AWR Hawkins: Where does Palin end & the Tea Party begin, or vice versa?

"Palin is coming, and the Tea Party is coming with her."
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Today, AWR Hawkins takes up a topic we explored over the weekend (See "Hate Sarah Palin, Hate the TEA Party Movement" here):

No one in recent memory has faced the left’s vitriol like Sarah Palin (not even George W. Bush). The over-the-top, asinine attacks she’s received have been so ubiquitous they need not even be relisted here. Just suffice it to say there is a genuine hatred of Palin throughout the MSM, the leadership of the Democrat Party, and the Republican Party establishment.

And don’t be fooled folks: they don’t hate her because of her convictions – although they despise her convictions – rather, they hate her because they can’t control her.

Fortunately, the hatred the left holds for Palin is more than overcome by the love conservatives and right-leaning Independents have for her. They see in her a refreshing image that dares cast certain issues in the prism of right and wrong, just and unjust, American and un-American, etc.

Perhaps as a group, the Tea Party has come closest to receiving the kind of vindictive normally reserved for Palin alone. There’s no doubt they’re hated as she is hated, and equally no doubt that the hatred is a result of the fact that the MSM, the leadership of the Democrat Party, and the Republican Party establishment can’t control them.

For example, during the push to get Tea Partiers to “compromise” (which is political speak for check your convictions at the door) and support Boehner 3.0, an angry John McCain took to the Senate floor and referred to Tea Party conservatives in the House as “hobbits,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, whom Alaskans foolishly elected over Joe Miller last year, referred to them as “absolutists,” and John Kerry, the haughty one, described them as a group “of extremists, who don’t understand the implications even of what they’re doing.”

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- JP