Dan Calabrese: Sarah Palin isn’t going to be what you demand her to be

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In our opinion, an excellent opinion piece by Dan Calabrese of the North Star National Monday:

Sarah Palin has never signed an I-must statement promising to do everything that a given constituency wants her to do. She has never promised to abide by the list of requirements that will make her a so-called real conservative.

Sometimes her supporters will agree with her. Sometimes they won’t. I wasn’t thrilled when she endorsed the son of Ron Paul in Kentucky, but I don’t feel the need to believe in a Sarah Palin who is perfectly molded to fit my ideal of who and what she is supposed to be.

Just as Barack Obama isn’t necessarily what you imagine him to be, Sarah Palin isn’t going to be what you demand her to be. She is who she is – a very smart, skilled public servant and political figure who thinks for herself and makes her own decisions.

If these decisions sometimes don’t comport to the strategy you think she should be following to achieve the objective you’re sure she’s obsessed with, check to see if maybe you’re the one with the obsession.

And if they sometimes don’t fit with the orthodoxy of your particular movement, and that makes you want to have a hissy fit, too damn bad.

As Calabrese cites in his op-ed, Sarah Palin's support for McCain and endorsement of Rand Paul angered some of her fair weather backers to the point where they declared that they "could no longer support her."

Every blogger whose website displays the Blogs 4 Palin blogroll on his or her website agrees to the principles stated on the Blogs 4 Palin home page. The key concept is stated there as:

"Blogs 4 Palin is a blog community whose members support the former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate in whatever she decides to do in 2010 and beyond."

The words "whatever she decides to do" mean exactly what they say. We support Sarah Palin regardless of whom she endorses or campaigns for. We support her whether she decides to run for the Senate or White House, in whatever year she decides to do it, or even if she decides not to run for public office again.

We support her for a number of reasons not limited to her positions on the issues. We like the fact that she connects with everyday people and is not a D.C. insider, but it is more than that. We appreciate her candor and are impressed by her record as a reformer. We admire her courage and her determination. We share her faith in God and her respect for innocent human life. We are inspired by her commitment to her family and her practice of what she preaches concerning those among us who have special needs. But for many of us the single most important reason we support Sarah Palin is that she is a fighter. She doesn't back down, no matter how viciously her enemies attack her nor how often they do it. If only there were more in the Republican Party with that spirit.

This is why we see Sarah Palin as the only one in the Republican Party who has the determination and the ability to reform it. She will drag the GOP back to its Reagan ways even if the cost to do it is her political future. As she said, paraphrasing scripture, "If I die, I die."

- JP