Another Worried Liberal Fears the Power of Palin

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Yesterday it was Arianna Huffington. Today it's Marla Miller. Leftists are increasingly admitting, though it pains them greatly, the obvious: Sarah Palin is a very powerful woman...

At the time of her nomination, everyone told me I was nuts to be worried. However, no amount of encouraging words would soothe for this reason: we live in a tabloid news-loving culture and Sarah Palin had ‘Tabloid Queen’ written all over her.

Almost two years later we now know that whether she quits jobs or makes stuff up, women love her and not just Right wing zealot women, either. Pro-choice women have climbed aboard the Palin train.

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They love their Mama Grizzly.

So how dumb is Sarah Palin? Probably not so. She was a Communications major who wanted to anchor the news but had five kids instead. If she has ‘brilliance’ it’s found in her instincts.

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There is a group of women in this culture mad as hell. Men, mostly, are the reason why. Palin’s rhetoric speaks to them. Finally, someone is listening. They’re tired of taking what the sexist culture dishes out and now they don’t have to. They’ve got their Mama Grizzly looking out for them in a way that Hillary Clinton could not. As brilliant as our Secretary of State is, she did let a man publicly humiliate her for many years. And in the end, she did concede to a man even though her 18 million supporters begged her not to.

My guess is, the Mama Grizzlies and Cougar movements are here to stay. Women in this culture are hungry for heroes. In this era where tabloid news is now the mainstream, competition for the sexiest headlines is fierce. Like the Cougars, who now have the added status of a TV series, the Mama Grizzlies create provocative headlines because Palin knows how to masterfully manipulate tabloid news. That’s the brilliance of this Communications Major and mom of five.

Of course, Miller, Huffington and the rest are completely wrong about the reasons why Gov. Palin is so powerful, and even to bring themselves to concede to as much as they are willing to admit, they have to load their rants with the obligatory elitist slams, slurs and snark. But 'twas not so long ago, many of them were singing quite a different tune. Back then, it was all about how irrelevant Sarah Palin was and how she would slip back into the wilderness of Alaska and never be heard from again. Funny how that didn't work out for them.

Many of them also claimed that Gov. Palin was ignorant, stupid, dumb as a rock. Now, rather than admit how very wrong they were on that front, these leftists grudgingly concede that the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate has some smarts after all. But, hey, it's all just instincts, they say. There's no actual thinking involved on her part, they claim. All of that animal imagery, whether it be barracuda, arctic fox or grizzly bear, is entirely fitting because she's like the animals, acting on pure instinct, they insist. You see, for the leftists to admit that Sarah Palin is actually an intelligent, reasoning person would go against their strategy of dehumanizing her. And they really don't want to give that one up. To do so, they would have to challenge her on the actual issues, not on the straw men they love to send into battle against her.

For our part, we would prefer that the left just go on deceiving itself about Sarah Palin. After all, it is this self-deception which has allowed the governor to make fools as well as mincemeat out of her political opponents. As Eric Croft, an Alaska Democrat who tangled with the Mama Grizzly long before she stepped in front of crowd and cameras in Ohio nearly two years ago warned:

"The political landscape here is littered with people who have underestimated Sarah Palin."

Fortunately for those of use who want to get them out of power and stop the national bleeding, Croft's fellow Dems failed to hear his warning. That one of the things we love so much about the left. They don't listen.

Go Sarah!

- JP