Please visit today’s Watercooler Chat comments section for discussions/debates about the 2012 presidential election and Governor Palin’s role therein. (Yep, this is a blatant sales pitch for more traffic to our site posts! Ain’t capitalism great?!)

Regarding my comments on Governor Palin mentioning the Whig Party and its demise more than once in the last few years, I did some research and couldn’t find the interviews I was looking for. If anyone has those links filed away, please let me know in the comments section.

I’d like to continue the conversation in this post, along with some pertinent articles/links on this topic.

First, here’s fine Palinista blogger, Josh Painter, from today:

Did Team Palin uncover an October surprise in September?

We think Gov. Palin and her advisors sensed “a great disturbance” in the political force

There’s one thing about Sarah Palin that her supporters, critics and even “neutral” pundits all agree on. Her political instincts are remarkably prescient. She has been praised for this keen instinctive ability to read the political tea leaves throughout her entire career. When Gov. Palin announced on October 5 that she had decided not to run for president, she cited family reasons. What this really means is that it was a family decision, but we were left to speculate on what factors were involved in her family’s deliberations.

There’s no question that a national campaign would be a major disruption of family life for the Palins, and security issues almost certainly were factored into the decision. But political concerns had to have also been involved in what was ultimately a key decision involving the governor’s political career. The words “at this time” from her official statement have been cited by some of her supporters as a clue that Sarah Palin, her family and her close advisors saw some new wrinkle in the political landscape that may have caused her to postpone her run, perhaps until 2016 or 2020 …

As you’ll see in my comments on our Watercooler Chat post, I disagree about conceding the 2012 election to the GOP. But YMMV. Read the rest of Painter’s article here.

For another perspective – and this great chronological sequence of Palin’s September/October timeline – check out this lengthy comment at C4P from our Jewish friend, IsraeliCojones:

The events:

September 20: Palin within five points of Obama in new Marist poll
September 21: Beginning of the chatter about a Palin’s run as a third-party candidate (!).
September 22: Last GOP’s candidates debate: Perry’s flaming out after being wildly hyped.
September 24: Cain “unexpectedly” wins FL’s straw poll in a landslide. Duh.
September 26: Tea Party Nation founder endorses Gingrich (“He’s electable”). Duuuuh.
September 26: Sarah Palin Threatens to Sue ‘Rogue’ Book Publisher
September 27: Roger Ailes: Fox News is making a “course correction”
September 27: Palin’s “sudden silence”
September 27: Greta’s interview
September 28: Cain: “I couldn’t support Perry as the nominee.”
September 28: Rush: “I don’t think Palin is going to run”
September 30: The date comes to pass without a Palin’s announcement.
September 30: Florida moves its primary to January 31st.
September 30: Talks in NH about moving their primary too.
October 3: South Carolina moves its primary date to January 21st
October 4: News come out that a law firm linked to SarahPAC has been making early-state ballot inquiries
October 4: Christie not running
October 4: Georgette Mosbacher, the RNC Finance Co-Chair and big GOP fundraiser says: “Now we know who it is who will be our nominee” (Romney). No mention of Palin. She already knew.
October 5: Chatter about a Palin’s independent run, again (which, as expected, she shuts down).
October 5: Palin announces she’s not running.

Read the whole comment here. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the reasoning here, but it’s food for thought!

And one more article, from today, to further the argument regarding the need to DEFEAT the GOP Ruling Class sooner rather than later. Can it be done in 2012? I think that is the central question.

GOP Empire’s Plan to Crush Tea Party Rebels

The Republican establishment is no longer terrified of the Tea Party, The New York Times‘ Matt Bai reports. It’s now figured out how to absorb them like a slow-moving but powerful star that’s swelling into a red giant. How to take these political hooligans over? There are a couple steps …

Actually, there are five steps in the article. Read the article, including infuriating comments from Fred Malek, Scott Reed, John Feerhy, etc., here.

Here’s the original lengthy New York Times magazine article that Rush Limbaugh made reference to yesterday. Here are some precious gems to give you a sneak peek with my own bolding and comments in brackets:

Establishment Republicans may prefer Romney to Perry, but their assumption is that either man can be counted on to steer the party back toward the broad center next fall, effectively disarming the Tea Party mutiny … [i.e., candidates for sale to the Establishment]

Today’s establishment is really a consortium of separate and overlapping establishments: a governing establishment of those who have served in administrations or in Congress; a political establishment of campaign consultants; a media establishment dominated by Fox News or the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and a policy establishment at organizations like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

If there is any one power center that connects all of these, though, it’s what you could call the money establishment — the group of senior Republicans, many of whom came to Washington as ideological warriors in the 1980s or early ’90s, who now make their living principally through the business of government. They wield quiet power as corporate lobbyists or regulatory consultants or prolific fund-raisers, or often as all of these at once …[i.e. the permanent political class]

yet it’s the very existence of such back-room decisions that so ignites the contempt of the Tea Party activists. The way they see it, too many movement conservatives, who in their day espoused fiscal restraint and limited government, have now become stewards of the Washington shop, working alongside Democrats to keep the federal money flowing so that they and their friends in corporate boardrooms can build second homes and write tuition checks to private schools. Tea Party members call such figures “big-government conservatives” — a category that includes the former president George W. Bush and most of the party’s Congressional leadership. Or they use an epithet that was popular with an earlier generation of conservative activists: RINO, or Republican in Name Only …

most establishment Republicans are optimistic that they can ultimately co-opt the House freshmen, prevailing on them to accept the wisdom of compromise. After all, here he was, the aging insurgent, now managing partner at the lobbying firm of Clark & Weinstock. A lot of the stridently ideological Republicans who came to town in the Reagan and Gingrich years quickly flamed out and were never heard from again, but Washington has more than its share of Vin Webers and Grover Norquists and Karl Roves — Republican politicians and activists who arrived crusading against the city’s corrupt culture and subsequently became fixtures in its boardrooms and restaurants. “They’ll become the establishment,” Charlie Black, the longtime Republican strategist and lobbyist, confidently predicted when we talked about the more radical members of the freshmen class … [unless Governor Palin wins the presidency as a Tea Party candidate and leads the way?]

At the risk of this post getting too long (is it already?), I’ll stop with the quotes and encourage you to go read the original. Don’t forget to come back here and comment!

Again, in conclusion, I believe we NEED to DEFEAT the GOP Ruling Class. Can We the People do it in 2012? What will Governor Palin’s role be in helping us to that end? Those are the questions/decisions before us.

UPDATE:

Thanks to KayHarri, who sent us this clip from June 2011, when Governor Palin talks about third party and the Whigs:

Transcript:

You know, a year ago I would’ve said “Please don’t even consider third party. We’ve got to shore up what is good and strong and principled within the Republican Party and we’ve got to run on a Republican ticket, stand strong on the planks and a strong platform that is the GOP.”

Well, I think conditions have changed in this last year where, after the November midterm elections, we swept in a new crop of hard-core, fiscal conservatives with a lot of common sense, who had solutions that they want to see applied in order to get the economy back on the right track.

Well, too many in the GOP are still resistant and resisting of that movement of this new crop of common sense conservatives.

And if they’re not careful in the GOP, there will be a third party rise up, just like back in the day when the Whigs finally went away and Republicans finally rose up.

That is what the GOP should be fearing today, is the electorate will get fed up with business as usual in the GOP and a third party will rise up.

Not that I want to see that, because I still have beliefs, strongly that the GOP planks are best for our country. But, they have, just the machine that runs the GOP has got to be very careful.

Thanks, KayHarri.

I know there are some from last year, too. If anyone has those, let us know.