Scott Payne: Democrats and Sarah Palin

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Freelance blogger Scott Payne, in a Washington Examiner op-ed, goes on the record with other observers who see Sarah Palin as Dr. Pavlov to the Democrat Yellow Dogs:

Whether it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mocking Palin by writing crib notes on his hand in advance of a a press corps question period or the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Bachmann or Palin Quiz, liberals often can’t help responding to Palin in a razor sharp rebuttals.

Even the generally unflappable President Obama was forced to respond to criticism from Palin on his nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia.

Whatever the issue, Sarah Palin has the uncanny ability to get under liberals’ skin. And more than just her ability to illicit a response is the kind of response that Palin’s vituperative seems consistently to draw.

The Gibbs incident in particular is endemic of the kind of vitriol with which liberals so often respond to Palin. It isn’t enough just to refute her, Palin’s jabbing invective requires mockery and scorn. And in many regards, I remain convinced that this is precisely what most of Palin’s efforts are designed to illicit.

Each time liberals like Robert Gibbs take a moment to mock the know nothingness of Sarah Palin, they reinforce a stereotype about what it means to be liberal to precisely the voters they have the hardest time reaching: the ones in the middle of the country. The 2004 second-term win of President George W. Bush demonstrated just how important those fly-over voters can be.

With each barb they hurl her way, liberals participate in a self-fulfilling prophecy that only serves to reinforce feelings of alienation amongst more rural voters with whom Palin continues to have an overwhelming degree of support. And the more those stereotypes are reinforced in the current national climate -- a climate that puts most Americans on the other side of the Obama administration on things like the Arizona immigration law, provides the President with his lowest approval rating amongst independents to date, and economic confidence continuing to sink -- the more Palin and her camp come out on the winning side of the national debate.

Despite Payne's admonition and the warnings of others, including some of the more thoughtful liberals that their attacks on Gov. Palin are backfiring, the left just can't help themselves. Every time she tweaks their noses they react, usually with viciousness and often with vulgarity. The more she tweaks them, the more hysterical they become, which turns off independents more than anything Sarah Palin ever said or did. A recent Gallup Poll shows support for President Obama and the Democrats has dipped perilously below the 40 percent mark. Please, keep it going, Dems. Heckuva job, team!

Payne concludes that whatever Sarah Palin will be doing in 2012, she is going to keep poking and prodding the left as long at it keeps working to her advantage, which it is clearly doing. Even a mad dog is no match for a Mama Bear.

Scott Payne's full opinion piece is here.

- JP