Memoirists From The United States

"Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League."

"In the same way I resent her co-opting a feminist message in order to achieve a retrograde goal, I resent her pandering to the insecurities of American Jews"

"Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted."

"It's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed [Sarah Palin]. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy."

"In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It's no good, not for conservatism and not for the country."

"How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows."

"Most qualified? No. I think they went for the — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives... Every time the Republicans do that — because that's not where they live, and it's not what they're good at — they blow it."

"People are learning that she pandered to us by saying, 'I'm for this' … and then when she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term that she said was insulting."

"You know what's the worst thing about it? The greatest [thing about] McCain is no cynicism — and it is cynical."

"In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity... In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying."

"Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology — contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice."

"There is nothing said about Palin that wasn't said about Ronald Reagan. Grade B movie Star. Amiable dunce. And it really hurt, didn't it?"

"I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America."

"I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington, Gov. Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska. ... She has an executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems, like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and she's taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats, and independents to serve in her administration. She's the wonderful mother of five children. She's -- she's helped run a small business. She's worked with her hands and knows -- and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments, and health care, and the cost of gasoline and groceries. She knows where she comes from, and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down."

"She really brought out some ire, fear, something personal...It was almost a visceral reaction that she represented something anathema against Jewish values, something very deep in their identity."

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. [...] I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be President of the United States."

"It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list."

"Sarah Palin is now the guy who hangs out in the high school parking lot showing off his car, five years after he graduated."

"Life is full of gambles that are unavoidable. This surely was an avoidable gamble."

"I found her quite a capable woman. She asked the right questions on Afghanistan."

"She talked about Reagan with great affection. But then she also talked about Lady Thatcher, and I think it's interesting for a number of our friends who assume that, if you come from Wasilla, you can't be very sophisticated. She was pretty vividly aware of who Margaret Thatcher was, and it made an impact on her as a young woman, watching and growing up in high school and college."

"She got her start as a PTA activist and 'hockey mom' who took on the corrupt Alaskan political machine. Unlike Obama, who played ball with the notorious Chicago machine, Palin took dead aim at the bosses of her own party."

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

"I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States."

"She wouldn't have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her. Tony [Knowles] and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn't about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people's most basic instincts: 'I like you, and you make me feel good.'"

"The Palin choice looks cynical. The wires are showing."

"She's got a show on The Learning Channel. That's like me having a show on the Christian Broadcasting Network."

"Gov. Palin supports an 'all of the above' energy approach, with first-hand experience advocating it. She has a strong record of working to cut wasteful spending. She is firmly dedicated to promoting strong families and protecting the most vulnerable in society."

"It's like a really bad Disney movie, The Hockey Mom. "Oh, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska", and she's president. She's facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's absurd."

"Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican Party’s cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working-class women."

"Hey, Sarah Palin, hows that hatey, killy, reloady, crosshairsy thing working out for ya?"

"She’s an instinctively effective candidate. And with a compelling story."

"She's been thrust in the spotlight with very little national preparation and I think, all things considered, you saw a very composed and effective debater."

"Sarah Palin rummages online frantically erasing her rabble-rousing Tweets like a Stalinist trimming non-persons out of photos."

"We should all come to her defense and say that Sarah Palin is a fucking retard. [laughs from his audience] Get it? You see, it's satire!"

"I can see Russia from my house."

"I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings."

"I have a person that I want to win obviously, and I don't think that's a mystery. On the other hand, if he doesn't win, if the other guy wins – if the guy who's running with Bible Spice wins – [applause] if John McBush and Bible Spice win, we have to find a way to come together as a country, because we can't let it be the way it’s been the last 8 years where there's been this acrimony and this bitterness."

"So Sambo beat the bitch!"

"What's happening to Sarah Palin right now is like the worst college exam cram period ever."

"It’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot, I will not do that. I won’t do it, and they better not touch my kids either."

"I think if enough of us rise up and say, ‘No, enough is enough,’ there are more of us than there are of them."

"When I learned of Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a helicopter, my sensibilities were tested, but after this film, I was prepared to call in more helicopters."

"He's as much a scientist as I am"

"Foundational to our exceptional nation’s sacred private property rights, a business must have freedom to locate where it wishes. In a free market, if a business makes a mistake (including a marketing mistake that perhaps Carrier executives made), threatening to move elsewhere claiming efficiency’s sake, then the market’s invisible hand punishes. Thankfully, that same hand rewards, based on good business decisions. But this time-tested truth assumes we’re operating on a level playing field. When government steps in arbitrarily with individual subsidies, favoring one business over others, it sets inconsistent, unfair, illogical precedent. Meanwhile, the invisible hand that best orchestrates a free people’s free enterprise system gets amputated. Then, special interests creep in and manipulate markets. Republicans oppose this, remember? Instead, we support competition on a level playing field, remember? Because we know special interest is one big fail."

"Politicians picking and choosing recipients of is railed against by fiscal conservatives, for it’s a hallmark of corruption. And socialism."

"A little tiny bit of brutality, in the grand scheme of things really is not that big of a deal, but you guys will appreciate it because you’re from Iowa!"

"Shoot, even the Lord said to take up arms and defend yourself and protect the innocent."

"Don’t believe me? Look it up – Luke 22:36. Proof that Jesus is a proponent of carrying."

"Reaganites learned it is POLICY change that changes economic trajectory. Reagan’s successes were built on establishing a fiscal framework that invigorated our entire economy, revitalized growth and investment while decreasing spending, tax rates, over-reaching regulations, unemployment, and favoritism via individual subsidies. We need Reaganites in the new Administration. However well meaning, burdensome federal government imposition is never the solution. Never. Not in our homes, not in our schools, not in churches, not in businesses."