Today is Thursday, May 17, 2012

'12 President

Peggy Noonan: Obama won’t even make a good former president; Sarah Palin doesn’t get Ronald Reagan

President Obama and Sarah Palin are getting some poor reviews from Wall Street Journal Columnist Peggy Noonan. And U.S. News publisher Mort Zuckerman says America's love affair with Obama is over. Frank Rich blasts both the GOP and Obama in Barack Obama, phone home. In Noonan's Saturday column that everyone should read, Americans vote for maturity; Obama gets a rebuke, but so do Republicans who seem unqualified, she writes:

On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression. 

Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president.

Zuckerman is a billionaire who got sucked in by Obama' in the 2008 elections along with millions of other gullibles. Now he writes that Obama

. . . came across as a young man in a grown-up's game—impressive but not presidential. A politician but not a leader, managing American policy at home and American power abroad with disturbing amateurishness. Indeed, there was a growing perception of the inability to run the machinery of government and to find the right people to manage it. A man who was once seen as a talented and even charismatic rhetorician is now seen as lacking real experience or even the ability to stop America's decline. "Yes we can," he once said, but now America asks, "Can he?"

Sarah Palin had big impact on primaries, minimal influence on general elections

Sarah Palin had a tremendous impact on some Republican primaries where she  endorsed losers in Nevada and Alaska for the U.S. Senate, but in close general election races, she wasn't much of a factor, reports Russ Britt. 

“She had a major impact on the primaries,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “In the general [election], I think she was of minimal consequence.”

LINK: Sarah Palin the biggest beneficiary of her own 'Palin effect' on midterm elections, by Meredith Shiner.

Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Ken Buck cost Republicans control of U.S. Senate

Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint foisted Ken Buck and other losers on the Republican Party, and that cost the GOP a chance to win control of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's elections, according to Mort Kondracke, a long-time political reporter and pundit and a Fox News contributor. He calls Palin a joke in the first video. Is Palin's victory lap video, Together, a joke? It celebrates the winners she endorsed, not the losers.

MItt Romney courts GOP leaders; Newt Gingrich goes after tea party leaders

Mitt Romney is courting traditional GOP leaders in early 2012 presidential caucus and primary states while Newt Gingrich is trying to recruit tea party leaders. LINK: Tea party already shapes '12 race, by Peter Wallsten.

Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh v. Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and other real Republicans

The GOP's God crowd is out to get Karl Rove, Mitt Romney and other real Republicans who have a chance of beating President Obama in 2012. The 2010 election is still nine days away and the Christine O'Donnel Republicans already are on the attack. The tea party is not about God or social issues. It's about America. It's about spending. It's about budgets. It's about taxes. And it's about intellectual integrity in Washington. This won't be fun to watch or cover. LINK: Huckabee blasts Rove, 'elitist' GOP establishment, by Ben Smith.