Yep it is a smear job, it's basically the start of the GOP civil war between the moderate, intellectual, monied power brokers and the extreme right and religious base who consider Palin as their shining leader and want her for 2012.
It's about more then just finding a scapegoat for the failure of the election even if there is some truth to the charge in this case.

The Palin supporters or 'base' are already responding in kind. If you go take a look at places like Free Republic (The Weasel List), Red State (Operation Leper), Michelle Makin you can see that they are already starting lists of people to be black listed or purged from the party with the litmus test being anyone and everyone who dared/dares utter a negative word about Palin.

Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge and appears to be actually giving instructions to his listeners on how to proceed.

[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: ElizaQ ]

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I can't believe that she did not know that Africa was not a continent. That sounds like a smear, and smacks of the 'stupid broad' brush that certain misogynist liberals also tried to paint her with (i.e. Bill Maher).

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Originally posted by Stargazer:
Palin is not a smart woman. Sorry, but she is not.

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ElizaQ: ...basically the start of the GOP civil war between the moderate, intellectual, monied power brokers and the extreme right and religious base...

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Even in defeat, the Republicans show that while they may be cruel, never can they be brave.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
It's unbelievable, really. McCain, and his aides, chose Palin. Any criticism of her, valid or otherwise, is an indighment of themselves.

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Rice or Powell in four years.

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
Wouldn't the Klan go ballistic about that?

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Originally posted by Slumberjack:

They might surprise everyone. Now that the threshold has been crossed, I wouldn't discount the possibility of them wanting to copy success. Rice or Powell in four years.

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I think that would depend on which factions of the party 'win' the struggle. If it's the Palin factions then nope, cross off Powell he's on the top ten of the hit lists and is considered 'not conservative enough and a traitor' because he spoke badly of Palin.
Rice is on the list too because she congratulated Obama and actually cried!
Plus as Martin said the KKK element of that faction wouldn't put up with it.

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They might surprise everyone. Now that the threshold has been crossed, I wouldn't discount the possibility of them wanting to copy success. Rice or Powell in four years.

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I wouldn't think so.

In four years, one has to believe that the economy will be much improved, and people, right or wrong, will certainly associate that with Obama and the Democrats. I even see Obama making serious inroads to the one demographic that hasn't yet seen the light: My demographic, the stupid white working class guys. Once Obama puts them back to work, the "Regan Democrats" or the "Bubba vote" will slide his way.

If the Republicans think they have only two or four years to wander in the wilderness, they have another think coming.

It should be interesting to watch the Republicans now. Will the gulf between the so called "moderates" and the religious wrong widen to an out and out split?

One can only hope.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
It should be interesting to watch the Republicans now. Will the gulf between the so called "moderates" and the religious wrong widen to an out and out split?

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And what will the re-invented, re-branded Republican party look like? I think they need to purge the idiocracy they have in the "moderates" and the religious wrong, and come out more towards the libertarian end of the scale.[/QB]

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I agree and I think that's exactly what is currently starting to happen, with the first purge being Palin. She's a huge threat to that because of her support from those factions and the loss of control of that part of the party.
The sentiment appears to being returned in kind. Hence the internal war.

Then there is this shaping up...

Conservative Leaders Meet With or Without Republicans

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A group of about 20 conservative leaders met in the Virginia countryside Thursday to begin planning the fight against the liberal agenda of President-elect Barack Obama – with or without the Republican Party.

The meeting was seen as the first in a series of gatherings that conservative leaders will be holding in the coming weeks to plan the development of new organizations, new fundraising efforts and new strategies to deal with what they expect to be a series of momentous battles over significant issues of public policy.

The leaders said they foresee battling Obama and the Democratic Congress – and most likely moderate Republicans, too – over issues including taxes, sanctity of life, marriage, judicial nominations, secret ballots for union organizing and the Fairness Doctrine, which they see as a threat to freedom of speech on the radio.
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There was a consensus among the group that conservative ideas and principles had not been defeated in Tuesday’s election, but a Republican Party that walked away from these principles had been defeated.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
In four years, one has to believe that the economy will be much improved.....Once Obama puts them back to work, the "Regan Democrats" or the "Bubba vote" will slide his way. If the Republicans think they have only two or four years to wander in the wilderness, they have another think coming. It should be interesting to watch the Republicans now. Will the gulf between the so called "moderates" and the religious wrong widen to an out and out split?
One can only hope. And what will the re-invented, re-branded Republican party look like? I think they need to purge the idiocracy they have in the "moderates" and the religious wrong, and come out more towards the libertarian end of the scale.

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Facing the most liberal president and Congress in a generation, conservative stalwarts do not blame the GOP’s disastrous election performance solely on Republican nominee John McCain or on President George W. Bush. The ultimate culprit, some say, has been big government Republicanism.

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t is important to separate the Republican Party from the conservative movement, said Lee Edwards, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He cited a recent poll that said 57 percent of Americans identify themselves as “very or somewhat” conservative. He thinks the conservative movement is strong, on many fronts such as alternative media and a consistent philosophy.
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Do not count on the Republicans uniting, said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and author of “Leviathan on the Right: How Big Government Conservatives Brought Down the Republican Revolution.”

Tanner expects to see a battle between three factions of the conservative movement: the big-government Republicans that support using free market ideas to promote universal health care and higher wages; populists who are culturally conservative, oppose free trade and support tougher border enforcement; and the traditional, small-government conservatives who want to shrink the size of government.

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[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: ElizaQ ]

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To those top McCain advisors who leaked the little story about seeing Sarah Palin in a towel. To those who called her and her family “Wasilla Hillbillies” while using her to stoke class warfare with redmeat speeches and an anti-elitist message. To those who claim she didn’t know Africa was a continent. To those McCain aides who say she is the reason they lost this election… can I please remind you of one thing: you picked her.

You are the ones who supposedly vetted her, and then told the American people she was qualified for the job. You are the ones who after meeting her a couple of times, told us she was ready to be just one heartbeat away from the Presidency. If even half of what you say NOW is true, then boy, did you try to sell the American people a bill of goods. If Sarah Palin is the reason some voters chose Barack Obama, that is no one’s fault but your own. John McCain, as he so graciously said himself the other night, lost this election. He lost it with your help, your advice, your guidance, and yes, your running mate recommendations. And that is crystal clear to everyone, no matter how hard you try to blame Sarah Palin or anyone else.

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[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: Slumberjack ]

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Originally posted by ghoris:
Obama made substantial inroads among white suburban voters in this election.

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t is 1945 all over again. A major historical War for the White House has ended forever, and the liberals won. The liberals do not usually win these things because they are scared of fighting, so who knows how this happened. Whatever. They can “govern” till the cows come home. The real story now is the new post-election Cold War that’s rapidly developing between McCain aides, Palin aides, conservative bloggers, conservative teevee hosts, conservative columnists… basically any GOP operative with a half-decent Rolodex and a certain moral flexibility. They are all shitting on each other. This is the greatest Cold War we’ve ever had the pleasure of covering. Let’s try to make some sense of it.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I can't believe that she did not know that Africa was not a continent. That sounds like a smear, and smacks of the 'stupid broad' brush that certain misogynist liberals also tried to paint her with (i.e. Bill Maher).

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Originally posted by remind:
Funny and when I suggested this was going to happen yesterday, I was poo poo'd in another thread.

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Don't. Just don't hand me straight lines like that here, please.

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It seems that blue-collar white males are not necessarily the key to victory for Democrats anymore.

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I don't think they've been with the Democrats for decades now, and were picked up by the Republicans more by default at first than any concerted effort on their part.

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I can't believe that she did not know that Africa was not a continent.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Um, it IS a continent.

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And they are reacting like a child who has had their lolly taken from them.

If I said I wasn't enjoying this on some level, I'd be a liar.

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
Can you believe a Republican VP candidate would believe that they speak Latin in Latin America? It must be because he was a man that they reported that...

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Originally posted by Catchfire:
I can't believe that she did not know that Africa was not a continent.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Um, it IS a continent.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
I guess when you reduce it all is what we are seeing is that the Republicans have discovered that stupid doesn't work anymore.

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The news here at 10 just had a clip on saying the Repubs finally decided she was a complete wash, when she respounded to the PQ comedians as being the French President. It seems even they, who disavow intellectuals, did not believe someone could become Govenor with so little intellectual skills.

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And they are reacting like a child who has had their lolly taken from them.

If I said I wasn't enjoying this on some level, I'd be a liar.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:

I don't think they've been with the Democrats for decades now, and were picked up by the Republicans more by default at first than any concerted effort on their part.

It's an unintended consequence of identity politics eclipsing class analysis on the left.

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Absolutely. Johnson was said to have remarked when he signed the Civil Rights Act that the Democratic Party would lose the South for two generations. He was right, of course, but what nobody seemed to see coming was the fact that working-class white men and farmers in the Rust Belt and Midwest, once reliably Democratic, were starting to drift away to the Republican party, turned off by the counterculture, the perceived excesses of the Great Society, and the 'New Left' college radicals. 1964 was really the last hurrah of the old New Deal coalition.

Everyone talks about 'Reagan Democrats' but I think you can make a case for 'Nixon Democrats' being on the scene much earlier. Carter's win in 1976 was an anomaly born out of Watergate. Take him out of the picture and you have a clear pattern of blue-collar white males voting Republican in increasingly greater numbers from 1968 onward. Clinton did not exactly have a resounding mandate in either 1992 or 1996, and the margin of his victory came entirely from women, while white men (including blue-collar white men) still voted overwhelmingly Republican.

[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: ghoris ]

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Originally posted by Slumberjack:

Which might prove that economics may even overcome latent racism if conditions are bad enough.

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This is coming straight out of Fox News. This 'info' came from a Fox news reporter so it is not a 'liberal' smear job.

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Can you believe a Republican VP candidate would believe that they speak Latin in Latin America?

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Originally posted by remind:
I was poo poo'd

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Originally posted by ghoris:

Absolutely. Johnson was said to have remarked when he signed the Civil Rights Act that the Democratic Party would lose the South for two generations. He was right, of course, but what nobody seemed to see coming was the fact that working-class white men and farmers in the Rust Belt and Midwest, once reliably Democratic, were starting to drift away to the Republican party, turned off by the counterculture, the perceived excesses of the Great Society, and the 'New Left' college radicals. 1964 was really the last hurrah of the old New Deal coalition.

Everyone talks about 'Reagan Democrats' but I think you can make a case for 'Nixon Democrats' being on the scene much earlier. Carter's win in 1976 was an anomaly born out of Watergate. Take him out of the picture and you have a clear pattern of blue-collar white males voting Republican in increasingly greater numbers from 1968 onward. Clinton did not exactly have a resounding mandate in either 1992 or 1996, and the margin of his victory came entirely from women, while white men (including blue-collar white men) still voted overwhelmingly Republican.

[ 06 November 2008: Message edited by: ghoris ]

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BTW, despite all the handwringing, Jews ended up voting 78% for Obama. A higher percentage than Kerry got. About 10% of that is directly due to Palin.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Instead of picking on Sarah Palin, why don't people blame the idiot who picked her out of the blue to be VP - John McCain. ultimately its his responsibility. He had a choice of ANY American citizen over the age of 30 born on US soil to be his VP nominee and he chose that idiot. You can't blame her for being unprepared - but you can blame him for making such an atrocious choice.

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People here and in the media have been doing just that. And as much as I am not a Palin supporter, I take the stuff comming from the McCain handlers with a grain of salt-- if by "grain" you mean any object ten times the circumpherence of Jupiter.

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Everyone talks about 'Reagan Democrats' but I think you can make a case for 'Nixon Democrats' being on the scene much earlier. Carter's win in 1976 was an anomaly born out of Watergate.

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Good observation.

The same holds true in Canada. Those white blue collar guys-- my peers-- if they bother to vote, probably vote Conservative. I bet many do this even though they know deep down that when the Conservatives speak to their problems, it's only lip service. Like gamblers who will bet in a game they know is fixed-- because it's the only game in town.

In the States, I think this was all born out of the civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's. Programs intended to help poor African American families were, or were seen, to ignore poor white American families. It's why, to this day, blue collar white guys bite on the big lie of "reverse descrimination", for example.

We can point to identity politics as another significant factor in the aleination of this demographic from political parties or movements that actually better represent or could better represent them than Conservatives here or Republicans in the States. But it's not a place to put "blame".

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
many americans don't have a fucking clue about the rest of the world so why are you surprised that Palin is just as ignorant as some other VP cnadidates?

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Which tells us a bit about American universities.

[ 07 November 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by Wilf Day:

She has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho in Communications/Journalism, with a minor in political science.

Which tells us a bit about American universities.

[ 07 November 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year -- Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

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Originally posted by wage zombie:
Rasmussen: 69% of GOP Voters Say Palin Helped McCain

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The fiscal conservatives are trying to take her out now before she builds up her own networks and becomes more powerful (and more professional).

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Repubs are the kind of people that desperately need an enemy they can savagely tear down with completely unprincipled attacks, smears, lies and deceit.

First it was the Soviets, who were Over There Somewhere and didn't actually care much about what some loudmouth radio talk show host had to say about the USSR.

Then it was the "enemies at home" - Democrats, homosexuals, Those Minorities, and basically anyone with a working brain who wouldn't fall in line with their thinking. The damage from that is still being felt today in the USA with the echoes of that viciousness in the success of Proposition 8 in California.

Now that Barack Obama has successfully led the Dems to back-to-back electoral gains in the House + Senate, and taken the White House, the Repubs will finish off their excesses that led to their reversal of fortune in 2006. When a man like Mark Foley can hypocritically believe he has carte blanche to chase after much younger men and use the authority of his job to do so, it's not hard to see that Republicans have come to fundamentally believe that they are above the law, that they are somehow superior and do not need to be beholden to the legal principles that stretch back centuries in the Anglo-Saxon world.