WaPo, NYT Recruit Palinophobes for Oppo Research (Updated)

WaPo hopes to "extract new stories that will lead to further investigation"
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Remember when the Associated press assigned eleven of its crack reporters to "fact check" Sarah Palin's first book Going Rogue? Democrat Party house organ The Washington Post has found a cheaper way to allocate resources in the corrupt media left's endless pursuit of digging for dirt on the first woman to be the vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party. It is recruiting Palin-hatin' Post readers to do it for free.

Ryan Kellett, who holds the title of "Interactivity Producer" at WaPo and has his byline under the bold head "Help investigate the Palin e-mails," makes the pitch:

More than 24,000 e-mail messages sent to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska's governor will be released Friday. Join The Post in digging through them. We are looking for 100 organized and diligent readers who will work alongside Post reporters to analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails. Think of it as spending some time in our newsroom.

Our hope is that working together, we can efficiently find interesting information and extract new stories that will lead to further investigation. We don’t know what we’ll find, but we want you to be ready and open for the challenge.

You will communicate with us virtually and work in small teams to make light work of reviewing the e-mail threads. Notice the patterns. Identify recipients and senders. Connect specific e-mails to larger themes and events. We’ll give you a sense of what to look out for, but the hope is that your team can tackle the challenge together in a collaborative way that our journalists alone cannot. And in fact, we are selecting just 100 people because we want to make real use of your talents and trust you to use teamwork to your advantage.

[More]

How acute is the epidemic of Palin Derangement Syndrome among the Post partisans? We can practically see Kellett's words salivating on our computer monitor, so thrilled is he with the prospect of finding juicy tidbits in the governor's e-mails. We wonder if he also has a thrill running up his leg. Too bad he and his WaPo cohorts could not get as excited about digging into the obscured details of a half-term Senator's college records and the radical characters he chose to associate with back in the day, and then in the years thereafter. If they had bothered, the republic would likely not have traveled so many miles down the road to ruin.

Wouldn't it be interesting if some enterprising Paliniste volunteered to go undercover and submitted applications to play in the Post's pool of Palin plunderers? If you've always wanted to be a double agent, or if you would just like to bring a little bit of fairness and balance to WaPo's witch hunt fishing expedition, just follow the links.

h/t: Kristinn

Update: The NY Times is also recruiting would-be muckrakers who are heck-bent on sliming Sarah. Help 'em out, even if it's not quite with the degree of bloodlust they are looking for .

h/t: Doug Brady

- JP

Matthew Continetti: Five myths about Sarah Palin

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Matthew Continetti has penned an op-ed about Gov. Palin which will be published in Sunday's print edition of the Washington Post. Here are a few excerpts:

Think you know Sarah Palin? The former Alaska governor has been in the spotlight ever since John McCain named her as his running mate on Aug. 29, 2008. Yet, while practically everybody has an opinion about Palin, not all of those opinions are grounded in reality. Many of them are based more on a "Saturday Night Live" caricature than on the living, breathing, 46-year-old mother of five. The real Sarah Palin is a complex woman who has risen in no time from obscurity to the stratosphere of American politics, fusing celebrity and populism in novel ways. Now that she's laying the foundation for a possible presidential run in 2012, it's worth taking a moment to separate the fact about Palin from the fable.

1. Palin cost McCain the 2008 election.

She didn't. CNN's 2008 national exit poll, for example, asked voters whether Palin was a factor when they stepped into the voting booth. Those who said yes broke for McCain 56 percent to 43 percent.

Before Palin's selection, remember, McCain suffered from an enthusiasm gap. Republicans were reluctant to vote for the senator from Arizona because of his reputation as a maverick who'd countered his party on taxes, immigration, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "cap and trade" climate legislation. But Palin's conservative record in Alaska and antiabortion advocacy changed the Republican mood. With her by his side, McCain's fundraising and support from conservatives improved. It wasn't enough to beat Barack Obama -- but McCain probably would have lost the presidency by a greater margin if he had, say, selected independent Sen. Joe Lieberman as his running mate, further alienating the GOP base.

[...]

2. Resigning as governor was rash.

No one expected Palin's resignation on July 3, 2009, just 2 1/2 years into her term. Her hastily composed and clumsily delivered farewell address left many observers confused about her motives. Some of her critics were only too eager to fill in the gaps with conjecture and hearsay (She's being investigated by the FBI! Sarah and Todd must be headed for divorce!). If there was one thing everybody knew for sure, it was that Palin's career in politics was over. But none of the rumored scandals ever broke. The Palins remain married. And as for Sarah Palin's career, it's taken off. She plays a far greater role in American public life than she did before she left office.

When Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, she confronted three problems. The political coalition on which she had based her governorship -- a combination of Democrats and renegade "Palinista" Republicans -- had, needless to say, collapsed. Her critics were using Alaska's tough ethics laws to launch investigations into her behavior, sapping her finances and her energy. Finally, every time she traveled to the Lower 48, Alaskans criticized her for putting her political interests above the state's.

Palin's solution was to resign. Her agenda stood a better chance of passing if then-Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who shared Palin's goals, succeeded her as governor. As a private citizen, meanwhile, Palin could make enough money to pay her legal bills. And she would no longer be accused of neglecting her official duties.

Some might say that Palin's resignation was shortsighted and showed that she was not ready for the demands of executive office. But if Palin had remained governor, she would have been denied opportunities to rally the tea party and fight in the battle over the Obama agenda. She would have been stuck on a regional stage. Instead, she's back on the national one.

(More)

- JP

streiff: The WaPo, Sarah Palin, and Conservatism

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This was published Thursday on Red Maryland by our friend and former colleague from our days at RedState.com:

Today's Washington Post features an editorial which serves to underscore a fear on the left of a resurgent conservative movement and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. It concerns the surprise endorsement of Brian Murphy by Governor Palin.

[...]

This type of editorial demonstrates why the Washington Post hires liberals like Dave Wiegel to explain conservatism.

First, the fact that the Washington Post wants us to believe that it actually cares about the fate of the GOP is laughable. If they really thought Gov. Palin was leading the GOP down the path to marginalization they would be first in line cheering her on. The fact that they find her endorsements troubling should be a sign that she's on to something useful.

Second, as I said below primaries are about ideas. Whether or not the editorial board of the Washington Post likes Governor Palin's worldview, the rest of the country does...

Read the rest of strieff's op-ed here. Also see Kelsey's take on this at C4P here.

- JP

Newsweek blames Sarah Palin for sexist treatment of GOP women

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NewsBuster Noel Sheppard catches Newsweek, which has a long record of sexist treatment of Sarah Palin, suggesting it's Gov. Palin's own fault that Republican women are being attacked for their beauty:

"There seems to be an insistent, increasingly excitable focus on the supposed hotness of Republican women in the public eye, like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Michelle Malkin, and Nikki Haley-not to mention veterans like Ann Coulter," the article now being prominently featured at the magazine's website began.

Hypocritically, Julia Baird's piece never once explained or wondered why the same thing isn't being done to Democrat women.

Instead, the numerous headlines exclusively trivialized physically attractive GOP females...

Newsweek's hypocrisy would be considered stunning were it not owned by the Washington Post Company, which has been reduced to little more than a stenographer service for the Democrat Party. What was once a glossy news magazine has been reduced in more ways than just circulation figures, advertising revenue and the number of its pages. It's just a brochure full of DNC talking points now, which may explain why Newsweek's owners are having so much trouble finding a buyer for the troubled periodical.

Read Noel Sheppard's full story here.

- JP

Breaking: Anti-Palin WaPo Blogger Weigel Resigns (Updated)

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The liberal blogger the Washington Post recently hired to cover Republicans and conservatives is out of there. David Weigel, who spent much of his allotted bandwidth bashing Sarah Palin, has resigned:

Washington Post blogger Dave Weigel resigned today after a host of offensive e-mails surfaced revealing his disdain for much of the right - the beat he was charged with covering. Fishbowl DC, which published a number of those emails yesterday, confirmed the resignation with the Post just after noon.

Yesterday I reported on leaked emails from Weigel to a listserve of liberal journalists bashing conservatives and conservatism - you know, the people Weigel is supposed to be covering. As bad as those email were, a plethora of messages from Weigel published in the Daily Caller take the conservative-bashing to a whole new level.

The new emails also demonstrated that yesterday's quasi-apology from Weigel was really not as sincere as he claimed. He said that he made some of his most offensive remarks at the end of a bad day. But these new emails show that there was really nothing unique about them, and that offensive remarks about conservatives really were nothing new or uncommon.

Just one of many examples of Weigel going all deranged on Gov. Palin can be found in a May 25 post on his now former WaPo blog Right Now, In it, Weigel called Sarah Palin "unprofessional," "immature," "paranoid," and "despicable" for expressing her feelings on Facebook about having leftist hack Joe McGinness move all the way from Massachusetts to just 15 feet away from her family's house on Lake Lucille in Alaska to write a book which no one disagrees will be little more than a hit piece on her.

But it wasn't Weigel's blog posts which led to his downfall so much as his tweets and emails. According to The Daily Caller, those emails were self-incriminating:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh famously said he hoped President Obama would “fail” in January, 2009. Almost a year later, when Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital with chest pains, Washington Post reporter David Weigel had a wish of his own. “I hope he fails,” Weigel cracked to fellow liberal reporters on the “Journolist” email list-serv.

More from the resignation from NewsBuster Lachlan Markay here. This makes Weigel, whose WaPo tenure lasted only about three months, a "quitter," does it not?

Updates: Reaction from...

RedState's Erick Erickson:

"It is no surprise to me that Ben Smith is on Journolist too. I wonder if the push back by lefty oriented journalists over Sarah Palin complaining about that stalker moving in next door was coordinated on Journolist. Probably."

Rick Moore at Holy Coast:

"It goes to show you the sad state of journalism when this is the best guy the Washington Post can come up with to cover conservatives. They can't even find someone who's at least somewhere in the middle who will give conservatives a fair shake. Weigel's... a typically smarmy liberal who believes he's not only smarter than conservatives, but superior in every way. The journalism community is full of them. A guy with this much antipathy for the people who are supposed to be the subjects of his unbiased reporting clearly doesn't belong on this beat."

Dan Riehl:

"Weigel undermined the Right at every turn. And, unlike Jim Geraghty, I don't care what his reasons were. That was the effect of his work... But to his defenders on the Right - if you want friends, get a dog - or join a book club. If you're more interested in client mentions, or links, sorry, but I don't accept your defending Weigel, because I can't be certain of your motivations."

- JP

Palin's Newest Crime Against Humanity: An Ugly Fence

- By Warner Todd Huston
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To pile onto Josh's morning post, it must have been a slow news day for the Washington Post's Adrian Higgins. Either that or someone made him upset that day and he wanted to take some anger out on someone and get paid for it at the same time. Catharsis doesn't come free from a journalist, you know? So, looking for some payback, Higgins decided that a petty attack upon Sarah Palin would be cheaper than a visit to his therapist. Besides, Palin is always the Old Media's favorite target for venomous attack so he obviously didn't have to think too hard in the effort.

But, since Gov. Palin hadn't been in the news over the last several days, Higgins must have had a hard time trying to find a rhetorical hook upon which to hang his venomous pen. Then it hit him. Her fence is ugly. Who cares that the fence story is now months old, eh? Who needs topical when one is going after Sarahcuda?

That's right, the fence is ugly and that makes Mrs. Palin an evil, oil-loving, war-mongering, racist, anti-feminist, monster, right? Man, that must have made Higgins feel better. And it saved him from kicking his dog this time, too. Smiles all around.

Of course, there was more to it than just saying the fence was ugly. Higgins also proclaims the Palins as "bad neighbors" because of it. Never mind that the only reason that the thing was even put up is to keep the hack-next-door from acting the peeping Joe on Palin's young children.

So, that fence is "defiantly ugly," says writer Higgins:

However genuine the motives behind the fence, from a design, horticultural and sheer aesthetic standpoint, it looks like a disaster.

Higgins scolds the Palins for not tearing down the old fence and replacing it with a more costly, professionally made fence.

Seriously? That is his concern here? Let's review why the fence went up in the first place. The goal for the Palins was to immediately stop the journo-voyeur next door from peering into their living quarters. The Palins had no plans to carefully tear down an old fence and build a new, permanent fence that was taller before the intruder arrived. Speed was of the essence, not "horticultural aesthetics"!

In fact, it is doubtful that the Palins intend to leave the thing up once the tabloid screedist next door has run out his lease and slithers back down to the lower 48.

Of course, this is thin gruel for a story. So Higgins goes off on several related tracks. That fence, that ugly, ugly fence, why it wouldn't even be allowed in some communities, Higgins gravely informs us:

A fence of such towering presence would not be allowed in many communities across the land, including the District and the Virginia and Maryland suburbs.

See, here is the thing, Mr. Higgins. The fact that some communities have rules that restrict the freedom of property owners to do whatever they want with their property is not a reason to scold those communities like Palin's that respect their citizen's rights more! In fact, I'd say that those rarefied communities in Maryland are far more un-American by telling people what they should be allowed to do on their own property than Palin's "ugly fence" is. And I'd also suggest, Mr. Higgins, that you, sir, are un-American if you are in such wild support of government taking away its citizen's property rights!

In any case, this was a petty and rather pointless attack piece and it makes me wonder how it got past an editor. In the final assessment, Higgins' op ed was far uglier than Palin's fence, for sure.

-WTH

Warner Todd Huston is editor of Publius' Forum and a regular contributor to Texas for Sarah Palin as well as Big Government, Right Wing News, Red County and a number of other websites.

Washington Post tries to minimize Gov. Palin's impact on SC race (Updated)

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Though the polls haven't closed in South Carolina, Democrat Party house organ The Washington Post is already trying to downplay the impact of Sarah Palin's endorsement and steadfast support of gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley.

In an entry on its Obamacentric "44" blog, the Post's Philip Rucker shamelessly quotes an anonymous "Haley staffer":

"Haley's rise preceded the Palin endorsement," said a Haley adviser who discussed the race only on the condition of anonymity. "But no question it was helpful."

No internal poll result from the Haley campaign or other corroborating evidence is furnished by Rucker to support the staffer's remark, not does he appear to have asked for any. Furthermore, apparently based on this one unattributed comment, Rucker writes:

"Yet despite the attention Palin's endorsement received, Republican operatives in South Carolina said Haley's surge was as much -- if not more -- a result of her conservative-reformer message and support from tea party groups."

The only other "operative" quoted by Rucker is -- again -- an anonymous one, this time a "national Republican official":

South Carolina is a small enough state that many Republican primary voters have had a chance to see the candidates in person. Haley began taking the lead, GOP operatives said, in part because she is a polished campaigner with a message that is resonating in this conservative state.

"She's someone who can communicate well, who has a brain and, most importantly, has a real agenda of cleaning house," said a national Republican official watching the race closely who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

According to Rasmussen Reports polling, a survey taken in March, prior to Gov. Palin's endorsement, Haley was in fourth place at 12 percent, trailing McMaster (21 percent), Bauer (17 percent), and Barrett (14 percent). The first Rasmussen poll conducted after Sarah Palin's endorsement shows that Haley had vaulted from last place to way out in front with 30 percent, followed by McMaster (19 percent), Barrett (17 percent) and Bauer (12 percent).

Not to take a thing away from Nikki Haley. She's a great candidate, and Gov. Palin would not have endorsed her were she any lesser of a person or politician. And she has demonstrated remarkable courage in light of the worst kind of personal attacks on her. Not to take anything away from the local Tea Party groups in South Carolins who endorsed Haley, either.

But for the Washington Post to attempt to minimize the force of Sarah Palin's support of Nikki Haley, without providing a shred of evidence, and by quoting two people who were not willing to put their names where their mouths allegedly are, seems to us to be just par for the course for the lamestream, pro-Obama, anti-Palin media.

Update: The questionable WaPo piece and its writers' vague "sources" are contradicted by this Politico report by Andy Barr, in which he quotes a named source inside the Haley campaign:

Perhaps Palin’s most powerful demonstration came in South Carolina, where her endorsement propelled a major swing in the polls for Haley’s primary campaign for governor and sustained the state representative through accusations of two separate affairs.

"Her decision to get - and stay - involved in the race here in South Carolina was a huge boon to our campaign, because it caused a lot of South Carolinians to take a second look at a rising in the polls but once-little known state legislator who was fighting to give them back their government,” Haley spokesman Tim Pearson said of Palin.

Palin was quick to defend Haley from blogger Will Folks, who claimed to have had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with Haley, writing on her Facebook page that Folks was trying to “make things up.”

Palin recorded a robocall for Haley in the closing days, urging South Carolinians to ignore the “made-up nonsense.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (February 15, 2010)

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Corrections - Washington Post:

"A secondary headline on a Feb. 8 A-section article about Republican Sarah Palin saying on 'Fox News Sunday' that it would be "absurd" for her to rule out a 2012 presidential bid incorrectly stated that she said President Obama should play 'the war card.' As the article said, the former Alaska governor told Fox News that Obama would improve his reelection chances if he 'played the war card' by declaring war on Iran or expressing stronger support for Israel, but she did not advocate such a move."

- JP

Washington Post: Sarah Palin's Letter To The Editor

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Sarah Palin has written a letter to the editor of the Washington Post in response to a column written by the Post's Eugene Robinson. The letter was published in the Thursday edition of the newspaper:

I'd like to thank Eugene Robinson for highlighting Alaska's achievements on climate change ["Palin's own 'Climate- gate,'" op-ed, Dec. 15] and for noting that I've "treated the issue as serious, complex, and worthy of urgent attention," while making "any number of pragmatic, reasonable, smart decisions as governor." But he's wrong to suggest that my views have somehow changed or that now I'll have to "renounce" my past efforts.

Once again: I don't deny that climate change is real. In creating a sub-cabinet to deal specifically with the issue, I said that "Alaska's climate change strategy must be built on sound science and the best available facts and must recognize Alaska's interest in economic growth and the development of its resources." That goal made sense to me then, and it makes sense to me now.

Mr. Robinson tries to make hay out of the fact that I asked the group to advise me regarding opportunities to participate in "carbon-trading markets." But considering voluntary participation in carbon-trading programs is much different from endorsing the economically disastrous cap-and-tax proposals put forward by Democrats in Washington. Those proposals will burden our job creators and raise energy prices for all of us, and that's why I oppose them.

As governor of Alaska, I sought common-sense solutions that took real-world costs and benefits into account. That's what I'm looking for now. But that's not what's on the table in Washington or in Copenhagen.

Sarah Palin, Wasilla, Alaska

- JP

Book Review: Matthew Continetti on Going Rogue

Matthew Continetti, author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star, has written a review of Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue for the Washington Post. Excerpts:

Palin's memoir is everything you'd expect from a politician who has no intention of leaving the national scene. With the aid of Lynn Vincent as her ghostwriter, she tells homespun stories, cracks a few jokes, provides juicy campaign gossip and lets the reader know where she stands on issues such as the right to life, government taxes and spending, health care and climate change. Like a good Republican, she invokes Ronald Reagan's name at every opportunity. The book is so packed with facts, history and encomiums about her state, she's practically a one-woman Alaska Division of Tourism: "We have the highest number of pilots per capita in the United States."

Palin tells her side of a story that's usually told by her opponents. It's the tale of how she rose from small-town mayor to the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee to her current status as global celebrity and one of the most polarizing figures in American politics. She writes in the warm, casual, occasionally corny voice that has made her so lovable to some and revolting to others. I'll go out on a limb and predict that if you like Palin, you'll like Going Rogue -- and if you don't like Palin, well, I hear the new Stephen King is pretty good.

The full book review is here.

- JP

Richard Cohen has no decency

Moonbat Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is equating Sarah Palin with Sen. Joe McCarthy:

Try this on for size: Palinism. What is it? It is an updated version of McCarthyism, which takes its name from the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin liar, demagogue and drunk, and means, according to Wikipedia, "reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries." As far as we know, Sarah Palin is not a drunk.

But she certainly shares McCarthy's other attributes -- and this one as well: the ability to drive the debate. In McCarthy's day, it was anti-communism coupled with national security, and it hardly mattered that he frequently did not have his facts straight. He got huge amounts of attention anyway.

With Palin, the subject is health care, which in many ways is the Red Menace of our day and lends itself to a kind of political pornography.

Since the Left has already lost the Death Panels battle, one wonders why they are still trying to fight it. Perhaps it has more to do with Palin herself than death care, according to Penraker:

The hatred of Sarah Palin seems to have escaped the tug of gravity and has now reached escape velocity. Liberals seem to need someone to hate, to demonize, to make into their secular devil. George Bush served admirably; but alas, he is gone. They need a new whipping boy…or girl.

In an astoundingly obvious display of hypocrisy, the Left’s all-out assault on Palin is itself the very definition of McCarthyism:

Where was Richard Cohen when his compadres were calling Bush Hitler? Where was he when the media falsified documents in order to "prove" that Bush did not complete his National Guard service? Is Dan Rather a McCarthyite? There are a million things Democrats did to the last administration that would fit Cohen’s definition of McCarthyism.

Here is where we are: If you oppose the Great Obama, you will be called a McCarthyite. If you dare to enter the debate, you will be called a McCarthyite. - by the Richard Cohen-style McCarthyites.

Penraker says this is a visible symptom that the Left is now completely panic-stricken:

They told themselves that the country had become wildly liberal. They told themselves that Obama was the new FDR, the new Lincoln. They told themselves that liberalism was once again popular.

They were wrong on all counts. Their great, big, brittle dream is suddenly crashing down around their ears. They built a fantasy-castle, and they have been living there happily for the last few months. They allowed themselves the luxury of imagining that all their political reveries will become substantial. But they are finding that the country is still a center-right country, that nothing has changed at all.

Just how much of a moonbat is Cohen? There's no better place to check than Moonbattery.com:

When it comes to moonbattery at its most treacherous, no one tops WaPo's Richard Cohen, who has openly sided with the Islamic terrorists laying siege to our democratic ally Israel.

[...]

If you look at history in the funhouse mirror that serves Cohen as a mind, Muslim terrorism over the last 100 years is a result of the dumb idea of "creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians)." Inconceivably, Cohen seems not to be aware of the profound ties Jews have with their homeland, going back thousands of years.

Here's how Cohen feels about terrorists:

There is no point in condemning Hezbollah..... And there's not much point, either, in condemning Hamas.

Clearly Cohen is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he could hardly be dumb enough to think that Muslims would ever "get distracted and move on" so long as Israel exists. To "hunker down," as he puts it, and wait until Muslims grow bored with rocket attacks, kidnapping and suicide bombing would mean acquiescing until the last Jew in the Jewish homeland had been murdered.

What this appalling little creature is calling for is willful submission to genocide.

As with all attacks on Palin, one should first consider the source.

Update: Daniel Oliver at The American Spectator has more to say on this.

h/t: FRee Republic

- JP

Palin tells WaPo she's taking battle nationwide

Oh I'm bad, I'm nationwide.
Yes I'm bad, I'm nationwide.

Gov. Sarah Palin, in written comments to The Washington Post:

"I'm not leaving the governorship because of any particular ethics complaint. Rather, I have explained that the millions of dollars spent by the state and the diversion of resources to address politically inspired records requests, personnel board costs and wasting staff time is unnecessary and harmful to the state. I will take the battle nationally, and I won't shy away from challenging the powerful, the entrenched, the corrupt and anyone standing in the way of getting our country back on the right track."

Welcome back, we're nationwide.
Yeah we bad, we're nationwide.

On the difference between the ethics complaint she filed in 2004 against Alaska GOP chairman Randy Ruedrich and those being filed against her by her political opponents, Palin wrote the Post:

"I publicly questioned blatant conflicts of interest. There is a difference between filing frivolous lawsuits and ethics complaints and overwhelming the state system with requests which are nothing more than 'opposition research.'"

I'm bad, I'm nationwide.
Girl I'm bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, I'm nationwide.

- JP