Rick Richman on the real connection between Palin and Revere

"She speaks with an honesty and directness still found in the ‘artisan class’ to this day"
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Rick Richman, editor of his own blog, Jewish Current Issues, also opines at Commentary Magazine’s blog, Contentions, and at Pajamas Media, where we discovered this essay. Richman sees a connection between Sarah Palin and Paul Revere that has nothing to do with the midnight ride, but is rooted instead in the ideology of small-r republicanism. Revere and Gov. Palin, as members of what Richman calls the artisan class, stand apart from the elites of their respective eras in American history. As non-elites, Revere played an important role in the establishment of the republic, and Sarah Palin's role in helping us preserve our republic is of no less importance:

Richman reminds us how some GOP and conservative elites were seduced by the prospect of Barack Obama as potentially a great president, even though he lacked "the qualifications of the vice-presidential candidate on the opposing ticket — a sitting governor with an impressive record of achievement."

As Joshua Green chronicles in this month’s Atlantic, Palin was a “transformative governor” — repeatedly challenging her own party on ethics violations, reaching out to Democrats, confronting the oil companies that controlled Alaska, vastly improving her state’s fiscal condition. But the very day Palin was selected by John McCain, David Frum described her as an “untested small-town mayor.” Michael Medved asserted that “by any standard” she was “less prepared as commander in chief than Obama” (without specifying the “standards” for comparing her to an untested first-term senator). A few days later, George Will called her “a person of negligible experience.” David Brooks later labeled her a “cancer” to the Republican Party (he evaluated Obama by applying a sartorial standard to his pants).

There was something about Sarah Palin that set her off from the elite from day one, preventing her from joining the club. And this takes us back to Paul Revere.

Jayne E. Triber’s acclaimed 2001 biography of Paul Revere, A True Republican, portrays him as a working man whose artisan status excluded him from the council of the elite in the Revolution and the political leadership thereafter, but who played a critical role for reasons unrelated to his Midnight Ride.

[...]

She may be better as a Paul Revere than a president. But we should acknowledge that as a candidate, she would not likely say anything as dumb as her prior problems were caused by working too hard for her country; nor say anything as incoherent as her health care legislation was great for her state but would be terrible for the nation. If she decides not to run, she will not likely schedule a live TV announcement to say anything as ludicrous as all the external signs said she would win but God told her to keep her TV show.

She speaks with an honesty and directness still found in the “artisan class” to this day, often missing from the eloquence of the elite, which is why — more than three years after the elite denigrated her as an unprepared small-town mayor of negligible experience — she is still a major political force.

[More]

Despite the fact that Obama has failed to meet their great expectations, those same GOP and conservative elites continue to deny the unmistakable signs all around them that the country is crying out for a leader who comes from a similar station in life to their own. No elites. They have witnessed the best the Ivy-league prepared ruling class can do for this country and have found it wanting.

- JP

Quote of the Day (December 17, 2010)

Why Do They Hate Sarah So Much?
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Victor Volsky at American Thinker:

"I submit, the elites detest Sarah Palin primarily out of fear and loathing. They view her as a usurper, as an embodiment of a threat to deprive them of the power and privileges they regard as their God-given right. And what happens if Sarah Palin actually decides to run for president? Katie bar the door, you ain't seen nothing yet!"

- JP

Noel Sheppard: Will the media elites ever learn?

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NewsBusters Associate Editor Noel Sheppard finds it remarkable that on the same day news broke of the JournoGate scandal, revealing the smoking gun which provided proof that leftist "journalists" conspired to destroy Sarah Palin, Politico's Roger Simon declared she's at the top of the Republican Party. Simon, unlike the JournoListers, is an old school real journalist with an actual record of accomplishments. The irony of it all was not lost on Sheppard, who detected a pattern and wonders if the leftist media types will ever learn:

Media elites have been attacking the intellectual capacity of Republican presidential candidates for years. According to them, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush were all too stupid to be Commander in Chief.

But what these so-called journalists have been missing for so many years is that most Americans don't have college degrees and don't necessarily identify with those that do. According to the Census Bureau, only 27 percent of our citizens has a bachelor's degree; only ten percent has a masters or doctorate.

Yet, the elites in the media keep wondering why so-called "intellectuals" typically fare poorly at the polls.

Despite such lack of success, press members continue to bash the intelligence quotients of those on the right.

In 2008, it was Palin's turn, and they've been doing it ever since. These folks had a field day recently with the former governor's new word "refudiate"

To be sure, the attacks on her character, along with a number of disturbingly dishonest press tactics, got Barack Obama elected in November 2008. But in the long run this strategy might have backfired - and badly.

After approaching 24 months of incessant Palin bashing by the media, as Simon noted, her popularity continues to rise. At the same time, polls show Obama and the Democrats hitting new favorability lows.

Irrespective of the press's support for a failing administration, Americans seem weary of this hopey changey thing.

Which bring us to the moral of the story: the more the media denigrate a conservative's intelligence, the more popular he or she becomes.

Read Noel Sheppard's unabridged original article here.

- JP

More Quote of the Day Honorable Mention, Part 77

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"Refudiate the press corpse in all 57 states and the Austrian-speaking country of Europe" Edition...

Lori Ziganto at NewsReal Blog:

"It’s hard to have shame when you spend all your time on your knees as media lapdogs. The media was all too ready to promote anything at all to make that icky 'beauty queen' Sarah Palin look bad, like a bunch of jealous high school kids gossiping and spreading false rumors about the popular girl."

Edisto Joe at The Edisto Joe Outlook:

"Sarah Palin and untold amounts of others warned about this and most of America agreed that we did not want Obamacare. Her call for the press corps to do their job on the appointment of Dr. Berwick is already seen as a right wing whack job to discredit and out the good doctor for the socialist he is... Obama and the liberal left forced this on the country, lying through their teeth all along the way... The program is socialist in nature and its roots run through the liberal Congress all the way to the Oval Office. Sarah Palin was right and no matter how Obama spins it, he is wrong."

Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

"Yes, who would think that the White House Press Secretary should be prepared to speak off the cuff on a pre-scheduled news show. Silly wabbits, that standard only holds true for people like Sarah Palin, when speaking with the likes of Katie Couric."

Louis Jacobson at The St. Petersburg Times:

"In a... Facebook post, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted excerpts from a speech she gave in Norfolk, Va., primarily on national security. At one point, she said, 'We spend three times more on entitlements and debt service than we do on defense.' We decided to check her math... Add together mandatory programs and the net interest, divide by the amount spent on security programs, and the ratio is 2.93 — very close to the "three times more" that Palin cites... we think it's reasonable for Palin to describe all security programs as 'defense' and all mandatory programs as 'entitlements.' In all, then, we rate her comment True."

Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters:

"Chris Matthews... called George W. Bush and Sarah Palin know-nothings... Maybe... EVERY MSNBC host should be required to publicly state which candidates they support in November so that those still foolish enough to watch this abomination will be cognizant of the biases at play."

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

"Consider it an admission against interests. Michelle Cottle gets ahead of the curve, at least on the Left, in acknowledging what has been painfully obvious for months as Sarah Palin raises money and endorses candidates around the country: she’s darned good at what she does. And one of the things she does is cut the media out of the loop, making them mainly irrelevant to her activism and base-building... Even Chris Matthews acknowledged that implicitly when he said that the media would try to destroy her. If Palin wasn’t successful, they wouldn’t need to make it a project."

John Steigerwald at Just Watch The Game:

"Remember how much fun Saturday Night Live had making fun of something Sarah Palin didn’t say about Russia? I can’t decide if this nugget from Sheila Jackson Lee is worse than Joe Biden’s 'FDR went on TV' quote or not. I do know that if Sarah Palin had said something this stupid, it would have been all over the national news.

Matthew Balan at NewsBusters:

"It was only a matter of time before CNN's Jack Cafferty returned to bashing Sarah Palin... Cafferty hypothesized that the Republican's popularity was a good omen for the Democratic Party... The commentator might be a bit premature in his celebration, as a recent poll from Public Policy Polling found that Palin and Obama would each gain 46% in a hypothetical 2012 match-up, with the President losing to both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee."

Stacy McCain at The Other McCain:

"Griffin, Dennis Zaki, Jeanne Devon — when it comes to sliming the Palins, the Atlantic Monthly has no discernible journalistic standards. Any 'source' is acceptable, so long as the source is anti-Palin."

James Poniewozik at TIME's Tuned In blog:

"Palin's 'refudiate' comment -- a controversy, almost too picayune to recap, over whether she misspoke... or whether she was engaging in Shakespearean coinage -- is a perfect example of how heavily the press covers her, and how well they are rewarded for doing it. Of course, it's also an example of how well Palin cultivates the media's obsession with her. Her response to most controversies -- don't steer away from a storm when you can tack into it instead -- plays them for maximum heat and exposure. If her response had simply been, 'So I said it -- what's the big deal?' it would have been an opportunity missed. When she instead responded that her usage was an example of the living language going back to Shakespeare, it was guaranteed both to enflame her critics (She thinks she's Shakespeare!) and delight her fans (she beat those know-it-alls at their own game!)."

Ian Lazaran at Conservatives 4 Palin:

"Obama's most memorable gaffes are actually insults of people who are different from him... Governor Palin rarely makes the Obama-style errors... No sensible person is offended that she said 'refudiate...' Unlike Obama's insults of special Olympians, white people, and rural Americans..."

Hippocritico at Big Journalism:

"Ben Smith not only found this Tweet worth mentioning, but worth mentioning in a headline where he linked to a blogger who accused Palin of 'joining forces' with the 'anti-Muslim Bigot Brigade.' I am simply pointing this glaring hypocrisy and bad judgment out for the benefit of Mr. Smith and his editors who will hopefully soon wake up to the fact that this kind of 'reporting' makes them look horribly dishonest – like left-wing ideologues disguised as journalists who have chosen sides. That can’t be who they are… right?"

McCain at Right Pundits:

"Yawn, the rest of us move on. But our liberal friends recent obsession with form over substance soon made itself known to all. They groaned. They laughed. They taunted... They did everything but refudiate her argument."

Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

"You may recall ABC's Charlie Gibson asking Sarah Palin about the Bush doctrine, all of which Gibson clearly didn't know. If he had, he would have understood that her puzzled reaction to the phrasing of his question, no better than a set-up, was perfectly understandable. As evidenced by his question, Gibson wrongly believed the entire Bush Doctrine was about preemptive war. Informed followers of related news knew much better than that. Consequently, that's two major television networks now with leading personalities and their respective staffs whose grasp of the news of the day amounts to little more than ignorance... They think they are actually doing research by scanning headlines in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Thanks to new media, especially blogs, America is discovering that the news is much more than that. And the news outlets of our major television networks have not kept up."

Jenn Q. Public at NewsReal Blog:

"Sarah Palin is a tireless supporter of Israel... Pat Buchanan’s name is nearly synonymous with Nazi apologia... Anyone else having trouble seeing the similarity between Palin and Buchanan? There’s no comparison. Eleanor Clift is simply playing the Left’s Mad Libs-style smear game"

- JP

The Bard of Conservatism

- by ehvogel

I ran across a reference to "Bard" a few days ago. We all know how it it relates to Shakespeare, but I find that it applies equally to Sarah Palin on many different levels.

Per Wikipedia: ...the term "bard"...acquired generic meanings of an epic author/singer/narrator, ...or any poets, especially famous ones. For example, William Shakespeare is known as The Bard.

William Shakespeare composed multiple narratives (plays) that helped describe and define the culture of his time. His plays are considered classics by anyone that studies them. They still entertain us today in countless theaters and give us insight into the culture to which they relate.

Sarah Palin has traversed a similar path. She defines the rugged individualism of Alaskan life and uses its metaphors to describe the American experience. We relate to her because of our own experiences, which allows us to embrace she and her experience as our own.

She speaks the language of the "commoner" -- which Shakespeare perfected in his works -- to the chagrin of his fellow playwrights. Sarah is no different, coming under assault by the bastions of elitism, which I can't begin to link.

Sarah spoke a simple truth in her remarks at CSU-Stanislaus. She spoke of conviction and patriotism, as defined by our history, but mandated by education. Her remarks spoke of a simple refrain: teach them what happened, not what the scholars say it means.

We are bound by tradition, in our families, our communities and our sense of country. We ask only to be heard and respected by what we have lived by and what we believe our future should be. We are born into a conservative lifestyle, and we hear the call of the Bard of Conservatism, and we like what she says.

Cross-posted on Generational Dysfunction

- ev

ehvogel resides in North Texas and is a regular contributor to Texas for Sarah Palin. He is Editor and Publisher of Generational Dysfunction.

Quote of the Day (June 6, 2010)

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Thomas Schmitz:

"Never in the history of America has a politician been feared and demonized more than Sarah Palin. Why? Simply put, the elites see Sarah Palin as a threat. She represents the end of elitism rule. Armed with the sword of her common sense politics, Sarah Palin reflects and defends the values of average everyday hardworking Americans. Her sword of common sense cuts right through their fancy Ivy League degrees and ponderous resumes boasting meaningless laureates and 'think tanks' which have nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with endless education. If you want to balance America’s budget it shouldn’t take a college degree to tell you that not spending more money than you make is a good place to start."

- JP

Stuart Schwartz: Sarah Palin and the Multitude of Dummies

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Stuart Schwartz has penned another outstanding American Thinker commentary in which he shines a light on the tyranny of America's ruling class elites and their media support troops. Some excerpts:

We are dumb. So say the folks at the top of our leadership ladder.

And they name names: Sarah Palin, taxpayers, Tea Party supporters, viewers turning away from the mainstream networks, newspaper and magazine readers canceling subscriptions, those without degrees from an elite university -- all dumb.

Stupidity is the face of American exceptionalism for Barack Obama and his media and university supporters. New York Times columnist David Brooks, a graduate of the elite University of Chicago, says the nation's a "joke," that Sarah Palin and ordinary Americans should shut up and let the "educated class" lead. Bill Maher, who practices his contempt at HBO and honed his arrogance at Yale, labels us a "stupid people."

[...]

Our traditional media, both left and right, regard this newly aroused dummy class (us) with disdain and anger topped with a heaping helping of arrogance. The deputy managing editor of National Review, even while defending Sarah Palin from vicious, gratuitous attacks (yawn), makes sure his brothers and sisters-in-brains on the right know that he agrees "quite intensely" with attacks on her rhetoric.

Sarah Palin is the anti-Harvard. She did not attend an elite university; doesn't have a Kennedy, William F. Buckley, or Bush gene in her body; and offers cringe-worthy thoughts such as "I love my country" and that character counts.

As such, she displays the "gleeful ignorance" that afflicts the vast majority of Americans disgusted at the mess our elites are making of the country. So says David Frum, a member of the conservative elite media; on the other side of the aisle at the Washington Post, editorial writer Ruth Marcus piles on, insisting that the angry nation represented by Palin is dumb, incapable of learning.

And so we need the guidance of our betters. Or so goes the thought processes...

This one's a keeper. Read it all at American Thinker.

- JP

Claremont Institute: The Roots of Liberal Condescension

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William Voegeli has composed an excellent essay for the Claremont Institute. Here are the opening stanzas:

John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate set off a fiercely contemptuous reaction. The chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party said Palin's sole qualification for high office was that she had never had an abortion. The comedian Bill Maher scoffed at the idea that "this stewardess" would be first in the line of succession. The scorn moved the Atlantic Monthly's Clive Crook to write that "the metropolitan liberal, in my experience, regards overt religious identity as vulgar, and evangelical Christianity as an infallible marker of mental retardation. Flag-waving patriotism is seen as a joke and an embarrassment."

The denunciation of Palin took place 45 years after William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote: "I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University." From Richard Nixon's invoking the "silent majority" to Palin's campaigning as a devout, plain-spoken hockey mom, conservatives have claimed that they share the common sense of the common man. Liberals—from Adlai Stevenson to Barack Obama to innumerable writers, artists, and academics—have often been willing foils in this drama, unable to stop themselves from disparaging the very people whose votes are indispensable to the liberal cause. The elephant-in-the-room irony is that the liberal cause is supposed to be about improving the prospects and economic security of ordinary Americans, whose beliefs and intelligence liberals so often enjoy deriding.

Buckley's identification of the political fault-line running beneath the campus quadrangle was confirmed by "UD," a blogger for "Inside Higher Ed." Belittling Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho, UD concluded, "A lot of Americans don't seem to like highly educated people, and they don't want them running the country." He continued:

We need to encourage everyone to be in college for as many years as they possibly can, in the hope that somewhere along the line they might get some exposure to the world outside their town, and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents' religion. If they don't get this in college, they're not going to get it anywhere else.

Thus, higher education is remedial education, and the affliction it remedies is an American upbringing.

This one simply must be read in its entirety, which you can do here.

- JP

Rex Murphy: The Sarah Palin Effect

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In a National Post Saturday op-ed, Rex Murphy writes about the Sarah Palin Effect on the elitist left:

Sarah Palin irritates, agitates, angers and annoys some of the self-appointed finest minds of America to a point long past reason.

[...]

She is a cheerful human being, with a large family, an apparently easy-going and normal husband. She has a personality that would sell corn flakes -- if not grow them. What career she had in Alaska, she earned. She's at home indoors and out, radiates human warmth, seems to have some balance about herself, and has displayed over the last year or so a considerable fortitude under an avalanche of mockery and hatred. For the final stroke of this cameo I should note she is smart -- smarter than 90% of the people who make a point of how rock-stupid they know she is.

She, by rights, should be queen of the feminists. All that self-reliance, her takeover of Alaska politics, the rocket ride to a Vice-Presidential ticket, a public career she blends with her family life-- these seem gold-standard credentials for a real feminist. But official feminism derides herewith an unspeakable intensity. Her early critics were not beyond the inane claim that she was somehow not really a woman.

I side with those who venture that the nerves Palin hits have more to do with class -- where she's from, how she speaks, where she was educated, what she likes (the moose-hunting), than her politics or her gender. She's rural, she came into national politics from (ugh) Alaska. She and her husband have the unerasable stigmata of the modern working class. She would not be embarrassed to be seen walking into Wal-Mart.

As Murphy points out, those are characteristics that the left should not find objectionable. They celebrate the hymns written by songsters from Woody Guthrie to The Artist Formerly Known as John Cougar Mellencamp. Ah, but those are just abstractions, and the left has trouble distinguishing from fantasy working class heroes and those we live in the real world. Plus, there's that hypocrisy thing, a prerequisite for being a leftist tool these days.

But Sarah Palin is very real -- too real for the lest to handle:

She also happens to be the most naturally charismatic politician at the moment in the United States. She is the one major figure who can claim authenticity without morally choking on the word. That makes her the populist rallying point of a nascent rejection of the fervid partisanship and Washington insiderism that is eroding the consent on which American politics is founded.

Murphy concludes that while Obama still owns Hope, Sarah Palin is all about real Change in American politics. We take issue with that conclusion. Abandon all hope ye who voted for Obama. Hope is Sarah Palin's too, or at least she embodies the boundless optimism of Ronald Reagan, and in that there is hope for the majority of Americans who don't want to go where Obama is trying to take this great nation.

Craig Carter has more analysis of Rex Murphy's commentary here.

- JP

Hinkle: Getting under the skin of the progressive elites

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Here are a couple of excerpts from an excellent column on the seething contempt progressives openly express toward the American public. It was penned by A. Barton Hinkle and appeared in Friday's edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Shakespeare himself could not have chosen a better foil for Barack Obama than Sarah Palin. The professor and the hockey mom make the perfect pair to dramatize the ongoing contest between liberal condescension and conservative populism.

[...]

It's a common theme in public discourse: My side is full of passionate idealism -- your side is just a bunch of angry fruitcakes. Both sides play the game, but some progressives manage to achieve a level of disdain that approaches the Olympic. The Tea Party movement's proletariat and its de facto leader, Sarah Palin, seem to bring out the worst among those who profess to care about the little guy. Calling her and her supporters dimbulbs and buffoons only stokes populist resentment, of course, so the mockery plays right into her note-covered hand.

Read Hinkle's column in its entirety here.

- JP

Irrational Leftist Calls Sarah Palin "Elitist"

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Unhinged New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier has launched the Left's newest anti-Palin meme:

"Anyone who has run for the vice presidency, and has published a monster bestseller, and appears regularly on television, and will run for the presidency is a member in good standing of the American elite."

Although his rebuttal includes no flaming skull (dang!), Ace shreds the ridiculous charge:

This is a common practice of the left. Take the right's complaints about you and argue, ludicrously, that they actually apply more to the right itself.

[...]

And now, as Sarah Palin [h]as been riding the anti-elitist horse for a while, it becomes the new stupid meme that it's really Sarah Palin who's the elitist. Google it! Notice they have no problem at all abandoning their previous trope (elitism is good and only an imbecile would argue differently) and sliding into the complete opposite notion (Sarah Palin is the real elistist; the lefties are in fact... I don't know, the Common Man being grinded down under her chic heel).

[...]

Essentially this guy... is angry. He and his cronies have repeatedly insisted on the special privileges of what his buddy David Brooks proudly calls The Educated Class; Palin is refusing to extend that privilege to them, and he's whining about it, basically arguing that if he and his buddies are not given their special privilege to rule the plebians then Sarah Palin is being "elitist" by refusing to admit they are entitled to their asserted public-policy psuedo-intellectual droit de seigneur.

Those are just a few excerpts from Ace's complete deconstruction of Wieseltier's howler of an argument. Read the full evisceration here.

- JP

Palin Populism vs. the Pathology of the Elites

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Michael Knox Beran, author of The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy, writes at National Review that Sarah Palin is right to question the "degree fetish" that leads to elitism:

Those who come forth from the most prestigious seminaries eager to follow President Obama’s advice and go into government are conscious only of a magnificent generosity of intention. This is the pathology of the elites.

It is characteristic of the more ardent champions of the social imagination that they seek to use the state to dominate not merely the economy of a nation but its culture as well. Where they succeed in dominating the economy, the result is fewer material goods. Where they succeed in dominating the culture, the result is fewer cultural goods.

The culture wars that have lifted Sarah Palin to prominence are best understood as an expression of popular frustration with a dwindling supply of cultural goods. The social state has banished a variety of these goods from places (such as schools) where they once traded briskly. Education in the West has traditionally been the process by which grown-ups civilize the young by introducing them to their moral and cultural heritage. America’s public schools have abdicated this role; traditional methods of cultural initiation have been replaced by vapid forms of “social” study. Social education, Paul Goodman said, is founded on the belief that children are “human social animals” who must be “socialized” and “adjusted to the social group.” The Faustian disavowal of the moral imagination, together with an embrace of a barren philosophy of acultural socialization, has resulted in ever more culturally vacuous public schools.

Ordinary people resent the elite classes not simply because they associate these classes with the development and imposition of these new social techniques, but also because they know that these classes are much less likely to suffer from the resulting cultural privations. The elite classes avoid the cultural problem by sending their children to private schools where humane traditions of culture (with roots in the old grammar and Latin schools) are carried on much more faithfully than in the universities. Ordinary people can’t afford to do that; they must either put up with the social curriculum or home-school their children.

Governor Palin, in contrasting “American values” with the aspirations of “elite education,” warns us of the arrogance — and the moral “spinelessness” — that today’s higher learning too often fosters. Knowledge divorced from what Trilling and Gertrude Himmelfarb (following Burke) call the “moral imagination” is a dangerous thing.

Beran's unabridged essay is well worth the read here.

- JP

Quote of the Day (January 15, 2010)

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Jedediah Bila:

"The truth is that Palin has become a star by virtue of being just like you and me. And the elitists, particularly academics on the left, are heated. They want their politicians snooty, want the lofty intellectualism they believe themselves to possess mirrored back at them by the big words and fancy slogans of their elected officials. They want their pomp and circumstance, a perfect side dish to the hollow rhetoric of their holier-than-thou leaders. For those elitists, Palin’s substance just isn’t going to cut it. And aggravating them all the more is the fact that she couldn’t care less."

- JP

Duh! Mika picks Abe Lincoln as her favorite founder?

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And she did it while mocking Sarah Palin for picking The Father of His Country George Washington. Ed Morrissey has a copy of the smoking gun at Hot Air:

In the middle of this MS-NBC gigglefest over Sarah Palin’s response to Glenn Beck on which Founding Father she likes best, Mika Brzezinski offers her opinion on the best Founding Father — who wasn’t born until 20 years after the US adopted its present Constitution.

We just love it when elitist liberals get tangled up in their own ignorance while trying to mock Sarah Palin. But mocking someone as ignorant while demonstrating one's own ignorance in the process is beyond ignorance. It's stupid.

- JP

Stacy McCain On Elitists, RINOs, Palin and Brown

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On The American Spectator's AmSpecBlog, Stacy McCain notes his colleague Philip Klein's apparent difficulty understanding why "many pro-Palin conservatives are enthusiastically supporting an un-Palin candidate" such as Scott Brown. According to Stacy, it's not exactly rocket science:

"Despite Brown's centrist politics, the pro-Palin populists support his Massachusetts Senate campaign because (a) Brown's election would not be a leftward shift of either the national debate or the GOP; (b) his election would validate perceptions of a rising conservative mood among voters; and (c) if elected, Brown would go to Washington with the knowledge of his indebtedness to grassroots conservatives."

As Stacy points out, elitists and populists may not agree on much, but the right choice in the Massachusetts race for a U.S. Senate seat is no cause for an argument. Scott Brown's opponent would be an even worse Senator than Al Franken. And that's a scary thought. The U.S. Senate already has more than its quota of leftist idiots. Adding one more to their numbers is not what's needed. 

- JP

Fightin' Words: Why Sarah Palin Is Hated

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On his Fightin' Words blog, Walter Scott Hudson takes a shot at explaining why Sarah Palin is hated by the Left and the Vichy Right. Excerpts follow:

"Of all political personalities, Palin is perhaps the consummate focal point around which America contends to define its identity. Palin is remarkable for sharing three traits – she is an American of average pedigree, who has audaciously pursued higher levels of civil service, and kept advancing despite volleys of arrows flung her way. This combination – average, ambitious, persistent – is terrifying to both the established political class and a willful underclass which wishes to be led by a government 'smarter' than them."

"The central precept around which this nation was formed, 'that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,' runs contrary to a dominant aspect of human nature. People want to be led. People desire leaders greater than them. It makes them feel safe. It makes them feel cared for. It makes them feel liberated to engage in endeavors of less import than that incumbent upon genuine freemen. This statement, that many folks wish upon themselves tyranny, is politically incorrect in our ostensibly free and democratic society. But it is demonstrably true. Consider, during the 2008 presidential election, Sarah Palin had the greatest amount of executive experience of any other person listed on either ticket. Yet, the chief criticism levied against her was a lack of 'qualification.' What manner of qualification is one expected to have for an executive office, if not executive experience?"

[...]

"The other side of the hatred coin comes from members of a political class which regard Palin as a streaker through their secret society. They trembled when she burst onto the scene in St. Paul with her folksy conviction toward principle and inexplicable desire to represent public interest. For that, she had to be shut down. If the public at large began to get the idea they could be led from someone among them, rather than by a demonstrably superior elitist, the entire political-industrial complex from which many derive a tidy stream of wealth at the expense of the taxpayer might be threatened. Thus the masters and many of their slaves found common cause. So they have worked as hammer and anvil to crush both Palin and the potential sea change she represents."

Hudson's take on this is interesting, and his full post makes for compelling reading. We highly recommend it.

- JP

Stacy McCain Schools Julian Sanchez

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Stacy McCain schools Julian Sanchez, and doesn't even break a yardstick in the process:

Turning Sarah Palin... into a symbol, and then analyzing reactions to that symbol from a perspective of cultural criticism, is a sort of avoidance strategy.

In the real world of politics, Obama and his supporters are desperately attempting to pass a health-care bill -- any health-care bill -- just so they can claim to have accomplished something useful since his inauguration. Every new poll shows a new low in Obama's popularity, and Democrats are beginning to fret about a massive electoral backlash next November.

Shorter Sanchez: 

"Hey, let's change the subject and talk about what a bunch of yahoos those Republicans are!"

[...]

He despises all provincialisms -- except his own...

Enjoy the full evisceration at The Other McCain.

- JP

Going Rogue "too dumb" for SF stores, but psychedelic space travel is smart

Pajamas Media's David Steinberg links to a San Freaksicko Chronicle quote from a really "smart" bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland on his reason for not stocking Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue:

"Our customers are thinking people. They’re not into reading drivel."

So if former Governor Palin's book is "drivel," what does Pendragon's proprietor consider to be literary brilliance? Steinberg checked some of the weighty tomes in the Pendragon inventory and found:

Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds Through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (Paperback)

"Those who regularly navigate the hyperspatial landscape that some have called the ‘tryptamine dimension’ have long suspected that the portals to inner and outer space may be one and the same. This book, a collaboration of the most cutting-edge shaman/neuroscientists working in this field, boldly explores this concept in a stunning tour de force."

Wow, open my third eye, Mickey. I'm flying to Pluto tonight!

Also in stock is a volume located in the Consiracy Nutcase section which is...

"...the definitive journalistic account of the hidden role of the Bush Whitehouse (sic) in perpetrating the 9/11 attacks."

Deep-thinking Pendragon patrons can also briefly satisfy their blood lust for the "people of the Book" with paperbacks by self-admitted "white separatist" Valdas Anelauskas and Obama buddy Rashid Khalidi. Those thoughtful books must be in the "Blame The Joooos" section.

Moving on to the the "Hate America First" section of the store, there are books by mad bomber Marxist Bill Ayers (another Obama bud), Mark Rudd and Ward Churchill, the latter of whom called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns." Over in the Real (Not Junk!) Science section, picky Pendragon browsers will come across a Lyndon Larouche volume on cold fusion.

Good thing the "thinking people" who frequent Pendragon don't want to read any "drivel" by Sarah Palin, though...

- JP

Rush: Conservative Sarah Palin Drives Media Elites Bonkers

Rush Limbaugh dicussed Sarah Palin extensively on Monday's program. Here are some excerpts from the transcript:

Folks, this is the most incredible thing. The Drive-Bys, the State-Controlled Media -- predictably -- are going bonkers over Sarah Palin and her book, her appearance on Oprah. We'll be talking to her tomorrow afternoon at one o'clock, the top of the second hour on this program. We did an interview late last week with her for the next issue of the Limbaugh Letter. "The Associated Press got an advance copy of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, and assigned eleven reporters, apparently, to try to find errors in it." Did you hear about this?

[...]

Eleven crackerjack AP reporters assigned to fact-check her book! Do any other authors' books get fact-checked like this? Not that I can recall. But anyway this is the best they can do? This is the best they could find. We have a brief time-out coming up here, ladies... (interruption) Well, I know liberals took after my book, but I mean does anybody on the other side get fact-checked? Nobody does.

[...]

Brooks is the guy that sounds mad. Brooks is the guy that sounds angry and jealous. I think he's jealous of the attention that she gets, and me, other so-called opinion makers. Because he doesn't move the opinion dial one way in any direction, and he's a static zero.

If he were an opinion meter, the thing would never move, just point straight up out into nowhere, which is I guess what he wants, you know, to be considered a good moderate. But in their arrogance and in their conceit, they miss her appeal. They miss her optimism and the things that she's positive about, and they totally don't understand why people are drawn to her. And it scares 'em. Now, I have a challenge to the Associated Press. They sent these 11 reporters out there to fact-check her book. Hey, AP, I got an idea for you. Assign those same 11 reporters to Algore's book and see how many facts you can find, not errors.

[...]

Now, if I'm David Brooks or any of these elitists and I'm really in tune with what's going on here, in a contest between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, for example, or Barack Obama and anybody, Obama should lose. Obama's destroying the United States. But they love Obama in part because they think he's one of them: smart, intellectual, elite, dresses well. Brooks even writes about the crease in Obama's slacks and how he's impressed by that. I kid you not. He was impressed by the crease in Obama's slacks, as a sign of refinement. Beltway Republicans, the wizards of smart, the Beltway Republicans have been running things, they have slowly lost Republican political power, so they are afraid of their own jobs and credibility if somebody like Palin, with her conservative viewpoint rises. I have to tell you, the reason why Palin's being hit here is not because she's Palin, it's because she's conservative. She is the most conservative of the Republican candidates, or I don't even know if she's a candidate, but of all the Republican public figures that might be in politics, she is by far the most conservative and everybody's threatened by that.

- JP

Sarah Palin was right #15: China's Military Rise Is Cause for Concern

The Week is not what anyone would call a Palin-friendly website. It features articles written by Democrats (Bob Shrum), Vichy Republicans (David Frum), and loony tunes Berkeley economists (Brad DeLong: "We can afford a second stimulus").

So when The Week's Tish Durkin authored a piece which would agree with some of Sarah Palin's remarks made about China, it was a foregone conclusion that said agreement would have to be presented as a backhand compliment. The article contains the usual Palin smears so typical of what we have come to expect from the fear and loathing set. But the elitist writer could not deny that Sarah Palin's most important points about China were absolutely correct:

In raising the specter of U.S. conflict with China, Palin was not, in the main, wrong.

For a compelling discussion of just how not-wrong, treat yourself to China: Fragile Superpower by Susan L. Shirk, the Clinton administration's deputy secretary of state for U.S.-China relations.... Or read the bulk of expert analysis on China from 1949 to the present... But when considering the possibility of hostilities erupting in the region, China hands tend to have more in common with Palin than with her detractors.

And why not? Raise your hand if you disagree with any of the following statements:

China is governed by a cadre of autocrats who, for all the positive development they have achieved in the past three decades, act first and foremost in the interest of their own political survival, which interest may or may not overlap with the calming of any given international crisis.

[...]

Even according to its official, famously low-ball budget, China's military expenditures have more than doubled since 2000; the growing stockpile of conventional short-range missiles alone is enough to shake up the neighbors.

[...]

These potential threats include: a violent succession scenario in North Korea; disputes over the territorial divisions of the East China Sea, with its estimated 7 million cubic feet of natural gas and some 100 billion barrels of oil; disputes over the islands of the South China Sea, through whose shipping lanes travel some 80 per cent of the crude oil consumed by Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea; an existential standoff with Taiwan, which the Chinese see both as a political birthright and a strategic necessity—regardless of whether the Taiwanese have a Beijing-friendly president, as at present, or not.

That's the case for trepidation.

[...]

There is every reason to hope for [restraint by China]. But there is absolutely no reason to assume any of it. That's the truth — even if Sarah Palin happens to be telling it.

The elites just can't summon up the intellectual honesty to say that they were wrong about Sarah Palin. To do so would be to admit that she may know a thing or two about foreign policy. As Governor Palin of Alaska, she was official host to a number of trade representatives from around the globe, was a member of the Northern Forum, addressed and hosted Arctic energy summits and was advised on strategic military matters by Admirals and Generals. Even when the elites have to admit that the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate is right, they do it like petulant children. "Yeah, she was right, but..."

Related: Washington Times: "Obama loosens missile technology controls to China"

- JP