What's behind the not so smart attacks on Sarah Palin?

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Certain members of the McCain campaign have gone to great lengths since even before election day, 2008 to convince the rest of the world that Sarah Palin is not just stupid, but also dishonest and a Diva. Their allies in the media have been only too eager to reinforce those memes. Posting at Arma Virumque, the weblog of The New Criterion, James Bowman looks into what may be behind the all-out assault on Gov. Palin's intelligence and her character.

The allegation of stupidity against Republican politicians — from Dwight Eisenhower to Barry Goldwater to Gerald Ford to Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — has long been a favorite tactic of the intellectual left and of their willing allies in the somewhat less intellectual media, and there has rarely been any shortage of Republicans willing to burnish their own reputation for intelligence while currying favor with the media and the literati by seeming to confirm their view of the matter. Naturally, the media never think to ask what these people stand to gain by turning on their fellow Republicans or to treat their supposed revelations as anything but a triumphant vindication of what they imagine they have known all along.

Now we find something of the political purposes behind the media’s traducing of Sarah Palin’s intelligence.

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The assumption is, of course, that the charge of stupidity against her must make Sarah Palin electoral poison, though if it does have any ill-effects, they weren’t enough to keep Eisenhower, Reagan or either of the Bushes out of office.

Read it all at The New Criterion.

- JP