Sarah Fuckin Palin.....

[Willie Escalade]

Palin vs Hillary 2016.

Anyone?

Hillary would wipe the floor with that bitch.

[Prospero]

I suppose so. After all, intellectually would it be fair for Hillary to take on an otherwise unarmed opponent?

You forget these are the people who elected Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush twice!!!

[robertlouis]

You forget these are the people who elected Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush twice!!!

.... which is why I'd hesitate before following Willie's line on this.

The irrational - and largely misogynist - hatred of Hillary knows no bounds.

Don't discount it.

[Prospero]

.... which is why I'd hesitate before following Willie's line on this.

The irrational - and largely misogynist - hatred of Hillary knows no bounds.

Don't discount it.

But does Palin really plan to run... Tina Fey you might be needed once again

[Willie Escalade]

And people thought Romney was a bad candidate...

[Prospero]

The moron and the man thrown out of the army... what a winning team

[broncofan]

Robert brings up an interesting point. The hatred of Hillary is largely misogynistic. She's a talented, intelligent, ambitious, political maneuverer who knows the ropes and can play hardball with the best of them. So people make judgments about her pantsuits and whether she made the right decision to forgive her husband. They are downright nasty with a woman who quite admirably has succeeded in a man's game on merit.

On the other hand, the Republicans tried to accuse detractors of Palin of misogyny shortly after the embarrassing Katie Couric interview. Let's see here. We have a woman who knows nothing about public policy despite being a governor, who cannot think of a single publication she reads, who doesn't understand the holding of Roe v. Wade, and is incapable of carrying on an intelligent conversation on issues she's supposed to take the lead on. If objecting to that is misogynistic, then this is what Republicans think women should aspire to. They must believe women should not be as qualified as their male counterparts, and that those who are should be detested.

Take a look at the Republican women and minority candidates they've offered up in local and national elections and only then can you get a sense of what they think of these constituencies.

[Stavros]

Towards the end of the Clinton era I recall an American on BBC tv pointing out that the Republicans did not just hate the Clintons, they hated them absolutely. Hillary Clinton probably should not have led the task force on health care reform in 1993 because she was unelected, but she has at least proven since then that she can both win elections and master one of the toughest jobs in US politics. To do this, she has had to overcome both the loathing of the Clintons as well as the misogyny referred to in other posts. You could claim she is a savvy politician having initially rejected Israel's claim that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel before reversing that opinion when deciding to run for the Senate in New York in order to court the 'Jewish vote' in New York, as if Jews were the only Americans who cared (I wonder who exactly it is that considers this a key issue anyway). Again, while she has proven that she is not merely 'Mrs Clinton', it is not clear to me what she and/or her team were doing when the first signs of a breakdown in Syria began to raise it as an important issue in both Middle Eastern politics and US-Russian relations. I also wonder if people are making an assumption that the Republicans are so divided, so out of touch with the American people that the next Presidential election is a shoe-in for the Democrats. The mid-term elections next year will be interesting in this regard.
Perhaps the Democrats need a fresher face, perhaps a woman, I think it is still to early to call. One thing that resonates is the shabby way that Julia Gillard has been treated in Australia in the last few weeks; I don't care for her myself but the personal nature of the abuse levelled at her had little to do with policy and was designed to be hurtful. I hope any woman running in the US is given space to debate policy rather than being forced to defend the facts of her gender.

[broncofan]

Hillary Clinton is flexible when it comes to playing politics. There's no doubt and it comes across as insincere a lot of the time. There's the complete backflip on Jerusalem. There were the ridiculous attacks on Obama during the primaries as an elitist because he didn't understand the importance of guns to mainstream Americans. I understand the objections to her as being too slick an operator or as someone who will do whatever is necessary to get elected. I think a lot of the vitriol though is based on the fact that she is a woman who is seen as intelligent and manipulative. But I didn't vote for her in the primaries because I couldn't stand some of her attacks on Obama. I was undecided until she jumped on the "elitist" bandwagon in 2008.

[Stavros]

Interesting post Broncofan. If the trend is towards a woman, are there any other strong women in the Democratic Party who could come through that point of momentum in the primaries when the challengers fall away? I suppose the question is, who else wants the job?