Cline: Palin Detractors and Their Double Standards

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In an op-ed published by FrontPageMagazine.com, Andrew Cline points to two recent events which clearly demonstrate the ludicrous double standard that the mainstream media and their Leftist fellow travellers apply to Sarah Palin:

When recently released e-mails revealed that Palin sought her husband Todd’s advice on numerous issues while she was governor of Alaska, the media gasped in horror. Why, he’s just a snowmobile racer!

Darker musings soon surfaced. The Washington Post “reported” that the e-mails “sent and received by Todd Palin further illuminate the personal quirks, machinations and frustrations of the Palins….” Machinations? Apparently, when male Democratic politicians [Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards] consult their wives, it’s a sign of wisdom and humility. When a female Republican governor consults her husband, there must be a sinister plot afoot.

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The other Palin-related controversial non-controversy this past week happened when she was shown to have written a few notes on her hand for her Tea Party Convention speech last Saturday. The Left went bonkers: Oh, she’s so dumb she has to crib her speech!

But if that’s so, what conclusions should we draw from President Obama’s teleprompter habit? Four words on her palm show Palin is dumb, but President Obama can’t deliver a short speech to elementary school kids without reading the whole thing off a Teleprompter – and he’s a genius?

Cline, who is the editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader, says he's not a Sarah Palinbot, nor does he consider her to be the savior of the Republican party. But the double standards used by the Left and its state-controlled media in all matters concerning Sarah Palin are so outrageous that even some who are not her supporters feel compelled to defend her.

The full Cline opinion piece is here.

- JP

Are Dodd, Dorgan and Ritter quitters?

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Surely the lamestream media and Palin critics on both the left and the right will now affix the "quitter" label to Chris Dodd, Byron Dorgan and Bill Ritter, three Democrats who have all announced that they will not seek to retain their offices in the midterm elections.

As one FReeper put it:

"I mean, didn't the State Run Media call someone else a 'quitter' when she left the governor's office to move on with her life and expand her horizons, both political and otherwise?"

Ah, but we wouldn't bet the farm (or even an arugula plant in the garden) on any Palin haters giving up their oh-so-convenient double standards.

- JP

Andrew Sullivan and the death culture of the Left

Food for thought from Craig Carter:

Andrew Sullivan thinks he has a knock down argument against social conservatives. So what is this terrible and horrifying thing of which social conservatives are guilty? He argues that statistics show that more fundamentalist teens give birth. Horrors! Don't those mothers have the decency to take their daughters to the abortionist and then get them on the pill like upper middle class liberal mothers do?

Continuing his pathological Sarah Palin obsession... Sullivan is so caught up in glorious raptures over the culture of death that he thinks that promiscuous, sterile sex and abortion are preferable to the struggle of parenting. And his charge against us social conservatives is that we presume to disagree with him. This is pathetic, to put it mildly. I'm afraid he will have to come up with something a lot worse than giving birth to a new, unique, human being made in the image of God to hurl as an accusation against social conservatives to prove how evil we are. If that is our worst fault, we are not doing too badly, all things considered, especially considering the alternatives.

If that's all there were to it, we would have the table set for a good debate. But Sullivan bends the rules. According to Patterico (Warning: some discussion after the jump is not family-friendly):

When Sullivan’s penchant for seeking cheap sex from strangers was revealed, he pontificated that it was proper to ignore the controversy:

The truth is: no-one’s legal, consensual, adult private life should be plundered and exposed for political purposes.

I ignored the requests for comment because there was nothing to comment on... I was asked to confirm a story presented anonymously, the only salient details of which I believed to be untrue. Why should I answer?

But when it came to Sarah Palin’s son, Sullivan was only to happy to press Palin to answer a story presented anonymously, the only salient details of which were untrue. Did Sullivan think Palin should answer? Naturally, that was different:

Why not kill this rumor with Palin’s medical records? A 43 year old woman’s pregnancy with a Downs Syndrome child would have been intensely monitored, and the records must be a mile long. Just release them, ok?

One standard for me, another for thee. If there is any point on which Sullivan is consistent, that is it.

The Left and their double standards. So much for intellectually honest debate...

- JP