A hockey mom from Wasilla beats back the darkness

She uses the very tools and venues of progressivism to promote conservatism
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When George W. Bush left Washington, DC and flew back to Texas as a private citizen, we thought that at long last, the left would be happy. But such was not the case. As many had suspected, "happy liberal" is an oxymoron. Leftists have a pathological need to be angry and bitter, and that anger demands to be fed. So it did not take much time for them to find a new focus for their hatred. Sarah Palin, then the governor of Alaska, had been John McCain's running mate, a job which cast her in the role of the attack pit bull with lipstick who went after their beloved messiah, Barack Hussein Obama. Bush Derangement Syndrome quickly morphed into Palin Derangement Syndrome as Gov. Palin, became the new source of their antagonism. Ever the happy warrior and with a flair for humor at their expense second only to that of Ronald Reagan, Sarahcuda laughed at their self-anointed sense of superiority and became the new champion of Reagan's ideas -- the same ideas the left had worked so hard for so long to discredit. All of which only caused their hatred and anger to grow geometrically.

At The Hub Pages, the blogger who writes using the pen name of weholdthesetruths takes on the same task that some many pundits and bloggers on the conservative side have undertaken: to try to account for Why Palin Makes Liberals Nuts and does as credible a job of explaining the phenomenon as we've seen:

It can all be predicted, you know. The labeling as dumb - after all, she is so dumb, she doesn't acknowledge that progressivism is better. She doesn't know her ideas have lost, and thus champions them with a straight face and no reservations. She doesn't act like a product of an elite school, where "education" has become an indoctrination - perhaps even programming - into progressivism on every subject. Professors and administrators feel free to degrade those who fail to conform. Pundits on TV react with derision and insult toward those who don't conform.

There have been other targets, of course. Some we know still, some forgotten. Mostly because they folded under the withering barrage against them, or compromised, or found themselves silenced by efforts of those who wished to shut them up. But Palin's the exception. Palin has reached into the heartland, where progressivism isn't the standard of thinking. She speaks for the majority, in an unabashed, proud and self assured way.

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And, so they get angry. Irritated, hateful, enraged, deranged, and whatever other terms fit the passionate and negative reaction to one who has so much popular support, who simply refuses in any way, to be cowed. Even more irritating, she turns their criticism and anger into additional public support and popularity. Progressives thought by making her the face of conservatism that they would marginalize it. Instead, it backfired. They attacked personally, the conservatives, by making Palin the proxy, and conservatives, for the first time, didn't roll over and die. Nor did Palin. Instead, the more they throw at her, the more she generates support for herself and the ideology attacked by proxy.

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Political critics of Palin say she's running a celebrity event. She's trying to be celebrity. Perhaps so. Analysts of Palin insist she can't run for President, because she's too caught up in being a media star. I think Palin has an instinctive grasp of things far better than she or most grasp. What more of a lightning rod could Palin be, than to subvert media and celebrity to campaign for conservatism? You could not possibly be more "in your face" than to use the very tools and venues of progressivism to promote conservatism. Conservatives were supposed to be mind numbed robots, remember, following Rush on AM radio. It was a nice, neatly packaged lie that progressives told themselves. Conservatives don't follow anyone... Except perhaps Jefferson and Washington and Jesus and other unknowns in today's media. They just assumed that conservatives followed, just as they follow.

Palin's not dumb. Not ignorant. She is the child of two passionate teachers. She knows more about biology and physics and math and history and geography and the list goes on, than the vast majority. She knows her place and our place in history. And she knows where we, Americans came from. And that exceptionally bright "city upon a hill" and "beacon of liberty" to the world. That's the kind of teaching that real teachers taught. It may be "ignorance" as defined by progressives. But it's the wisdom of age, time, and history.

And just when they believed the battle to overcome history and wisdom was won, along came the most unlikely hockey mom from a dusty and un-sophisticated town, in the most primitive state, championing the most unprogressive ideas, and in doing so, taking that victory and flushing it down the toilet. Instead, the TEA Party showed up. It's the worst nightmare of the intellectual, the elite, the progressives. Thank God. I thought for a while the darkness would win. We had forgotten that even a hockey mom from Wasilla can beat back the darkness. We fear it no more.

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- JP