PrintSeptember 5, 2008
Peggy Noonan
I've read Peggy Noonan's WSJ rebuttal to charges that she shortchanged John McCain's campaign in an MSNBC interview. It didn't happen that way, she says -- she was recorded surreptitiously over an open mike and some unknown figure then distributed the recording without her permission. She never said that McCain's campaign was over. She said his tactics were over.
Okay. I guess we'll have to settle for that. I suppose that a twenty-year-plus media veteran could be taken in exactly that way.
Though I'll be very interested to see what Noonan's attorneys make of this breach of trust when she files suit against MSNBC.
I mean, wouldn't you?
But when we move down a couple of paragraphs, we begin to discern that there's a little more to it. In a lengthy passage reminding us how far she goes back, Noon an compares Sarah Palin to no less than Dan Quayle.
Anybody out there want to second that comparison?
I didn't think so.
I didn't think so.
Then we learn on whose behalf this comparison has been made: Kay Bailey Hutchison. To which I can add only this quote (by "Tex") from yesterday's comments:
Why not Kay Bailey Hutchison???!!! LOL. Come on. She's a fine, reliable Republican vote in the Senate. She represents me. I've voted for her in the past, and I'm sure I will again.
But she'd bring ZERO of the things Mrs. Palin does to the ticket. She's a female member of the old boys' club. She looks ... old. Sorry. But she does. And she doesn't underscore McCain's reformer cred.
The rest of Noonan's column is devoted to sowing further doubts about the choice of Palin -- an example of great timing if there ever was one.
At the tail end we get a few pro forma words about the Palin family's ordeal by media, to which Noonan, inadvertently or not, provided the capper.
There are substantial elements of conservatism who have lost the thread. This is no longer simply another campaign, to be parsed and analyzed like any other campaign. The assault on the Palin family has transformed it into a moral confrontation.
Reagan's prairie fire is blazing once again. Some of the old guard don't seem to realize it. And that's a sad thing.
Reagan's prairie fire is blazing once again. Some of the old guard don't seem to realize it. And that's a sad thing.
