The Palin Factor: Will Democrats Manufacture Her Alter-Ego in Time for 2012?

Sarah Palin: love her or hate her, she's a force with which to to be reckoned.  Ever since her bid for the Vice Presidency, there have been continuous whispers of her going for the presidential nomination in 2012.  Although I practically snorted milk out my nose one day at lunch back before the 2008 elections when someone naively said that Sarah was too inexperienced, in brainwashed fashion overlooking Palin's experience outweighing Obama's by a long shot, I presently do not wish to see her make a run for the Office.  I love how she makes Libs start frothing at the mouth just at the mere mention of her name, picturing Democrats throwing themselves to the floor either in a bratty temper tantrum or in exorcism-like revulsion at the invocation of "Saaraaaah!"  But, I think she has become too controversial, too hated, her faux-pas obsessively played and compulsively replayed, leaving her public persona filleted beyond repair.  Despite her accomplishments and the influence she wields, as evidenced by her popularity and successful endorsements of many candidates in the November 2010 elections, Sarah Palin has become too much of a "hot potato" -- a lightning rod, if you will.

Regardless of political ideology, the one individual I think that is truly cut out for the job as President of the United States is former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.  I love this woman!  She is brilliant, intelligent, poised and polished with impeccable credentials.  But, I'm sure this amazing woman has her very well reasoned reasons for not seeking the office ... at least, for now.  (By the way, I'm presently reading her book "Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family."  She lovingly and proudly tells of her parents, who made Condi the person she is today.)  

Currently, there are a number of names being thrown about as possible candidates for 2012.  However, I wonder whom the DNC is going to troll out as its PC- baby.  Will they parade about a Dem version of Sarah Palin?  Although late in sharing this with you, towards the end of summer I found an interesting opinion piece just about that, written by two Liberal feminist contributors at The New York Times.  Surprisingly, Holmes and Traister do give Palin her propers as they make their case for the DNC needing an equally influential female and criticize Progressives for doing little to counterbalance Palin's rise to fame and power (emphasis added):

A Palin of Our Own

By ANNA HOLMES and REBECCA TRAISTER

TWO years ago today, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee, introduced the world to his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. Chosen by Mr. McCain’s campaign strategists as a cynical rejoinder to the ill-starred presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, Governor Palin was a historic pick: the second woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket and the first Republican woman in history to do so. 

In the 24 months since her appearance onstage in Dayton, Ohio, Ms. Palin has enthralled pundits and journalists who devote countless television hours and column inches to her every Twitter message and Facebook update, while provoking outrage and exasperation from the left. Case in point: Ms. Palin, now a Fox news contributor, and her cable colleague Glenn Beck planned a rally for Saturday on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, a wily usurpation of an anniversary cherished by progressives and civil rights activists.
The left should be outraged and exasperated by all this — but at their own failings as much as Ms. Palin’s ascension. Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics. 

What makes this all the more frustrating, of course, is that progressives helped to give Ms. Palin her start; her political career was a natural outgrowth of feminist successes. As a teen, she played basketball thanks to Title IX; as an adult, she enjoyed a professional life made possible by the involvement of her load-bearing husband Todd, entering Alaska’s governor’s mansion at 42 with four children in tow and giving birth to a fifth while there.

Ms. Palin, in turn, has been making a greedy grab at claiming feminism as her own. She recently marked the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment by expressing her gratitude “to those brave feminist foremothers who struggled and sacrificed, endured imprisonment and ridicule ... to grant future generations of American women a voice.” On the same day, she sent out this Twitter message: “Who hijacked the term ‘feminist’? A cackle of rads who want 2 crucify other women w/ whom they disagree on a singular issue.”

The hijacking accusation goes both ways. Ms. Palin’s infuriating ability to put a new twist on feminism — after decades of the word’s being besmirched by the right and the left — allows her to both distance herself from and accentuate the movement’s maligned reputation. Her new spin, of course, is that she does not support policies that move women forward. 

You’d be forgiven for thinking she does. Ms. Palin has spent much of 2010 burnishing her political bona fides and extending her influence by way of the Mama Grizzlies, a gang of Sarah- approved, maverick-y female politicians looking to “take back” America with “common-sense” solutions.
Sure, the Grizzlies sound somewhat progressive on paper. But from their opposition to reproductive rights to their work against health care reform and labor policies that would empower American women, their ideas are just antiquated clichés dressed up in designer suits. Like Ms. Palin herself, their talk about being “mama bears” and “tough as an ox ... wearing lipstick” simply reduces female candidates’ political prospects to maternal worth and sex appeal. 

It’s easy of course, for liberals to laugh off Ms. Palin’s “you go, girl!” ethos and increasingly aggressive co-optation of feminist symbols. We progressives discount her references to the women’s movement — not to mention her validity as a candidate — by looking down on her as a dim, opportunistic, mean-girl prom queen, all spunk and no policy muscle. 

But the sad truth is that Democrats often prefer their women fulfilling similarly diminutive models for behavior. Consider how Hillary Clinton has been treated, at times, by those in her own party: Democratic leaders never really celebrated Mrs. Clinton’s nation-altering place in history as the first female candidate to get so close to a major party’s presidential nomination. Indeed, she is most appreciated when she plays well with others in the Senate or the State Department; when she behaves like a fierce competitor, she is compared to Glenn Close’s bunny-boiling virago from “Fatal Attraction.”

The left’s failure to nurture and celebrate female politicians has had a significant effect on its policies. In recent years, Democratic majorities and progressive legislation seem to have been built on steady trade-offs of reproductive rights, culminating this year when the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to push through health care reform with a compromise on abortion financing.

An older generation of female Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi, are about as eager to mount a Palin-style girl-powered campaign as they are to wear a miniskirt on the House floor. For them, proudly or aggressively touting one’s feminist credentials (if you’re actually a feminist, that is) is taboo. It’s considered too, well, female.

But as women of a different generation — of, gulp, Sarah Palin’s generation — we wonder if Democrats shouldn’t look to her for twisted inspiration, and recognize that the future of women in politics will be about coming to terms with (and inventing) new models.

Imagine a Democrat willing to brag about breaking the glass ceiling at the explosive beginning, not the safe end, of her campaign. A liberal politician taking to Twitter to argue that big broods and a “culture of life” are completely compatible with reproductive freedom. A female candidate on the left who speaks as angrily and forcefully about her rivals’ shortcomings as Sarah Barracuda does about the Pelosis and Obamas of the world. A smart, unrelenting female, who, unlike Ms. Palin, wants to tear down, not reinforce, traditional ways of looking at women. But that will require a party that is eager to discover, groom, promote and then cheer on such a progressive Palin. 

If Sarah Palin and her acolytes successfully redefine what it means to be a groundbreaking political woman, it will be because progressives let it happen — and in doing so, ensured that when it comes to making history, there will be no one but Mama Grizzlies to do the job. 

I wonder: who would be the DNC's alter-ego of Sarah Palin?

I find it interesting that these two authors also complained about how Hillary Clinton and Palin were treated in the 2008 elections.  I, myself, was appalled at how Clinton was criticized for her fat hips, her "dike" haircut, and her "mansuits."  That election proved to me that the United States is ready for a minority to be in the Oval Office, but not ready for a woman. 

... I still think Condi would kick everybody's ass -- man, woman, White, or Minority.  She's got the goods that no one else comes even close to!  She epitomizes the American Dream.

Let's draft Condi for President in 2012!!!!!!  THAT'S a candidate worthy of America!!