The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Judd Gregg Succumbs to Palinphobia

Posted on | March 14, 2011 | 44 Comments

In a column for The Hill, the former New Hampshire senator surveys the 2012 GOP presidential primary field and confronts his dread fear that You-Know-Who might win the nomination:

Because the nominating process has become so dominated by primary elections, with the vast majority of the delegates chosen by direct vote, it is entirely possible that with no presumptive winner or even favorites, a candidate who runs second or third in a great many primaries could go into the convention with a sizable block of delegates.
Who would this favor? Does Sarah Palin come to mind? Although she is not viewed by most as strong enough to win, she is viewed by many as a person worth voting for to make a statement. And primaries tend to be populated by people who go to the polls with the purpose of making a statement.
Finishing second and third isn’t really a big deal — until you get enough delegates to be the nominee. And picking a nominee who it seems would be easily defeated by President Obama might not be the best statement.

For crying out loud, Republicans, stop doing this!

In what alternative universe does it make sense for prominent Republicans and conservative pundit to publicly declare that the GOP’s 2008 vice-presidential candidate — clearly one of the favorites of the party’s grassroots — is a guaranteed hopeless loser in 2012?

Who does that help, besides Obama?

Look: Everyone studying the 2012 GOP field has their Please-God-No candidate, or perhaps a short list of them. My own darkest fear is a Draft Jeb Bush movement. (“Read my lips: No more Bushes!“) Among the actual likely candidates, however, the one I absolutely can’t bear to think about is Mike Huckabee. He’s a warm personality but, as Ann Coulter says, Huckabee is essentially a pro-life Democrat.

So obviously, I’m anti-Huck. But what’s the point in beating up on the guy every day when, for all we know, he’ll be up on the stage in Tampa accepting the nomination in August 2012?

Gregg’s name has been bandied about as a 2012 candidate, so perhaps he fancies himself on that stage in Tampa. If so, taking a cheap shot at Sarah Palin — and Clyde Middleton is right, this is a cheap shot — is the best way to move himself to the top of the Please-God-No lists of everyone who supports Palin.

More likely, however, Gregg is trying to play kingmaker. Fine: Let him declare which candidate he supports. Let Gregg tell us whose agenda he is secretly serving by submarining Sarah, and then that candidate can go to the top of the Please-God-No list.

Even if Palin isn’t your first choice for 2012 (my own fondness for Herman Cain is certainly no secret), these public outbursts of Palinphobia are unseemly and counterproductive, unless it is your goal to ensure Obama’s re-election.

DON’T FEAR THE UTERUS!

UPDATE: Linked by Da Tech Guy and The Lonely Conservative — thanks!

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Category: Election 2012, New Hampshire, Sarah Palin

Comments

  • Joe

    Good post.

    BTW, happyfeet used to post all the time at PW and loved to attack Sarah Palin, including mocking her lady parts. Jeff G recently gave him the boot. Here is a video of happyfeet being destroyed by a radiation exposed Japanese cheerleader: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWBOWbAzfuM

    Coincidence? There are no coincidences!

  • http://roughedgesandsharpelbows.blogspot.com/ Brian D Paasch

    “For crying out loud, Republicans, stop doing this!”

    I disagree with this sentiment. Because….

    “Who does that help, besides Obama?”

    I want it clear who in the “GOP” is actively helping Obama and the Dems.

  • http://www.haemet.blogivists.com Roxeanne de Luca

    Thoughts from the raging feminist lawyer: a lot of liberal women are miserable because they are trying to be something they are not. If you aren’t wired up to be a career woman, then meet Mr. Right, have your kids, and then go to graduate school if you want a post-child career. Also, most of these sweeties have *adorable* degrees in English from Vassar and Bard – the brains! Engineers, mathematicians, physicians, or, hypothetically, nationally-recognised experts in energy they are not.

    These chickies aren’t breaking new ground, aren’t changing the dismal stats of women in the hard sciences or the corner office. They are doing the same types of things that women in the ’50s were welcome to do – be high school teachers, writers, or maybe professors – so long as it’s in a female ghetto area like Women’s Studies. So when Sarah dances atop the glass ceiling, she’s showing that it’s not the “patriarchy” at work; it’s these sweetie pies’ own inability to dominate.

    They try to do Career Woman, and they can’t even do it right.

    I don’t see myself as a five-child woman – I’m more of an Ann Coulter than a Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann – but I know that discouraging women from having babies is the highest form of sexism out there. And something tells me that it’s often not 35-year-old liberal women who shun having their second child, but their husbands or boyfriends who tell them that “one is enough” and “don’t you want a career, honey”? I think a lot of this is fear of women like Sarah, but also gut-level envy, that Todd Palin didn’t whine like a girl on the playground that Sarah needs to be on the Pill, Sarah needs an abortion because she can’t raise Trig and be Governor, Sarah should be content with just Track and Bristol.

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  • Joe

    And any woman who can look that good after having and raising those kids deserves praise, not criticism. She looks way hotter than those pale nervous office professionals who put off marriage and child rearing for their careers while their biological clocks alarms have long gone off…and they hate her for it. Especially since she looks that way without trips to certain doctors.

    Mrs. Palin has great gams.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    DOMINATED by the primaries? And he has a PROBLEM with that? Ole Judd was in office too damned long…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    Hey, if you climbed 10% of Mt. Denali, your legs would shape right up too… *g*

  • kansas

    Nice knee caps you got there Senator. Be ashamed if something happened to them. OK, I get it. Sarah Palin is dumber than, than, Shelia Jackson-Lee, no wait, give me a minute, James Clyburn, no wait, hang on………………..

  • grebrook

    LoL, one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever read. It’s great because this is the EXACT kind of thing conservatives CONSTANTLY whine about when it comes to liberals.

    Identity politics. Sorry, but Sarah Palin is the single most ignorant politician in America today. She’s flat-out stupid. She would be an embarassment to our country no-matter what title she held.

    And the latest polls show her getting crushed by Obama. So please, oh please, nominate her in 2012. LoL. Dare you.

  • DaveO

    They also hate her because instead of using quotas, or being credentialed by the elite, Governor Palin essentially tripped up the system. Seeing something she didn’t like, she ran for office, and won! Again and again, winning when she wasn’t supposed to win. She wasn’t a member of Alaska’s, or America’s elite, but here she was winning elections.

    Given her organizing, use of social media, and even her TV show, if she doesn’t become President, whomever does will have to kiss her ring. And they hate her for that most of all.

  • Anonymous

    Well, re: Ann Coulter, she also says that if Christie doesn’t win, all is lost!!!

    Seriously.

    Did you see her blow a gasket the other night on Hannity when Sean actually stood up to her regarding Christie’s liberal actions?

    So Coulter’s stock as a political prognosticator is waaaaayyyy off so far this go-round.

    First Romney. Now Christie. Guess Ann likes brunettes? And males?

  • TR

    Great Pic! I wonder about the backstory in NH since Sarah Palin was an early and upfront back of Kelly Ayotte who is now the Gregg replacement?
    It seems like Huckabee, Daniels, Tpaw, and Romney vs. Palin and their backers and money people in the GOP (Bushies, Rovites and Rinos) are all taking shots at Palin like kids in a 25¢ boardwalk gallery. The funtime is gonna be over soon. These amateurs are going to go home without their cupie doll while Sarah wisely choses to use recalibrate her sights just like she did on TLC.
    Think of those intellectual ‘cariboo’? Perseverance, knowing EXACTLY who the target is and willingness to pull the trigger, is a big advantage and something that Huck, TPaw, Daniels and Romney tend to be lacking.

  • gg

    You are on to something and also missing something…

    Sarah Palin’s favorability among women voters is less than what could be expected for a woman politician, very likely less than a generic male republican presidential candidate. On the other hand her favorability among the social conservatives is higher than other republican candidates (with a possible exception of Huckabee).

    What does that tell? Its not the feminists who are really worried about SP, its the anti-religious liberal base that is behind the drive for Palin marginalization…

    Although there is a close correlation between uterus issues and christian religion, Virgin Mary beats Sarah Palin any day…

    I’m refering to The Immaculate Conception of Our Lord, Jesus Christ!

    Don’t hang up!! Hear me out, y’all.

    To put in terms of the Latin Vulgate, and the American Vulgar,

    What i’m alluding to is the World-Honored stupping of the Blessed Virgin Mary (playing the part of Mater, or Matter. BTW: see Alvin Boyd Kuhn’s word on this bit of wordplay and it’ll almost blow your mind. Search under “Esoteric Alphabet.” re: mother, matter, mater, ma.)

    Anyway, back to the topic at hand: Transcendental Nookie!

    The Holy Ghost gets horny for an Earthly piece of tail, and heads down to Nazareth town to have a roll in the hay, or on the shag rug, with Mary, the Mother of God (sorry, Trig Palin’s mom, she got there first).

    The Holy Ghost, however, being an Over and Under-Graduate from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, had neither the rod, nor the staff with which to comfort Mary, and so He invoked the Immaculate Conception Act, which gave Him the Power vested in Him, to divinely introduce His Noumenal semen into Mary’s phenomenal uterus.

    And the rest, as they say, is His story!

    GG

  • Joe

    Kejda you are getting fat. You hate Palin because she looks better than you and you are only in your twenties.

  • Joe

    Runners are like that, Richard. You seldom see chicken legs on women that are out there getting their miles in.

  • http://twitter.com/alwaysfiredup alwaysfiredup

    Absolutely. In fact, I like my own strategy: start a family right out of high school and go to college & law school after the kids are off to kindergarten. The family responsibilities engender the maturity and focus to get more out of higher ed.

  • http://twitter.com/alwaysfiredup alwaysfiredup

    “Chicken legs”? Doubt it. Most moms I know suffer from cankles.

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  • Joe

    That is an immitation Joe, not the real Joe.

    But I have to say the comment is generally correct and Mrs. Palin does have great gams.

  • Joe

    Immitation Joe, but again generally correct.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-J-Dietl/1842357376 Mark J Dietl

    Not to put too fine a point on it but who is this douchebag and whyshould any conservative care what he has to say about anything?

  • Chance

    Great minds think alike, “fondness for Herman Cain” and Motorhead, what else do you need to know?

  • Joe

    gg, nice channelling of me. Funny you sock puppet me and then refer to yourself as Kejda. Crazy.

    Maybe it is time for a troll spray.

  • ltw

    Personally, I think J. Gregg and company are having a second go around at a mid-life crisis over Gov. Palin going to India this week. Trying to make her week miserable…is only going to make their week more miserable. It’s very craven.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    So does Roxeanne, [Real] Joe.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    I’m leaning heavily towards supporting Sarah Palin in 2012, but it could be a deal-breaker if I find out she supports nuclear over coal….oops…sorry ’bout that – I thought I was Dan for a second there.

  • TR

    The name-go-round is weird in here?
    Sarah Palin just needs to harness that video crew that made her great pre-2010 mama-grizzly vid. Maybe add little Prince music
    (or a conservo facsimilie, I hear Dylan is going right-wing?):

    “So when u call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
    U know the one – Dr Everything’ll Be Alright
    Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
    Ask him how much of your mind, baby

    ‘Cuz in this life
    Things are much harder than in the afterworld
    In this life
    You’re on your own”

    I say Gregg, and Brooks for that matter, need to find a new shrink!

  • http://twitter.com/SumErgoMonstro The Monster

    I don’t think you know what Immaculate Conception means. Don’t feel bad, being a Protestant, I didn’t either, at first.

  • Joe

    I have never seen Roxeanne, but I just assumed she had great gams. And Roxeanne is smart and her comments make sense (unlike gg). And yes this is the real Joe.

  • Anonymous

    It’s hard to tell what Gregg is after. Apparently, he’s been writing a weekly column for thehill.com since early February, when he also started giving out quotes to various media outlets on a variety of topics. He’s recently been named (or nominated) to the boards of Honeywell International Inc. and IntercontinentalExchange.

    I’m tempted to think that Gregg is just trying to stay busy (and feel important), that he might not have had any overarching agenda in deciding to write the column in general, or regarding his comments on Palin in particular. Then, again, maybe he is trying to be a “king maker,” of sorts. But he has to know that he has absolutely zero chance of being the Republican nominee.

    Beyond his motivation/agenda, I’m curious about his logic. If he believes that Obama will be such a formidable candidate in 2012, why worry about Palin? If Palin is as weak as he suggests, yet is capable of winning the nomination by limping over the finish line with a bunch of second and third place finishes, then wouldn’t that suggest there is no other potentially much stronger candidate (which is what it would take, presumably, to defeat the almighty Obama)? I mean, how does a candidate that is strong enough to beat Judd Gregg’s O-BAMA! “go out like that?”

    Or is he suggesting that, Obama is not that strong, and could be defeated by a formidable Republican nominee, if only Palin does not muck up the works with all those second and third place finishes? I’m confused.

  • http://twitter.com/isleofyouth PhilipJames

    I have easily come to the conclusion that Judd Gregg has a small penis and is uneasy realizing that Sarah Palin has bigger balls than he does. This forces him to go to his feminine side in order to become bitchy and then take a cheap shot at Sarah.
    Why do we have so many pussified “men” in the Republican Establishment? Is there something in the water in Washington that shrinks their “bat and balls” and shrivels up their brain??

  • Joe

    The Immaculate Conception is of Mary, not Jesus. She was born without original sin. But hey, even Catholics get that one wrong all the time.

    And yes this is the real Joe, not the sockpuppet gg/”Joe”.

  • Quartermaster

    A rather blasphemous “Joe” at that.

    I’m a life long “Protestant” but I’ve known for about 50 of my 56 years what was meant by the immaculate conception. It isn’t true, but that’s another post.

  • Rosalie

    I don’t quite see Ann Coulter the same way since she’s so high on Chris Christie. She’s definitely not a Conservative then. Maybe she never was. I don’t know. Christie’s doing a good job in NJ but he’s just another Rino and we all know where they’ve gotten us. He’s made some snide remarks about Palin, which I think has just made him look like a classless, arrogant jerk. I really like Walker. He’s tough without the arrogance. I hope he doesn’t disappoint me.

  • Quartermaster

    I guess Obama is Einstein to you.

    I don’t care for Palin either, but the kind of nonsense spewed by the you and the rest of the Republican left-wing is simply stupid.

  • Joe

    Hey QM, are you real or is this gg getting his moby on? If so, this is a new twist.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception

  • JeffS

    Goldstein finally got rid of happyfeet? Maybe I’ll start reading PW again, hf and his incoherence (and not just about Palin) being one of the main distractors for me.

  • http://twitter.com/dustbury Charles G Hill

    Bob, I would never, ever question you on the matter of feminine pulchritude, but I’m still going to wonder: by what wizardry did you determine that the lovely Roxeanne has, um, high-quality stemware?

  • SVT

    Sure you dare us, sure. Douche.

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  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    If Gregg had done the exact same piece without the gratuitous reference to Palin and her supposed “unelectability,” it would have made sense as a critique of the primary system and delegate allocation, and there are certainly problems there. McCain was able to run up a sizable, practically overwhelming lead in delegates in multiple-candidate primaries without scoring 40% in one until the field had winnowed out. There are certainly problems with the system which do not lead to optimal outcomes.

    I think Da Tech Guy is onto something when he suggests Gregg is a stalking horse for another potential candidate who wants to keep clean hands and leave no fingerprints.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    I am one of the Rule 5 Mojo Masters – my reach is infinite!

  • Joe

    happyfeet is dancing over at Patterico’s now.

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