I’m going to withhold final judgment on Sarah Palin’s decision to step down as Governor of Alaska until we see exactly why she made the choice.

 Right now, I find myself somewhat sympathetic to Russ Douthat’s view:

A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans who despise her. A Sarah Palin who resigned in the delusional belief that it would give her a better shot at the presidency in 2012 warrants no such kindness.

(It’s a good piece and I highly recommend it.)

Perhaps, it’s because I’ve been spending time these past few days with my sister and watching her delight in her maternity,* I “sense” that Governor Palin wants to spend more time with her children–and grandchild.   After all, her youngest daughter is just eight years old and her baby Trig is just fourteen months.

Kids that young require lots of attention.

Sarah Palin is relatively young (politically speaking).   She can wait until 2016 or 2020 to run for President.  She can put off her political career, but she can’t put off her maternal one.

* (more…)

As hundreds of thousands of Americans (including my co-blogger) rallied across the country in Tea Parties, protesting larger, more intrusive government and higher taxes, it seems that a growing number of their fellow citizens share their sentiments.

Michelle linked a new Gallup survey confirming something which polling data over the past few months has been making manifest, Americans are moving to the right:

Despite the results of the 2008 presidential election, Americans, by a 2-to-1 margin, say their political views in recent years have become more conservative rather than more liberal, 39% to 18%, with 42% saying they have not changed. While independents and Democrats most often say their views haven’t changed, more members of all three major partisan groups indicate that their views have shifted to the right rather than to the left.

Guess people needed to see liberalism in action.  Or maybe now that there is no longer an ostensibly conservative party in power not adhering to conservative ideals, it becomes easier for the Americans to reassert their natural conservative instincts.

So, once again in an era of big government, conservative ideas are becoming ascendant.    Thus, it behooves the GOP to reassert Reaganite ideas and stand true to our core principles.

Should we do that, we may well win back our majorities in Congress — and state legislatures.

UPDATE:  Commenting on this poll, John Hinderaker offers:

. . . .voters tend to turn to the “outs” when they become fed up with the “ins.” It appears that not too many voters were fed up with the Republicans because the party was too conservative. Nevertheless, there was enough dissatisfaction with Republican governance that the other guys got a shot. It seems reasonable to expect that the Democrats might wear out their welcome sooner than the Republicans did, since, in addition to the usual grievances that accumulate and erode support for the party in power, the Democrats are taking the country in a direction where the voters don’t particularly want it to go.

Emphasis added. Read the whole thing!

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? “Coffee May Reverse Alzheimer’s.”

Guess that settles the question about getting a refill.

It seems serendipitously synchronous that I’ve been reading Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror during a week in which Sarah Palin has been back in the headlines.  In the first half of his book, Glazov details the political pilgrimages various intellectuals, artists and assorted left-wingers have made over the years to tyrannies and proclaimed their rulers to be enlightened despots, describing those brutal tyrants in terms mythologies reserved for deities and heroes of ancient legend.

They did not portray Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh or Fidel Castro as not the actual man who respectively presided over Russia, China, North Vietnam and Cuba, but the heroic figure of their imagination.  The political pilgrims just projected characteristics of an imaginary, benevolent wise man onto the actual presence of a tyrant who was trying to remake a nation in the image of the ideology to which he subscribed.  The intellectuals saw each tyrant as they wanted to see him, eager to have a ruler adversarial to their nation embody all the noble qualities they found lacking in their own leaders.

And just as they project benign qualities onto our nation’s adversaries, they project malign ones onto conservative leaders in the United States.  From Ronald Reagan to Sarah Palin, charismatic conservatives have been a particular object of their scorn.

Governor Palin’s resignation has become yet another chance to just how obsessed they have become with this good woman.   Just consider all the conspiracy theories they are spinning about theabout her recent decision.  They don’t seem to allow facts to interfere with their analysis.

Just as the Zorastranians had a benign (Ahura Mazda) and maleficent (Angra Mainyu) deity, so do today’s liberals have their benign and malign deities, yet, unlike followers of this ancient tradition, they  describe real life human beings in terms the faithful reserved for beings who did not no longer assumed human form on this earth.

Just wonder at how they refused to let go of Mrs. Palin even when her ticket was defeated last fall and she departed from the national stage.  What is it about her which gets them so upset and causes them to spin so many conspiracy theories?

Seems I’ve inspired the Youngest PatriotNephewWest to ponder the mysteries of the universe:

Or maybe that’s just what happens when you snuggle up in Daddy’s arms while your favorite uncle sits nearby.