Anyone who has ever attended a large protest rally is bound to encounter his fair share of kooks, loons and assorted fringe elements.  At the Santa Monica Tea Party I attended in April 2009, I talked with a 9/11 Truther, who seemed to have showed up not so much because he agreed with the small-government rhetoric of the assembled protesters, but because it was, well, a gathering of protesters.  And he wanted the chance to wave his sign.

Over a Politico, in a piece lamenting that despite promise that the of Barack Obama would “transform the charged, stilted ‘national conversation’ about race into a smarter and more authentic dialogue,” Ben Smith finds that instead “the conversation just got dumber.” He observes further that “while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America.”

Except MSNBC won’t tell you that.

They’ve been rooting around for racism not as a means to expose bigots, but as as a part of their campaign to discredit conservatives.  Their goal (as well as that of others peddling the racist narrative) isn’t honest reporting, but, to borrow a famous phrase, the politics of personal destruction.  Maybe they’re trying to convince themselves that conservatives really are the horrible, no good and very bad people they imagine them to be.

They want to match the reality of the world to the images inside their head.  And to do so, they have to pretend that it’s only at rallies protesting Democratic politicians and liberal policies than you find nutbags and kookooheads.  They have, as one scholar put it, “overplayed” the race card.  And in so doing, Democratic politicians and left-of-center pundits and reporters have, if anything, exacerbated racial tensions in this country — undermining, more than anything perhaps, the greatest promise of Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds links an article on race and quips: “REUTERS: Analysis: Race issues beset Obama’s “post-racial” presidency. Well, he’s played the race card nonstop, but it’s no longer trumps.”

I’m cutting Bruce a little more slack than he did himself due to the limitations of this medium.  I know from our (all all too) infrequent communications that he has been very busy with work and yet remains very eager to blog.  It is no wonder he jumped on the Shirley Sherrod story.  As he put it: “(My one attempt at a lame excuse is that my “window” to blog comes and goes and it just happened to open up when the Sherrod video was first going viral).”

With a more flexible schedule than he (and delighted in the distraction of blogging/internet surfing as I struggle with the outline for the next chapter of my dissertation), I have more time at my disposal to flesh out stories.  (When I recognized there might be more to the story, I joined the Anchoress in wanting to see more of the story before passing judgment.)

So, Bruce’s is more than an attempt at a lame excuse.  Unlike the folks in the MSM, the NAACP or the Administration, we lack staffs to assist us in looking into these matters.  What he calls a “lame excuse” is in fact a very real acknowledgment of the nature of blogging.

To be sure, I would that Bruce had said something about wanting to see the rest of the video (when he first posted it).   That said, as quickly as we can get thing out there, we can retract and/or apologize for them.  And Bruce did that as soon as he became aware of the nature of his error.

The head of the NAACP, by contrast, who had more ready access to the full video (than did Bruce or Andrew Breitbart) (as well as to people, you know, members of the organization he heads, who attended the confab where Mrs. Sherrod spoke), doesn’t, as Ann Althouse puts it, “acknowledge this personal responsibility.”   (more…)

I want to apologize to my readers and to Shirley Sherrod.  I was one of the first bloggers to re-publish the excerpted video from Andrew Breitbart regarding Ms. Sherrod’s speech to the NAACP. 

Clearly, this has turned into a much more complex story than a simple case of “RAAAAAAACIST” based on one video clip.  I should have known better on Monday.

That being said, I should not have been so hasty to post the video and engage in the same type of sweeping behavior of labeling Americans as “RAAAAACIST” as, for example, the NAACP has to millions of American in the TEA Party movement.

I will make no excuses, I apologize and I regret that I didn’t let this story simmer for a little longer.  I got swept into the “gotcha” mentality of the moment on Monday when this video appeared.  I haven’t pulled it down because I do appreciate the commenters’ clarifying the situation as time went along and because I do not want to hide from my mistake.

(My one attempt at a lame excuse is that my “window” to blog comes and goes and it just happened to open up when the Sherrod video was first going viral).

The fact of the matter is there is too much of a rush to judgment in America (i.e. – the Obama Admin firing Sherrod immediately without investigating) these days and the consequences are personal to those individuals touched.

I cannot promise that I won’t make another rush-to-blog error in the future.  But I wanted to get it on the record that on this one, I goofed.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

For the longest time I’ve puzzled over this conundrum:  if liberal intellectuals are so smart and so well-read, why so some have so much trouble with the mere expression of conservative views.

Now, to be sure, there are many (many, many) pundits, politicians and academics on the left who welcome spirited discourse and engage regularly in exchanges with their ideological adversaries (on the right).  But, there is a significant mass of supposedly very smart liberals who regularly disdain a philosophy they show no evidence of understanding who regular seek to discredit its advocates with mean-spirited (and frequently) slanderous slurs, accusing their adversaries of sinister motives while working energetically to prevent the public expression of their ideas.

They don’t just see conservatives as wrong-headed, but as evil.  Having perused the archives of the Journolist, Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller provides evidence of this narrow-minded animus:

On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.

Assuming the worst of conservatives, no wonder they regularly criticize FoxNews which regularly airs those views.  In his piece, Strong provides yet another piece of evidence that rather than confront the conservative ideas which Fox covers more thoroughly than do its broadcast rivals and cable counterparts, a fair number of supposedly broad-minded liberal journalists wish to have the FCC shut the news network down:

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down. (more…)

Like the Anchoress (whom I quoted when I addressed the matter), I wanted to hear more before rendering judgment on (former) USDA official Shirley Sherrod before passing judgment.  Once again, that blogress pretty much expresses my feelings on the matter:

In my post yesterday, I was pretty clear that the Breitbart tape wasn’t sitting well with me. Ms. Sherrod–still not a great speaker–clearly was on her way to relate a tale that indicted her own understanding, when that tape ended.

Then, she goes on to put the story in a larger context:

There is absolutely nothing simple about the matter of race in America; there is a ways to go before content of character will finally overcome color of skin. But I am not sure if further progress toward a truly color-blind society can be made until the manufactured cry of “raaaaacism”–by people who know that their are merely fanning flames or manipulating movements–has finally been rejected by both the right and the left. Race-baiters must be made to understand that their cheap tactic will no longer bear weight among fair-minded people, who are horrified by genuine racism but tired of its weaponized unreasonable facsimile.

In a nation that has come far enough to see African-Americans hold its highest offices, and wield enormous power–power given to them by people of all races and backgrounds, who can and will take it back at their own pleasure–the overplayed charge of “racism” among the chatterers is not only toxic, it is self-revelatory: it betrays their own tawdry cynicism, and their own racial fixations.

Read the whole thing.  Via Instapundit who has a great roundup.

Our reader ILoveCapitalism makes a good point that the extended video reveals that she hasn’t let go of her groupthink mentality: (more…)

Over at Sonicfrog, our correspondent looks into one of the reviews supposedly clearing “climate science of any wrongdoing in the Climategate scandal.”  He finds that, well, their inquiry was quite selective:

We already knew that the very small list of papers that were reviewed by the Oxburgh panel, twelve to be precise, were cherry-picked to provide as little damning evidence as possible – none of the papers reviewed were those that skeptics have issues with. We already knew that NOT ONE SKEPTIC of note was interviewed to discuss possible issues to be looked into. Well, now we find out that the papers that were chosen, were not only chosen by the University being investigated, East Anglia, but were given final approval by the very same Dr. Phil Jones, the man at the center of the entire Climategate controversy.

Read the whole thing.  To paraphrase Sonicfrog, wonder how Congress would react if BP were allowed to select the sites a commission investigated its safety record was allowed to investigate.

We have seen how ready left-wing pundits (and Democratic politicians) are to brand conservative activists as racists.  We have seen gay activists label anyone who disagrees with their agenda as haters.   And yet, despite their rhetoric, they never manage to acknowledge the bile and bitterness on their own side  – or in their own hearts.

At least not in public.

But, in what they assumed was the privacy of their own peers, they have begun to ‘fess up.  One liberal journalist admitted that she would delight if she saw a certain conservative suffering from a heart attack:

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio,* that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

Emphasis added.  She would delight in the pain of another.  Not Osama bin Laden, but Rush Limbaugh, a man who offers a different political perspective than she does–and draws a considerably larger audience.  A man whose radio program doesn’t rely on a federal subsidy to maintain its operations.

Remember Ms. Spitz draws her salary from a corporation which derives its income from our tax dollars.  If a conservative were working for NPR (well that political viewpoint would be enough to disqualify hrt from appointment in the first place) and said such a thing about a prominent liberal, she would be vilified in the media and fired from her job. (more…)

The release this morning of various e-mails from left-of-center journalists and bloggers on the attempt of some members of the Journolist listserv to squelch media coverage in 2008 of then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s relationship with a racist pastor shows just what’s behind attempts to smear the Tea Parties as racist.

It has nothing to do with the alleged prejudices of Tea Party protesters, but with politics. As Ed Morrissey put it, “the racist attack — was deliberately political:”

Let’s put this in its proper perspective.  Ackerman wasn’t talking about a strategy to exposereal racists, in the media or anywhere else.  The Washington Independent reporter wanted to conduct a campaign against any figure on the Right, including journalists like Fred Barnes, to smear him as a racist for the political purposes of electing a Democrat to the White House.  Notice that Ackerman doesn’t even bother to ask people to look for actual evidence of racism, but just suggests to pick a conservative name out of a hat.  Tellingly, the pushback from members of Journolist had less to do with the outrageous idea of smearing an innocent person of racism to frighten people away from the story than with whether it would work.

Bold added.

Ed adds, “It certainly puts efforts by the Left to paint the Tea Party as racist in an entirely new light.”  Indeed it does.

Guess evidence doesn’t really matter when you’re trying to peddle a narrative about conservative racism.  Do hope Barney Frank and other Democrats will “differentiate themselves” from the attempt to smear conservatives a racist.

Meanwhile, we have one more piece of evidence to show that some of the left attack conservatives as racist not based on a evidence, but as a means to discredit their political adversaries.

UPDATE:   (more…)

At least since I was in college and first hinted at my attraction to men, friends and acquaintances to the left of the political center have suggested I adopted the conservative political views I held to hide my homosexual feelings.  If I would just come out, I would experience this sudden illumination and easily see the error of my ways.

Even today, while long since open about such feelings, some on the left inveigh against my “ideological affiliation”, arguing that I won’t have completely come to terms with my sexuality until I swear fealty to the Democratic ideology dominant in the gay community.  Basically, these broad-minded leftists assume we hold our political views for reasons unrelated to the merits of our ideas.  There has to be a psychological reason — or some other personal motive.

Not how one critic responded to my regular reminder than monogamy was an essential aspect of marriage (in a comment to a post that didn’t address monogamy):  ”You also zero in on the idea of monogamy, and it always leads me to wonder: have you been particularly cheated on?”

Wonder why it didn’t occur to the reader that it has been my study of the institution — and not just in Western culture — that led to my repeated references to monogamy.

This notion that all too many on the left are constantly seeking a personal motive to conservatives’ expressing views at odds with the liberal worldview came to mind earlier today when I read Jonathan Strong’s Daily Caller piece on the “radical steps” a group of liberal journalists took to protect “their favored candidate” by attempting to squelch stories of Barack Obama’s relationship with a racist pastor. (more…)

With the appointment of Carte Goodwin to the seat of the late Robert Byrd, Senate Democrats are set to break the Republican filibuster against Democratic attempts to extend unemployment benefits without adhering to President Obama’s campaign pledge to “pay for his new spending plans with even bigger spending cuts.“

That imminent appointment didn’t stop the president yesterday from attacking Republicans:

Obama launched a fresh salvo Monday, demanding the Senate act on the legislation — after a vote already had been scheduled — and criticizing Republicans for the holdup.

“The same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans,” Obama said.

Republicans say they do favor the benefits but insist they be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere in the government’s $3.7 trillion budget. After initially feeling heat this winter when a lone GOP senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, briefly blocked a benefits extension in February, the GOP has grown increasingly comfortable opposing the legislation.

So ready is this post-partisan politician to attack Republicans that he misrepresents their record.  They’re not saying the government shouldn’t provide relief, only that that relief should be paid for with spending cuts — almost exactly what he said in his campaign infomercial at the close of the 2008 presidential contest.

In short, the Republican filibuster is an attempt to hold the Democrat to his campaign promises.

Amazing that he has resorted to misrepresenting the Republican position in order to attack.  Wonder why that is.

Bill Clinton, the only Democratic president to be elected to two terms as chief executive since the first half of the last century, has been much in the news of late, with the Washington Examiner‘s Julie Mason recently commenting on a report from Ed Henry of CNN about the administration “deploying” the former president “to help close the gap for the party this fall.”

But, I would warn Mr. Obama to be wary of this particular predecessor.  Clinton showed that he was ever ready to jettison his ideology (if even had one) and even his party for political survival.  His triangulation strategy of 1995-96 sought to distance himself from the Democratic party — as well as the GOP — in order to secure his own reelection.

Bill Clinton, in short, always looks out for his own interests.  He has little to gain by the reelection of Barack Obama in 2012.  Indeed, he has much to lose by it.  Should Obama prevail in the coming presidential contest, Clinton will lose his singular status as the only Democrat since FDR to be reelected president.

Not just that, with Obama no longer in the Oval Office, Clinton would resume his role as the nation’s most prominent (and possibly most popular) Democrat.

This most legacy-obsessed president saw that legacy not in ideological, but personal terms.

While, on its surface, the video that Bruce posted earlier today presents pretty strong evidence of the NAACP welcoming the racial attitudes of an Obama Administration official, like the Anchoress, “I want the rest of the story before I start passing judgment on it“:

I want to see the rest of the tape. I cannot believe Sherrod ended on “I took him to one of his own.” Either she said something much worse after that (which we would have seen) or she said something much better.

If it was something “better” then we should have seen that, too.

Via Instapundit.

That said, with the attitudes of the Department of Justice toward the Black Panther case as well as this woman’s initial attitude toward a white man in need, we have considerable evidence of racial attitudes in the Obama Administrations, attitudes that the mainstream media is all but ignoring while dwelling on the NAACP resolution and a few isolated racially-tinged signs at Tea parties.

It seems that whenever I have gone to the gym these past few days, I look up to see something on CNN about the NAACP resolution; the “news” network almost always features the same stock footage of four, maybe five signs, only two clearly racist, one likely a fabrication of a Tea Party crasher.  (Wonder if CNN investigated the phenomenon of Tea Party crashers.)

Now, I wonder if the NAACP has been harping on the alleged racism of the Tea Parties, basing their resolution, in large part, on unsubstantiated charges, in a desperate bid to make the organization relevant in an age when most Americans increasingly see race an increasingly irrelevant and warm to Dr. King’s dream that his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Well, maybe not so desperate given the makeup of the MSM today. (more…)

Whoa baby. When Breitbart is on fire… he is ON FIRE!

We are in possession of a video from in which Shirley Sherrod, USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development, speaks at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia. In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions.

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

I love Andrew because he, like me, hates hypocrisy and has a nose to find it.  Sniff away, Breitbart!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Hope AND Change!  And Socialism….

The Treasury Department failed to consider the economic fallout when it told General Motors and Chrysler to quickly shutter many dealerships as part of government-led bankruptcies, a federal watchdog found.

A report released Sunday by the Inspector General for the government’s bailout program raised questions about whether the Obama administration’s auto task force considered the job losses from the closings while pressuring the companies to reduce costs.

Treasury didn’t show why the cuts were “either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” said the audit by Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $787 billion stimulus program known as TARP.

“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses,” investigators said.

Those decisions resulted in “potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” the report said.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Given the media coverage of the Clarence Thomas hearings now nearly 20 years ago, you’d think the American people had been overwhelmingly opposed to the confirmation of that good man to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And while his critics kept up their criticism of that man even after he took his seat on the court, his supporters were, by and large, content to let him do his job (hence a decline in his support).

But, at the close of his confirmation hearings when both sides were actively pursuing their case, nearly three in five Americans supported his confirmation while fewer than a third were against.  Contrast that with the support Elena Kagan currently enjoys.  Her support is only “lukewarm” with fewer  than half of all Americans supporting her confirmation.  58% of Americans supported that of Justice Thomas, more than supported the confirmation of Democrats Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Sonia Sotomayor:

If confirmed, Kagan would be the first successful nominee in recent years whose nomination was backed by less than a majority of Americans in the final poll before the Senate confirmation vote (or, in the case of Harriet Miers, before her nomination was withdrawn).

Somehow, I don’t think this will generate much commentary outside the rightosphere.

Save for a brief few months in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Democratic Senate leaders in succession, first Tom Daschle (until voters in his state tossed him out), then Harry Reid, used the parliamentary tactics at their disposal to block numerous initiatives from then then-Republican president, including reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that might have forestalled — or at least mitigated — the financial crisis of 2008.

At no point in his Administration did George W. Bush face a Senate where his party had enough votes to block a Democratic filibuster nor were there enough Republicans to block one by picking up just one or two Democratic votes.  Now, his successor whose party has a much stronger Senate caucus (in term of numbers) than he ever did gets all upset when Republican Senators do almost exactly the same thing his caucus did when he was in the Senate:

President Barack Obama is taking aim at Senate Republicans, accusing them of playing politics with measures that would extend benefits to the unemployed and increase lending to small businesses.

Striking a deeply partisan tone in his weekly Saturday radio and online address, Obama said the GOP leadership has chosen to “filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress” by blocking votes on agenda items the president says would breath life into the economic recovery.

Note, this isn’t a campaign speech, but an official presidential address.

And there’s something else to note.  Back in the dark days of the Bush Administration, such MSM outlets as the New York Times defended Democratic use of the filibuster.  It was clear back then that first Daschle, then Reid, were trying to obstruct the president’s agenda.  Indeed, they all but said as much.  And now Republicans are merely trying to block an item on the president’s wish list because of concerns about the lack of funds to pay for it.  Meanwhile, Democrats reject Republican attempts to use already allocated “stimulus” funds to pay for these benefits.

Wonder if the media will take the president to task for playing the politics of division.

Why must this new kind of politician always attack the opposition in bitter partisan terms??

Perhaps had one of our perennial critics not be in such a rush to slander conservatives and had he paid more attention to the ideas I express in my posts, he might have realized how one of his points on gay marriage quite closely resembled my own.  While suggesting that those he deems “the guardians of the hallowed institution of marriage” were not sincere in their support of monogamy, darkly hinting of their hypocrisy, this critic contended they “could learn a few things from their married gay counterparts.”

Now, one reason I have long encouraged gay marriage advocates to make the case for including same-sex unions in the protections the various states (and the federal government) grant to different-sex couples who elect traditional marriage is that I believe that very advocacy will remind straight people what marriage is all about.  Indeed, Jonathan Rauch said as much in 2004 when he promoted his then-just released book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America (a study I have long recommended, in large part due to the chapter on What Marriage is For) at a Los Angeles bookstore.  That gay marriage advocate told his audience how when he was talking about his book in another city, a straight person thanked him for reminding him what the institution was all about.

In promoting gay marriage, if sincere in its promotion, advocates make the case not just for state recognition of same-sex marriage, but also for strengthening “traditional marriages.”

Now, while my critic has somehow gained the notion that I wish to curry favor with social conservatives, I wonder how many of them would accept my contention that a sincere argument for state recognition of same-sex marriage would be a social conservative one.  Indeed, when Andrew Sullivan was making a sensible case for gay marriage (as opposed to the silly and selfish one he is making today), he all but admitted as much.

Simply put, marriage as an institution, as it has long been defined, promotes social stability and discourages promiscuity.  It forces us to consider the welfare of others, making us look outward and helps us become less selfish.  At the same time, it has profoundly selfish aspects, if we could but see mutual selfishness as a good thing.

And it helps integrate the new partner into his (or her) spouse’s family.  Recently, I learned how a left-of-center lesbian blogress found greater welcome in her wife’s socially conservative family when she looked out for her when her beloved was ill.  Another friend of mine helped his beloved’s blue-blooded family see the depth of his love and the genuineness of his concern for his schweetie when he cared for that fine young man when he was hospitalized. (more…)

On Wednesday night when I returned from my shift at Outfest, I started writing a piece on marriage, fleshing out an idea I had earlier in the week for which I had intended my post on Elizabeth Gilbert’s book to serve as a prelude.  But, as I wrote, I found the words on the screen didn’t match the ideas in my head.  Or at least the ideas that had been in my head when I had initially conceived the post.

I also had an idea for a post on the Dodd/Frank financial regulation bill which the Senate passed this week–how it was crafted by two individuals who have spent their professional careers in government, having never worked in the entrepreneurial or financial sectors — and thus having had no real world of experience of financing an enterprise or creating jobs.  I doubted whether the bill would help the anemic economy, indeed, thought it might well prolong the credit crunch.

For some reason, yesterday, likely due to the heat, I just couldn’t write either piece yesterday.  My mind was elsewhere.  I couldn’t focus my thoughts–much as I tried.  Then, this morning, while doing cardio in anticipation of my workout, the whole marriage piece just kind of wrote itself.  Would it that I had had a tape recorder.  I did scribble some notes after working out and hope to get to the post later this afternoon, but must first take care of several requirements related to my day-to-day existence as well as my civic “responsibilities.”

Once again, there’s just something about writing.  Sometimes the words don’t flow when you’d like (need?) them to.  And then when you’re not even thinking about the issue you wish to address, there they are.  And at moment when you like the means to preserve and/or transmit them.

On Wednesday, I wrote that when crafting their narratives about the right, many on the left dispense with the facts and adhere to their prejudices (about conservatives).  This morning, Glenn Reynolds links a video which provides further evidence of that mind-set: Protesters Claim Tea Party is Racist, Can’t Point to Any Evidence.

RELATED (also via Instapundit):  Left-wing blog uses clip of racist infiltrator at Tea Party, claims he represents Tea Parties.

We all know how liberals love to loathe the immediate past Governor of the Last Frontier, who, based on the latest media reports, is best known as the future mother-in-law of Levi Johnston.

Well, Jim Geraghty alerts us to a new poll by the Democratic polling firm, Public Policy Polling (PPP), that shows Sarah Palin, despite approval ratings that are seriously underwater, tied with the incumbent Democrat:

With his approval numbers hitting new lows it’s no surprise that Barack Obama’s numbers in our monthly look ahead to the 2012 Presidential race are their worst ever this month. He trails Mitt Romney 46-43, Mike Huckabee 47-45, Newt Gingrich 46-45, and is even tied with Sarah Palin at 46. The only person tested he leads is Jan Brewer, who doesn’t have particularly high name recognition on the national level at this point.

It’s not that any of the Republican candidates are particularly well liked. Only Huckabee has positive favorability numbers at 37/28. Romney’s at 32/33, Gingrich at 32/42, Palin at 37/52, and Brewer at 17/20. But with a majority of Americans now disapproving of Obama it’s no surprise that a large chunk of them would replace him as President if they had that choice today.

Emphasis added.