State-Run Media Misinterprets Sarah Palin

RUSH: The State-Run Media — and even several Republican media commentators — I think totally continue to totally misread and misunderstand Sarah Palin. Here’s a State-Run Media montage where the State-Run Media basically say that Sarah Palin is me in a skirt.

CHUCK TODD: Maybe she just wants to be, rather than president, the next Rush Limbaugh.

ROB HARLESTON: I think she will co-host with Rush Limbaugh.

KAREN FINNEY: She could potentially be the next Rush Limbaugh of the party.

TODD PURDUM: I don’t think it precludes her trying to run. Like Rush Limbaugh wielded great influence…

DONNY DEUTSCH: She’ll be the next Rush Limbaugh.

AL HUNT: Is her future, as Rush Limbaugh in a skirt?

RUSH: They get on these themes. They get on these themes and they all adopt them. Well, here’s one more. It’s Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington. This was on Meet the Pretty yesterday morning. David Gregory said, ‘This is a question I posed to Senator McCain, which is: Is shirking from those fights the way you demonstrate leadership in the Republican Party?’

MITCHELL: I think that is her big flaw right now. She’s feisty. She’s attractive — (bitterly) Lord knows she’s attractive — but she has to have a coherent worldview to be the Republican nominee. And the reason why she was so rambling in that Friday statement and didn’t really fix it in her interviews with many of us is that she doesn’t… She’s not deeply read. She hasn’t thought through a lot of these policies, and you have to do that.

RUSH: Okay, and I hear this from a lot of people on our side, too. Primarily women, primarily women. And I think many of them have been in Washington too long. ‘Lord knows she’s attractive.’ That’s the rub. That’s the rub. Well, it’s not the whole rub, but it’s part of what grates on ’em. Trust me, my friends. Trust me. When your poster chick is Barbara Mikulski, you get the drift. When your poster chick is Nancy Pelosi. I don’t care, pick one. But this whole notion of… I’m sure Obama’s well read, too, right? And Obama’s running around apologizing for the United States every chance he gets. What’s the point of being well read…? This is an effort to say she’s unsophisticated. She’s not properly refined. She’s not from the schools of thought that everybody in Washington considers to be important.

Now, I have no clue what she’s going to do. I don’t know anybody who does besides her. We got a Washington Post story that says she’s going to go out and campaign for conservative Democrats. When I watched her speech when she announced she was going to leave the governorship of Alaska, I didn’t hear the word Republican mentioned once. If I’m Sarah Palin and I’m conservative, the Republican Party’s been just as mean-spirited to her as the Democrats have. A lot of them have. A lot of Republican Party, a lot of the so-called conservative media have been. I don’t know if she’s going to campaign for conservative Democrats but if she believes that conservatism is the way to go… But one thing that does slightly worry me about this is this whole third-party business. Yeah, it’s remote but it’s still a possibility out there, and there are a lot of people pushing a third party, and that’s…

Third parties, they lose. They just lose. Third parties never end up with a congressional or Senate candidate winning. It’s not the way to go but we’ll save that for later if that actually begins to transpire, or we see it beginning to transpire. The bottom line is she and her political… You ought to read Willie Brown in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday. Willie Brown says she’s just outsmarting everyone. Her instincts are good. American Thinker, I think Thomas Lifson wrote about it, too, Willie Brown analysis of this. That she’s just steps ahead of everybody strategically and doesn’t fit any cookie-cutter mold, which is exactly what’s necessary. But also just from the standpoint of personal responsibility as governor. She has been distracted about over a half million dollars of ethics charges.

None of them are true. She is having to spend most of her time defending herself. At the same time, let’s say that she does have future political aspirations. As a Republican or as anybody else. None of her supposed opponents do not have day jobs. Let’s look at the Republicans — or the ones we think are out there — Huckabee, Romney, we hear Crist and he has a day job. Sanford’s gone. By the way, has he been in the news lately? He hasn’t been in it. He’s probably thanking Michael Jackson and this Sotomayor stuff. But if she’s going to compete she’s gotta come down here. She’s got to come to the lower 48. She’s gotta do television. These guys can do it any time they want, and if she’s been distracted from serving as government… She can overcome this quitting business depending on what she does between now and then. She continues to intrigue me politically. I don’t have any idea what she’s going to do other than try to make some money right off the bat.