party to John Sununu (?), a sensible (?) and clever (?) man who has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th). (Just how is John Sununu “Clever”?)
But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not conservative or populist enough—Mr McCain, after all, was an amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama’s associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled “Ideas have Consequences”; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.
Mitt Romney’s Education:
Romney graduated from the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills (now Cranbrook Kingswood School).
Received his B.A. with Highest Honors and as valedictorian from Brigham Young University in 1971.
In 1975, Romney was awarded an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and was named a Baker scholar.
In 1975 he also received his J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. Romney graduated at the top of 3 classes. Valedictorian in English, Cum Laude with an MBA from Harvard Law School, and Baker Scholard (at the top of his class) from Harvard business school. Romney is by far the smartest person to run for the white house in a long time (including Obama). Romney would have helped the republican parties image…
November 18th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I don’t know what this analyst considers “homophobia” but if a traditional marriage amendment can pass in a progressive blue state like California, I don’t think it’s a problem for the GOP.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Thank you, great article. Post it at Huck’s site, maybe they will wake up. I doubt it, but what the heck!!!!
November 18th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Remember during one of the presidential debates when Huckadolt gave a brilliant answer when asked for his ideas on economic stimulus? His in-depth, comprehensive economic answer was… ta da! America should build a freeway somewhere on the east coast! Bwa ha ha! Now, the HuckaPharisee machinates a slam on Romneconomy in his new book by attributing a “let them eat stocks” mentality to Mitt.
Take a look at Huck’s old “LET THEM EAT TAXES” strategy. Heh, heh, listen to him tell the Arkansas legislature they will have his PROFOUND THANKS if they send him a tax bill to sign, in whatever form it takes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pLOC4krZI4
November 18th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Huckabee may have officially ended any chances of being taken seriously. His book maybe as bad as the Scott McClellan fiasco a few months ago.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Note to Readers David Frum new blog -
I chose a heck of a day to go offline!
I had to travel yesterday and could not post, and so missed my chance to speak for myself about yesterday’s story in the New York Times about the future of NR.
I’m hoping that the excuse “better late than never” works better in the blogosphere than it did in high school:
The Times quoted me as describing my departure from NR as “amicable.” That’s not just a form of words. I am not walking out in protest of anything or because I am mad at anyone. Obviously there have been some differences in recent months, but that is natural. And if those differences have sometimes been expressed emphatically, well we are all big boys and girls. I will reman an eager reader of NR and NRO, and I will continue to treasure my friendships with NR editors, writers, and readers.
NR plays a unique and indispensable role in the conservative world. Yet there are other roles and missions that are also necessary in their way. It’s my belief that conservatism as we have known it - and the Republican party as an institution - are in very great trouble. Conservatives and Republicans need a new kind of conversation about how we can adapt to new realities.
I want to assist in that conversation. Starting over Inauguration Weekend, I’ll be launching a new website, NewMajority.com. It will be a group blog, featuring many different voices. Not all of them identify as conservatives or Republicans. But they - and people like them - are the people conservatives and Republicans need.
I hope we will debate policy as well as politics. I hope above all that we can create an online community that will be exciting and appealing to younger readers, a generation often repelled by today’s mainstream conservatism. NewMajority.com will feature an active monitored comments section. Reader contributions will be welcome - and I hope will be integrated into the dialogue rather than relegated to appendage status. We will be experimenting with video commentaries - and offering a very much expanded “bookshelf” section.
Over the past three years, I have been engaged in some intense rethinking of my own conservatism. My fundamental political principles remain the same as ever: free markets, American leadership in the world, and intense attachment to inherited moral and cultural traditions. Yet I cannot be blind to the evidence that we have seen free markets produce some damaging and dangerous results in recent years. Or that the foreign policy I supported has not yielded the success I would have wished to see. Or that traditions must evolve if they are to endure. There are new principes too that must be included in a majority conservatism: environmental protection as a core value and an unwavering insistence upon competence and integrity in government.
The path back to a Republican and conservative majority will not be an obvious or easy one. I am not claiming to have the answers. For now, however, it is the questions that matter most.
I discussed these issues with Rich Lowry a month ago, and he responded with characteristic grace and generosity. We agreed that I will continue blogging in this space until Inauguration Day. The archives of my past work for NRO will remain available and searchable. We will continue to engage each other in debate, agreeing and disagreeing as we have done since I launched this blog six years ago.
I hope you will continue to stop by - and that you will bookmark NewMajority.com for the year and years ahead.
As always, it is the interaction with you, the readers of this Diary, that sustains my work here. Too often, journalism takes the form: “I talk, you listen.” For me, blogging has been a prolonged dialogue, in which I spend as much time reading what my readers have to say as I do writing my own words. I won’t be able to continue my past practice of replying to every non-vituperative email I receive. But I do read them all, I learn from them all, and I am grateful for them all. At their best, blogs create community. And I have never felt as welcome in any community as the readers of this blog have made me feel in this virtual one. Thank you. There’s a lot of work to do.
11/18 07:19 AM
November 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Mike, you might want to consider using the feature that allows part of a post to be hidden until the reader clicks on the artile itself.
November 18th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
MK LOL
November 18th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Bigmo, As a nation we have changed the definition of traditional marriage twice, once to allow blacks to marry blacks and then again, when we as a nation allowed blacks to marry whites. If there was a vote by the people on whether to allow this to happen back then, it would have failed. The majority should never vote on the civil rights of a minority, the courts got it right again.
To the Mormons like Romney who bankrolled the bigotry, religious discrimination is simply awful, as long as it is happening to them — even though religious discrimination drove them from Missouri and Illinois in the 1830’s
November 18th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Johnny,
Give it a rest. The people spoke. And you know what? you can’t even begin to tell me that over 50 percent of califorians are Mormon. You lost. Get your own ballot thing going, or go to CT to get married.
November 19th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
A must read for anyone that is a Mitt supporter and wants to see Huckabee get slammed!!
http://townhall.com/columnists/DouglasMacKinnon/2008/11/19/huckabee_was_the_inspiration_for_the_twisted_character_in_my_novel
November 19th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Chris, people will not give it a rest because it is wrong, period.
We will overcome this, just like we overcame discrimination back in the day. We lost the battle not the war. And by the way, I am married, I just want the same protections for my son that my wife and I have, is that too much for a parent to ask for?
People should not fight against love, they should fight against hate, prejudice and discrimination, in the end love always prevails.
$17.67 million was contributed by 59,000 Mormon families since August to groups like Yes on 8; I say they helped push the tally up a bit.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
What is wrong for doing what is right, Johnny. Wrong for whom? you? Wrong for society? not. This was passed by an overwheliming majority, not all LDS, I might add. And YOUR taticts are wrong. do what we did. Take it to the voters. But when you do that, you get defeated, who else are you going to terrorize? huh? My daughter was one of your victims yesterday. Was that fair to her? no. She’s 14. Who’s next? my younger childrens primary?
Take it to the ballot box. I’ll respect the vote. You should too.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Chris, again I state, had we voted on a minorities rights back in the day, we would have had a US constitutional amendment against blacks marring blacks. Enough said, if you don’t get it now, you never will.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Johnnyh.
I am the mother of a few african american children. THIS IS NOT LIKE SLAVERY, nor is it like blacks marrying whites, etc. Again, go to a different room. I do get it. More so than you know. You know this was a can of worms. We closed the can. Go somplace you can. And quite frankly I could care less about who you sleep with. I care more about what my God says is right, than what you say is right. This is not about the majority deciding what was right. Black, white, hispanic, mormon, catholic, baptist… the MAJORITY. Want change? put it on the ballot. You have every legal right to go and make contracts with anyone you wish. Just don’t call it a marriage, because it is no.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Chris, like I said, if you don’t get it now you never will, it’s quite obvious you’re a very ignorant women, and I’ll accept that as your excuse, but let’s get that straight and move on. My hope was that you were able to hold an intelligent conversation about facts, which I now know you can’t, again I’m ok with that.
Chris I hope someday you will not fight, contribute or accept hate against your fellow man, that’s all I can say. Life is about one thing, love, that’s all people want and should strive for in life, it is too bad that’s what you’re fighting against.
As an older man, I fought for freedoms in this country of ours, freedoms for all, not just a few. I want my son, who I also am now fighting for; to have the same protections many couples in love have today. I’m saddened by people like you that want him to be a second class citizen, only because you think less of his love. I’m sorry Chris but his love to his partner of 17 years is stronger than the majority of marriages in this world, many who will never last that long. I don’t understand your mindset and you will never convince me that your god would be against protecting true love.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Mike Huckabee and Me
by Gary Bauer (Bauer was a presidential candidate and is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families.)
11/21/2008
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29581
Ronald Reagan used to quip that the 11th Commandment is: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. While there are times for Republicans to call one another out for un-Republican behavior, such arguments are best kept inside the family and should not be aired openly to unsympathetic media.
It is therefore unfortunate that, at a time when the GOP needs to close ranks and seek unity, Governor Mike Huckabee has aimed his fire at his fellow Republicans. In the just-released Do the Right Thing, which he has been promoting on news shows and in major newspapers, Governor Huckabee takes shots at several prominent Republicans, including his one-time rivals for the GOP presidential nomination Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
He also takes a couple shots at me, claiming I told him that the issues I have worked on most of my professional life — the sanctity of human life, the preservation of marriage and family and religious freedom — were no longer a focus of mine and that my focus has shifted to foreign policy matters. Gov. Huckabee writes of being puzzled about why I didn’t endorse his presidential candidacy, stating, “Gary Bauer reportedly wasn’t impressed at all and set forth from that day onward to find an ever-changing reason to deny me his support.”Continued
Huckabee is wrong on a couple of counts. First, my passion and work on behalf of values issues have in no way diminished. Second, I have believed since 9-11 that the West’s battle against Islamofascism is a crucial component in the fight for our civilization. Thus it is a values issue. That Huckabee fails to understand all this gets to the heart of why I did not support him.
Huckabee said that during a private meeting we had, “it was like playing whack-a-mole at the arcade — whatever issue I addressed, another one surfaced as the ‘problem’ that made my candidacy unacceptable.”
In fact, talking with Huckabee was like playing whack-a-mole, because he had a number of issues that posed problems. It wasn’t just that he didn’t get it on foreign policy. His record on taxes and spending, illegal immigration, his apparent backing of Al Gore’s carbon cap and trade scheme, support for voting rights for Washington, D.C., and cozying up to unions like the NEA all worried me. Huckabee can call it whack-a-mole. But for me there were just too many items where he wasn’t sufficiently conservative coupled with a lack of attention and experience on foreign affairs.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
Palin update: Love her, hate her, or somewhere-in-between-kinda-sorta-find-her- annoying, Sarah Palin isn’t going away.
Oprah, Leno, Letterman: What’s Palin to do next?
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Writer Michael R. Blood – Sat Nov 22, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081122/ap_en_ot/palin_s_popularity
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Sarah Palin is juggling offers to write books, appear in films and sit on dozens of interview couches at a rate astonishing for most Hollywood stars, let alone a first-term governor.
Oprah wants her. So do Letterman and Leno.
The failed Republican vice presidential candidate crunched state budget numbers this past week in her 17th-floor office as tumbling oil prices hit Alaska’s revenues. Her staff, meanwhile, fielded television requests seeking the 44-year-old Palin for late-night banter and Sunday morning Washington policy.
Agents from the William Morris Agency and elsewhere, have come knocking. There even has been an offer to host a TV show.
“Tomorrow, Governor Palin could do an interview with any news media on the planet,” said her spokesman, Bill McAllister. “Tomorrow, she could probably sign any one of a dozen book deals. She could start talking to people about a documentary or a movie on her life. That’s the level we are at here.”
“Barbara Walters called me. George Stephanopoulos called me,” McAllister said. “I’ve had multiple conversations with producers for Oprah, Letterman, Leno and ‘The Daily Show.’”
Asked whether Winfrey was pursuing Palin for a sit-down, Michelle McIntyre, a spokeswoman for Winfrey’s Chicago-based Harpo Productions Inc., said she was “unable to confirm any future plans” for the show.
Palin may have emerged from the campaign politically wounded, with questions about her preparedness for higher office and reports of an expensive wardrobe. But she has returned to Alaska with an expanded, if unofficial, title — international celebrity.
John McCain plucked Palin out of relative obscurity in late August and put her on the national GOP ticket. Now, she has to decide how and where to spend her time, which could have implications for her political future and her bank account, with possible land mines of legal and ethical rules.
Palin is considering about 800 requests for appearances from December through 2009, with 75 percent coming from out of state. A year ago, just a sprinkle of requests came from beyond Alaska’s borders. They range from invitations to speak at The Chief Executives’ Club of Boston to attend a 5-year-old’s birthday party, from a prayer breakfast in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to a business conference in Britain.
Michael Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor who wants to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee, is seeking face time.
She has invitations to make appearances in 20 foreign countries, typically with all expenses paid, McAllister said. She has more than 200 requests for media interviews, again from around the globe.
“She has to pace herself,” suggested veteran Hollywood publicist Howard Bragman. “She wants a career made in a Crock-Pot, not a microwave.”
In her two months on the national stage, Palin energized the Republican base but turned off moderates and independents, according to some surveys. Flubbed answers in national television interviews raised questions about her competence. She was embarrassed by the disclosure the RNC spent at least $150,000 for designer clothing, accessories and beauty services for her and her family.
The right book or movie deal could help Palin reintroduce herself to the nation, on terms she could dictate.
While books and movie deals could be worth millions of dollars, it’s not clear if Palin would be able to legally earn it. State rules say she cannot accept outside employment for compensation. But there appears to be little in the way of precedent left by former governors to judge if book deals or lucrative speaking appearances amount to “employment.”
Palin has sent unmistakable signals she is open to running for president in 2012, but to advance her political ambitions she must stay in the public eye in the lower 48 states. As with any celebrity, there is the risk of overexposure. At the same time, she’ll be under pressure to attend to governing her home state, which is thousands of miles from the rest of the nation.
“She has to deal with the perception that she bobbled her debut,” said Claremont McKenna College political scientist John Pitney. “She needs to stay home for a while. If she wants a future in national politics, her No. 1 job is doing a good job as governor.”
Just this past week, shortly after conducting a string of national TV interviews and skipping a state education conference, she was scolded by the Anchorage Daily News. “There are … low graduation rates, plummeting North Slope oil prices, proposals to build alternative energy projects, the gas pipeline,” the paper said in an editorial. “It’s time for the governor to refocus on Alaska’s needs.”