The great Sarah Palin debate

On Friday, August 29, 2008 the country was plunged into an extraordinary experience by John McCain’s surprise selection of the personally intriguing but politically unknown Gov. Sarah Palin as the GOP vice presidential candidate. For the next week VFR focused on the Palin issue. While I liked her personality and said many positive things about her, I opposed her candidacy, initially because of her family situation and what its approval by conservatives would do—had already done—to conservatism, and later for her demonstrated lack of an informed conservative perspective.

Below are VFR’s entries on Palin, in mostly chronological order, from late August to mid September 2008. They are followed by further developments on the Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson front, on Palin’s stunning resignation as governor of Alaska, and on general Palin matters since then.

Sarah Palin

Palin: the debate continues

“Glass Ceiling” Sarah

Making “experience” instead of principle the main thing, unprincipled Republicans get caught in their own net

Dowd on Palin

A conservative message you’ll never hear at National Review

How Palin was chosen

Is Palin likely to belly flop?

The Viagra veep?

Palin speaks

Can Palin’s non-traditionalist role be justified from a traditionalist point of view?

Like a Hollywood movie with too many plot changes

Conservatives lining up obediently—no, eagerly

Standing athwart the Sarah Palin love train yelling Stop!

How conservative Christian Republicans responded to the news of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy

Why I said that Christian conservatives approve of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, so long as it’s not followed by abortion

Why teen pregnancy, even when followed by marriage, is a tragedy; and why parents are responsible

What should be done about the Palin nomination; and why public men’s views of sex matter publicly

Responses to Palin situation

Palin should withdraw

Who is responsible for Bristol Palin’s becoming a household name?

Mothers expressing doubts about Palin running for national office with small baby

Powerline on the “life happens, don’t judge anyone” Republicans

How the McCain campaign won over the religious conservatives

Why I will not vote for McCain-Palin

Why Mark Jaws will vote for McCain-Palin

Byron York asks a helluva good question

Conservative says my writings about Palin have been shameful and disgusting

The conservatives’ new goddess

Palin debate

The new conservatism, and reactions to Palin speech

Many comments

Thoughts on “pit bull with lipstick”

Enquirer: Palin announced Bristol’s pregnancy because the Enquirer was about to reveal it

Recent references to VFR

What makes McCain tick—and why it’s a mistake for conservatives to support McCain for Palin’s sake

McCain’s speech

Palin and the conservative betrayal

Palin had trouble controlling her daughter because of her preoccupation with her political career

A call for VFR to drop the Palin issue

Comments on Palin, September 4-6; and, conservative men in love with Palin

By respecting the views of women do I contradict myself and turn into a wimp?

Whence the worship of “real” candidates?

The empty reactiveness of today’s Republicans

Does McCain have the election won?

The death of political conservatism

A pit bull, or a silly girl?

Hechtman: The culture war is over and the left has won

Why should I be agonizing over the death of conservatism?

How the Democrats and the Republicans follow the cult of the self

A shocking announcement [“I’m getting sick of Sarah Palin.”]

A view from Wasilla

Palin as bait and switch

Wake up, conservatives: you are as hypocritical as the leftists whose hypocrisy you denounce [“Social conservatives who believe in natural sex differences and in the resulting differentiation of social function between the sexes, should not celebrate a female politician with a five month old baby who runs for vice president, and should not seek to silence all questions concerning whether women with small children can adequately perform in high level government positions, for the pragmatic reason that they will look like gross hypocrites if they do.” Sept. 8 2008.]

Replying to a reader who is very disappointed in the way I’ve treated Sarah Palin

Protesting conservatives’ abandonment of the family

Another Christian conservative who gets it

Palin correcting her small town chauvinism

How low can the Democrats go? How low can the Republicans go?

What McCain hath wrought by nominating Palin: an angry feminist “conservatism” [Discussion about the retro, angry feminist-style YouTube, “I am Sarah Palin,” starring Michelle Malkin, Pamela Geller and other self-described conservative women, the key line of which is “I will not be told that I cannot be a good mother and participate in politics.” But that line is false. No one is saying that a woman cannot be a good mother and participate in politics. What they are saying is that a woman cannot be a good mother of infant children and hold national office.]

Palin does not present herself as the exception, but as the rule

How the Palin nomination eclipses conservatism—let us count the ways

Palin discussion backlog

Liberals, conservatives, smears, and the inversion of reality

Was the conservative organizations’ abandonment of principle inevitable?

The latest GOP argument for McCain-Palin

Mulshine nails absurdist GOP attack on Obama’s “sexism”

How Gibson foully misrepresented Palin’s petition about “God’s plan” as a declaratory statement about “God’s plan”

Coleman and Auster find common ground

Palin on Beck

Feminism’s ideal male

Elizabeth Wright on VFR and Palin

The return of glass ceiling Sarah

Where are the anti-Palincons?

The great civil war between liberal and conservative women over Palin

Who’s the lipstick? Who’s the pig? The real truth about the Republican campaign

Joseph Farah endorses Sarah Palin for president

The new conservatism, cont.

Palin supports radical feminist law—so her “conservative” supporters support it too

Malkin ally denounces Palinites’ “victimization pageant”

Todd Palin interview

We will always surrender

More criticisms of Palin from the Republican camp

Is the passion for Palin going the way of all passion?

Today’s discussions

Why experience matters in a vice presidential nominee

Conservative Palin critics are attacked as not a part of America

What the L-dotters are saying about “Northeastern Corridor conservatives”

Where Palin could make a difference

Palin unpacks on the cause of the 9/11 attack

Et tu, Phyllis? Then die, conservatism!

Later discussions on the Bristol Palin out-of-wedlock pregnancy issue, Levi Johnson’s doings, and related issues

While some people’s views of Palin have changed, Peggy Noonan’s have been all over the place [October 18, 2008. A review of how some former Palinites had become critics.]

No Bristol-Levi wedding—what a surprise! [March 2009. Official announcement that Bristol and Levi decided “some time ago” to end their relationship and call off their engagement. I quote my September 5, 2008 entry where I said, “In other words, far from agreeing to marry, [Bristol] has refused to marry. Therefore the announced wedding is a fiction, and my previous skeptical characterization of the wedding as the “supposed” wedding was correct. Levi and Bristol do not want and do not plan to marry.”]

Levi Johnston threatens to sue Palins for custody of son [April 2009. This story proves everything I was arguing in September.]

The latest development on the Levi Johnston, uh, front [October 8, 2009. The news that Levi is going to pose nude in Playgirl.]

Levi Johnston retracts his statements about Sarah Palin [July 2010. In the wake of the announcement Bristol and Levi’s re-engagement, Johnston apologizes for his statements about Sarah and Todd Palin, which he says “were not completely true.” I point out how weak the apology is, but add that it’s better than nothing.]

The neverending Palin reality show [August 2010. Laura Wood on why the news that Levi got another girl pregnant would lead Bristol to break off her engagement with him, one week after it was announced.]

Johnston comes full circle [August 2010. Having ended his two-week engagement to Bristol Palin, Levi Johnson retracts his apology to Sarah Palin which was one of the conditions of that engagement. I retrace the two-year saga which led to this moment.]

Resignation as Alaska governor

As often happens at VFR, when we get into something, we really get into it. I count 16 entries on Sarah Palin’s stunning announcement that she is stepping down as Alaskas governor before the end of the month. The entries are listed below, in chronological order.

Palin resignation

Thoughts on Palin from the conservative commentariat

Palin, traditionalism, and sexual liberation

Why she’s stepping down

Collins on Palin

Resignation dooms Palin’s chances at higher office, says pundit

Why they hate Sarah [Steve R. (and also James N.) gives a good explanation of Palin hatred: “So liberal women envy her and liberal men, emasulated by all the above respond by demeaning her with sexual insults. Thus Letterman calls her a slut and her daughter the same for good measure.” I reply: “Despite the excellent points made by James and Steve, I still find the extremity of the hatred for her mysterious. Maybe their explanations are sufficient after all, but I’m just not getting it.”]

Preliminary reply on Palin and Letterman

Comments on the many-sided Palin issue, cont.

That Vanity Fair article

“American Thinker” J.R. Dunn’s brainless apologia for Palin

A champion of the people

Palin explains why she resigned! (not)

Making the incoherent, coherent

Palin unveils her plans

The observed of all observers, the fantasied of all fantasists

Palin general

Sarah Palin on running [July 2009. About her cover interview in Runner’s World. An extended discussion in which I keep asking, why do people on the left hate her with such intensity? Readers offer numerous explanations. I reply that while they all have some element of truth, none of them is satisfactory. Palin hatred remains a mystery.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 15, 2009 08:38 AM | Send