The Pit Bull in the China Shop-By FRANK RICH

[kpete]

Op-Ed Columnist
The Pit Bull in the China Shop
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 21, 2009

The book’s most frequently dropped names, predictably enough, are the Lord and Ronald Reagan (though not necessarily in that order). Easily the most startling passage in “Going Rogue,” running more than two pages, collates extended excerpts from a prayerful letter Palin wrote to mark the birth of Trig, her child with Down syndrome. This missive’s understandable goal was to reassert Palin’s faith and trust in God. But Palin did not write her letter to God; she wrote the letter from God, assuming His role and voice herself and signing it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.” If I may say so — Oy!

Even by the standard of politicians, this is a woman with an outsized ego. Combine that with her performance skills and an insatiable hunger for the limelight, and you can see why she will not stay in Wasilla now that she’s seen 30 Rock. The question journalists repeatedly asked last week — What are Palin’s plans for 2012? — is a red herring. Palin has no obligation to answer it. She is the pit bull in the china shop of American politics, and she can do what she wants, on her own timeline, all the while raking in the big bucks she couldn’t as a sitting governor. No one, least of all her own political party, can control her.

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Culture is politics. Palin is at the red-hot center of age-old American resentments that have boiled up both from the ascent of our first black president and from the intractability of the Great Recession for those Americans who haven’t benefited from bailouts. As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so she does from the disdain of Republican leaders who, with a condescension rivaling the sexism they decry in liberals, belittle her as a lightweight or instruct her to eat think-tank spinach.

The only person who can derail Palin is Palin herself. Should she not self-destruct, she will doom G.O.P. hopes of a 2012 comeback. But the rest of the country cannot rest easy. The rage out there is larger than Palin and defies partisan labeling. Her ever-present booster Continetti, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggested that she recast the century-old populist outrage of William Jennings Bryan by adopting the message “You shall not crucify mankind upon the cross of Goldman Sachs.” If Obama can’t tamp down that rage across the political map, Palin will at the very least pave the way for a demagogue with less baggage to pick up her torch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22rich.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1258897142-9N0UUjKO3yo0dShVYexd6A

[Andy823]

1. The problem is

It won't be easy to "tamp" down that rage when right wing talking heads keep pumping up their base, and "trying" to promote violence of some kind, and that's what I see them doing on a daily basis. How do you tamp this kind of hate down when people like Limbaugh and Beck keep stirring it up daily? How do you show the people you are doing the right thing, when both sides of the isle in congress seem to be working for their corporate masters?

If president Obama wants to make "real" changes, and I think he can do that, he needs to get tougher, stand up to the republicans, and democrats alike, and stop taking bad advice from those around him. Nothing he does will be easy since the right has made it their goal to make him fail. He needs to get the people back on his side. There is a lot of anger out there, anger over the economy that Bush screwed up, anger over the bailouts, the greed on wall street, high oil and gas prices, etc. He needs to take the lead and push through changes in congress that will address these issues. He can't sit back and let congress take care of it because to many in congress, democrats included, are in the pockets of big business. He needs to show that he is in charge, and that there will be serious consequences for those in his own party who don't do what is right for the country, and keep on doing what is good for their big money donors!