Commentaries on the Liberation of Sarah - Pt. 5

This is the fifth in a series in which TX4P recommends some of the best writing which chronicles the liberation of Sarah Palin from the ball and chain of the Alaska governors office to her new role as a leading American conservative coalition builder.

John Tantillo is a branding and marketing consultant (he coined the term "The O'Reilly Factor") who holds a Masters in Experimental Psychology and a doctorate in Applied Research Psychology, which gives him an understanding of why people make the choices they do. In a Fox News op-ed titled "Palin Right, Pundits Wrong" Tantillo says that the media doesn't "get" Sarah Palin:

Her decision was one with her brand for two main reasons:

She's practical and holds government to this standard. This means that when she was watching millions be spent on what seems to amount to frivolous investigations against her, she couldn't stand by and watch the money be wasted. Not only was she being hamstrung in her job, but dollars were being thrown out the window. Her frustration over this waste showed at her press conference. Not only does this point back to the sincerity of her brand and reinforce that she actually cares about every taxpayer dollar, but it puts her "quitting" in a different light: by stepping aside and risking hurting her political career, she is actually saving Alaska money (one of her core promises to the people of that state).

She embodies family values and put them first. For the political class, a family is often an accessory, but even so, families are semi-sacred ground for the media. Except for Sarah Palin's. By any reasonable standard, her family was dragged through the mud. The wife and mother making the announcement on July 3 was someone who could not and would not bear anymore. She made a choice that came out of the deepest part of herself (her core brand) - no wonder the political class was left scratching its collective head. They hadn't taken her claims of loving her family seriously. But the wives and mothers who make up Palin's supporters got it.

Fact is, as Stanley Fish over at The New York Times pointed out: if you just listened to what Palin said at her press conference, you'd understand that this was not someone making a traditional political calculation. This was someone being real about her choices and her pain.

And that's why Sarah Palin has just strengthened herself for the long run (if she ever chooses a political future). She wasn't erratic at all; she was true to the things she believes in.

Carl Cannon is the senior Washington correspondent for Politics Daily. He has been a White House correspondent for National Journal, The Baltimore Sun and the San Jose Mercury News. Cannon is a past president of the White House Correspondents' Association. He is a co-author of the best seller Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Architect of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs. His Politics Daily article "Sarah 'Barracuda' Palin and the Piranhas of the Press" is a stunning admission of guilt not only for the media's treatment of Sarah Palin, but its abandonment of objective reporting in favor of partisan cheerleading:

From the beginning, and for the ensuing 10 months, the coverage of this governor consisted of a steamy stew of cultural elitism and partisanship. The overt sexism of some male commentators wasn't countered, as one might have expected, by their female counterparts. Women columnists turned on Sarah Palin rather quickly. A plain-speaking, moose-hunting, Bible-thumping, pro-life, self-described "hockey mom" with five children and movie star looks with only a passing interest in foreign policy -- that wasn't the woman journalism's reigning feminists had envisioned for the glass ceiling-breaking role of First Female President (or Vice President). Hillary Rodham Clinton was more like what they had in mind – and Sarah, well, she was the un-Hillary.

[...]

I'm not a Republican or a conservative; I'm a lifelong journalist who was born and raised in this profession and normally I'd defend the media in this argument. In this instance I cannot.

The reason is what happened when the battle over Sarah Palin came to a head on Oct. 2, 2008, in St. Louis, Mo. That night, the press showed its colors – and they were Democratic blue. That was the night that Palin cleaned Joe Biden's clock in their only debate, and nobody in the media could even see it, let alone report it. That was the night that the dual blinders of ideology and elitism prevented us being honest brokers.

Star Parker is an admitted former welfare cheat and shoplifter who had four abortions. She became a Christian, renounced her former ways and became an advocate for conservative causes and personal responsibility. She is an author and holds an undergraduate degree in marketing. In "Palin's Audacity of the Unconventional" Parker makes the point that just as it happened with Ronald Reagan, the more the media trashes Sarah Palin, the more the grassroots loves her:

It has got to gall the many political geniuses – the journalists, consultants, bloggers, academics – that so many at America's grassroots refuse to see what is so obvious to them.

Surely everyone, they think, should understand, as do they, that Palin is a vacuous shooting star whose selection by John McCain as his running mate showed nothing except McCain's questionable judgment.

But we're still left with the fact that fresh out of the Republican convention, with Sarah Palin on board, the Republican ticket moved out front. They were in the lead.

Then, of course, McCain showed his mettle to the many around the country looking for a Republican leader who actually believes that government is the problem, by suspending his campaign to go back to Washington to talk to politicians about a government stimulus package. That was the end.

[...]

Pundits live in the world of the conventional. They assume if you know what happened yesterday, you can predict tomorrow.

But life is art, not science, and freedom is about enabling the inconceivable. It's where principles, faith, and courage depart from expertise and analysis.

Reagan's experts didn't want him to speak those historic words in Berlin – "tear down this wall." The words stayed in the speech because of Reagan.

Reagan himself drew derision from the media and the pundits, not unlike what Sarah Palin gets. Even though he served two terms as California's governor, he still was an ex-actor who went to Eureka College. How could he be president?

But grassroots America heard him. As they do Sarah Palin.

Other posts in this series:

Commentaries on the Liberation of Sarah - Pt. 1
Commentaries on the Liberation of Sarah - Pt. 2
Commentaries on the Liberation of Sarah - Pt. 3
Commentaries on the Liberation of Sarah - Pt. 4

- JP