Saturday, November 05, 2011
Palin rules out running for President in 2012
Sarah Palin, the former Governor of Alaska and favourite of the United States' ultraconservative Tea Party, ended months of speculation on her political intentions by announcing that she would not be entering the race for the November 2012 presidential election.
Ms. Palin, an outspoken voice of the American right whom many expected to enter next year's primary elections for the Republican nomination, said “My family comes first,” in a letter to her followers explaining why she had opted out.
However, in an indication that other considerations such potential weakness in any electoral bid that she made, might have weighed on her decision, she said that her decision was based upon “a review of what common sense conservatives and independents have accomplished, especially over the last year.”
Many observers noted that her popularity had waned significantly over the course of the year, certainly within the Republican Party mainstream, and to an extent even amongst its more conservative factions.
For example Karl Rove, erstwhile aide to the former President, George W. Bush, recently criticised Ms. Palin's emotional public statements when he said, “It is a sign of enormous thin skin that if we speculate about her, she gets upset... I suspect if we didn't speculate about her, she'd be upset and try and find a way to get us to speculate about her ... I'm mystified.”
Her popularity also plummeted in January, in the wake of the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords in Arizona. At the time her critics connected the shooting to the fact that Ms. Palin had put Ms. Giffords on a “target list” of lawmakers whom she hoped to see defeated in the November 2010 midterm elections.
She had also used a map of various districts where these lawmakers were based, placing several of them, including Ms. Giffords', within a “crosshairs” symbol, and Ms. Palin then said on Twitter to her supporters, “'Don't retreat, instead – reload!”
Ms. Palin nevertheless continues to command a high level of popularity, as a recent bus tour that she conducted across the U.S. suggested. In that context she hinted that her involvement in politics would continue, not only as a regular commentator on the conservative news channel, Fox News, but also in other public positions.
“I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office — from the nation's Governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency,” Ms. Palin said, adding that she would continue driving the discussion for “freedom and free markets.”
Labels: Sarah Palin, US presidential election
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Republicans test the waters in tepid debate
From The Hindu
Seven Republican Party candidates for the 2012 presidential election engaged in a tepid debate in New Hampshire on Monday night, with all of them in broad agreement on conservative values on relating to gay marriage, abortion rights, shrinking the size of government and repealing President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform.
Frontrunners such as Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, and nationally recognised figures Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were understandably reluctant to launch any attacks against their rivals this early in the contest, with more than six months to go before the primaries and caucuses kick off.
However what was remarkable was that even the candidates who were relatively less well-known or new to the national platform, including Tea Party-backed Michele Bachmann and former Pizza company CEO Herman Cain, focused their criticism on the shortcomings of Mr. Obama rather than seeking distinguish their policy stance from those of the others on stage.
The closest that any of them came to trading barbs was when Mr. Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota, was questioned on his use of the term “Obamneycare,” an insinuation that the universal healthcare plan that Mr. Romney introduced in Massachusetts in 2006 was highly similar to the seminal Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama administration last year.
Yet even there Mr. Pawlenty passed up the opportunity to press Mr. Romney to spell out how his policy was any different to Mr. Obama’s healthcare reform. Instead he said that his decision to use “the term “Obamneycare” was a reflection of the President's comments that he designed Obamacare on the Massachusetts health care plan.”
The elephant in the room, however, was the absence of several Republican heavyweights who were yet to throw their hats in the ring, most notably former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former Ambassador to China, John Huntsman. Both of them are widely expected to announce their candidacies in the near future.
To an extent the debate also reflected the conservative, economy-focused mood in the country, with the arguments predominantly revolving around domestic issues. Foreign policy found scarce mention throughout, with the candidates only offering a few critical words on the Obama administration’s costly military engagement in Libya and Afghanistan.
On Libya Ms. Bachmann said that U.S. involvement had failed to advance “any vital American interest,” and Mr. Paul, said that as Commander-in-Chief he would push for cuts to military spending in Afghanistan and consider bringing American troops home soon.
At certain points the debate was also indicative of what some view as a deeper malaise within the Republican ranks – that there is a growing disconnect between the fiscally and socially conservative Tea Party on the one hand and the mainstream Republican view on the other.
Exemplifying this tension, when Ms. Bachmann was asked about whether she would enact laws to define marriage as being between a man and woman only, she initially said that she was not in favour of interfering with state laws on this subject.
Yet contrary to the Tea Party principle that states ought to be free of federal government diktat, Ms. Bachmann later conceded that she would be in favour of enacting a common marriage law through constitutional decree.
The primaries and caucuses, which will throw up the final candidate to run against Mr. Obama in the 2012 elections, will be held early next year. However there will be at least two more debates before then, in August and September.
Labels: abortion rights, gay marriage, Republican party, Tea Party, US presidential election
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