{"id":988,"date":"2009-11-03T03:54:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T07:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=988"},"modified":"2015-10-19T22:43:58","modified_gmt":"2015-10-20T02:43:58","slug":"sarah-palins-second-ac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=988","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin’s second act"},"content":{"rendered":"

This<\/a> is not something I would have expected to find in the Washington Post<\/i>:<\/p>\n

He was called a dumb actor\u2014a mere mouthpiece for wealthy controllers on the right, who fed him lines and pointed him toward a lectern to deliver them. He communicated well and knew how to act the part, having trained in those arts. But he was really an empty suit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, many rank that man\u2014Ronald Reagan\u2014among our greatest presidents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That he was not the derogatory things he had been called was a matter of record. Well before running for the presidency he had wedded himself to the core ideas he espoused in that office\u2014anticommunism, smaller government and lower taxes. For years, he had spoken and written about them. Yet, even some who served in Reagan’s administration were surprised when, in his twilight years, the treasure trove of documents in his own hand emerged, demonstrating his long involvement with these issues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, Sarah Palin faces a similar challenge. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Supposedly, there are no second acts in American life. But history refutes that notion. Presidential candidates who have lost earlier races, including Reagan, have returned victorious. Americans love an underdog\u2014especially one they suspect was treated unfairly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sarah Palin may fit that bill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Palin’s activities indicate that she intends to remain in public life. There are signs that her viability remains strong. That her new book is ranked among Amazon’s bestsellers, even before its publication later this month, reflects that Palin still commands interest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To strengthen her viability, Palin must seize this momentum and mobilize her supporters. Developing and espousing a small set of conservative values that become her “brand”\u2014as did Reagan\u2014will be critical. She has time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The chap who wrote that, Darryl Jackson, is a former federal prosecutor and assistant secretary of commerce who’s competing for a slot as a columnist with the Post<\/i>. As such, I have to salute his courage here, because this isn’t the sort of thing that newspaper’s readers generally want to hear; it didn’t impress the judges, either (though they had some valid criticisms of Jackson’s writing style). Even so, he has a point: those who thought they’d buried Gov. Palin\u2014and who are now whacking her with spades trying to get her to cooperate and stay dead\u2014did so far too prematurely to be credible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is not something I would have expected to find in the Washington Post: He was called a dumb actor\u2014a mere mouthpiece for wealthy controllers on the right, who fed him lines and pointed him toward a lectern to deliver them. He communicated well and knew how to act the part, having trained in those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-sarah-palin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6R3Ax-fW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1349,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1349","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":0},"title":"A pastoral comment on Sarah Palin","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"26 April 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I forgot to mention this yesterday, what with everything else going on, but I have another post up over on Conservatives4Palin. \u00a0Counsel for leaders within the church is also of value for Christians called to leadership outside the church, since I believe exercising Christian leadership in the marketplace and in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Faith and politics"","block_context":{"text":"Faith and politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=77"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1424,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1424","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":1},"title":". . . and Sarah Palin’s biography matters, too","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"14 March 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"R. A. Mansour has a long post up today called \"Who Is Sarah Palin?\"\u00a0\u00a0It's a fine piece of work drawing on all the major widely-available sources\u2014the biographies by Kaylene Johnson and Lorenzo Benet, John Ziegler's interview, Sally Jenkins' Washington Post profile, and others\u2014and drawing, I think, some fine conclusions. \u00a0It's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=63"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1279,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1279","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":2},"title":"Barack Obama’s priorities","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"4 June 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces finally saw fit yesterday, two days after the murder of Pvt. William Long and the attempted murder of Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, to issue\u00a0a statement on this attack\u00a0on two young men who had pledged him their service (HT: \u00a0Michelle Malkin): I am deeply\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Barack Obama"","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1621,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1621","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":3},"title":"The road to recovery begins with unsparing self-criticism","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"10 December 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"and J.R. Dunn of American Thinker\u00a0has done a wonderful job of helping start that process for the Republican Party, stating bluntly, \"The GOP Must Take Out the Trash.\"\u00a0\u00a0It's an excellent piece (though I think his comments on the Democrats are overstated, that doesn't invalidate his points about the party of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=63"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1708,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1708","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":4},"title":"Liberal feminist says: \u201cSarah Palin’s a Brainiac\u201d","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"29 October 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the frustrations of this campaign season has been watching so many people\u2014even conservatives, and even smart conservatives (like Peggy Noonan, or Bird over at The Thinklings)\u2014buy the dismissive leftist line, backed by predatory editing to distort her MSM interviews, that Sarah Palin is intellectually and otherwise unqualified to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media"","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=92"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1923,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1923","url_meta":{"origin":988,"position":5},"title":"Sooner or later?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"6 August 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a bit of a debate going on (in the comments on this post, for instance, where it's obviously among those pulling for Sarah Palin) as to whether John McCain should name his running mate before Barack Obama or wait until after Sen. Obama has made his pick. Personally, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=63"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}