It’s too bad this is too long to use as my signature.
As a fan of Churchill and his quotations, let me interpose that apparently, this quotation predates him. It has been attributed to Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and, earliest of all, François Guizot.
Reagan was also fond of quoting Abraham Lincoln:
The only problem was, Lincoln never said that. It was written by William J.H. Boetcker, a conservative minister who published them in a 1916 pamphlet.
So, did Reagan deliberately misrepresent Lincoln, or was he just mindlessly parroting the right-wing narrative?
So if the OP is still defending his theme, which is that liberals attack Palin’s intellectual chops because of basic policy deisagreements they cannot otherwise refute…
…then why do I do it?
I mean, surely you can’t believe I’ve spent eleven years on this board honing a phony conservative reputation so I am perfectly positioned to attack Sarah Palin, right?
I am a conservative, and I believe Palin would be a disastrous choice for President, because her intellect isn’t up to snuff.
What’s my ulterior motive?
You’re secretly a liberal, duh.
“My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”
Yeah, yet another of these threads where the OP apparently is trying short-circuit all discussion from the liberal side by painting it as hypocracy, thereby eliminating any need to respond on point-by-point basis. It’s complete bullshit and I’m sick to death of it, regardless of which side does it.
For the OP: is it your position that there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of Palin’s competency? Are you saying that you refuse to consider the possible merits of any such criticism? If not, could help us all out a bit and tell what degfree of criticism you will and will not accept?
And guess who could see the explosions?
Hold on, I said I’d bet she can name them, not state the holdings correctly! 
Is it true that Bush “told friends the ex-Alaska governor isn’t qualified to be President”? Or a fabrication?
If true, then I am – again – shocked at how American politics can lurch to the right. I am aware of the tendency to describe increasingly large segments of the political spectrum as “scared-to-death liberal” but I literally never before even imagined that being applied to George W Bush. I don’t agree with him about much, but if <i>he</i> says someone is not qualified to be president, I am in this case inclined to give that some weight… 
I don’t recall Reagan doing anything as dumb as Palin’s ‘refudiate’ thing.
And I don’t mean the initial conflation of “refute” and “repudiate” (although that’s certainly not a point in her favor). The really dumb thing was after being made fun nationally of she tried to correct it, and picked the wrong word out of the two.
That’s weapons-grade stupid. Wouldn’t you make sure you used the correct word in something that so many people are looking at? Run it by a few people before you launched it into the world? Load up dictionary.com and check a few definitions? She was either too dumb to check it it, or too dumb to even realize she might have been wrong.
And yes, I’m one of those liberals “scared to death” she’ll get elected. It’s the same type of fear I have of giving a toddler a loaded gun. And I’m not afraid the toddler will do good things with the weapon that prove me wrong about toddler/gun issues.
GWB has ceased to exist and will continue his lack-of-existence up until the right wing has successfully managed to rehabilitate his image.
So, it is irrelevant whether or not GWB said it up until such a time as he resumes existing.
-Joe
Yeah, how much media/press attention is given to what the Governor of North Dakota happens to say?.. about anything?
How many thousands of people in other states turn out for rallies and speaking engagements given by the Governor of Vermont?
Who pays any attention about what candidates all over the nation that the Governor of Montana gives an endorsement to?
How many books has the Governor of Hawaii written, and how many books were sold?
How many people watch TLC television series featuring the family of the Governor of Rhode Island?
Bottom line: Sarah Palin is a very real and a very charismatic person. Both friend, and foe, fall over themselves to see and hear her her every word. Alaska is not big enough for Sarah Palin. I also cannot think of any other politician who would so fearlessly put themselves out there and say “This is who I am, this is my family, this is where I live.” I find it incredibly refreshing.
That was much more relevant when you said it in the thread about her show. Where she belongs. Because she has much more in common with Snooki than Reagan.
Nobody gave a damn about Palin until McCain picked her as his running mate. Which, I might add, he did precisely because even he thought it was a crazy decision; he just thought it was so crazy it might just work.
I think it was a more an attempt to get women voters who were previously going to vote for Hilary Clinton.
That’s why he was looking for a female running mate, yeah, but he went to Palin because she was an unknown. It’s been a couple years since I read the post-election article, but IIRC in his own words he was trying for a Hail Mary pass and it failed.
What I want to know is, could Reagan play the fiddle.
Now, having agreed that Palin is not tops in the brains department, I should also mention that I find irritating the tendency to criticize her for things she’s correct about.
Remember “Party like it’s 1773!” Ha, ha, what an idiot; the Declaration of Independence was 1776!
Yes. But the Boston Tea Party was in 1773.
This came to mind when Gawker published excerpts from Palin’s unreleased book. She tweeted angrily, asking if that was illegal. Gawker sneeringly replied:
Of course, the party that got “walked through it” was Gawker, who learned that an author has a strong right to control her unpublished material and that it’s NOT fair use to publish it ahead of the first authorized publication. Had Gawker actually read their own link and clicked through on it, they might have gotten a hint of this truth:
And sure enough, the judge that was asked that question immediately ordered Gawker to take down their offending publications.
Ha! Ha! That Palin. What a moron.
While at the same time bemoaning all the unseemly media attention. Right.
Hate to break it to you, but I don’t actually fall over myself to see or hear her every word. Frankly I don’t much care if I never hear another word from her, although I do find her somewhat entertaining, just as I find, say, Michele Bachmann somewhat entertaining.
In any event, I don’t think attempts to build a cult of personality were appropriate in Obama’s case; why would I think otherwise regarding Palin?