NY Sun: The Palin Platform

Constitutional Conservatism
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According to a New York Sun editorial Friday, Gov. Palin's success in helping the 2010 candidates she endrsed get elected, although impressive, is not her most important achievement:

The fact is that Mrs. Palin has spied and branded the most relevant, the most inclusive, and the most uplifting theme for the Republicans in the coming contest — the idea of what she calls constitutional conservatism.

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This is an idea for our times, if there ever was one, and it was shrewd of Mrs. Palin to seize on it, as early as she did. It is certainly true that others have gotten the message, and may have gotten it independently of Mrs. Palin.

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The clarity of the idea comes into focus at a time when the Democratic administration is lunging for expanded powers, and she has emerged in a remarkable position. She has written two books. One is a kind of autobiography and declaration of her breakout from what might be called hidebound Republicanism, the other — to be issued this month — a meditation on faith, flag, and country. This sets her up for a third book on the idea of constitutional conservatism. If she goes ahead and writes it, we predict it will have an even greater impact than her first two — and just in time for 2012.

Even if the Alaskan doesn’t turn the idea of constitutional conservatism into a book, Mrs. Palin has marked the idea as her theme. Its great power is that it sets up a methodology for dealing with everything from — to name but a few issues — foreign policy and the war to the dollar, nationalized health care, same gender marriage, taxation, and gun control.

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So let the pundits puzzle over which of Mrs. Palin's candidates prospered and which lost. The better count is which contenders for the national ticket can lay any better claim than Mrs. Palin to an idea as unifying, uplifting, and inclusive as the idea of constitutional conservatism that she has made her platform.

[More]

- JP

Video: Sarah Palin backstage at 'Restoring Honor' Rally (Updated)

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The media interviewed Gov. Palin backstage at the Restoring Honor Rally here, here and here:

"I hope that Dr. King would be so proud of us, as his niece Dr. Alveda King is very proud as a participant in this rally. This is sacred ground where we feel his spirit and can appreciate all of his efforts. He who so believed in equality and may we live up to his challenge."

"[Voters in November will elect,] I think, a lot of common sense constitution conservatives That’s what Americans are ready for — the kind of change where we get back to protecting our constitution and limiting government. That’s what I think we see reflected here, even though this is a rally about restoring honor. Really appreciating our military here today is reflected I think [in] that sentiment.."

"I'm very excited about Joe Miller, and I anticipate the final victory after the absentee ballots are counted. A lot of folks like me, my husband and my friends all voted absentee, of course, for Joe. Joe Miller is the right one for Alaska and he’s the right one to help put our country back on the right track. He knows that it is time for Alaska to start contributing more to the U.S. with development -- responsible development of our resources -- instead of being a ‘taker state,’ being a contributor. We’re so vastly wealthy with our resources but the federal government has to allow us to tap into those resources so that we can become energy secure as a nation."

Update: Notice how the ABC News headline distorts Gov. Palin's answer about Dr. King here. Lamestream media, indeed!

- JP

Maddow: "The Constitution doesn't have a preamble"

MSNBC anchorcreep Rachel Maddow, while mocking TEA Party protesters and GOP congressmen, stated on her poorly-rated cable television program Thursday night that "the Constitution doesn't have a preamble." The moment is captured on YouTube at Freedom's Lighthouse.

As every high school civics student should know, the U.S. Constitution does indeed have a preamble, and it is a vitally important part of that document:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

While we have little use for radical leftists such as Ms. Maddow, we don't believe for one minute that she is that stupid or that ignorant. Like her fellow radical Alinskyites, she's simply a liar. Like last April, when both of Maddow's viewers [rimshot!] heard her say of Sarah Palin:

"Last week, she got precisely zero support for her call for Alaska's Democratic Senator Mark Begich to resign because Ted Stevens' corruption conviction was overturned."

However, according to Politifact.com:

But did Palin get "precisely zero support" for the idea?

No. In fact, it wasn't even her idea in the first place. It was the Alaska Republican Party that suggested it.

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Wev Shea, a former U.S. attorney now in private practice in Anchorage, did not specifically call on Begich to resign but he endorsed the idea of a special election and told the New York Times, "There’s a groundswell all over the state for a special election."

So Maddow left her viewers with two incorrect impressions — that Palin had initiated the idea for Begich's resignation, and that no one else supported her. In fact, it wasn't Palin's idea, and she wasn't particularly wedded to it, and others supported it. We find Maddow's claim False.

The lie was such a whopper that the pointer in PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter is resting on the peg on the far left. Which seems entirely appropriate...

Update: NewsBusters.org Associate Editor Noel Sheppard notes Maddow's mea culpa:

"Well, at least she showed some character and admitted her mistake -- which puts her in a whole different league than her cowardly colleague Keith Olbermann who almost never issues a correction or offers an apology for his frequent gaffes."

- JP

It's not crazy to stand with Ronald Reagan and the founders

At American Thinker, Villanova emeritus law professor Howard Lurie addresses the liberal charge that Sarah Palin is crazy for warning about death panels:

The absence of specific language in the Constitution or a statute doesn't mean that something isn't there. There is no language in the Constitution guaranteeing a right to abortion, but that didn't stop the Supreme Court from concluding that such a right exists. The right to an abortion arose out of the right of privacy that also lacks any textual support in the Constitution.

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If the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is subordinate to "a compelling state interest," one could reasonably fear that the Amendment's guarantee that no person should be deprived "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law is likewise subordinate to "a compelling state interest." Arguably, the preservation of dwindling government health care dollars is "a compelling state interest."

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I hasten to remind the reader that it was not too long ago that, in the interest of the greater good, states were forcibly sterilizing the mentally retarded. "It is better for all the world" said the eminent jurist Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. speaking for the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), if "society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles is enough."

Professor Lurie reminds us that over one million abortions a year are performed with the full sanction of the president and the Supreme Court, many of them merely for the convenience of the mother, and concludes:

If the burden of the unwanted justifies their extermination prior to birth, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the burden of the unwanted ill and infirm elderly would constitute a justification for their early exit from this world. Will some number of ill and infirm aged be "enough"?

There are but a few steps between government mandated end-of-life counseling, and the "better for all the world" ending of life by government mandates.

Sarah Palin is not crazy.

Blogger Mark Epstein, a pro-life libertarian, concurs:

If there’s an undergirding insanity in the body public, it’s not Sarah’s beliefs, but those who abhor her.

Anyone who doubts that there are many who call themselves Republicans but neither support nor agree with the principles stated in the Grand Old Party's platform, should look no further than the anti-Palin faction of the GOP. These Vichy Republicans are not only anti-Palin, but they have turned their backs on the very principles which Ronald Reagan so effectively preached and practiced to become the most successful GOP presidential candidate in modern history. Sarah Palin has embraced Reagan's principles. Epstein touches on two of them, family values (including standing for life) and fiscal restraint:

While the left uneducatedly screams about separation of church and state, the Republicans see acceptance of abortion as a political means to an end. Sarah takes issue with both and, since the majority of Americans oppose abortion, it would seem Palin is more in touch with the citizenry than either of the two major political parties.

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Now that America is suffering a more than 16.8% real unemployment rate, the corporate thieves have made off with taxpayer money, and the country stands on the precipice of hyperinflation, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama era policies are coming home to roost. Obama’s answer? Pass the largest pork-laden generational-theft act in history, whose only result will enslave future Americans to the federal government for generations to come. Sarah has a problem with this and so do most Americans.

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Of all the politicians in America, Sarah "gets it" with respect to the God-ordained role of the family — the very same God who grants Americans their inalienable rights.

Although not cited by Epstein, Sarah Palin stands strong for Reagan's other two principles. The first of these is national security, not only through a strong military, but through her advocacy of replacing imported oil and gas with our abundant domestic resources to achieve true energy security. The other is limiting the growth in the size of the federal government, a Palin position which has won her the support of many libertarians.

In conclusion, Epstein warns that unless the GOP turns away from its "royalist" ways (we know the Democrat Party won't), the Republican Party could be marked for extinction:

Glenn Beck is leading the charge in this area and his ratings reflect a disenchantment with both political parties. Americans are energized and they want real change, regardless of party affiliation. At this point, Sarah Palin could conceivably run as an Independent and trounce both parties combined. Why? Given the public’s disaffection with Obama’s Pravda (mainstream media) and its loss of viewership combined with crumbling newspapers, Beck and bloggers are rapidly becoming the option for real news “choice.” And the choice is clear: Throw ALL the bums out of Washington.

If the GOP goes the way of the dodo, it need look no further than the Vichy Republicans of the Tom Ridge and David Frum school and spineless "conservatives" who lack the courage to fight for not only the principles which Ronald Reagan stood for, but for which our founders pledged "our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor."

Related: Read Bill Quick's "Control and the Young Lions" at Daily Pundit.

- JP