In this climate, you accept the de facto truce as is — when asked about specific social issues, you say “While that’s an important issue and I have strong feelings about it, we must get our fiscal house in order and get America back to the business of creating real jobs before we address those issues. First, we need to address ObamaCare and our tax structure yadda yadda yadda…”

You don’t come out of the gate trumpeting a grand truce at the top of your lungs…while other operatives are simultaneously telling all and sundry that Social Conservatives should just shut the h*** up ’cause they’re losing us elections.

Remember the context: we were all arguing furiously about whether the lose-with-COD was an acceptable price for keeping squishy 20% ACU-er Castle out of the Senate where he’d dilute the Republican brand and Tea Party energy, even if the cost was Senator Bearded Marxist. The establishment types held the expected position, that all social conservative policies and candidates were universally toxic and those who held them should be treated like an embarrassing rich uncle. (And not-conservative-at-all in ANY area was ok, as long as he had an ‘R’ by his name; DE was NOT a fiscon-vs-socon election!)

Hardly the right time to deliberately poke SoCons in the eye with a sharp stick by crowing about “truces” and the like in coded language, obviously aligning with those establishment types already hard at work tearing apart the coalition.

I think all of those count as “executive experience”. Whether each is a valuable as the others is a judgment call, but if you add it all up you get 10 years or so.

You’re the new achance, and I don’t mean that as a compliment.

I’m not sold on Palin (in fact I was leaning toward Pence for many of the same reasons as EE, if he would actually run) — but this sort of comment is beneath ANY informed RedState commenter.

(a) she wasn’t “caught red handed” — none of the ethics complaints were ever upheld (there may be two or three /still/ working their way thru the system, I’m not sure)

(b) as I understand AK’s benighted “ethics laws” she was personally liable for the costs of all legal defense — AND when she tried to set up a legal defense fund they filed an ethics complaint about THAT. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d want my children’s house foreclosed on and force them to watch their parents declare bankruptcy, because I couldn’t afford the cost of defending an endless stream of frivolous ethics complaints, while a sitting governor (which nicely prevents me from actually earning any real money with which TO defend myself, because doing so while in office WOULD be an actual, not frivolous, ethics violation!)

Look, mbecker, there are PLENTY of things to be critical of Palin for, without going out of your way to take cheap shots.

that here we touch on the fact that Palin was a classic outsider/insurgent gubernatorial candidate, at least in her messaging and approach (or, to the detractors, she cynically represented herself that way in order to marshal populist power against “higher up” members of her own party).

In any case, BEFORE the VP selection, she used that status to cobble together an alliance with Democrats to move legislation and reforms — much to the consternation of the entrenched AKGOP movers and shakers. Plus, her attacks on (other, Republican) members of the Oil&Gas Commission, and Frank Murkowski’s administration….left her with few Republican allies in AK.

Including the AK Atty General.

Once the VP selection happened, she instantly lost whatever support she had among the AK Democrats — right when the frivolous ethics complain machine cranked up.

No allies, huge expenses thanks to an idiotically written law and a PDS-driven and Soros-funded attack machine, AND she didn’t trust the Atty General to rule in her favor (either because she felt he wouldn’t rule fairly, OR because the law really IS just that stupid)…

I don’t know if you are making a “oral cop” slur or what, but I’m pretty sure that statement wasn’t an attempt at a rational argument based on facts or even opinions.

You know, after achance left, many folks claimed that he had been given too much leeway in his postings, for which other posters would have been banned, simply because of his long-standing participation on the forums. I wonder if the same is becoming true of you.

gadfly and aesthete:

In either case, it?s a failure of Palin?s team ? but not directly of Palin herself, she?s not a lawyer. (Indirectly, yes, because she picked her legal team).

Truman’s “The Buck Stops Here” is a statement accepting indirect responsibility: you didn’t do it, but one of your team did, and you’re responsible. I admit I would feel better if Palin had, in hindsight, ever admitted that the AK ethics law *she got passed* was poorly drafted. I haven’t read either of her books yet, so maybe she has done so — but I think it would have been news.

And yes, the eeeevul Establishment Republicans in AK are just that — evil and corrupt (they even called THEMSELVES the “Corrupt Bastards Club”). As are most (all?) of the Establishment Republicans in other states, and in DC. Power corrupts, and Establishment types are “establishment” precisely because they have been in positions of power, and move among others with such power, for so long they can’t even see their own corruption. Fish don’t know they are wet, and most politicians think the “Way Things Are Done In DC” isn’t actually corrupt — when it would get your average CEO jailed for decades.

My motto from here on is “Replace. Then Rinse and Repeat”. If we can’t have term limits, then we should impose them ourselves MUCH more frequently that in the past. No more Strom Thurmonds — and no more Robert Byrds. (My only concern about ACTUAL term limits is that it tends to concentrate power — e.g. corruption — in the hands of the permanent bureaucracy and political aides who spend DECADES on the Hill regardless of picayune things like elections.)

of certain jobs as executive experience is “not in good faith”?

Look, we disagree. You don’t need to make a personal attack — like accusing me or others of arguing in bad faith — and I won’t point out that your claim of personal mayoral experience is unverifiable.

You claim being a mayor of a small town is not relevant experience. I say it is /relevant/ but its /value/ is something each voter would have to judge for themselves. Where’s your disagreement: simply state its value is zero, in your estimation. Ditto for the Oil&Gas stuff — which has direct regulatory control over the main income producing industry in the state — and the non-profit director gig.

You can argue about its value — but not whether it exists or not. She did it, it’s part of her qualifications for ANY job. Maybe it has zero, or even negative value as an opportunity cost (why THIS job rather than THAT one?), in your estimation. Fine. Others ARE allowed to make their own judgments — but the point is that it is a JUDGMENT call. It isn’t kosher to accuse somebody of “fudging numbers” because they differ from you on a matter of OPINION, like whether being a mayor, director, or commissioner count as executive experience.

…which are quite dry, thanks.

Thanks for admitting that I and others ARE free to disagree with you — I really appreciate that permission, your majesty. I’d also like to thank you for explaining how running a town, small though it may be (Wasilla: $17M budget in 2011), or a major statewide commission (Oil&Gas, $7M budget in 2010, oversees safety and env. impact of the production of 250M barrels of oil/gas per year) is EXACTLY equivalent to operating a single fast food restaurant (avg McD 2010 single-store revenue: $2.2M) since…well, a town, a restaurant, and a major industry oversight group are all the same thing, really. (I never claimed that running a fast food franchise is executive experience; that’s your strawman. I might even be tempted to say it is a rather dishonest characterization of my argument, but instead I’ll just chalk it up to your inability to grasp the specific (to Palin’s resume) rather than generalized (to every managerial task in existence) nature of my dispute. Bless your heart.)

I also apologize for my misunderstanding…I had no idea that when you accused me and others of (a) arguing “in bad faith”, and (b) “fudging numbers” you meant to only, in the nicest possible way, to accuse me of general dishonest behavior and how could I possibly object to that? As long as you don’t use the magic word “liar” I’d be supremely silly to take offense.

You know what’s really funny? I’m not even a Palin supporter. I like her, but I’m not sold — but just as many reluctantly anti-Palins like to say it’s the behavior of the PalinBots that drive them away from her, the behavior of you obsessively anti-Palin types tends to drive others to her. I don’t subscribe to those emotion-based reactions, but…after this FUN exchange I can certainly understand why some do.

I wrote you off as unable to recognize that other people can actually disagree with your exalted opinions without “fudging” or acting “in bad faith” many messages ago; I was quite pleased to see you acquiesce to that point. I have no interest in “convincing” you of anything else — hell, if you notice, I’ve never said that I hold Palin’s various non-governor jobs as providing the same level of executive experience as her 2+ year stint as governor. My only point has been that the claim of some type of executive experience for those other jobs, however you want to assign relevancy/value to each, is a colorable one, and not deceptive. Other than that, the rest of this subthread has been like catnip: it’s so much fun to see that of your messages, each one included rhetorical fallacies from strawmen to ad hominem. Want to try for post hoc? Howzabout an appeal to authority? (yes, yes, I know that appeal to ridicule and pity are also rhetorical fallacies, but they’re just so much fun…)

But like my cat, I’m starting to get bored now…