Win Ben Stein’s Acrimony: The Sarah Palin Edition [UPDATED w/ video & more Palin bashing]

Ouch.  Former Nixon speechwriter, economist, game show host and arch conservative Ben Stein was just interviewed by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about Sarah Palin and he was somewhat complimentary at first, but when talk switched to the economy things turned sour fast.  Here’s my rough transcript:

I don’t think she’s said a word in her life about the national economy, which contributes to making this one of the oddest choices in the history of presidential politics. I think this may go down as the most peculiar vice presidential choice there’s ever been.

They were selling themselves as the keen (?) ticket of experience.  That’s out the window.  They were selling themselves as the ticket of steady habits.  That’s out the window.  They were selling them as the ticket of people who are ready to deal with America in a foreign policy crisis.  That’s out the window. What we have now is back to what you might call fundamentalist, born-again, backwoods values of the United States of America.  That’s fine.  I love those values.  I’m all for them.  I believe in intelligent design, which I’m probably the only person to ever be on CNN who believes in that.  But let us be fair about this, she’s a very different person from what John McCain was advertising himself as and in terms of the economy, as far as I know, she has absolutely zero background in it.  That’s fine. Neither did John F. Kennedy, but somebody’s got to get in there and fill her in on it really quick.

Soledad then asked Stein if that was “doable.” He said it was but that it was “a lot to learn” and that it would require “night and day” work.  And then he added:

She’s going to have to be like that business in the Superman movie where the little superbaby was traveling through space and they’re giving him a tape of all the knowledge in the world for him to absorb.

So, basically, if Palin’s going to pull this off, according to one of the leading minds of the current conservative movement, Sarah needs to be super human. People have been comparing her story to a Lifetime movie, but according to Stein they’d better change the channel to the SCI FI network and fast.

RELATED: Peggy Noonan and former McCain advisor Mike Murphy get caught off camera deriding the Palin pick.  Bonus: Noonan says “bullshit”!  Peggy, you saucy lass!

[hat tip HumboldtBlue in comments]

UPDATE: Here’s video of Ben Stein on CNN [via TPM]…

Posted by Kevin K. on 09/03/08 at 02:27 PM • Permalink

Wow, Ben Stein sounding almost human for a change.

Wow, Ben Stein sounding almost human for a change.

Yeah, almost. He lost me with the intelligent design stuff and the inaccurate JFK jab, but a good performance overall.

Wait’ll y’uns hear Nooners and Steve Schmidt on Palin ... of course, they thought the mics were off.

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

The real hat tip goes to Josh Marshall who has an excellent piece on just what transpired over the past few days and the tales surrounding Palin.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Overwhelmingly, reporters are pressing eminently reasonable questions—her role in troopergate, her lack of experience, her connections to the AIP, her history of earmarking and lobbyists, etc. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is going absolutely non-stop about Palin’s daughter. It is unmistakable.

I can’t believe they’re also trotting out the young Baby Daddy to introduce to the world.  All just a big happy family.  And that open mike gaffe is hysterical.  “It’s over.” Said with tone of complete finality.