John Hayward: Why Palin is NOT the Al Sharpton of Alaska.

"Palin had to speak out against the attempts to slander her"
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The latest hit piece on Sarah Palin, spawned by sweet nothings whispered inb the ears of the tag team of Jonathan Martin and John Harris at Politico by The Weekly Standard's Matt Labash seem to awakened some conservative pundits, many of whom have been snoring right through some of the vilest attacks on Sarah Palin that have been leveled at her since "progressives" on both the left and the right started bashing her before the 2008 RNC convention was even gavelled to a close. Good to see them waking up, smelling the coffee, and once again defending the woman who has never failed to defend conservative principles.

Here are some experts from John Hayward's response at Human Events to the latest anti-Palin smears:

Politico published an article filled with establishment conservatives attacking Sarah Palin, using a juicy pull quote from Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard for their title: “She’s Becoming Al Sharpton, Alaska Edition.” Supposedly her transformation into the maestro of the Tawana Brawley hoax has been prompted by her “frequent appeals to victimhood and group grievance.”

The central piece of evidence for this claim is Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” to describe the sickening attempt to pin the Tucson massacre on her. Speaking as one who used that term several days before Palin did, I can testify that I received no group grievance discount. It was the first time that came to mind when I saw what the media was trying to do to her, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

If the standards applied to Palin in this Politico roundup were to be accepted, no female or minority conservative would be able to defend themselves against any attack, because all such defenses would become “appeals to victimhood.” Try Googling any black or female conservative, and take a look at the vicious racist and sexist assaults they have to put up with on a regular basis. It would be very convenient for the Left if we agreed to make them suffer these assaults in silence, because responding only makes things worse.

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Palin had to speak out against the attempts to slander her, not only because conservatives cannot allow liberal slander to stick and harden into conventional wisdom, but because she wasn’t the only target. Ultimately, all conservatives were. The same Left that flushed John Edwards down the memory hole as soon as he became an embarrassment would force us to wear “Sarah Palin, Voodoo Murder Priestess” around our necks forever.

It’s hard to understand how Sarah Palin could be simultaneously criticized for wallowing in victimhood and fighting back too vigorously. It sounds more like another doomed attempt to win peace from the Left, and media approval, by letting them rule the person they hate most out of bounds – as if politics were a trial of ideas by jury, and they get to strike down a few jurors of their choice before the contest begins. Of course, they will never grant the same courtesy to conservatives, or arrive at any given moment without a fresh “person they hate most” on tap.

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- JP

Lance Fairchok on The Pain Factor: Even Republican Elites Don't Get It

The Labashing of Sarah Palin
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Like us, Lance Fairchok was shocked to see a Sarah Palin hit piece at the previously Palin-friendly Weekly Standard:

I happened upon an article in the Weekly Standard by Matt Labash with a title poking fun at Palin's Twitter abbreviations: "R U Lovin' Sarah's Alaska?" Labash throws quite a number of petty hits at Palin, ridiculing her folksy language, her rural underpinnings, and her lack of "gravitas" in the context of her hit TV show. Conservative elites have heretofore been more circumspect with their criticism, preferring the knife in the back in a dark alley to open confrontation. Apparently, that is changing as 2012 approaches.

While Labash mouths the standard criticisms of the "lame-stream media" in homage to his magazine's conservative bona fides, he is clearly not a Palin fan. Labash channels Dick Armey and Karl Rove throughout the article. It will rub more than a few conservatives the wrong way to see such inane criticism of a conservative icon on the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, and not at the Palin-hating New York Times. Palin often criticizes the Republican "old boy network" that brought us John McCain, and for good reason. One wonders what elderly political pulse Labash has his journalistic finger on -- the same one, perhaps, that thinks the government health care-supporting Mitt Romney will make a far better president in 2012 and is positioning against Palin now.

The Labash Palin-bash includes some nasty lines that should have the elites tittering into their expensive cocktails. He refers to "Sarah's Alaska": "And that's what Sarah Palin's Alaska is really about: self-love," meaning, one assumes, self-aggrandizement and tastelessness. This next gem should cost the Weekly Standard some subscriptions: "On the show, this involves seein', and doin', and experiencin' things that don't require a 'g' on the end of them, such as shootin', and rock climbin', and snow machinin', and clubbin' halibut over the head ('let me see the club, you look crazy,' says Bristol to her mom when they do the deed on a commercial fishing boat) and media-critiquin' and BlackBerryin', which Palin gets caught doing even in the midst of wilderness adventures." And "While many suspect Palin wants to be president of the United States, she writes as though she just wants to be president of Brent Bozell's Media Research Center," which I, for one, think is a good thing after the despicable treatment she has received and continues to receive from the press. (Does Labash also hold the Media Research Center in disdain?)

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As people watch the train-wreck that is the Obama administration unfold, they are beginning to realize just how much the press, the politicians and their government has lied to them. There is a dawning realization that being a mayor of a good-sized town gives a person some very useful skills. Taxes, utilities, law enforcement, education, and myriad other things fill a mayor's day. Palin did it for ten years and did it well. It is true community organizing. It is a leadership proving ground with measurable human consequences -- America and America's problems in a microcosm. Palin cut her teeth there and made it to the governor's office, where, brief though her tenure was, she excelled. Her entry into national politics was perhaps premature, but the crucible of the 2008 election cut away much of her naïveté.

Here in flyover country, we see an honest woman with our values and our best interests at heart. She is not a liar, nor is she a fool, and she is as angry as we are. The "we love her but don't want her to be president" push poll is meaningless two years out from 2012. It is a tool to mute enthusiasm for her. The electorate is tired of "old boys" and their endless manipulations. The Tea Party and Sarah Palin are not sitting back, content to savor the latest victories. The spin-masters and talking heads who lament Palin's lack of "gravitas" forget that Obama has "gravitas" aplenty. Obama's attitude is a façade and an affectation, while Palin, love her or hate her, is the real deal. Unlike Obama, you can read the details in her résumé. That counts for something now.

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Some on the liberal left and the libertarian left have opined that Labash's bash of Gov. Palin signals that the neoconservative right has turned against her because The Weekly Standard's founder and editor Bill Kristol is a neocon. Labash, however, doesn't march to the neocon cadence. But neither does Sarah Palin, as she has an identifiable small-government and fiscally responsible libertarian streak, though the libertarian left ("social libertarians") can't stand her.

In a 2003 interview, Labash revealed that a writer need not be a neocon to survive at TWS:

"I suppose I should come up with some sort of game plan, but the Standard is a very comfortable place to work. Even if your sensibilities don't exactly match the editors, they pretty much let you go your own way."

So why is Labash Palin-bashing? We may have found a clue in the same interview. Consider Labash's reply when asked if he had ever entertained the thought of a career as a television pundit:

"No, I hate television. I love to watch it. That's my place -- in front of the TV. I have friends who go on TV a lot and say, 'You ought to be on TV.' I don't do it partly because of performance anxiety. I'm pretty sure I'm going to screw it up. Second, it just makes me feel like a fraud. Popping off about issues of the day that I'm considered an expert on simply because I read the paper that morning doesn't feel right to me, which is surprising because I pop off a lot in real life. You take me out to lunch and put a few beers in me and I'll pop off all you want."

So Labash hates television and knows that he doesn't have it in him to be good at doing television. Could some of his disdain for "Sarah Palin's Alaska" be rooted in base jealousy? We'll leave that one for the psychology majors to kick around. No, we think someone took Labash out to lunch and got a few beers in him. Then he went back to the office and "popped off" a hit piece on Sarah Palin. Matt, you really shouldn't try to write when you're high.

- JP

Aaron Goldstein: Palin's Pioneering Path to the Presidency

She is using social networking the way Reagan used television
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Sarah Palin's political enemies are deployed against her on three flanks. The progressives of the Democrat Party are lined up on one flank and the progressives of the GOP -- the ones we call Vichy Republicans and others refer to as RINOs occupy another. But standing against her on the third flank are the condescending conservatives also known as conservative elites. If she decides to run for the White House, she will have to fight on all three flanks. Even to make the Republican Party the party of Reagan again, she must fight forces opposed to her on two flanks, while those on the third flank cheer on the enemies of their enemy.

Aaron Goldstein, in today's Political Hay column at American Spectator, takes on two of Gov. Palin's conservative critics, both of whom have written op-eds which read like they were written by liberals Maureen Dowd or Bob Herbert. But elitists of both the left and right share that air of condescension. One of the two, Mona Charen, wrote at both NRO and Townhall.com that Sarah Palin's Alaska is "another cheesy entrant in the reality-show genre." The other, Matt Labash at the Weekly Standard describes it as "tacky" and claims that the show is just an act of Sarah's "self -love." Nonsense, counters Goldstein:

Alas both Charen and Labash miss the point. Having watched the first two episodes of Sarah Palin's Alaska I'd say it is neither cheesy nor tacky much less an exercise in vanity. Rather it should be seen as a series of extended home movies. Now not everyone likes home movies, especially those who are unwilling participants. But for the open-minded among us we now have an opportunity to view Sarah Palin and her family on their own terms. It also gives us an extended look at a part of our country that is seldom given a second thought.

Let's face it. Most Americans have never been to Alaska and this show is probably the closest a lot of us will get. Of course, one could make the case that if one wanted to see the wonders of Alaska on television one could tune into a PBS program like Nature. But it is one thing to see bears fighting in a river; it's another to see it as it is being observed by the Palin family.

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Alas Charen and Labash find the proceedings more than a tad undignified. They certainly don't find it presidential. Why else would they both complain about Palin's Twitter use? Let them sneer at reality television and social networking to their heart's content. The fact of the matter is these things mean a great deal to people. Whether we like it or not, who wins Dancing with the Stars means more to people than our monetary policy. Whether we like it or not, people define themselves by their Facebook status. All Palin has done is to tap into this new reality. She is merely using the social networking medium the way Ronald Reagan used television when he hosted General Electric Theater. While Palin espouses traditional values she is not taking a traditional path to the presidency. The question is whether she can carve out her own path to electoral success.

Assuming Palin decides to take a run at the White House, she will undoubtedly do so with the knowledge that she will encounter enormous barriers along that path led by a liberal media (with a little help from some condescending conservatives) determined to keep President Obama in office. In fact, she should expect them to be a thousand times more arduous and vicious than those she faced in 2008. The difference now is that no one will stop her from clearing the brush. With her pioneering spirit, this time she gets to do things her way.

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- JP