Republicans catapulted former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the national limelight in 2008 as a "razzle-dazzle" vice presidential candidate. Then, rather than nurturing her talents, they "cast her aside," wrote
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker.
Instead of helping to coach Palin — who was "out of her league" — so that she'd be "ready for a national ticket by 2016" the former executive was "fragged, you might say, by her own troops," thereby making her "Exhibit A" in the liberal case that there was a "Republican war on women," wrote Parker.
Palin's "desperate" desire for "relevance" ultimately led her to tell a reporter that she was
"seriously interested" in running for president in 2016, wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parker.
Republicans professed to be taken aback after Palin's teleprompter crashed while she was addressing a conservative audience in Iowa and she fell into a disjointed "stream-of-consciousness speech."
Yet Palin's collapse actually began in 2008. And a good measure of the blame belongs to the Republican Party.
"Let's be honest. Any man of Palin's comparable deficits, no matter his winning ways, would have been eliminated from consideration" as a vice presidential candidate "within minutes of opening his mouth," according to Parker.
The fault rests with both party strategists and Palin herself. The operatives exploited Palin's "hot-ness" to inject excitement into John McCain's campaign.
At the same time, "One wonders why Palin would accept the invitation to become McCain's running mate, given how ill-prepared she was, not to mention that she'd just had a baby," Parker wrote.
Over the years, rather than polishing her intellectual and public policy credentials, Palin opted to remain a "public personality."
The "tragedy" of Palin's rise and fall should not be blamed on the media but on "the Grand Old Party itself." It handpicked Palin "placed her on the altar of political expedience" and then "sacrificed her."
"Imagine being the governor of a frontier state, suddenly being placed before millions of armchair critics and asked to perform without proper preparation, training or support," wrote Parker. "This is crazy-making on its face; devastating and crushing to the individual who finds herself alone on the ledge."
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