There they go again... making more things up

In her final speech as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin asked the drive-by media to "quit making things up." They weren't up to the challenge.

Posting on the Chicago Tribune's blog The Swamp, Mark Silva shows that he is able to leap to tall conclusions in a single bound:

Palin is talking about "real change." And, she says, "you don't need a title to do it." Judging from her remarks in Hong Kong, one wonders if she feels she needs a party to do it -- or one of the big-two parties.

This talk has the feel of a Ross Perot 2.0 -- while we remain mindful of the fact that, while Perot captured one fifth of the vote his first time out, he also helped get Bill Clinton elected president.

"There is suddenly a growing sentiment to just "throw the bums out" of Washington, D.C. - and by bums they mean the Republicans and the Democrats," Palin suggested in her address to the CLSA investors conference.

Silva so doesn't get it. He doesn't get Sarah Palin, and he doesn't get the grassroots movement. Yes, we want to throw the bums out, but we have to replace them with someone, don't we? Who does he think we have in mind to replace them with, imaginary candidates representing a third party that doesn't even exist? 

As we stated here over a month ago:

Sarah Palin has never advocated forming a new political party, nor has she ever said anything about joining an existing minor party. She's a Reagan Republican, and as such, she is no doubt aware of Reagan's warning about third parties and has taken it to heart. Many have misinterpreted her pledge to campaign for conservative candidates regardless of their party affiliation. In our opinion, that is just a hint at what is yet to come from the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate.

Ronald Reagan drafted the blueprints for conservative electoral success years ago. Just because the Republican Party has forgotten how to follow them is no reason to give up on the GOP. The answer is to rebuild the Reagan coalition of conservatives of all stripes, and then bring libertarians, independents and blue collar Democrats on board. Once the troops are assembled, Sarah Palin can lead them into battle to take back the Republican Party. The GOP has the database of voter lists, donors and precinct workers. It has the connections to the volunteers who man the phone banks, canvass their neighborhoods and put the yard signs on their lawns. The Republican Party is already registered and organized in all 50 states and 3,143 counties, parishes (Louisiana), boroughs (Alaska) or independent cities in the nation. It is just plain foolish to think for even a moment that reinventing all of those wheels would be any quicker or easier than taking back the GOP 

Such third party talk as Silva is trying to start up is sheer nonsense, and we question his motives for doing so. It's not to difficult tell which way he leans. Silva has referred to Hanna Giles and James O'Keefe as "a pair of conservative vigilantes" and has criticized our "gun-happy culture which encourages the resolution of simple domestic disputes with the pulling of a trigger."

This is the same liberal media which, according to a recent poll by St. Mary University, played a very or somewhat strong role in helping to elect President Obama, according to a whopping 89.3 percent of respondents, and appear to be coordinating efforts to diminish Sarah Palin's record, according to a 57.6 percent majority of those surveyed. Who do they think they are fooling?

- JP