David Brooks, on ABC's This Week.
"She's a joke. I just can't take her seriously.
We've got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama's trying to handle war. We just got a guy elected in Virginia who's probably the model for the future of the Republican party -- Bob McDonnell. Pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kinda boring.
The idea that this potential talk-show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me it will never happen. Republican primary voters are just not gonna elect talk show hosts."
UPDATE: Brooks makes an interesting claim a little later in the discussion.
"There is a populism in both the the Democrat and Republican parties that is against Wall Street, against intellectuals, against Washington, against New York, and against the coasts.
But if you look at the sort of populism that has won in this country. It is not William Jennings Bryan populism which is hostile and negative, which Sarah Palin sometimes is.
It is the populism that is Ronald Reaganesque, which is simply 'we're for small towns, but we're not angry at the big cities'.
The anger turns people off... what she does which is turning it into a hostility toward intellectuals in general, that just doesn't work. "
