Andrew Sullivan and John McCain believe that Sarah Palin has a chance to beat Obama in 2012 - Palin causing major stir at "Rolling Thunder" (PHOTOS)

By Patrick

If America wants it or not, she is "back." The force of the Palin-propaganda machine is just about to hit the country, and John McCain already appears to rate her as a serious contender. Today on "Fox News Sunday", he said, according to "The Hill":

The GOP’s standard-bearer in 2008 also shrugged off his former running mate’s poor standing in many polls, saying she would have the opportunity to turn that around if she did make a bid for the White House.

“That’s what campaigns are all about,” McCain said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I’ve never seen anyone as mercilessly and relentlessly attacked as I have seen Sarah Palin in the last couple of years,” the Arizona senator added. “But she also inspires great passion, particularly among the Republican faithful.”

So, she "inspires great passion", and she could "turn that around." Thank you, John McCain! Also for unleashing Queen Esther onto the world, we are incredibly grateful, thank you so much, John. She's just what the world has been waiting for. A warmongering, lying, deceitful, demagogic politician whose main argument is that if you are against her, you are against women and against real American values.

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few journalists who have taken the threat that Sarah Palin poses seriously, and of course he has been ridiculed many times, because she is such a joke, isn't she! Who could possibly take her seriously!

This weekend, he was not afraid to defend his position on the Chris Matthews Show at MSNBC:

From the exchange:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Does anybody here really, does anybody imagine Sarah Palin being elected President of the United States?

ANDREW SULLIVAN, DAILY BEAST: Yes.

MATTHEWS: You can.

SULLIVAN: Yes, because…

[LAUGHTER]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN: Uh oh, here it comes.

SULLIVAN: …not because of her apparent virtues, not because of Obama’s weakness, but because of unforeseen events. I do think that if for example we have a collapse in the markets because of a debt ceiling crisis, if we have a second recession…

MATTHEWS: You’re talking Armageddon.

SULLIVAN: If we have another terrorist attack…

BORGER: Sorry.

SULLIVAN: No, I’m just saying we shouldn’t rule out things.

MATTHEWS: Okay, okay, let’s go…

JOE KLEIN, TIME MAGAZINE: You were around, you were around in ’79 and ’80 as I was. Did you see many people in the Carter administration think that Ronald Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter?

MATTHEWS: Okay, let’s imagine that short of an Armageddon moment like the capture of 80 hostages and the humiliation of the United States for year-long and inflation and unemployment like Carter had.

Well, we’ve got the soaring gas and food prices as well as the unemployment. Apparently Obama gives Matthews too much of a thrill up his leg to notice.

Regardless, a few minutes later, the discussion came back to Palin:

MATTHEWS: Okay, let’s go to Palin. Lot of fun here. Palin, you love Palin. In some strange way you’re fascinated by her, Andrew.

SULLIVAN: As I said on the show many times, she started running the day after the 2008 election ended, and there’s no reason to believe she isn’t running.

MATTHEWS: Did she take a smart break the last three or four months so that the Newts and the Trumps make fools of themselves more or less?

SULLIVAN: Her position has been formerly if no one else will represent this grassroots movement of cutting government down to size and standing up for America abroad, then I will have to go in.

MATTHEWS. Anger. She’ll be the anger candidate.

SULLIVAN: Not just the angry candidate. She’ll be the principled candidate against what she will describe as the free…

MATTHEWS: Are you getting her into this race? Are you escorting her into this race?

SULLIVAN: No, no, no, no, no. I’m too terrified for the country to do such a thing. But I don’t, I do think Washington has misread her, underestimated her, and doesn’t see the…

MATTHEWS: Okay, can Palin and Bachmann run both on the right?

KLEIN: Sure they can both run, but I don’t know that either of them can win. But one thing you have to say about Palin: she doesn’t know anything about policy, but she’s got skills. She knows how to be a standup politician.

MATTHEWS: I agree. Great on the stage.

KLEIN: Yeah.

BORGER: But I believe in the end she’s so relentlessly negative that the, the American people don’t like relentlessly negative politicians. Look at Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was optimistic, positive…

SULLIVAN: But “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” is the most – I know it’s completely phony – but it’s very optimistic. This whole “Triumph of the Will” movie she’s putting out there, two hours of total upbeat, optimistic stuff. She, she knows this, and she’s going to work around it.

The right-wingers surely are mightily upset that Andrew Sullivan compared Sarah Palin's upcoming propaganda piece to Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", but so be it. "The Undefeated" will be pure propaganda, and even if it's packed with lies, just as "Going Rogue" was, her fanatical fans will love it, because they want to believe in her. This has nothing to do with rational thinking. What we have is a populist who is willing to use every lie imaginable in order to impress her fans - and the potential voters. This should scare anyone, it's no laughing matter - but I believe that large parts of the media will be very happy to play the "Palin media game", again. She will give them the sound bites, and they will happy to pick them up, because Sarah Palin sells. It would help if the media started to take her seriously. So far, not many people in the media seem to do so, which I believe is a great mistake. Sarah Palin is ruthless, and she is determined. Virtually every move she has made after she resigned as Governor is directed to prepare her upcoming presidential campaign. Therefore, nobody should be surprised, and Americans need to realize what's heading towards them.

Sarah Palin's embarrassing interviews have been around since 2008. But journalists have no excuse any more, when it comes to simply repeating Sarah Palin's lies about her record. They are now in a position to educate themselves, as Geoffrey Dunn's book "The Lies of Sarah Palin" and Frank Bailey's book "Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin" are packed with facts which are damning.

I was very happy to see that Jack Cafferty highly praised Geoffrey Dunn's book on CNN, saying that it "ought to be required reading for anybody considering supporting a Presidential run by this woman":

Now, I do hope that neither the journalists nor the voters will forget Sarah Palin's disastrous appearances during the 2008 campaign - because one thing is for sure: There will be no more interviews with critical journalists, as Sarah Palin recently announced on Hannity. It will only be propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.

Is the USA prepared for that? I surely hope so, because otherwise we will all be in big, big trouble.

Let's finish this post with Sarah Palin's "Greatest Hits" - we can never see them often enough:

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UPDATE:

A new report by the "Washington Post" describes how the appearance of Sarah Palin caused a major stir at the "Rolling Thunder motorcycle ride." Palin did a great job of hijacking the event:

Participants in the annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle ride Sunday expressed mixed feelings about the involvement of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R).

Palin, along with husband Todd and daughters Bristol and Piper, joined the hundreds of thousands of riders who gather in D.C. every year to raise awareness for prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action.

Palin’s arrival at the event around 11:30 a.m. caused a huge commotion that event organizers struggled to contain. Photographers swarmed her; young men in suits hung around the press pack asking Palin to sign copies of her books. Rolling Thunder security yelled at press and fans not to touch the expensive bikes.

“I’m very not appreciative of the way she came in here,” Ted Shpak, Rolling Thunder’s national legislative director, said of Palin’s arrival. The former governor came in the front of the Pentagon’s north parking lot, where event staff and press were assembled. “If she wanted to come on the ride, she should have come in the back.”

The ride goes from the Pentagon, past the Vietnam Memorial, to the National Mall. From there, Palin plans to head to the National Archives to see the Constitution. It’s the beginning of a week-long tour of historic sites in the Northeast.

But many riders said politics has no place in the event.

“It intimidates our people if we’re pro or con any particular candidate,” said Wayne Kirkpatrick, chairman of the board of an Illinois chapter of Rolling Thunder. “And until national says there's a candidate we’re and supporting them, we don’t want to feel because the president of this chapter is pro-tea party, ‘Gee, I have to be our else I better get out of this organization.”

While many riders said they were fans of Palin, they still did not want her to bring politics to the ride. “Don’t come here and try to make a political point out of it,” said Joe Clark of Pennsylvania. “If she’s just here backing the cause of the entire run, that’s fine. If she’s just trying to get votes, she should just stay out of it.”

Also, we have the first pictures of Sarah Palin at Rolling Thunder ride, thanks to one of our readers (click to enlarge):

The inevitable "hand":

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UPDATE 2:

Major screech alert - Fox News interviews Sarah Palin at the ride - hide your dogs before you watch the video (it's just once sentence, though). Sarah Palin says that she

"loves the smell of the emissions."

I am sure that the Koch Brothers will be happy to hear that!

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UPDATE 3:

Many Americans will not be fooled by Sarah Palin's show, and others are certainly not fooled as well. The UK Daily Mail published a good, also very balanced, article, with lots of pictures and additional information, as well as scathing captions, such as:

"Parade time: Ms Palin waves to the crowd, from the back of a hog...

where she sat for a few minutes"

The Daily Mail writes:

Jim Roddey, chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee in Pittsburgh, said: 'Overall, most of us feel she could be an important force in the party, but I would hope she would not run for president.

'I don’t think she has the intellectual capacity or the depth of knowledge to be president.'

She has also been criticised by Maryland’s 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee, Robert Ehrlich, who called her a quitter and said: 'If you look at the categories of potential nominees, most people do not mention her as a tier-one candidate.'
Palin's problem in the north east is the predominance of suburban swing voters, who are not impressed by her social conservatism and anti-intellectual posturing.
Mr Madonna said: 'The overall style, her manner, her approach, doesn’t sit well with college educated, independent-minded women.

'They’re looking for a different persona in their candidate.'

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UPDATE 4:

Super-LOL! The Taiwanese are at it again! Especially the depiction of RAM is simply brilliant:



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UPDATE 5:

Last for today - raw video of Palin at the ride: