Kristol: Refudiate Liberalism!

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In a Weekly Standard editorial William Kristol says Sarah Palin was on to something when she enriched the English language Sunday:

Presumably, Palin was wavering between “refute” and “repudiate,” and, in the heat of the tweeting moment, typed or BlackBerried or iPhoned or texted the new amalgam, “refudiate.” Pedants in the blogosphere got all huffy. Palin decided to double down. A few hours later, she follow-up-tweeted: “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!”

Gotcha.

So let us celebrate the new term “refudiate.”

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Indeed, given the dramatic moment at which we have arrived, one might say that we now have the prospect of a grand refudiation of liberalism.

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We are conservatives. We ordinarily shun novelties of all kinds, including new words. But desperate times call for desperate measures. The Obama project is one of noxious ideology and wild political overreach. The challenge before conservatives is to beat back both. So say it loud and say it proud: Refudiate liberalism now!

Read the entire TWS editorial from the August 2 edition here.

- JP

Hawkins: Palin Is A Better Feminist Role Model Than Steinem

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A lot of liberal heads have been exploding lately, especial among those who prefer to wrap their radical leftist agenda up in the cloak of feminism. This post by Right Wing News editor John Hawkins is going to cause even more radiclib cranial combustion:

It must be tough to be a left-wing feminist these days. For so long, they got away with essentially defining feminism as "being a liberal woman." Then along came Sarah Palin. Granted, she's not the only conservative woman who deserves to be treated as a feminist icon. For example, I've long said that Michelle Malkin is a fantastic feminist role model and if you're looking for an empowered woman, who's a better example of that than Ann Coulter? But Sarah Palin is such a towering figure that people are paying attention to her attempts to redefine the word "feminism." That's not making shrill battleaxes like Gloria Steinem very happy...

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Shorter Steinem: Only liberal women can claim to be feminists and be role models for other women.

Yet, if Sarah Palin is not a phenomenal role model for young women -- then nobody is. Take a look at what we have in Sarah Palin....

Read Hawkins' post unabridged at RWN.

- JP

Big Journalism: Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift Wrestles with Her Inner Girlfriend

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More outrage from the feminist Left over the rise of conservative women. Like her soul sister Jessica Valenti, the tired old liberal columnist for troubled Newsweek magazine, Eleanor Clift feels so threatened by the New Feminism of Sarah Palin and other women not of the political left that she has little else to do but howl in protest:

As the nearly two-year-old Palin piñata-fest demonstrates, for the devout liberal the intersection of Sorority Street and Politics Avenue is left-turn only.

To no one’s surprise, Sarah Palin remains the left’s First Lady of political feminae non gratae, the gold standard. The needle on the left’s Feminometer moves from the safe green left-hand side (Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi) to the beige neutral middle (Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins) to the hazardous red-hued right-hand zone (Michele Bachmann) to the far-right crimson danger area (Sarah).

Palin’s status as the left’s lead whipping girl is not news. What is news is that women like Eleanor Clift (Hell hath no fury like a liberal feminist scorned) are using the same elitist Palinesque prejudices to bash this year’s crop of wrong-turning conservative women.

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Nevertheless, one question is begged of Clift: Throwing in the towel so soon? That’s not exactly what you’d expect from a progressive twenty-first century woman.

At least, it’s not what Sarah would do.

The full story by Gregg Opelka is at Andrew Breitbart's newest site, Big Journalism.

- JP

Sarah Palin's New Feminism Trumps Jessica Valenti's Tired Old Version

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At Robbing America, John Galt finds Jessica Valenti's WaPo rant, "The Fake Feminism of Sarah Palin," to be a "Highly entertaining piece":

This pretentious psycho-babble pseudo intellectual mumbo-jumbo incoherent tirade and verbal version of a chicken-without-a-head attack on Sarah Palin has the unusual reward of being a festival of misallocated terminology and leaving Palin with an awesome repartee of intellectual qualities we did not know even existed.

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Ms. Valenti says, “it isn’t [Palin’s feminism] a structural analysis of patriarchal norms, power dynamics or systemic inequities”. Wow, and we thought that Palin was a straight forward old conservative that simply arouses good old traditional hate from ‘fellow travelers’.

Whereas Galt ridicules Valenti, at NRO's The Corner, Carrie Lukas deconstructs her argument:

Feministing’s Jessica Valenti has a new op-ed in the Washington Post, and she has decreed that to qualify as a feminist one must believe that American women are oppressed.

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Valenti doesn’t explain why she thinks those of us on the right are wrong when we argue that American women are doing pretty well. She merely argues that we inappropriately co-opt the language of feminism when making our case.

Feminism lost its way when adhering to the leftist politcal agenda became more important to feminists than empowering women. The more the feminist left uses abortion and gay marriage as litmus tests for feminists, the more irrelevant it becomes. Sarah Palin and her mama grizzlies represent the new feminism. Out with the old!

- JP

Liberal who defended Sarah Palin gets lots of hate mail

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Ilana Angel, a liberal Democrat who had a chance encounter with Sarah Palin and blogged about it, was on the receiving end of an e-mail tsunami because she said that despite their political differences, she found Gov. Palin to be a nice person, and she liked her. In a follow-up post, Ilana discusses the responses she received, which generally fell into two camps:

Conservatives wrote fast and furious to let me know they respected the bravery of my article, considering I was not a supporter of Sarah as a politician. I think it’s a sad day in America when people feel the need to commend you for being decent.

Liberals wrote to say that I took my picture with Hitler, was fraternizing with the enemy, and should be ashamed of myself. Six of my “friends” were so disgusted with my blog, that they decided to “un-friend” me on Facebook.

Listen to me people, just because you talk to a woman about glasses, purses, children, and dating, does not mean that you are going to sit down for a glass of Kool-Aid, and give up on everything that you believe in. Liking Sarah Palin is not a sin. Judging her as a politician, rather than a human being, is.

“A card carrying Democrat”, wrote to say I was going to hell, my Jewish son would soon take Jesus into his heart, and then bring home his pregnant teenage girlfriend, if I spent another moment buying into the rhetoric of Ms. Palin. To that charming writer, I say, kiss my ***.

Ilana Angel, one of those rare liberals of good character and good conscience, seems to be genuinely surprised and disturbed by the number of nastygrams she received from others on the political left. This is a phenomenon we conservatives are well aware of. Sadly, thoughtful liberals like Ilana appear to be an endangered species. Driven by irrational hatred, the radical Left has even ruined liberalism for liberals. 

- JP