Robert Stacy McCain: Palin to the People

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Excerpt's from Stacy McCain's "Political Hay" column in The American Spectator Monday:

Palin did not disappoint either fans or detractors at Searchlight, using her speech to assail the media for promoting Democratic claims that the movement is… well, a dangerous collection of hate-filled, misinformed lunatics.

"We're not inciting violence," Palin proclaimed from the windswept stage that organizers had erected on the back of a flatbed truck. "Don't get sucked into the lame-stream media lies."

Palin's denial of the accusation, wrapped in an anti-media message, drew cheers from the enthusiastic crowd and was quickly headlined by the same "lame-stream" reporters whom she targeted. The national press corps seems to be pursuing the idea that Palin can be used to discredit the Tea Party movement and vice-versa, as part of a mutually-reinforcing negative propaganda campaign intended to convince America that the only people who oppose the Democratic Party and its policy agenda are (you guessed it) a dangerous collection of hate-filled, misinformed lunatics. So any event that connected Palin to the Tea Party was sure to draw a swarm of reporters, only too happy to depict both the crowd and the featured speaker as irresponsible dingbats.

The same polls that show Americans' continuing to reject the health-care plan that Nancy Pelosi rammed through Congress also show that the Tea Party movement has higher favorability ratings than either major political party.

Whatever those polls say about Palin, she is drastically more popular than Pelosi. At least the Democratic Speaker of the House has the consolation that she'll probably get re-elected by her California constituents in November, whereas Harry Reid now appears utterly doomed to defeat. Polls show that, if the election were held tomorrow, Reid would lose to any likely challenger among the dozen or so Republican Senate candidates who are contending in the June primary -- all of whom were making the rounds shaking hands at Saturday's rally.

Read the "Political Hay" commentary unabridged here.

- JP