Just another pile on Palin a clueless beltway conservative pundit.

“Sarah Palin’s resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, acknowledge her limits, and let go of her drama. It is an opportunity they should take. They mean to rebuild a great party. They need to do it on solid ground.

Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

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. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. “I’m not wired that way,” “I’m not a quitter,” “I’m standing up for our values.” I’m, I’m, I’m.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying.”

The only problem with that is Noonan, like the rest of the beltway elites, misses the point.

We don’t care what her or other pundits think, the polls show the truth of who is the proper candidate for 2012 is. Even after all their “takedowns” and “forgetabout” Palin articles her numbers are still better than most of the current crop for 2012. It’s amazing how out of touch Noonan, Barnes, and other conservative pundits are out of touch with what the base wants. But it’s not surprising as none of them saw Barack Obama winning his party’s nomination much less the Presidency. In large part it was their lack of foresight that enabled him to get as far as they did.

Remember how they rallied – as they are now – around Guilliani and Romney? Rudy turned out to be a bust before he got out of the primaries and Romney who excited only those who saw him as a mini-me McCain.

Barack Obama couldn’t get his states right, or answer a single question without Axelrod reviewing it, and teleprompted his way to the White House, so spare me the “experience matters”. Yes it does, but not when it comes to the polls. Obama won because he spoke to his uber left base while romancing the middle grounders.

Noonan and her ilk are continuing this “litmus” test of what they believe the “perfect” GOP candidate would be, yet the only problem is that even if that person existed, even 1980 Reagan wouldn’t have met that, we wouldn’t vote for it.

Again, with Obama’s shrinking poll numbers that will only dip further which each passing stimulus handout Micky O’Rourke will be able to wup him in 2012.

Yeah we need the best, but fortunately it won’t be Noonan’s idea of best.

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