They gave her 72 hours. The liberal blogosphere, aided and abetted by the mainstream media was on a mission; eliminate Sarah Palin as a serious candidate. Force John McCain to choose someone else, someone more palatable to those on the left. After all, it just wasn’t fair for the Republicans to select a woman since Hillary didn’t get the nod on the Democrat side.
They threw the book at her. They dredged up every half-baked argument and insinuation they could find. They even made stuff up as they went along; the more salacious the better. Who cares if it is true? The end justifies the means! Gotta stop that juggernaut before it really gets started…
She made it through the 72 hours. Well, the Dems thought, maybe she will mess up the speech. After all, she is from Podunk Alaska and it is a major address. Thousands will be in attendance. Millions will be watching. The biggest address she has given in the past has been before an audience of hundreds. She’s a former beauty queen for crying out loud. What can you possibly expect from her?
She hit the speech out of the park.
It was really interesting to watch the aftermath of that speech on CNN. We watched Barack’s speech on CNN as well. You would have thought it was Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled up into one. The newsgroupies on CNN could barely contain their excitement, gushing superlatives one right after another. It felt so good. It felt so right. It felt so – messianic.
I bet Chris Mathew’s leg was tingling so bad he could barely stand.
After Sarah Palin’s speech however, you would have thought the CNN newsgroupies were covering a funeral. Theirs.
Such somber faces. The best they could come up with was that, yes, it was a great speech, but you know, she didn’t write it. And anyone, it seems can deliver an out-of-the-park speech if they have a teleprompter in front of them. It’s so easy, even a caveman could do it!
Unfortunately for them, they didn’t find out until the next day that the teleprompter had technical difficulties and at least half the speech was given without it. I bet they couldn’t even tell which parts were with and which parts were without.
Sarah Palin is without a doubt the most exciting thing that has happened to the Republican Party at the national level since Ronald Reagan was last president. I say at the national level because folks in Alaska have known about her for some time now, and obviously like what they see; 80% approval ratings don’t grow on trees.
Now I am not as gifted as Chris Mathews. I don’t have a trick leg that tingles when politicians that excite me are around. (Sort of like Spiderman’s spider sense?) But about half way through her speech, I turned to my wife and said “you know, this reminds me of the speeches Ronald Reagan used to give. Not saying she is Ronald Reagan, but this gives me the same feeling, the same sense of hope.”
I have waited 20 years for someone to move me in the same way. George H. W. Bush didn’t. Bob Dole didn’t. Newt Gingrich didn’t. George W. Bush doesn’t.
Sarah Palin does.
And you know, I am not alone. I thought that perhaps it was just me; that I was overreacting. However I have talked to numerous people on the right that had the exact same reaction. We know she is not really Ronald Reagan, but she seems “Reaganesque”; and we would like to see more.
If nothing else, she has brought to the forefront the sheer hypocrisy of the left and the leftist bias in the MSM for all to see. It’s impossible to hide it, so blatantly has it been put on display.
For years, the left has been telling us that the modern woman is a working woman. You can have it all! There is no reason why a woman can’t have a family and work outside the home. There is no reason the husband can’t stay home and take care of the kids. And there is always daycare.
Except if you are Sarah Palin; except if you are a conservative female. She has five children, the liberal blogs scream. Shouldn’t she be staying home with her kids?
Conservative women of America, take note. Remember your place! If you are not a radical feminist, get back to your kitchen!
It is said that people who have special needs children are to be admired, particularly those who adopt, or who know that their child will have a disorder and elect to have the child anyway.
Know anyone with a Down Syndrome child? I have known a few. Most such families I have known have become much closer to each other and are very caring towards their afflicted child or sibling. Many have said that there is a joy and a spirit about such children that is precious beyond all else. Usually, people with a Down child are looked upon favorably; or at least they are not put down. To do so, after all, would not be politically correct.
Unless you are Sarah Palin; except if you chose to have the child instead of aborting it. Perhaps, wonders Alan Coombs (studying for his medical degree, no doubt), perhaps the reason why her baby was born with Down syndrome was because she was too busy being Governor of Alaska and didn’t give it proper pre-natal care.
Unlike Alan, most Americans are aware that Down syndrome is a genetic disorder and has nothing to do with anything the mother could prevent; the only thing the mother can do is decide whether to have the baby or to abort. Sarah and her husband chose to have the child. This is not a choice that those on the left who believe in “choice” approve of. Could it be that the “proper” care Alan was referring to was termination?
Then there were those on the leftist blogs that saw this as yet another reason why Sarah should abandon her VP candidacy and return home to take care of her family. Special needs children take a lot of time and care, you know. Conservative women of America, again take note. A woman’s place is in the home (unless you are a liberal)! Remember your place!
Gloria Steinem, the voice of modern liberal feminism weighed in as well. Putting Palin on the ticket is no way to attract women, she claimed. “Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton.” She says. According to Steinem, Palin “opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality.” In short, Sarah Palin is not only not a “real women”, but a traitor to her sex in much the same way that Democrats paint conservative African-Americans as traitors to their race.
Well, the fact that Sarah has only a chromosome in common with Hillary is a good thing in my book. I think that most conservatives would agree. And if Gloria Steinem dislikes her, then all the more reason for my support.
What Steinem and her ilk see as an “unqualified woman” who is setting their agenda back, many see as a “real American woman” standing up for those who are tired of being told that Steinem and her kind represent them when in reality they do not. There are a lot of women who are tired of the frontal assault on the family that has been waged by liberal feminists who seem to think that life’s fulfillment lies in the workplace, that freedom means free sex without consequence, and that the family is a ball and chain that holds you back from becoming all you can be.
But, you say, Sarah Palin is in the workplace. Indeed she is. And she has a family. And not just one or two, but five children, one with special needs. Family is important to her. But she also is one who sees a job that needs to be done. She is one who sees that a leader is needed. She is one that has seen that in order to effect change, new leadership is required. And seeing the need, she is doing the job, and has ever since she first signed up for the PTA. In a lot of respects, she reminds me of Paula Hawkins, the first female elected to the U.S. Senate from Florida who started as a Soccer Mom and went into politics first at the local level, because she saw things that needed to be fixed that weren’t. One of the main reasons she went into politics was to promote reform – same as Sarah Palin.
Note also that Paula Hawkins served only one term as a U.S. Senator, being unseated in her reelection bid by Bob Graham. During her time in the Senate however, she authored 32 bills and amendments which passed the Senate and went on to become law. This is more than Barack Obama can claim. Of course, he has spent half his first term thus far campaigning for a promotion…
The leftist smear machine is in full-court press mode. There is nothing about this woman they like, because everything she stands for is diametrically opposed to what they stand for. And they are pulling out all the stops.
They have claimed she cut funding for special needs education in Alaska by 62%. False.
They have claimed she demanded certain books be banned from the Wasilla public library – and fired the librarian when she refused. False.
They have claimed she pushed to have creationism taught in Alaskan schools. False.
They have claimed she endorsed or supported Pat Buchanan for president. Also false. She was actually supporting Steve Forbes during that election.
They claimed she was once a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates secession from the United States. False. Her husband was a member; she has been a registered Republican since May 1982. Please note this was the year she turned 18 and was first eligible to vote.
If you want to see a good analysis of these claims, please read the Newsweek article, “Sliming Palen”; it goes into these claims in much more detail than I have time to address in this column.
I even heard them discussing her religion on the radio this morning. It seems that her views on God’s purposes here on Earth do not jive with those held by some on the left. What a surprise! It seems that they think her stance on matters of faith and conscience too extreme to hold the office of Vice President of the United States.
I find it funny that the same people who support Barack Obama attending a church for 20 years which most American’s would consider extreme now find Sarah Palin’s religious views to be extreme and over the top. The only thing the left seems to agree on is that a little religion goes a long way, and the less they hear about it the better. And that their candidate’s religious views are OK no matter what they are. Probably because they believe them to be more of a political prop than a matter of true conviction.
While I am sure that Sarah Palin and I would disagree on matters of religious doctrine, I find nothing about her general belief in the Almighty incompatible with my ability to sustain her in this position. I doubt seriously that from her lofty perch as Vice President she will command the ability to call forth a religious theocracy, forcing us to believe exactly as she does. Not only does the VP not have this power, but the same first amendment that protects my freedom of religion protects those on the left to believe as they will, or not as they desire, in exactly the same way.
Even Canada, our socialistic neighbor to the north, wants to get in on the act. Take for example this tongue-in-cheek slam at Sarah’s family, which the author describes as a “Baby-Boom sized brood”, entitled “An icon of fertility,” and making the point yet again that there is no aspect of Sarah Palin’s life that the left cannot take exception to.
When all else fails, the left and the Democrats fall back on the experience argument. “How can you criticize Barack Obama for a lack of experience when your VP candidate in no way matches the experience Joe Biden brings to the table?”, they ask.
It’s true that Sarah Palin cannot match, in total years, the 37 years that Joe Biden has held elective office. When Joe Biden was first elected a Senator back in 1973, Sarah Palin was nine years old. That’s one of the problems with youth; it does preclude the breadth of experience that old age brings. Which is one of the reasons why John McCain has vastly more experience than does, say Barack Obama, when it comes to the Presidency.
Joe Biden should not be one to talk about needing experience to be elected to national office. His previous experience before being elected to the Senate was a two year stint on the County Council of New Castle County, Delaware.
Be that as it may, for some reason, the Democrats think that the fact that Sarah Palin has less experience in office than does Joe Biden somehow makes up for the fact that Barack Obama has significantly less experience in office than does John McCain.
Is Barack then just a figurehead? Will Biden really be the one calling the shots? Or is Biden’s role more of a “coach”, to help Barack learn the ropes as he goes along. Do they think that McCain needs an experienced “coach” to help him out as well? Or are they expecting McCain, at the advanced age of 72, to keel over at any moment?
The last time a president died in office, necessitating the VP to take over was in 1963 when JFK was assassinated. It doesn’t happen all that frequently. And even if it did, from what I have seen, Sarah Palin is more than capable of handling the job. The left might not like her politics or positions, but that is a different issue.
When it comes to executive experience, both McCain and Palin have more individually than Obama/Biden have collectively. McCain’s experience dates from when he was in the Armed Forces, a naval Captain (O6), the commanding officer of the Navy’s largest air training squadron, based in Florida. Palin’s comes from her duties as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and as Governor of the state. Say what you will about the size of the town, it is still more executive experience than Obama or Biden have. And as governor of Alaska, she not only has the executive reins for the state, but is commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard. While most in America don’t think about it much, Alaska is pretty much the only state in the union that has constant probing by Russian air units testing our reactions and air space, and is the first line of defense when it comes to continental ballistic missile defense, a job that is carried out 24x7 by the Alaska National Guard.
For that matter, Hillary has more executive experience than Barack, running Bill’s Bimbo Eruption Mitigation Department during the 8 years of the Clinton presidency.
I could go on. Each day seems to bring on a new attack, new ridicule, a new reason why Sarah Palin is really the anti-christ; at least from the perspective of the left, who seems to be suddenly afflicted with some sort of political Tourette Syndrome where she is concerned.
But this is too long as it is, so I will make an end of it.
For now.