Quote of the Day (December 8, 2011)

“Some of these candidates … are playing right into the left’s playbook”.
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William A. Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection:

“Some good advice which is being completely ignored already...”

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 29, 2011)

Reconsider Bachmann? No.
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William A. Jacobsonn, at Legal Insurrection:

“Taking another look at Michele Bachmann is one of the memes being pushed by people unhappy with the Newt/Romney choice in the wake of the likely departure from the race of Herman Cain. Why does Cain dropping out make Bachmann any better than she was? She’s still the person who built her campaign in the early summer around trashing Sarah Palin via Ed Rollins and was happy to ride that wave while it lasted.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 28, 2011)

“There is no such thing as liberal journalistic bias” Tweet of the Day
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William A. Jacobsonn, at Legal Insurrection:

“Reminds me of the time WaPo and other mainstream news outlets crowd-sourced Sarah Palin’s e-mails, and were downright giddy. Until they fell flat on their faces.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 21, 2011)

Will we ever get around to vetting Mitt Romney?
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William A. Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection:

“Had any other presidential candidate pulled Romney’s hiding act, that candidate would be skewered. (As Sarah Palin was for the past three years by people who now are Romney supporters, even though she was not running for President.)”

- JP

Quote of the Day (October 9, 2011)

PDS found Palin, Palin didn’t find PDS
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William A. Jacobson, st Legal Insurrection:

“Attacking Palin became an industry, and when she fought back she was blamed. The derangement started the day she was designated by John McCain as the VP nominee, and it continues to this day from small people like David Frum. Palin didn’t bring it on herself, but having found herself in the cross-hairs, she fought back. Good on her.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (July 4, 2011)

Did Margaret Thatcher “refuse” to attend Reagan statue dedication?
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William A. Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection:

“Margaret Thatcher is not in good health, rarely goes out or receives visitors, and therefore had to miss the dedication of a statue of Ronald Reagan in London... The reasonableness of the reaction to Thatcher’s non-appearance contrasts with the hyperventilation (and not just by the left) in early June when some anonymous ‘ally’ of Thatcher supposedly (and falsely) told The Guardian that Thatcher refused to meet Sarah Palin. In fact, The Guardian went so far at to state that Thatcher, by contrast to her rebuff of Palin, would be attenting the Reagan statute dedication... Now that The Guardian story, down to the detail of Thatcher attending the Reagan dedication to prove ‘her level,’ has been revealed to be phony, will The Guardian and those who used The Guardian story to bash Palin admit that they were wrong?”

- JP

Quote of the Day (June 22, 2011)

Hey Ed Rollins, you deal with it...
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William A. Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection:

“Your candidate is getting the predictable Palin-treatment, but of course, you have so pissed off Palin supporters, you deal with it. After all, you are a serious campaign consultant.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (June 13, 2011)

Palin Can't Win ≠ Palin Shouldn't Run
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William A. Jacobson, at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

“The Ziegler article in many ways demonstrates what is wrong with the Republican Party today. It is too reactive to the mainstream media, seeks to impose its vision on the Republican electorate, and when all else fails, resorts to smear and innuendo against someone who has endured more than any other potential candidate under consideration. I trust the voters. It's too bad some very vocal Republicans do not.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (June 9, 2011)

Rollins hire was Rep. Bachmann’s first campaign mistake
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William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

“Dear Michele Bachmann, If Ed Rollins Stays, I Go... As long as Ed Rollins is one of your advisers, I'm looking elsewhere. It troubles me to say that because I think you have a lot to offer, and I've been as disgusted with the unfair attacks on you as I am with such attacks on Palin. But Rollins spit in the face of every Palin supporter (and I use that term in the broad sense, not just people who support her for President). I cannot support a campaign run by Ed Rollins. Every time I see his smug face as your spokesman, I'll be reminded that the opening shot of your campaign was directed by him at Palin.”

- JP

Quote of the Day (March 17, 2011)

PPP set out to embarrass Sarah Palin, but ended up embarrassing itself.
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William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

"Isn't the headline that 24% of the population definitely would choose Charlie Sheen over the sitting President of the United States? Or that another 19% are not sure?"

- JP

William A. Jacobson: Why I Am So Intolerant

Any GOP candidate who mimics the Palin haters does so at his political peril
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At Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, Professor Jacobson explains his no-tolerance policy concerning virtiolic attacks on Gov. Palin:

If you have noticed, I am very intolerant of cheap shots and snide comments directed at Sarah Palin, particularly when those cheap shots and snide comments come from conservative bloggers and Republican politicians.

Perhaps I react this way because when Palin Derangement Syndrome first struck this blog was not yet established, and I just stewed. In many ways, PDS -- along with Obamamania -- was the motivating factor in my creating this blog in October 2008.

[...]

No one on our side has an obligation to support Palin just because Palin has been a target of almost unbelievable hatred merely for being. Support whomever you want, and make the case for other Republican candidates, but don't join the mob as some people did in the wake of the Tucson shooting.

Palin is not just another potential Republican candidate. Palin is someone who has endured attacks by the mainstream media, entertainment establishment, and left-blogosphere second to no one currently active in Republican politics.

[More]

Furthermore, Jacobson declares, he will not support any candidate during the GOP primaries who attacks Sarah Palin. Now there's a "Palin Pledge" we would like to see go viral.

h/t: Jefferson's Rebels

- JP

Jacobson: If 'She Can't Win,' Then Neither Can We

"Let them all enter the primaries and let them all be seriously considered"
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William Jacobson, the law professor who blogs at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, has been on the case of the PDS-afflicted on both the left and the right who have been pushing their "can't win" meme so hard lately. The naysayers with their axes to grind insist she doesn't even deserve to be seriously considered by GOP primary voters because the 2008 Republican vice presidential just can't win a general election.

They cite as evidence her poll numbers, but they don't want to talk about how far down in the polls (22 points) Ronald Reagan was to Jimmy Carter in January, 1979. They say she is "too divisive," but Reagan was characterized in the same manner. They say she's too hated by the left, but so was George W. Bush, yet that did not prevent him from winning a second term in 2004. Tim Pawlenty and a number of other prospective GOP presidential candidates have poll numbers much lower than those of Sarah Palin, but no one is claiming that any of them "can't win." As Prof. Jacobson observes, the meme has been used almost exclusively against Sarah Palin. But he points out that she is not the issue:

The issue is whether we will demoralize voters who would work hard to elect a Republican -- even a Republican not quite to their liking -- in the general election provided the primary process were viewed as fair and open.

We saw in the 2010 elections that Tea Party supporters are among the most loyal. Where Tea Party candidates lost primaries, Tea Party supporters rallied around the winner, or at least did not actively seek to undermine the winners. By contrast, the moment establishment candidates lost, there were active attempts in some races by establishment Republicans (and unfortunately, some of the conservative blogosphere) to undermine the candidates.

There is no better way to demoralize a key segment of the Republican Party, and damage our chances in November 2012, than to announce a year before the primaries even begin that Palin should not even enter the primary fray or should not be seriously considered because she cannot win a general election.

We do not need the Republican equivalents of 2008 Democratic PUMAs, people so embittered by the perceived unfairness of the primary process that they stayed home or switched sides in November. And that will be the result of attempts to shut Palin out of the process through the "can't win" strategy.

[...]

If "she can't win" is the means by which one of the candidates wins the Republican nomination, then we can't win either.

[More]

- JP

Quote of the Day (January 20, 2011)

"Why now? Hinderaker never addresses that question"
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William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

"Why now? Of all the moments to let loose on Palin, why on the cusp of the media assault over the Tucson shooting, which was not only a media attack on Palin but also on the entire conservative movement? Remember, while Palin was the focus of media attention because of the phony supposed connection of her electoral map to the shooting, there was a broader media attack on 'right-wing vitriol,' conservative talk show hosts, and other Republican politicians such as Michele Bachmann. Why at such a critical moment in time would one of the most widely read conservative blogs run a headline declaring the candidacy of Palin over? Hinderaker never addresses that question, which I believe is what upsets people the most. There is no need for uniformity of opinion, but there also is no need for gratuitous piling on in a manner which empowers those who willingly smear leading Republican figures."

- JP

Sarah Palin, Operation Demoralize and Wishful Thinking (Updated)

Hinderaker demonstrates how not to win in 2012
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Clinical Law Professor William A. Jacobson has a lesson for lawyer John Hinderaker: don't let the DMC's (Democrat/Media Complex's) scare tactics bully you into turning your back on one of the leading potential GOP presidential candidates.

Hinderaker, based on just two dubious polls sponsored by media outlets hostile to Sarah Palin, has folded up his spine and abandoned any pretense of support for Gov. Palin as the next Republican presidential nominee. We say "pretense" because neither Hinderaker nor his fellow legal eagles at Power Line have been among Sarah Palin's staunch supporters. That blog is not included on the roll of Palin-friendly websites at reference site The Book of Sarah because overall, PL has been more unfriendly than friendly to the alpha female of the Grizzly Bears.

Prof. Jacobson schools Hinderaker by simply pointing out that whether the GOP standard bearer for 2012 is Sarah Palin or some other Republican, the treatment of that candidate by the DMC will be the same, i.e. demonization:

You can throw Palin under the bus if you want, but what will you do when the next candidate faces blistering false accusations which drive negatives high after a mainstream media feeding frenzy?

Why not let the political and primary process work itself out. We do not even know if Palin is running, or if she will garner enough Republican support to win.

There is an insatiable mainstream media hunger to demonize and marginalize potential Republican nominees. Feeding that beast in the wake of the Tucson shooting is not the way to win in 2012.

Indeed, Hinderaker has taken the two DMC-sponsored polls at face value, loaded interview questions and all. But in another post, Jacobson calls attention to a third poll, one which which shows Gov. Palin down by 10% among registered voters and only 6% among voters who marked their ballots in 2010. These results are all the more remarkable, given that survey was conducted by Democrat pollsters Greenberg Quinlin Rosner, who have Democracy Corps on their client list, and given the intensive media invective against Gov. Palin both before and after events unfolded in Tuscon. The poll was conducted over the four days following the shootings, and the anti-Palin hysteria began literally just minutes after. As the professor observes:

Considering the beating Palin took in the media during the days in which the poll was being conducted, being down 10% is much better than would have been expected.

In both of his posts, Jacobson advises that Republicans, including conservatives, should let the primary process -- and not the Democrats and their obedient media -- decide who our presidential candidate will be in 2012.

As for us, we've never seen so many weak knees and spineless serpents in our lives as what we have seen not only in the GOP, but among the ranks of those who consider themselves conservatives as well. One would think that someone smart enough to earn a law degree would have enough sense not to fall for the DMC's opening gambit this early in the chess game.

Fortunately, Big Journalism's Mike Metroulas is made of sterner stuff than the three sisters at Power Line. Metroulas, a libertarian whose grad school studies were focused on Intellectual History, sees the DMC meme that Gov. Palin is political toast for what it is: wishful thinking:

As of now, if she wants it, it is hers. Of course, that may change, but a Palin run for the nomination would unleash a grassroots fury of support unseen on the right for a Republican presidential nominee in recent memory, and her detractors know it. Why else would much of the mainstream media be scrambling so often to convince independents that Palin isn’t viable? Plus, many of these people just do not like Palin and what she stands for, which is a pragmatic, principled view of government and fierce American individualism. Mainstream media types generally prefer theorizing about complex strategies and solutions to problems that were most likely created by over-theorizing in the first place. It’s how they were trained in academia and sometimes they just can’t help it. However, life isn’t complicated, and Sarah Palin knows it.

[...]

The core question I’d like answered is this: What is the purpose of this witch hunt if it’s not to rile people up against Sarah Palin? If she’s so damn irrelevant, then this effort can’t be political, can it? Lambasting her on national television, saying she is responsible for murder is inexcusable and it’s personal. Even so, if some whack job did take something Keith Olbermann spat out one night while in one of his hysterical fits and acted on it, Olby would not be culpable. Sarah Palin would agree with this, even if she knew that the person was influenced by Olbermann’s rhetoric. By the standard created for Palin in the Tucson case, Olbermann would be responsible. The problem, of course, is that the standard is completely bogus to begin with, a mere attempt to destroy Palin, with no basis in fact whatsoever. That’s where the “purport” comes into play in Palin’s statement; it’s all a hypocritical, theoretical lie. Did Palin talk about how evil Giffords is? No. Did she call Giffords the “Worst Person in the World” or say she was an accessory to murder? Why didn’t the media go after Chris Matthews or Olbermann or Ed Schultz? Aren’t they pretty abrasive?

Palin’s accusers in this case think rhetoric is powerful enough to influence people and yet there they are, spewing their garbage toward Palin, accusing her of the same thing they would be guilty of–under their own logic–should some loon act out violently toward Palin or any other right winger. If they are so certain that lively rhetoric is dangerous, why are they practicing it themselves? The obvious conclusion must be that they want to incite violence, right? Isn’t that a reasonable conclusion to come to when employing their logic?

Palin’s point was rock solid and her detractors played a silly game of semantics, claiming “She’s done!” along the way, all while discrediting themselves in the process, as Palin so adroitly pointed out.

She done kicked your a__es, boys and girls, all while expressing mainstream American principles that will make her the nominee in 2012, should she decide to run.

There's a scene in the first (Episode IV: A New Hope) Star Wars movie in which Luke Skywalker is curious how his mentor, Obi-wan Kenobi, was able to use his Jedi powers to dupe a Storm Trooper into allowing the two and their robots to pass through a checkpoint. Kenobi explains, "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded." Like The Force (Dark side, of course) the media's narrative can have a strong influence on those with weak knees.

Update: See John Hinderaker's Weak Defense Of His Palin Political Premortem

- JP

Quote of the Day (January 13, 2011)

The Three Media Stooges
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William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

"There really is no difference at this point between Markos Moulitsas, Keith Olbermann, and Paul Krugman. Actually, there is a difference. Moulitsas spreads disinformation knowing it is a lie, Olbermann doesn't care, and Krugman is too sanctimonious and self-righteous to recognize it."

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 29, 2010)

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William A. Jacobson at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

"I’ve put forth the proposition that the best way to defeat Obama is to put forward a conservative but non-controversial candidate who will keep the election focused on Obama... But as I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least. And whether that is just as likely to be successful in defeating Obama as the 'safe' route. Nothing and no one brings out the worst in the Democratic Party, in the liberal media, entertainment and academic establishments, and in the left-wing blogosphere, as does Sarah Palin. Bringing out this worst may be the path to a lasting, generational conservative victory. Maybe this is the battle which needs to be joined, once and for all."

- JP

Jacobson: Nuts and Sluts In Delaware

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Law Professor William Jacobson weighs in on the dirty nukes the GOP establishment has launched, with the grassroots candidate in Delaware as its target:

The "nuts and sluts" defense is a common employment law tactic whenever a female employee brings a claim. It doesn't matter what the claim is, the defense -- after the usual legal mumbo jumbo -- will be something like this:

"She's nuts. And by the way, pssst, she may be a slut."

That is the mode of attack Democrats use against conservative women. Sarah Palin is the prime example, as she routinely is called crazy and is sexualized by the left (to the silence of liberal feminist groups).

The nuts part of the attack is being used against Christine O'Donnell in Delaware by the local Republican establishment, and also by two leading conservative magazines, The Weekly Standard and National Review. If O'Donnell is so nuts, why did the Delaware Republican Party nominate her to run against Joe Biden just two years ago?

[...]

I am not "anti-Mike Castle," but I do have a problem with someone who was willing to destroy the economy by signing on to Nancy Pelosi's cap-and-trade plan. The vigorous attacks on Castle have been focused almost exclusively on his record and policy prescriptions. Almost none of the attacks on O'Donnell focus on her policies or political agenda.

Professor Jacobson adds:

Update: See what I mean:

"Our problem: Mike Castle makes John McCain look like Jim DeMint; Christine O'Donnell makes Sharron Angle look like Margaret Thatcher."

Read William Jacobson's full post at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

- JP

William Jacobson discusses Gov. Palin on Charlotte radio program

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Law Professor and blogger William Jacobson was interviewed recently by WBT-AM's Stacey Simms on "Charlotte's Morning News" about this post at his blog Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

You can listen to audio of the interview here.

- JP

Jacobson: CNN distorts already biased 60 Min./Vanity Fair poll about Gov. Palin

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At Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, law professor William A. Jacobson exposes the latest 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll as bogus and the reporting on it in the lamestream media as grossly distorted:

The headline of the day at CNN is TRENDING: Clear majority says Palin not qualified to be president...

This description of the poll is an outright fabrication. The actual poll question had nothing to do with credentials, qualifications, or even electability. Here was the actual question: "Do you think SARAH PALIN would have the ability to be an EFFECTIVE PRESIDENT?"

Similarly distorted versions are all over the internet, in which the authors misread the actual question asked, and use it to opine on Palin's qualifications or election prospects.

[...]

Again, there is no truth to the characterization that the poll concerned qualifications or election prospects.

(added) Whether someone would be an "effective" president could turn on a number of factors, including the strength of opposition.

[...]

These Vanity Fair polls are a joke; there are few choices given to the interviewees, there is no depth of questioning, and they mix pop culture questions... in with political questions.

That said, at least accurately report the question and the context.

Which is what HuffPo did, by also noting other polls on Palin's prospects:

While the 2012 election is a long way off and poll numbers are difficult to interpret, in one recent poll of potential 2012 matchups, conducted Aug. 6-9 by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 43% of registered voters said they would support Palin to 49% for Obama.

HuffPo more fair than CNN and Time Magazine. It has come to this.

Read Prof. Jacobson's full debunking of the ersatz 60 Minutes/VF poll here.

- JP

Quote of the Day (April 28, 2010)

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William A. Jacobson:

"Dave Weigel now blogs at The Washington Post... At least now he knows what it is like to experience Palin Derangement Syndrome first hand... Welcome to the club."

- JP