WaPo's David Broder: Tea Party speech showed Palin "at the top of her game"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

David Broder likes a lot of things. He likes growing old and getting paid. He likes bipartisanship, civil cocktail parties inside the Beltway and timidity in the legislative process. He likes it when nothing ever has to change, sure, but what he loves even more than any of this is being utterly vapid and oblivious. And so, for today, David Broder likes Sarah Palin.

The snows that obliterated Washington in the past week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.

I hate to tell David Broder this, but I actually do not think anyone actually got this message.

Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News' Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game -- a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself, even with notes on her palm.

The top of what game? At the Tea Party convention, Palin more or less read the participants' protest signs back to them in her lilting "Aw, shucks" dialect, and took all of their money with her upon her departure. Then she made an appearance on a Sunday morning chat show about a year and a half after it would have mattered. This isn't what I'd call gamesmanship.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/11/david-broder-is-really-in_n_457582.html

[trumad]

1. Time for this old fart to retire...

[CBHagman]

16. Normally I would object on principle, but Broder...

...reminds one of the definition of chutzpah (i.e., the boy who killed both parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan).

Broder completely lost me when he attempted to paint the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth ads as to some degree a difference of opinion and not more Richard Nixon/Karl Rove-style smears.

Check out this passage:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27207-2004Aug23.html

But the reality is that on both sides of the '60s culture war, the wounds are so deep that they apparently cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Whatever collusion may or may not exist between the Bush campaign and the Swift Boaters, these veterans' disdain for Kerry is as genuine and deeply felt as his resentment of them.

The only thing that will save the country -- and end this breach in its leadership -- is that the boomers are now in their sixties. Another generation will eventually come to power, and the country will finally be spared from constantly refighting these same battles.

Of course he wrote that in 2004, when no one from the baby boom, let alone the entire generation (born from 1946 to 1964) had even turned 60 yet. Broder himself was by then in his 70s, evidently in haste to dismiss of a group of people arguably at or near the height of productivity, and, of course, mathematically challenged. He had to post a mea culpa when readers called him on his mistake.

Of course I am absolutely fine with people of 70, 80, 90, or 100 writing columns, screenplays, or novels (I understand one member of the Mad Men writing team is an Oscar-winning writer in his 80s). But Broder...he's just appalling these days.

[MadMaddie]

2. What is he smoking? She wrote notes on her hand

that doesn't indicate sophistication?

[LostInAnomie]

8. My guess...

Broder probably had the article written well ahead of the actual speech. He just had to change a few specifics and then he handed it in.

[LostInAnomie]

3. I have no idea why anyone would actually pay Broder.

His opinions are always irrelevant and anchored to nothing but his own perceptions of the mythologies people have created for themselves. there is never any actual analysis or insight. Just his own warped conception of DC conventional wisdom.

Anytime someone can convince him they're a "maverick" he falls in love even if it couldn't be any further from the truth. What's the old saying "Get the reputation for being an early riser and you can sleep until noon for the rest of your life", or something like that.

[Captain Hilts]

7. I cancelled my subscription when they hired Gerson. Since then they've hired Kristol and Parker. nt

[Patsy Stone]

4. 'nuff said.

If that's the best they've got -- bring it on.

[marmar]

5. David Broder has jumped Jaws I, II, III in 3-D and IV

[Betsy Ross]

6. She long passed the top of her game.

(Wasn't that when she played the flute?) She's on a downhill roll. I can hope, can't I.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

9. If that is the *top* of her game...how low can she go?

[TheCowsCameHome]

10. Her entire charade is a game.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

11. What game? Hungry Hungry Hippos?

Because it sure as hell wasn't Clue.

[CBHagman]

25. LOL!

What game? Hungry Hungry Hippos?


Because it sure as hell wasn't Clue.

:rofl:

[JeffR]

12. Wow! Proof that there really is a bigger idiot than Sarah Palin out there

and the bigger idiot's name is David Broder.

[Liberal_Dog]

13. If That's The Top Of Her Game, Then I Sure Don't Want To See The Bottom. nt

[Tempest]

14. Broder wants himself some MILF

It's obvious which head he's thinking with.

[TheCowsCameHome]

19. All he'll get is Metamucil In Liquid Form

[subterranean]

22. Palin, of course, is now a GILF.

[Tempest]

23. A Git he wants to ...?

Seriously, I don't know what a GILF is.

[subterranean]

24. Grandma...

[mix]

15. his shit is so transparent nt

[Octafish]

17. Broder praised the hell out of Smirko McCokespoon at 2000 Hatefest GOP

The guy absolutely hates on Democrats, including Vice President Al Gore. Broder's strength: Puffing on power and shilling for privilege is SOP for The high priest of political journalism."

[tanyev]

18. Nowhere to go but down, then.

[HughMoran]

20. "top of her game", however, is squatting in a 3ft deep pile of cow-patties

:eyes:

[DefenseLawyer]

21. And when she rubs her leg like that...

I start to feel all funny errrr I start taking her very seriously.

[KonaKane]

26. Time for the glue factory, David.

With your latest vacation from reality, it's obvious that it's time for you to hit the showers.

[mitchum]

27. Horny old men are very sad

[Tutankhamun]

28. That moronic "...Take Sarah Palin seriously" lede has an all-too-familiar ring to it.

It's that very predictable, generic lede that was written days before its duplicitous RW sycophant of an author even saw the speech.

[laylah]

29. Oh FFS! nt