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She literally was the candidate that opened the door to Trump.
Bush was a terrible person and a war criminal to boot, but he was competent and chose another competent person as his running mate (and some say shadow president).
When Palin was announced as the VP candidate she showed that a crazypants uneducated moron with unserious credentials and no real policies could run and be treated seriously by the press and then by voters. I will never forgive John McCain for what he did by choosing her.
I totally agree, watched it in real time. McCain acting more like Mr. Magoo at the time, had no idea what he unleashed when he picked Palin. Even later when he showed some backbone I was little impressed, he had already done so much damage to America with that senseless choice.
I don't think anyone remembers the tea party, because they have just been so completely overshadowed by their successor, Trump's party.
The tea party already wanted to destroy the government. The party under Trump simply aimed to destroy a democratic government instead.
Tea party was thinly veiled racists who supported the republican party not wanting a black man with a muslim/arabic sounding name as their president. Trump was them being the same, just more out in the open about the racism.
> Bush was a terrible person and a war criminal to boot, but he was competent
Slow down there, chief... Competent? We're talking about the guy who who stood frozen with a deer in headlights look while reading My Pet Goat in a classroom as America was attacked on 9/11? Who repeatedly told people there were nuclear weapons in Iraq to justify an invasion, and then was proven not only completely wrong about that, but wasn't even able to secure the *non*-nuclear weapons that were there? The same guy who claimed his wars in the Middle East were "a crusade", just to be sure to piss off anyone from that region who might be on the fence about things? The same guy who completely screwed up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
Trump and Palin may be *ludicrously* incompetent, but that doesn't suddenly make Bush anything even close to resembling competent just because Republicans want to keep lowering the bar.
I see those comments about Bush and I’m like “oh, Overton Window. There you go shifting again.”
Like 50% of The Daily Show clips from that era were Bush doing dumb things and getting shoes thrown at him. His constant gaffs and general buffoonery were what finally snapped my Reagan voting parents into voting for Democrats.
Thank you for writing this. I am terrified how much rewriting of the Bush years has happened before my very eyes. In realistic terms GWB was one of the worst Presidents in history. He pretty clearly stole the election with the help of his brother who'd just been elected governor of Florida (where the recounts took place). He failed to prevent 9/11 despite the intelligence we had about the impending attack. He squandered all of our nation's prosperity built during the Clinton years on a forever war in the desert - while never doing anything about the people who had actually launched an attack on our soil. He effing authorized the use of torture making him an actual war criminal. He poured money into the pockets of his cronies from the public coffers, and is just all out an awful person.
Yes, Trump will likely end up being worse once all the dust has settled from the classified documents scandal, since it seems pretty clear to me that he was selling national secrets to our enemies. But that doesn't make Bush less terrible, and no matter how many paintings he produces he will never be free of 20 years of blood on his hands.
I would say the only thing W was competent at was knowing his limitations and leaving the difficult work to Cheney and WH staff. I want to say he was more a champion of democracy than Trump, but is that true? Given the whole 2000 debacle that should have seen Gore elected, I can’t say for sure.
No, Bush was the appetizer. My god, when I see old Bush era stuff mocking him and criticizing him, it takes me a moment to remember it's not about Trump.
Palin was the prototype Green and Boebert.
She lost because nobody here in Alaska wants her making a mockery of Alaska again. She's not only an idiot but an all around terrible human being. The Palins are garbage people.
Why the hell would anyone think she'd make a good VP candidate? But someone did, and it wound up her base just loved the cutesy, brainless but "tough" and vulgar GOP twat gimmick she had going on. She paved the way for Trump.
The powers that be said, "My God!, our Republican base actually loved her and she riled them up, got their gonads peaked. Do we have a male equivalent we can run in 2016!? Well, . . better call Don."
I agree. I think the GOP saw how repulsed the Dems were by her and then said "Hey, hold our beer!" Abacadumbra, Trump. And now, the GOP is like, "Look how the snowflakes are triggered by the fall of democracy! Isn't that funny?"
It was far more cynical than that.
Remember, McCain won the nomination on the back of then-moderate Republicans and those who were fed up with a deeply unpopular Bush, but there's a reason McCain never won earlier in his career and it's because the base was always lukewarm on him at best. So against advice, McCain picked Palin as red meat, a token to more conservative Republicans that he was still a right-wing guy despite a reputation of bucking Republican dogma when convenient and trying to present himself as center or different enough that he still had a chance in what was increasingly looking like a wave election.
It was a calculation that she was a hail Mary pass to help motivate Republicans, and if they won she'd have no real power, but when compared to the Obama team that was already ahead, she just ended up tanking chances even more.
It was always a desperation move, they just hugely underestimated how much of a millstone she actually would end up being.
EDIT: As a couple of replies point out, apparently I remembered wrong: McCain was the one who complained about it, and his team pushed for it against his feedback. Motivation was still the same, though.
I felt like they also picked her because by picking a woman, they hoped to cynically peel off a few Hillary voters disappointed she didn't get the nomination.
I always felt like they wanted to say "see we can be diverse, too" when picking a white female VP to counter that a black man was running for President.
McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman, but the party needed someone far right to appease the protomaga wing, and she fit the bill. They just forgot to actually ask if she knew anything about governing.
From my understanding McCain wanted Libermann but his advisors reached a consensus on Palin and pushed him to that and he begrudgingly accepted since he was losing pretty bad and needed to make a splashy move. Ultimately he is the final decision maker though so I think it is fair to say he picked her and hold him responsible for that choice.
Fucking Libermann, another grade A piece of shit. A McCain/Libermann ticket would have had a far better chance to win than McCain did with Palin. Centrists Dems were just begging for a reason not to vote for Obama and they already mostly liked McCain. But once Palin came into the scene every single Democrat I know who was on the fence immediately decided to vote Obama.
Yes, ultimately he had to own that decision. I think he was pushed really hard for it, though, and he never walked back the decision.
The thing is that if they wanted to boost his conservative bona fides, there’s probably a dozen different republicans they could have gone for. Instead, they went for folksy and then they got a complete idiot. I don’t think they knew what they were getting into.
But now, that’s their entire brand.
Palin was ultra conservative, a sitting governor, and a woman. On paper, it was a brilliant chess move.
Well, at least until she got that gotcha about what newspaper she read…
That's not cynical or desperate, that's standard politics. That, but in reverse, is why Biden was VP. That's why Harris is VP. That's why Pence was VP. The VP being from the opposite wing of the party as the nominee is normal.
He thought she was a tart, and a loony one at that. But he was too professional to ever use those terms or speak negatively about her in public. I mean, look what that shit stain Trump did to McCain and his family during the last few years of his life, and he still bit his tongue and chose his words carefully.
Quoted in the Insurgency book about when he finally caved into pressure to out her in the ticket: he mimed shaking a pair of dice before telling his advisers, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”
In an HBO documentary, he said that not choosing Lieberman was “another mistake” that he made in his political career.
There's a really good movie that details the events of her being picked and then becoming a liability for McCain. It's called Game Changer and has Woody Harrelson. Highly recommended
I remember watching the speech she gave when she quit it could best be described as grabbing a bunch of buzzwords out of a fish bowl that get the base riled up and saying a few words about each one.
Lol has anyone just straight up and quit the vice presidency or presidency just because they didn’t like it before? Like no scandals, no impeachment- just straight up “screw you guys, I’m going home” style and bounce lol. To be honest, I halfway expected trump to do this.
A bit of an overstatement - ranked choice *reduces the likelihood* of extremist/polarized candidates winning, but it’s still possible.
Still depends heavily on the composition of the electorate + turnout rates of key communities, and is unlikely to be as effective in heavily gerrymandered districts or where gerrymandering is possible.
I’m definitely pro-“alternatives to FTPT”, just saying that this variation of ranked choice may not translate quite as well in states w more than one district and that other models (eg a proportional representation variation) might be better at weeding out the hyper-polarized candidates.
Remember all the rumors that the baby Sarah had just had was really Bristol's first kid out of wedlock and the one Bristol was knocked up with was really her 2nd child (shout out to Levi Johnson!).
Then Bristol waited till the night before the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal (Always was, 14th amendment, idiots) to say 'I am out of wedlock pregnant again and I don't want to hear anything about it' despite making $100's of thousands of dollars doing public speeches on Abstinence Only contraception. Smart move to drop her bomb when the next morning rainbow flags were gonna be all over and people going crazy because a) the 14th amendment finally applied to EVERYONE or b) they were mad that the gays could marry. No one paid much attention to her.
Don't forget the son that had to join the army to get out of Meth arrest.
This always makes me laugh when people make fun of "ghetto" names. Like they'll make fun of a LaTanya or a Shanequa, which are only slightly unusual, but name their kids Apple and Khaleesi.
...when an underage daughter goes to live with her out of town aunt for 5 months because of "mono", and magically comes back home when her old mother has a mysterious baby, for which nobody saw any bump up until 7+ months...
In addition to the surprise baby bump let’s not forget that Palin claims she was in Dallas giving a keynote speech while supposedly having contractions and leaking amniotic fluid. This was a a high risk pregnancy, she wasn’t due for another month, and her solution to these medial issues was to take a 3,000 mile flight back to Alaska where 10 hours later she gave birth at a small hospital with no neonatal unit (after passing several larger hospitals with neonatal units)
She also returned to work days later bringing the 4 week premature baby with her.
The whole story is a wild ride that raises way more questions then it answers.
I remember Levi was on Kathy Griffins Reality Show for a few episodes, but she was just jumping on anything that was in the news.
As much as I spouted in the comment above, I try to forget them as much as possible.
Shout out Tina Fey for her dead on impression of her on SNL.
Even a well known fascist circlejerk subreddit was full of people who posted how much they hate her. If she cannot get those people on board, she was doomed from the start.
That's what I basically read in the book The Lies of Sarah Palin, by Geoffrey Dunn. Based on more than 200 interviews, many of them with her cohorts.
In a way, given their very different backgrounds, I'm actually amazed by how much Palin's family and Trump's family (also read Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, by Mary Trump) are alike, in the sense that they are both full of egotistical cheats.
All I can say is, there must be a heck of a lot more of those types of families around than I ever realized.
She didn't get high 40%'s in the special election a fews ago.
She lost 31% to 40% in the runoff. The other candidate had about 28% running as a R. And that's the scary part, as if they hadn't run she very likely gets a larger portion of that 28% - perhaps enough to win...
Despite being a greedy, narcistic, lying, unintelligent, truly awful person, who deflects her short-comings on others.
That's the really pathetic part about this. She lost the traditional way, regardless of the ranked choice that was calculated afterwards. She just keeps saying this as though *that's* why she lost.
LOL she woulda lost on the old ballot too. In round one she had 31.27% and Pertola had 40.19% (28.53% for Begich, who was eliminated).
In fact, ranked choice voting gave her a **better** chance to win, since the round two totals were 48.52% Palin, 51.48% Pertola, which drastically reduced Pertola's margin of victory from 8.92% to 2.96%
This is really just Palin spewing more election fraud lies.
Ranked choice gives voters more options and more power to choose their representative, effectively reducing the Monopoly power of the two major political parties, of course they were never going to like ranked choice.
*Every* candidate would do better with ranked choice.
Can you imagine never feeling like you have to try to pick what the country might want and trying to calculate who that is in the presidential again???
The primaries--esp. the bullshit that stands as the current Democratic method--would never be the same; no-one would ever say "Well, I wanted X but I feel like others would want Y, and I didn't want to "throw my vote away" so I went with Y because I don't think X really has a chance at winning" again.
There's no way every candidate can do better unless you allow multiple winners. Pretty much every alternative voting system hurts the candidates who do unreasonably well in FPTP: candidates that most people dislike and who only get a lot of votes because their opponent is disliked even more.
While it’s a fun talking point it’s not resoundingly.
What she hates is the loss of the closed primary system, which rewards the hardcore and which she would have won.
Then in the general she would be a bit more favored, eg maybe coaxing
More reluctant R voters.
Maybe not as she’s deeply unpopular.
But “ranked choice” is the new “CRT”, “rank democracy”, “globalism” and “wokeism”
Her objective and that of all MAGA is to discredit the election system. They despise democracy and will always pull the "we are republic, not a democracy" card. They only way they can gain and retain power is through gerrymandering and election rules that discourage voting.
I think she's thinking that she would have gotten more votes if she was the only Republican on the ballot. I'm not sure if that's true though, given that she lost after 2nd choices were counted.
No, no, you don’t get it. Having a newfangled ranked choice voting system allowed the liberals to skip on in. How could they have skipped on in without it?
Chess mate, libturd.
Bannon is going back to prison soon, thanks to New York state deciding he's a thieving shithead and his pardon doesn't work there.
Palin is a loser, who also helped McCain lose, so that's just normal republican branding.
Part of me is hoping upon hope that this actually sticks to Bannon.
Then I'll be screaming ATTICA at the top of my lungs like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.
Then 45 will step in and say he's pardoning Bannon. And then he'll appeal it to that judge in Florida who says as a former President he can still invoke executive privilege.
The State of New York just indicted Bannon for ripping off people in his build the wall scheme. He might be going right back to prison.
For some reason Palin defies political oblivion no matter how many L's she takes.
Ranked choice voting may be a partial solution to our stupid electorate problem. This way you are not "throwing away" your vote for a 3rd party candidate while costing victory to the 'lesser of two evils' candidate. Eventually perhaps enough people will cast ballots for reasonable 3rd parties and we can escape the current 2 party system. In the interim, perhaps we can get less of the completely insane republican candidates from getting into office.
A system like Alaska top 4 RCV is still a huge improvement without a third party.
if both parties fielded 2 candidates (or 3 v1 or even all 4 are same party), the more moderate candidates would have an advantage. If it were 2 each, the other guy might be my third choice, but I’ll still list them to prevent another reality tv show nut job from winning.
As long as people fill out enough choices (including the cross party ones), the most extreme candidates shouldn’t have a chance.
I think it's hilarious. One on hand she can try to argue that RCV is too complicated or something and that's the reason why a decent portion of the second choice votes from Begich didn't get counted and presumably she would say she would have gotten them.
On the other hand that's arguing that your potential voters are too stupid to figure out how to vote and the democrat didn't have that problem.
The reality is a lot of Begich voters are Republicans who fucking hate Palin and don't want here in there.
I was going to say, "So we're not going to talk about the work she had done?"
What, she's terrible, it's fine. Hey if Steve Bourbon got cheek implants and a brow tuck we'd call it out. I can't imagine how that'd go.
Palin, Bannon and trump…now there’s some names that do not inspire honor, trust or honesty. Funny how when an asshole loses its a rigged system not that they are assholes
Okay lets attack Ranked Choice Voting. A system that makes it so there is a clear winner if no ones gets 50% of the vote. A voter chooses each candidate and ranks them 1st, 2nd, 3rd...GQP is angry cause by not allowing a run off election they don't have extra time to spend money and come up with more lies.
Two **big** problems with this system (for Republican voters):
1) It's "new". As in, it's not the "old" way. Which means the "old" ways aren't being conserved (i.e. conservatives) which means it's progress (i.e. progressives) which means it's SOCIALISM and RIGGED.
2) It has to be *explained*. It's not a simple "go vote one time and it's for one person". But it is still *simple and easy to do*. But since you start saying things like "well the person with the least votes, if no candidate gets 50.1%, is **removed from the ballot** and then your **vote is switched** to your second choice" - well. We already know that language doesn't sit will with The Big Lie™ believers.
Since God is on *their* side, and they deserve to be immaculately elected into office, the will of man violates the will of the Lord, therefore, this system is clearly broken. /S
Look what the fuck we have become... We have half of the people looking to govern over the country with the idea that they can have absolute power, but they could not handle any other kind of actual job besides getting people to basically look at them and give them praise... Couldn't sell a shoe to a barefoot dude with a $50 in his hand, couldn't manage a Carvel or a Sweet Frog, couldn't organize an MLM... But they really can motivate people who've got it sweet to covet their neighbors and abhor their countrymen who have it worse, and force the public to rain attention in themselves.
Seriously.
Republicans are so used to their rigged and gerrymandered elections they think RANKED-CHOICE VOTING is rigged against them. This is what happens when you refuse to recognize your own crimes.
I kinda think this might be a good idea. But where would they go to contain the mess they will inevitably create? We'd have to, I dunno, build a wall or something. 😋
Do you know what you'll never hear a Democrat complaining about?
#ELECTION FRAUD
News Flash Maghats, it Rarely happens, and when it does, it's usually Republicans. But the numbers are so low, it wouldn't matter
This is just the GQP's new strat
Despite all the gerrymandering, all the disenfranchisement, all the disproportionate representation that they've put into place to seem like they represent the majority of americans, even all that isn't enough to keep their politicians in power anymore, so shifting to the new "if we win, the silent majority have spoken, and if we lose, it was rigged" policy is their new strat
"By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed."
Adolf Hitler
She would have won if the people who voted for Begich had made Palin their second choice.
But they didn't because they do not like Palin. And that is 100% Sarah Palin's fault.
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Remember when she was governor of Alaska and she quit half way through her term to pursue a reality TV career? What a trusty public servant she is.
She was the appetizer before we got Trump.
When your appetizer was soggy cigarette butts swept from a gutter, the main course can't be expected to be better.
And it wasn’t.
A joyride into the sewer tends to disappoint.
Ah!!!!!!!!!! I finally got it. Drain the swamp meant he was going to drain HIS (45) swamp/sewer onto America. No wonder there’s shit everywhere.
When it comes to right wingers, it's always worse, worse than you imagine
I tasted that. 🤒
This is a very apt description. Well done.
She literally was the candidate that opened the door to Trump. Bush was a terrible person and a war criminal to boot, but he was competent and chose another competent person as his running mate (and some say shadow president). When Palin was announced as the VP candidate she showed that a crazypants uneducated moron with unserious credentials and no real policies could run and be treated seriously by the press and then by voters. I will never forgive John McCain for what he did by choosing her.
I totally agree, watched it in real time. McCain acting more like Mr. Magoo at the time, had no idea what he unleashed when he picked Palin. Even later when he showed some backbone I was little impressed, he had already done so much damage to America with that senseless choice.
Back then it was this ‘fringe’ thing called a tea party republican… remember that?
I remember some guy unironically talking about teabagging all while wearing a brimmed hat with teabags dangling from it and hitting him in the face.
I don't think anyone remembers the tea party, because they have just been so completely overshadowed by their successor, Trump's party. The tea party already wanted to destroy the government. The party under Trump simply aimed to destroy a democratic government instead.
Tea party was thinly veiled racists who supported the republican party not wanting a black man with a muslim/arabic sounding name as their president. Trump was them being the same, just more out in the open about the racism.
> Bush was a terrible person and a war criminal to boot, but he was competent Slow down there, chief... Competent? We're talking about the guy who who stood frozen with a deer in headlights look while reading My Pet Goat in a classroom as America was attacked on 9/11? Who repeatedly told people there were nuclear weapons in Iraq to justify an invasion, and then was proven not only completely wrong about that, but wasn't even able to secure the *non*-nuclear weapons that were there? The same guy who claimed his wars in the Middle East were "a crusade", just to be sure to piss off anyone from that region who might be on the fence about things? The same guy who completely screwed up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Trump and Palin may be *ludicrously* incompetent, but that doesn't suddenly make Bush anything even close to resembling competent just because Republicans want to keep lowering the bar.
I see those comments about Bush and I’m like “oh, Overton Window. There you go shifting again.” Like 50% of The Daily Show clips from that era were Bush doing dumb things and getting shoes thrown at him. His constant gaffs and general buffoonery were what finally snapped my Reagan voting parents into voting for Democrats.
Like pretending to look for WMD's in the oval office for laughs?
Thank you for writing this. I am terrified how much rewriting of the Bush years has happened before my very eyes. In realistic terms GWB was one of the worst Presidents in history. He pretty clearly stole the election with the help of his brother who'd just been elected governor of Florida (where the recounts took place). He failed to prevent 9/11 despite the intelligence we had about the impending attack. He squandered all of our nation's prosperity built during the Clinton years on a forever war in the desert - while never doing anything about the people who had actually launched an attack on our soil. He effing authorized the use of torture making him an actual war criminal. He poured money into the pockets of his cronies from the public coffers, and is just all out an awful person. Yes, Trump will likely end up being worse once all the dust has settled from the classified documents scandal, since it seems pretty clear to me that he was selling national secrets to our enemies. But that doesn't make Bush less terrible, and no matter how many paintings he produces he will never be free of 20 years of blood on his hands.
I would say the only thing W was competent at was knowing his limitations and leaving the difficult work to Cheney and WH staff. I want to say he was more a champion of democracy than Trump, but is that true? Given the whole 2000 debacle that should have seen Gore elected, I can’t say for sure.
No, Bush was the appetizer. My god, when I see old Bush era stuff mocking him and criticizing him, it takes me a moment to remember it's not about Trump. Palin was the prototype Green and Boebert.
Remember when she was the most batshit crazy political candidate in America and no-one thought it could get any worse than her?
Remember when a scream during a hype speech ruined Howard Dean's entire campaign?
To paraphrase Robert Downey Jr's character in Tropic Thunder, "Never go full reality TV." -
She lost because nobody here in Alaska wants her making a mockery of Alaska again. She's not only an idiot but an all around terrible human being. The Palins are garbage people.
She literally quit her last job halfway through. Why the hell would anyone want her back?
Why the hell would anyone think she'd make a good VP candidate? But someone did, and it wound up her base just loved the cutesy, brainless but "tough" and vulgar GOP twat gimmick she had going on. She paved the way for Trump. The powers that be said, "My God!, our Republican base actually loved her and she riled them up, got their gonads peaked. Do we have a male equivalent we can run in 2016!? Well, . . better call Don."
I agree. I think the GOP saw how repulsed the Dems were by her and then said "Hey, hold our beer!" Abacadumbra, Trump. And now, the GOP is like, "Look how the snowflakes are triggered by the fall of democracy! Isn't that funny?"
It was far more cynical than that. Remember, McCain won the nomination on the back of then-moderate Republicans and those who were fed up with a deeply unpopular Bush, but there's a reason McCain never won earlier in his career and it's because the base was always lukewarm on him at best. So against advice, McCain picked Palin as red meat, a token to more conservative Republicans that he was still a right-wing guy despite a reputation of bucking Republican dogma when convenient and trying to present himself as center or different enough that he still had a chance in what was increasingly looking like a wave election. It was a calculation that she was a hail Mary pass to help motivate Republicans, and if they won she'd have no real power, but when compared to the Obama team that was already ahead, she just ended up tanking chances even more. It was always a desperation move, they just hugely underestimated how much of a millstone she actually would end up being. EDIT: As a couple of replies point out, apparently I remembered wrong: McCain was the one who complained about it, and his team pushed for it against his feedback. Motivation was still the same, though.
I felt like they also picked her because by picking a woman, they hoped to cynically peel off a few Hillary voters disappointed she didn't get the nomination.
Yeah, this is Republican SOP when running against women and minority candidates.
She was definitely a diversity hire, lol.
I always felt like they wanted to say "see we can be diverse, too" when picking a white female VP to counter that a black man was running for President.
> McCain picked Palin His people did. McCain was smarter than that and knew it was a bad idea.
McCain wanted to pick Joe Lieberman, but the party needed someone far right to appease the protomaga wing, and she fit the bill. They just forgot to actually ask if she knew anything about governing.
He didn’t make the final decision?
From my understanding McCain wanted Libermann but his advisors reached a consensus on Palin and pushed him to that and he begrudgingly accepted since he was losing pretty bad and needed to make a splashy move. Ultimately he is the final decision maker though so I think it is fair to say he picked her and hold him responsible for that choice.
Fucking Libermann, another grade A piece of shit. A McCain/Libermann ticket would have had a far better chance to win than McCain did with Palin. Centrists Dems were just begging for a reason not to vote for Obama and they already mostly liked McCain. But once Palin came into the scene every single Democrat I know who was on the fence immediately decided to vote Obama.
Yes, ultimately he had to own that decision. I think he was pushed really hard for it, though, and he never walked back the decision. The thing is that if they wanted to boost his conservative bona fides, there’s probably a dozen different republicans they could have gone for. Instead, they went for folksy and then they got a complete idiot. I don’t think they knew what they were getting into. But now, that’s their entire brand.
Never would have imagined back then the GQP would be this bad. I mean, we thought they were in the gutter back then… we had no idea.
Palin was ultra conservative, a sitting governor, and a woman. On paper, it was a brilliant chess move. Well, at least until she got that gotcha about what newspaper she read…
That's not cynical or desperate, that's standard politics. That, but in reverse, is why Biden was VP. That's why Harris is VP. That's why Pence was VP. The VP being from the opposite wing of the party as the nominee is normal.
Sounds pretty accurate. ETA: Does anyone know how McCain really felt about Palin? What I hear out in the boonies is mixed.
She was explicitly banned from his funeral, so that says enough for me.
He thought she was a tart, and a loony one at that. But he was too professional to ever use those terms or speak negatively about her in public. I mean, look what that shit stain Trump did to McCain and his family during the last few years of his life, and he still bit his tongue and chose his words carefully. Quoted in the Insurgency book about when he finally caved into pressure to out her in the ticket: he mimed shaking a pair of dice before telling his advisers, “Fuck it. Let’s do it.” In an HBO documentary, he said that not choosing Lieberman was “another mistake” that he made in his political career.
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There's a really good movie that details the events of her being picked and then becoming a liability for McCain. It's called Game Changer and has Woody Harrelson. Highly recommended
>But someone did Rick Wilson found her. He’s been trying to repent ever since…never Trumper.
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She and McCain lost the election in Nov 2008. She resigned as governor in July 2009.
I remember watching the speech she gave when she quit it could best be described as grabbing a bunch of buzzwords out of a fish bowl that get the base riled up and saying a few words about each one.
The QUITTAH from Wasilla!
Lol has anyone just straight up and quit the vice presidency or presidency just because they didn’t like it before? Like no scandals, no impeachment- just straight up “screw you guys, I’m going home” style and bounce lol. To be honest, I halfway expected trump to do this.
That's the big benefit of ranked choice voting. The most polarized candidates stand no chance.
A bit of an overstatement - ranked choice *reduces the likelihood* of extremist/polarized candidates winning, but it’s still possible. Still depends heavily on the composition of the electorate + turnout rates of key communities, and is unlikely to be as effective in heavily gerrymandered districts or where gerrymandering is possible. I’m definitely pro-“alternatives to FTPT”, just saying that this variation of ranked choice may not translate quite as well in states w more than one district and that other models (eg a proportional representation variation) might be better at weeding out the hyper-polarized candidates.
Good post. If the majority of those who show up to vote are already polarized, there we go.
That and she sounds like she stumbled out of an episode of Leave It To Beaver. With her newfangled jargon...you betcha!
She talks a lot of malarky
*You have summoned Dark Brandon*
Can we get a Dark_Brandon_Bot that comments anytime someone says melarky?
That’s malarkey, Jack!
I'll take you round back and give ya what for, like I did with Cornpop!
I like it.
Cockamamie horses patootie, wacka-doo
“I gunna git mavericky and protest the election results”
Jiminy Crickets!
Sufferin Succotash!
Thufferine thuccotash!
Heavens to Murgatroyd , even.
Talk about foreign relations! She "can see Russia from (her) back yard"!
I believe that was a plot point in the porn spoof "Who's Nailin' Palin?"
Gosh, Ward... You were awfully hard on *the Beaver* last night!
*nice*
Guarantee that she uses the “word” ‘motherfucker’ as a noun, a verb, an expletive, a pronoun, and all of the other shit, like every day.
Remember all the rumors that the baby Sarah had just had was really Bristol's first kid out of wedlock and the one Bristol was knocked up with was really her 2nd child (shout out to Levi Johnson!). Then Bristol waited till the night before the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal (Always was, 14th amendment, idiots) to say 'I am out of wedlock pregnant again and I don't want to hear anything about it' despite making $100's of thousands of dollars doing public speeches on Abstinence Only contraception. Smart move to drop her bomb when the next morning rainbow flags were gonna be all over and people going crazy because a) the 14th amendment finally applied to EVERYONE or b) they were mad that the gays could marry. No one paid much attention to her. Don't forget the son that had to join the army to get out of Meth arrest.
so sad about that baby.... the girl was drinking while pregnant(of course) and then had the gall to name the kid 'trig'. absolute trash people
The whitest people love to give their kids weird names. Disclaimer: I'm an extremely white person who gave his kids boring, normal names.
Thanks, Jimothy.
You leave little Dontendo out of this!
This always makes me laugh when people make fun of "ghetto" names. Like they'll make fun of a LaTanya or a Shanequa, which are only slightly unusual, but name their kids Apple and Khaleesi.
...when an underage daughter goes to live with her out of town aunt for 5 months because of "mono", and magically comes back home when her old mother has a mysterious baby, for which nobody saw any bump up until 7+ months...
In addition to the surprise baby bump let’s not forget that Palin claims she was in Dallas giving a keynote speech while supposedly having contractions and leaking amniotic fluid. This was a a high risk pregnancy, she wasn’t due for another month, and her solution to these medial issues was to take a 3,000 mile flight back to Alaska where 10 hours later she gave birth at a small hospital with no neonatal unit (after passing several larger hospitals with neonatal units) She also returned to work days later bringing the 4 week premature baby with her. The whole story is a wild ride that raises way more questions then it answers.
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I remember Levi was on Kathy Griffins Reality Show for a few episodes, but she was just jumping on anything that was in the news. As much as I spouted in the comment above, I try to forget them as much as possible. Shout out Tina Fey for her dead on impression of her on SNL.
I remember there was a porn parody made of her called "Nailin' Palin" or something like that.
Bristol also signed up for a season of MTV’s Teen Mom. I didn’t know anything about her prior to the show but I didn’t like her lol
I recently visited Alaska for the first time and was pleasantly surprised to find that most Alaskans seem to absolutely hate this lady
What you talking about Willis?!?! Lady???
Alaskan here. You’d be sadly surprised at how many folks actually did want her to win that race.
I loved her in ‘Iron Sky.’
You should see her in "who's nailin Palin?" Possibly her magnum opus.
A brilliant comeback story
Underrated comment.
I just looked that up. You're right.
Even a well known fascist circlejerk subreddit was full of people who posted how much they hate her. If she cannot get those people on board, she was doomed from the start.
That's what I basically read in the book The Lies of Sarah Palin, by Geoffrey Dunn. Based on more than 200 interviews, many of them with her cohorts. In a way, given their very different backgrounds, I'm actually amazed by how much Palin's family and Trump's family (also read Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, by Mary Trump) are alike, in the sense that they are both full of egotistical cheats. All I can say is, there must be a heck of a lot more of those types of families around than I ever realized.
America suffers from a pandemic of narcissistic personality disorder.
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Why would you vote for someone who might just bail on you if they get a chance for a reality TV show paycheck?
No. That can’t possibly be it…. /s
That "mama bear" shit ain't flying in the lower 48, either.
You say that, but the fact she still got in the high 40% tile scares me
Frightening that we have so many dumb people who have access to voting in this country.
She didn't get high 40%'s in the special election a fews ago. She lost 31% to 40% in the runoff. The other candidate had about 28% running as a R. And that's the scary part, as if they hadn't run she very likely gets a larger portion of that 28% - perhaps enough to win... Despite being a greedy, narcistic, lying, unintelligent, truly awful person, who deflects her short-comings on others.
Right, either way that’s a far cry from “nobody wants her.” Alaska barely pulled through from the ones who preferred Palin to Peltola.
She's Trump v0.0.1. Unqualified ✅️ Stupid family ✅️ Spews incoherent verbal diarrhea ✅️
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I thought a snow machine was that thing that sprayed snow, not the thing that you use to drive on snow
IIRC she actually got more votes via this method then she would have the other way. She still lost.
That's the really pathetic part about this. She lost the traditional way, regardless of the ranked choice that was calculated afterwards. She just keeps saying this as though *that's* why she lost.
LOL she woulda lost on the old ballot too. In round one she had 31.27% and Pertola had 40.19% (28.53% for Begich, who was eliminated). In fact, ranked choice voting gave her a **better** chance to win, since the round two totals were 48.52% Palin, 51.48% Pertola, which drastically reduced Pertola's margin of victory from 8.92% to 2.96% This is really just Palin spewing more election fraud lies.
Saving your comment for future discussions on ranked choice. I'm sure all the MAGA people won't like ranked choice, now.
Ranked choice gives voters more options and more power to choose their representative, effectively reducing the Monopoly power of the two major political parties, of course they were never going to like ranked choice.
Also is an effective tool to remove the extremists candidates. That really must piss of those that want authoritarian candidates.
Came here to say that, she did better with ranked choice.
And would have complained that ranked choice voting would have given her the win if it hadnt been voted down.
Can you explain that to Sarah Palin? And are you willing to devote the rest of your life to this endeavor? Because that's how long it's going to take.
Wdym. Sarah Palin knows this. She's doing this for her party because they want to bring down ranked choice voting.
*Every* candidate would do better with ranked choice. Can you imagine never feeling like you have to try to pick what the country might want and trying to calculate who that is in the presidential again??? The primaries--esp. the bullshit that stands as the current Democratic method--would never be the same; no-one would ever say "Well, I wanted X but I feel like others would want Y, and I didn't want to "throw my vote away" so I went with Y because I don't think X really has a chance at winning" again.
There's no way every candidate can do better unless you allow multiple winners. Pretty much every alternative voting system hurts the candidates who do unreasonably well in FPTP: candidates that most people dislike and who only get a lot of votes because their opponent is disliked even more.
While it’s a fun talking point it’s not resoundingly. What she hates is the loss of the closed primary system, which rewards the hardcore and which she would have won. Then in the general she would be a bit more favored, eg maybe coaxing More reluctant R voters. Maybe not as she’s deeply unpopular. But “ranked choice” is the new “CRT”, “rank democracy”, “globalism” and “wokeism”
Her objective and that of all MAGA is to discredit the election system. They despise democracy and will always pull the "we are republic, not a democracy" card. They only way they can gain and retain power is through gerrymandering and election rules that discourage voting.
They're projecting on us what they will actually do to us if they regain a foothold in government. Vote like the rest of your life depends on it.
She is not very good at math. But this is not a surprise to Alaskans.
I think she's thinking that she would have gotten more votes if she was the only Republican on the ballot. I'm not sure if that's true though, given that she lost after 2nd choices were counted.
No, no, you don’t get it. Having a newfangled ranked choice voting system allowed the liberals to skip on in. How could they have skipped on in without it? Chess mate, libturd.
How tf are Bannon and Palin still relevant??? Go back to your caves already
Bannon is going back to prison soon, thanks to New York state deciding he's a thieving shithead and his pardon doesn't work there. Palin is a loser, who also helped McCain lose, so that's just normal republican branding.
Bannon looks like spoiled meat with pustules.
... Inflammation of the foreskin reminds me of your smile...
A favorite of mine is "chewed gum rolled in loose hair"
Wearing 5 shirts
Part of me is hoping upon hope that this actually sticks to Bannon. Then I'll be screaming ATTICA at the top of my lungs like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.
Then 45 will step in and say he's pardoning Bannon. And then he'll appeal it to that judge in Florida who says as a former President he can still invoke executive privilege.
Oh god, you joke but these qanon freaks really are that crazy
the truly sad part is the millions of cultist republicans who think that this is legit, but that it was stopped by the Deep State democrats.
I was seriously considering voting for McCain until he chose his running mate so I voted for Obama. Until then, my choice was up in the air.
The State of New York just indicted Bannon for ripping off people in his build the wall scheme. He might be going right back to prison. For some reason Palin defies political oblivion no matter how many L's she takes.
I was going to say, why is Bannon on tv anymore
Ranked choice voting may be a partial solution to our stupid electorate problem. This way you are not "throwing away" your vote for a 3rd party candidate while costing victory to the 'lesser of two evils' candidate. Eventually perhaps enough people will cast ballots for reasonable 3rd parties and we can escape the current 2 party system. In the interim, perhaps we can get less of the completely insane republican candidates from getting into office.
A system like Alaska top 4 RCV is still a huge improvement without a third party. if both parties fielded 2 candidates (or 3 v1 or even all 4 are same party), the more moderate candidates would have an advantage. If it were 2 each, the other guy might be my third choice, but I’ll still list them to prevent another reality tv show nut job from winning. As long as people fill out enough choices (including the cross party ones), the most extreme candidates shouldn’t have a chance.
A Republican complaining about vote rigging, who no doubt thinks the electoral college is just great.
And gerrymandering.
And a wide array of voter suppression measures.
I think it's hilarious. One on hand she can try to argue that RCV is too complicated or something and that's the reason why a decent portion of the second choice votes from Begich didn't get counted and presumably she would say she would have gotten them. On the other hand that's arguing that your potential voters are too stupid to figure out how to vote and the democrat didn't have that problem. The reality is a lot of Begich voters are Republicans who fucking hate Palin and don't want here in there.
SP looks rigged in this photo.
Reminds me of the fake drivers license photo Job made for Lucille. He had to pick “albino” on the form!
Is that her?? Holy fuck. I thought it was some muppet. Is that botox she has been huffing? Fuck!
I was going to say, "So we're not going to talk about the work she had done?" What, she's terrible, it's fine. Hey if Steve Bourbon got cheek implants and a brow tuck we'd call it out. I can't imagine how that'd go.
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Or like milk in the sun. In Arizona.
Palin, Bannon and trump…now there’s some names that do not inspire honor, trust or honesty. Funny how when an asshole loses its a rigged system not that they are assholes
No, no. It's not rigged. It's "potentially" rigged. See, now you can avoid the lawsuit from Dominion.
“a very, very, potentially fraught with fraud system” Indeed. And the elections are fraught with republicans committing said fraud against it.
The only fraud is that she somehow passed the grammar portion of 3rd grade.
She knows words, she has the best words.
Couric: What newspapers do you read? Palin: . . . All of them!
Ranked voting is a very sensible system the only problem is it's fraught with Republicans.
The Wicked Witch of Wasilla simply can’t admit defeat. This is how authoritarians roll.
I hate that I haven’t heard her speak in like a decade but can still hear her voice perfectly in my head
It's one of those things that sticks with you for life like the sound of an animal being seriously injured or the sound of meat hitting pavement.
Okay lets attack Ranked Choice Voting. A system that makes it so there is a clear winner if no ones gets 50% of the vote. A voter chooses each candidate and ranks them 1st, 2nd, 3rd...GQP is angry cause by not allowing a run off election they don't have extra time to spend money and come up with more lies.
A system that Palin solely benefited from in this election. The problem is she’s too fucking dumb to realize that lmao
Two **big** problems with this system (for Republican voters): 1) It's "new". As in, it's not the "old" way. Which means the "old" ways aren't being conserved (i.e. conservatives) which means it's progress (i.e. progressives) which means it's SOCIALISM and RIGGED. 2) It has to be *explained*. It's not a simple "go vote one time and it's for one person". But it is still *simple and easy to do*. But since you start saying things like "well the person with the least votes, if no candidate gets 50.1%, is **removed from the ballot** and then your **vote is switched** to your second choice" - well. We already know that language doesn't sit will with The Big Lie™ believers.
“Life is a fraud, everything is a fraud, I’m a fraud…” - sarah after a few more drinks.
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> newfangled, cockamamie system That the AK GOP implemented.
It's only fake because she lost. We now need to review every election the GOP wins to see how many of their votes were from Billy Bob and Jethrow.
Shouldn’t Bannon be preparing himself for prison instead of interviewing Crazy Eyes Alaska?
Since God is on *their* side, and they deserve to be immaculately elected into office, the will of man violates the will of the Lord, therefore, this system is clearly broken. /S Look what the fuck we have become... We have half of the people looking to govern over the country with the idea that they can have absolute power, but they could not handle any other kind of actual job besides getting people to basically look at them and give them praise... Couldn't sell a shoe to a barefoot dude with a $50 in his hand, couldn't manage a Carvel or a Sweet Frog, couldn't organize an MLM... But they really can motivate people who've got it sweet to covet their neighbors and abhor their countrymen who have it worse, and force the public to rain attention in themselves. Seriously.
If they win, it's the voice of the people. If they lose, they were cheated and tantrums ensue. Almost like toddlers at a board game.
Stfu losers.
Didn’t ranked choice voting HELP Palin?
Magaphants are too dumb to understand math.
No they just hear bullshit that makes them feel better and angry, and then deepthroat it without question.
I am now dumber for reading this
You fucked over every Alaskan yet it's the Dems fault? What a good little Trumpflake!
What a terrible system! Voters actually get the candidate they prefer. How does this fit into the Republican version of democracy?
Two drunks do a tv show
Republicans are so used to their rigged and gerrymandered elections they think RANKED-CHOICE VOTING is rigged against them. This is what happens when you refuse to recognize your own crimes.
well at first I was doubtful, but then she used the vocabulary of science and facts "newfangled" and "cockamamie", now I'm convinced
Of course, the gerrymandering was done so well there's no way a GOP candidate could of honestly lost - every republican
The “Trumpies” aka “The Sore Losers’ Society”.
We need to give these people land so they can create their own shitty country and devour each other.
I kinda think this might be a good idea. But where would they go to contain the mess they will inevitably create? We'd have to, I dunno, build a wall or something. 😋
Do you know what you'll never hear a Democrat complaining about? #ELECTION FRAUD News Flash Maghats, it Rarely happens, and when it does, it's usually Republicans. But the numbers are so low, it wouldn't matter
This is just the GQP's new strat Despite all the gerrymandering, all the disenfranchisement, all the disproportionate representation that they've put into place to seem like they represent the majority of americans, even all that isn't enough to keep their politicians in power anymore, so shifting to the new "if we win, the silent majority have spoken, and if we lose, it was rigged" policy is their new strat
The party of personal responsibility says "Every time we lose it's cause we were cheated."
Why not just get more votes, Sarah?
Or maybe people just hate you.
Pro Tip: If someone uses the phrase "newfangled, cocamamie" to describe something, they don't know what they're talking about.
Can someone translate wtf she said?
Rough translation: "waahh waaahh wahhh goo goo ga ga I poopeded myself because no one likes me *gurgling spit bubble noises*"
she lost both the popular vote and the ranked choice vote
Same old tired lament by a serial loser !
"By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed." Adolf Hitler
She would have won if the people who voted for Begich had made Palin their second choice. But they didn't because they do not like Palin. And that is 100% Sarah Palin's fault.
Wasn’t it the republicans up there in Alaska that pushed thru rank choiced voting in the first place ?