Now Playing at Reason.tv: Tucker Carlson on Sarah Palin's Appeal

Backstage at yesterday's Ron Paul Rally for the Republic, MSNBC personality Tucker Carlson explains why he's in love with Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin: "She hunts and she fishes."

Which makes you wonder: Does he love Dick Cheney then?

Comments

[zoltan]

Maybe because she doesn't instinctively make him cross his legs?

Who gives a fuck what this hack thinks? Jon Stewart already ripped him a new one. He shouldn't even be anywhere near a camera.

[joe]

Tucker Carlson is one of those urbane, sissy Republicans who looks at anyone who ever got dirt under their fingernails as a noble savage.

Sort of like David Brooks, Jonah Goldberg, and...well...anyone who's had anything published in National Review or the Weekly Standard in the past two decades.

[BDB]

Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy, on what they REALLY think of Palin (hot mic moment).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrG8w4bb3kg&eurl

Too funny. The short version is, they think their party is fucked.

[zoltan]

I'm not sure how they didn't think their party was fucked to begin with.

[BDB]

Yeah, but now they admit it.

[joe]

Hilarious, BDB.

It's over.

The funniest part is the way the citizens of Right Blogostan have been obediently parroting talking points about how great a selection Palin is, and how "panicked" (think of how many times you've seen that word in the past four days, and from whom) Democrats are.

Obviously, the political and media figures who've been saying those things don't even believe them - which makes sense, because anyone with even a passing familiarity with the American political scene knew right away that this was a disaster - but their sycophants treat their every utterance as gospel.

[K.T.]

Nick -- No, he doesn't love Dick Cheney. It's the female who hunts and fishes that creates the Pavlovian drooling at the feet. For many male sportsman, particularly those who hunt, they [we] look at Sarah Palin -- with no political considerations, whatsoever -- and ask, (a) "How come my Mom was never that cool?" and/or (b) "How did I not marry someone like that?" and/or (c) "How long does it take to get to Alaska?"

If voting is anything like leading around the proverbial puppy dog, BHO is screwed. Us hunters is dumb.

[texas_libertarian]

Come on guys! Tucker may be a dork but he is the only non-lunatic at MSNBC.

[BDB]

Joe, the only talking point I see them dragging up over this little clip is that "elitism in the MSM is clearly not limited to liberals".

Pathetic.

That combined with McCain's decision to start advertising in North Carolina because they're scared of losing it tells me his internals look worse than the public polling.

[BDB]

Oh, and also word is the reason they got Fred Thompson as the keynoter instead of Rudy 9iul1an1 is because they're that scared of losing not only Virginia, but North Carolina and Georgia, and they needed a southerner to sure up support.

[joe]

I'm sorry, BDB, did you say "Peggan Noonan?"

This Peggy Noonan: Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

[BDB]

Yes, that Peggy Noonan.

I, too, read that same exact WSJ column this morning.

[Seitz]

Is there anyone named Tucker who isn't a Republican douchbag?

[t. j.]

tucker's cancelled msnbc show was a great libertarian news show.

[zoltan]

Peggy Noonan in short: As a long as a woman still looks pretty and does some manly stuff she's a feminist and "transformative".

[Chloe]

I always did figure Tucker Carlson for a submissive male that would wet his pants over a good dominant woman.

[dbcooper]

Noonan has responding with the following, which looks a lot like dissembling to me.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122044753790594947.html?mod=todays_columnists

Well, I just got mugged by the nature of modern media, and I wish it weren't my fault, but it is. Readers deserve an explanation, so I'm putting a new top on today's column and, with the forbearance of the Journal, here it is.

Wednesday afternoon, in a live MSNBC television panel hosted by NBC's political analyst Chuck Todd, and along with Republican strategist Mike Murphy, we discussed Sarah Palin's speech this evening to the Republican National Convention. I said she has to tell us in her speech who she is, what she believes, and why she's here. We spoke of Republican charges that the media has been unfair to Mrs. Palin, and I defended the view that while the media should investigate every quote and vote she's made, and look deeply into her career, it has been unjust in its treatment of her family circumstances, and deserved criticism for this.

When the segment was over and MSNBC was in commercial, Todd, Murphy and I continued our conversation, talking about the Palin choice overall. We were speaking informally, with some passion -- and into live mics. An audio tape of that conversation was sent, how or by whom I don't know, onto the internet. And within three hours I was receiving it from friends far and wide, asking me why I thought the McCain campaign is "over", as it says in the transcript of the conversation. Here I must plead some confusion. In our off-air conversation, I got on the subject of the leaders of the Republican party assuming, now, that whatever the base of the Republican party thinks is what America thinks. I made the case that this is no longer true, that party leaders seem to me stuck in the assumptions of 1988 and 1994, the assumptions that reigned when they were young and coming up. "The first lesson they learned is the one they remember," I said to Todd -- and I'm pretty certain that is a direct quote. But, I argued, that's over, those assumptions are yesterday, the party can no longer assume that its base is utterly in line with the thinking of the American people. And when I said, "It's over!" -- and I said it more than once -- that is what I was referring to. I am pretty certain that is exactly what Todd and Murphy understood I was referring to. In the truncated version of the conversation, on the Web, it appears I am saying the McCain campaign is over. I did not say it, and do not think it. In fact, at an on-the-record press symposium on the campaign on Monday, when all of those on the panel were pressed to predict who would win, I said that I didn't know, but that we just might find "This IS a country for old men." That is, McCain may well win. I do not think the campaign is over, I do not think this is settled, and did not suggest, back to the Todd-Murphy conversation, that "It's over."

However, I did say two things that I haven't said in public, either in speaking or in my writing. One is a vulgar epithet that I wish I could blame on the mood of the moment but cannot. No one else, to my memory, swore. I just blurted. The other, more seriously, is a real criticism that I had not previously made, but only because I hadn't thought of it. And it is connected to a thought I had this morning, Wednesday morning, and wrote to a friend. Here it is. Early this morning I saw Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and as we chatted about the McCain campaign (she thoughtfully and supportively) I looked into her eyes and thought, Why not her? Had she been vetted for the vice presidency, and how did it come about that it was the less experienced Mrs. Palin who was chosen? I didn't ask these questions or mention them, I just thought them. Later in the morning, still pondering this, I thought of something that had happened exactly 20 years before. It was just after the 1988 Republican convention ended. I was on the plane, as a speechwriter, that took Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, and the new vice presidential nominee, Dan Quayle, from New Orleans, the site of the convention, to Indiana. Sitting next to Mr. Quayle was the other senator from that state, Richard Lugar. As we chatted, I thought, "Why him and not him?" Why Mr. Quayle as the choice, and not the more experienced Mr. Lugar? I came to think, in following years, that some of the reason came down to what is now called The Narrative. The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself, and communicate to others. I don't like the idea of The Narrative. I think it is ... a barnyard epithet. And, oddly enough, it is something that Republicans are not very good at, because it's not where they live, it's not what they're about, it's too fancy. To the extent the McCain campaign was thinking in these terms, I don't like that either. I do like Mrs. Palin, because I like the things she espouses. And because, frankly, I met her once and liked her. I suspect, as I say further in here, that her candidacy will be either dramatically successful or a dramatically not; it won't be something in between.

But, bottom line, I am certainly sorry I blurted my barnyard ephithet, I am certainly sorry that someone abused my meaning in the use of the words, "It's over", and I'm sorry I didn't have the Kay Baily Hutchison thought before this morning, because I could have written of it. There. Now: onto today's column.

[BDB]

She sounds like shes blabbering.