May build on this post later.  Was just at a brunch where a very intelligent man refused to accept that Sarah Palin had a record of accomplishment as Governor of Alaska.  Why is it that some Democrats (and a few Republicans) refuse to acknowledge — or even familiarize themselves with this woman’s record?

Is it because she is a woman?

I mean, when John McCain tapped her as his running mate, she enjoyed a 75% approval rating . . . among Alaska Democrats.  When Katie Couric interviewed the then-Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, the CBS News anchor didn’t once ask her interlocutor about her record.  Or what she had done to win support among Democrats as well as Republicans.

Do these folks just assume that a woman can’t stand up to a corrupt political establishment and effect real reforms?

If, back in 2008, our legacy media had taken the time to look into Sarah Palin’s actual record in Alaska politics, three names of corrupt politicians would forever be associated with her, Frank Murkowski, Greg Renkes and Randy Ruedrich.  And the reason we would associate their names with hers was not because she turned a blind eye to their double-dealing, but because she exposed it.

She stood up against corruption in her own party.  Each of those men is a Republican.  As she put it in her post yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government:

Barack Obama and I both served in political office in states with a serious corruption problem. Though there is a big difference between serving as the CEO of a city, then a state, and regulating domestic energy resources, and being a liberal Community Organizer, bear with me on the comparison. The difference between my record and Barack Obama’s is that I fought the corrupt political machine my entire career (and I have twenty years of scars to prove it) on the local, state, and national level. But Obama didn’t fight the corruption he encountered. He went along with it to advance his career.

Read the whole thing.

And yet our friends in the legacy media bought into the claim that that career Chicago poll was some new kind of politician.  They neither asked nor looked for any evidence to buttress his claims.

Sarah Palin, by contrast, had a real record of reform.  It’s just that some journalists thought her tanning bed of greater interest.

But, we’ve been through this before.  That said, it serves as an important reminder about necessary battlefield preparation for the coming presidential contest.

NB:  Tweaked the title to make it less clunky

“Apparently“, writes Rob at JoshuaPundit, “Rush Limbaugh meant what he said when he told his listeners, ‘Those advertisers who no longer want your business, fine, we’ll replace them.‘”

The conservative talker, who has apologized for slurring a woman who defended the administration’s contraception mandate, is taking in stride the handful of companies no longer advertising on his program:

Less than an hour after AOL officially became the eighth company to pull its ads from Limbaugh’s radio show, the conservative host cracked a joke [then] continued his broadcast in typical, pontificating fashion. . . .

While the conservative host said that the advertisers’ disaffiliation was a “shame,” at the end of the day he just doesn’t care.

“Those advertisers who no longer want your business, fine,” Limbaugh continued. “We’ll replace them. It’s simple, really.”

You know the Limbaugh-haters should have left well enough alone when the talker apologized.  I think that’s called quitting when you’re ahead, right?  Well, as they continue to demonize the popular broadcaster, his standing among conservatives will only strengthen.

Rush is not the only conservative to see a coordinated attack backfire.  Seems that HBO, despite massive promotions, had trouble scrounging up an audience for “Game Change”.  Only a handful of its subscribers, writes John Nolte, “bothered to tune into one of the most hyped movies in the history of television. Glitzy, glamorous premieres, all kinds of free publicity through the cable news outlets, controversy galore, and yet ‘Pawn Stars’ kicked its ass.”  He quotes the Washington Post:

One massive marketing and GOP-undies-bunching campaign later, the unveiling ofHBO’s Sarah Palin flick, “Game Change,” attracted 2.123 million viewers Saturday night at 9. HBO says “Game Change” brought in the biggest original-movie opening crowd in about eight years.

To put the audience in perspective, that’s slightly fewer people than sat down the next afternoon at 2 to watch a rerun episode of History’s “Pawn Stars” (2.129 million viewers). (more…)

Don Surber was on a roll this past weekend. Glenn linked his must-read post on the videos linking Barack Obama to radical law professor Derrick Bell:

This video will not bring down President Obama. His sorry record of no accomplishments will. We cannot afford to live in 2008 and mope about Obama not being vetted. The job before us is to show that the last 3+ years have sucked and 4 more years of Obama — a red-blooded, true Christian American who was born in Hawaii — will suck even harder.

While over at Surber’s site, I caught up on some of his recent posts, including this critique of Rick Santorum’s organization, a piece on the record level of polar ice, an alert to an Obama campaign attack on Sarah Palin, and the video included at the end of this post.

And he post the chart “Obama used to sell the $787 billion stimulus” contrasting the unemployment rate projected when he put forward the nearly $800 billion program with the latest figures.  Not only is the unemployment rate 2.3% higher than the administration forecast, but it’s even higher than the level expected “without” the “recovery plan.”

He contends the Palin ad shows that the president runs “on diversion” that the Democrat “is running for re-election as a troll.”  Do hope my fellow Republicans follow the lead of another conservative blogger, Jim Hoft and focus on another Democratic attempt at diversion, illegal robocalls targeting Republican Congressmen who just happen to be on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) hit list.

If the Democrats are so confident of victory this November, how come they keep trying to distract voters? (more…)

You have to wonder about people in politics who define themselves by their animosities.  Some people seem to spend the better parts of their day obsessing about Sarah Palin and other right-wingers who figure prominently in their demonology.  If you really hated this accomplished reformer, why would you want to subject yourself to seeing her picture every day on your wall calendar:

WTF stands for Winning the Future, right? We conservatives tend to put up Ronald Reagan Wall Calendars — not those mocking Jimmy Carter.

It’s not just the publishers of this wall calendar who obsess over the former Alaska Governor. As Byron York reported last month, “‘Game Change,’ the movie version of the 2008 campaign best-seller that premieres” next week on HBO, has a peculiarly Palin focus:

The book, by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, focused equally on the bitter contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the troubled McCain-Palin ticket that went down to defeat in November ’08.

But the movie is about just one topic: Sarah Palin. Director Jay Roach jettisoned most of the book’s riveting political story so he could focus on the tumultuous period in which John McCain chose the then-governor of Alaska as his running mate. (more…)

A few days ago, Bruce alerted me to Pat Dollard’s tweet reminding us that current MSNBC host Al Sharpton once referenced “Greek homos.”  After a quick google search, I learned that the left-leaning pundit also used a term that caused the folks at HRC to get their panties all in a bunch when the daughter of a prominent Republican celebrity used it.

Although I could find no reference online indicating that HRC rebuked the bombastic Reverend for his use of the term, they did honor him in 2005 as one of their “Top 10 Straight Advocates for Gay and Transgender Rights“.

Now, people can surely change.  And perhaps HRC did fault Mr. Sharpton when he made these statements and their rebukes are no longer online.  But, that man did, in recent years, defend a prejudiced pastor who used anti-gay rhetoric.

Wonder why HRC and GLAAD are not calling for him to publicly rebuke his past statements in order to retain his post on MSNBC.  I mean, if they called on Sarah Palin to apologize publicly for her teenage daughter’s remark.

Just sayin’ . . .

Commenting on a Newsweek cover designed to make Michele Bachmann look demonic, Michelle Malkin posts (with numerous examples on  ”The liberal media fetish of demonizing conservative women and their looks goes back years.”

It is a fascinating phenomenon.  Wouldn’t feminists want conservative women to succeed to show females earning the accolades of the Republican rank and file and demonstrating a capacity to lead?

Yesterday, Jim Geraghty reprinted account that Mike Allen had included in his newsletter from Politico about a meeting of hedge-fund billionaires in New York where “venture capitalist Ken Langone . . . implored New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to reconsider and seek the GOP presidential nomination.”  Several in the audience indicated that they were Republican show voted for Obama because they “couldn’t live with Sarah Palin”:

Many said they were severely disappointed in the president. The biggest complaint was what several called “class warfare.” They said they didn’t understand what they had done to deserve that: If you want to have a conversation about taxation, have a conversation. But a president shouldn’t attack his constituents — he’s not the president of some people, he’s president of all the people. Someone mentioned Huey Long populism.

Well, does seem the media did their job, destroying the reputation of Mrs. Palin while ignoring the background of Mr. Obama, leading Geraghty to comment:

But not all of us are shocked and stunned about Obama’s class warfare and his demonization of you and the sense that he doesn’t think of himself as your president too. Some of us spent two years telling anyone who would listen that he was a lot more liberal than his bland, blank-slate rhetoric suggested. And was all of this worth it because you “couldn’t live” with Sarah Palin? Really?

Emphasis added.  We had news media rifling through Mrs. Palin’s garbage, yet uninterested in checking out Mr. Obama’s story, so much did they swoon over his narrative.  And now, bit by bit, we’re learning not just how far left he’s always been, but also how he’s misrepresented his own background.

Many in our mainstream media have taken Barack Obama’s word as gospel.  And when it comes to subjecting him to the same sort of scrutiny to which they subject Republicans, particularly Republican women, well, they’ve just taken a pass.

So, MSNBC has suspended its senior political analyst Mark Halperin for using a derogatory synonym for wiener to describe the president.  Calling “Halperin’s crack . . . crude and dumb,” Greg Sargent says, “it doesn’t deserve indefinite suspension.”

Two years ago, over on CBS, David Letterman said that then-governor of Alaska had the style of a “slutty flight attendant” and joked about a baseball player having sex with hee teenage daughter.  The former funnyman was not suspended and still appears on the air.

Guess MSNBC must just have stricter standards for political discourse than CBS.

It seems that Sarah Palin arrived just in time for the Bush-hating left.  In 2008, as the much (and mostly unfairly) maligned President of the United States was preparing to head off into a constitutionally-mandated retirement, his political party nominated the charismatic governor of Alaska as its vice presidential candidate.

And ever since, those who once projected their inner demons on George W. Bush found a new target for their wrath.  He might be going into retirement, but they would still have a Republican to revile.

So much has their demonology of Sarah Palin developed that her haters remain clueless how this accomplished reformer earned so much respect among Republican reformers — even before John McCain tapped the Alaskan as his running mate.  Indeed, mainstream media outlets were so convinced they’d find dirt in her recently released e-mails that they dispatched as many as thirty reporters to Juneau to sift through them.

They were simply not prepared to discover e-mails which showed a focused and energetic executive doing her job.  The emails, as the editors of the Richmond Times-Dispatch put it, “have redounded to the author’s benefit and have left her critics dismayed” (via Instapundit).

They were dismayed because the e-mails did not confirm their conviction of her incompetence.  Reality did not conform to their narrative.

Maybe if they had actually bothered studying her record as governor of the Last Frontier, they might realize that she reached across the partisan divide to accomplish real change for Alaska, where she was, to borrow an expression, a kind of a post-partisan politician.  They wouldn’t have been so dismayed had they taken the time to study her record and consider her accomplishments, instead of viciously responding to her nomination.

. . . to, as Bill O’Reilly put it, sift ”through 24,000 pages of emails written by then-Gov. Sarah Palin?”

And she’s a former governor.  And not now a presidential candidate.  I wonder how many reporters are investigating how “a radical left-wing special interest group gets a big boost in federally funded grants and contracts after one of its most visible leaders is appointed to a key White House job.”  Or Operation Gunwalker.

Or Obama’s background.

As I pointed out in a post earlier today, when on John King’s CNN show yesterday, Obama strategist David Axelrod offered up this whopper, “This president was scrutinized, more perhaps than any candidate ever had been.”  Perhaps clueless about the latest Sarah Palin-inspired media frenzy, King chose not to challenge the Democrat on his assertion.

Perhaps, Mr. King should join me in subscribing to the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary.  Yesterday, in that e-newsletter, John Fund, commenting on said frenzy asked us to

Contrast this with the level of interest that reporters have shown in Barack Obama’s lack of a paper trail during the 2008 campaign and afterwards. No, I’m not talking about the issue of his birth certificate. I am thinking of his college records and papers; his application to the Illinois bar to become a lawyer; his complete list of clients while he was in private practice; and his records from his service in the Illinois State Senate. Almost none of this has been released in whole or in part by Mr. Obama, and requests have been airily dismissed.

And then there are Mr. Obama’s longtime associations with very left-wing political figures and foundations. With the exception of journalist Stanley Kurtz, author of a richly documented new book called “Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism,” almost no one has been interested in those ties.

Do hope Mr. King asks Mr. Axelrod about this missing paper trail and these associations the next time he has him on CNN (and he does seem to be a frequent quest on that network).  In the meanwhile, it would be nice if other reporters at CNN started subjecting the incumbent to the same sort of scrutiny it subjects Mrs. Palin.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  The Griper may not “like to use this type of argument but” remains “certain that in this case if Sarah Palin were a liberal and the right held her up to this scrutiny there’d be accusations of sexual prejudice flying all over the nation.”  Indeed.

UPDATE:  Ann Althouse offers some perspective on the nature of the scrutiny the media have made into Mrs. Palin’s affairs:

In the run up to the receipt of the boxes of xeroxes, air time was devoted to speculating about what might be in those emails. Most notable — it’s in the middle of the “Daily Show” montage — was the suspicion that the governor’s husband was secretly running the show, pulling the strings. (You know, the shameful sexism.) But there was absolutely nothing that looked at all like that. Maybe there’s another montage that could be made of these reporters spelling out clearly what was disproved by the emails. But I think what’s they did was dribble out statements like “no smoking gun yet” — seemingly expecting that we’d gradually lose interest and move on to something else.

Read the whole thing.   Via Instapundit.

In a thoughtful piece on the media frenzy surrounding the release of the “13,000 emails detailing almost every aspect of Sarah Palin’s governorship of Alaska“, Toby Harden gets one thing wrong:

The email release could mark the end of a chapter of what conservatives have termed “Palin Derangement Syndrome” [PDS]. Her enemies in the media appear to have overplayed their hand.

He may well right that the accomplished former governor “seems likely to emerge from the scrutiny of the 24,000 pages, contained in six boxes and weighing 275 pounds, with her reputation considerably enhanced” at least to those concerned with her actual record.  But, Mrs. Palin had already developed a solid reputation in her home state — well before John McCain tapped her as his running mate fewer than three years ago.

Many of those afflicted with PDS never paid much attention to that record.  Recall, that in her celebrated interview with the then-Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States, Katie Couric never once asked the charismatic conservatives about her record in office.

Indeed, you talk to most of those afflicted with PDS and they repeat some talking points about earmarks Palin asked for when Mayor of Wasilla.  Or books she supposedly wanted banned from the local library.  They’ve always given short shrift to her actual record.  Or the record approval she once enjoyed.  Among Alaska Democrats.

Palin Derangement Syndrome is not a rational reaction to an imperfect understanding of Sarah Palin’s record in office, but an irrational antagonism to a charismatic conservative woman.  Facts didn’t matter to their initial opposition to this strong woman.  And they won’t cause some Palin-haters to reassess their animus.

Via Big Government.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Rick Patel quips:

It does seem like Sarah Palin is the Emanuel Goldstein of the American left. She provides them with their two minutes of hate every day. You can imagine them all together in a howling mob.

It does seem hatred of Sarah Palin is part of the doctrine of the church of liberalism.

. . . putting more effort into combing through Sarah Palin’s e-mails than they did combing through the details of the “stimulus” and Obamacare legislation — and those were actual bills considered and passed by Congress and signed into law by the president.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Palin is the former governor of one state and is not, at present, a candidate for any public office.

UPDATE:  A nice rejoinder to the flurry of MSM interest in Mrs. Palin’s e-mails:

Other former vice-presidential candidates or potential presidential candidates whose entire email archive from their time in office has been released so the press (or just people who read the WaPo online) can comb through looking for something interesting

. . . .

You know, I can’t think of any. Nope, not a single one.

Via Instapundit.

Perhaps the most telling means to determine media bias is to compare treatment of the two major parties’ nominees for vice president.  One had a reputation for embellishing his record while making some pretty silly statements, the other had her supposedly silly statements publicized as a signs of her stupidity.  His were brushed aside, as “Well, that’s just Joe.”

Now, another prominent Democrat tapped by Barack Obama for an important job has now joined her fellow partisan from the First State, with her eagerness for exaggeration and her penchant for misrepresentation.  And Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has not been subject to the same degree of media scrutiny (and mockery) as the more charismatic former Alaska governor received.  Now, Jennifer Rubin reports, she’s telling us that Republican “want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws“.

“No,” quips Rubin,

I don’t suppose the media will give her the same treatment that is handed out to Palin. They make allowances for Wasserman Schultz, you see, because her “heart is in the right place,” meaning she mouths liberal platitudes, albeit inartfully.

Well, they do make allowances for Joe Biden.

Sarah Palin reminds me of one of my teenage nieces who knows just how to smile and just what to say in order to manipulate her father.  For an example of such behavior, see the first scene of the Odyssey on Olympus.  Athene knows how to get Zeus to do her bidding. My niece is not nearly as successful as was the owl-eyed Olympian, but she is aware (at some level) of her charm and her power over men.  And Sarah Palin sure knows, on a much deeper level, just when and where to bat her eyelash to whip the media into a frenzy.

Or to get them to follow her motorcade when she doesn’t share her itinerary with them.  Today, I occasionally looked up from the new cardio machine to catch a glimpse of CNN commentators caught in Mrs. Palin’s web.  They were talking about her recent pizza summit in New York with the man who bills himself as the Donald (the real Donald has his own bill) and bemoaning that Mr. Trump and Mrs. Palin were upstaging the more serious candidates and preventing a serious discussion of the issues.

Methinks they were doing the bidding of the Obama campaign, trying to make Republicans look like we’re obsessed with the Trump/Palin circus.

But, the only reason Palin and Trump might be upstaging the other candidates is because, well, folks like those on CNN are dispatching their production crews to follow her every move as they shine their lights and focus their cameras on their stage.  Message to CNN:  if you don’t want Sarah Palin to upstage those whom you bill as the more serious candidates, then don’t cover her.

“For more than two years,” Michelle Malkin observes, “Palin-bashing journalists (on the establishment left and the right) have mocked the conservative supernova while milking her for headlines, circulation, viewership and Web traffic.”

These guys just can’t leave her alone.  They give her a prominent role on their broadcasts while complaining that she gets too much publicity.  They should learn from wise fathers of teenagers.  It is possible to say, “No,” to a charming and attractive young woman.

UPDATE:  In a great post on the media’s Palin obsession, John Nolte wonders “how many of these so-called journalists who are now making complete fools of themselves choking on bus fumes left unfinished ‘Palin is irrelevant’ pieces on their desk to dash off and make fools of themselves.”  Read the whole thing.

While I have been more critical of Sarah Palin in recent days than I was during the 2008 presidential campaign, I still admire the accomplished reformer for her ability to drive liberals crazy without insulting them and to keep her name in the media.  Yesterday, Glenn linked this from Hot Air:

Once again, the former vice presidential nominee has proven she can tilt the political world on its axis in an instant. Last week, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann took their campaigns to Iowa, but it was the news of Palin’s bus tour that really had people talking. She made a simple announcement on her website, and she got all the attention, all the interest.

Today on Hot Air, Ed Morrissey tells us that the media have been grumbling “that Palin’s decision to keep them out of the loop on the tour’s stops have created a dangerous working environment for reporters“, with CBS reporting

Since Palin and her team won’t share where the potential candidate is headed, reporters and producers have little choice but to simply stay close to Palin’s bus. This has resulted in scenes of the Palin bus tooling down the highway followed by a caravan of 10 or 15 vehicles – including a massive CNN bus – all trying to make sure they don’t lose sight of the Palin bus.

It adds up to a dangerous situation, says CBS News Producer Ryan Corsaro.

I can just see the former Alaska governor looking back through tinted glass windows at the caravan of media struggling to keep up with her bus and laughing (a rich, deep, full laugh) at their obsession.  Morrissey offers them a means to spare themselves this dangerous pursuit:  ”Here’s your first option: stop chasing her.  If it truly presents a danger to journalists to drive behind the bus and attempt to keep up, then don’t bother doing it.”  Yeah, but, Ed, as Glenn put it, “She’s living in their heads, rent-free, 24-7.”  Like a jilted boyfriend, they can’t let her go.

In addition to being the official left-wing panty buncher, Sarah Palin may well also serve that role for the MSM.

UPDATE:  I believe the answer to this question is “Yes”: Media wonders: Could Palin be manipulating us?.

UP-UPDATE:  Jeff Goldstein finds that her failure to play by the traditional rules of political travel is. . .

. . . driving the mainstream press to distraction — giving her the media coverage she needs, on her terms, because they just can’t quit her, and because they can’t help but take offense at her audacity in ignoring them, which serves to remind them, uncomfortably, that their cultural significance is based solely on people’s willingness to believe in their power.

Chris Matthews calls Sarah Palin ‘profoundly stupid’

ADDENDUM:  It seems the editors at Yahoo! give this story such prominence because they agree with Mr. Matthews statement, but most people will wonder at his obsession.

In commenting on Josh Green’s Atlantic piece on Sarah Palin, Jennifer Rubin takes slight issue with said reporter’s conclusion that the former Alaska governor is a tragic figure and elucidates a pitfall of politics — and of blogging as well:

One can’t but feel that Palin was not only snared in the web of resentment but that it determined a particular course for her post-2008 career. She embarked on a particular path, one incompatible with being a serious force on conservative policy and a credible presidential contender. . . .

But one can’t really call it a “tragedy” as Green does. She’s attained fame and fortune and she has as loyal a following as any popular figure. But she made a choice — to bear grudges, to forgo serious policy study, to reject the advice of all but a handful of advisers. It is a shame for those who saw a star-quality and enviable political talent. But tragedy? No. She simply chose a different path.

“Snared in the web of resentment”:  a good way to describe what sometimes happen to bloggers who end up responding to hate comments where the critic makes little effort to understand our arguments, even less to acknowledge the sincerity of our expression.  But, alas, they’re not interested in our opinions, but see us instead as targets for their own animus.

Just as most Palin critics are little interested in her record.  Josh Green is.  Outlining her successes as governor and asking a question which almost perfectly parallels an exchange I had with a liberal Alaska woman last summer*, he asks:

WHAT HAPPENED TO Sarah Palin? How did someone who so effectively dealt with the two great issues vexing Alaska fall from grace so quickly? Anyone looking back at her record can’t help but wonder: How did a popular, reformist governor beloved by Democrats come to embody right-wing resentment?

I do think he’s a little harsh here, but he is onto something.  Sarah Palin doesn’t so much embody right-wing resentment as she taps into it, but she also exudes conservative enthusiasm.  She can still articulate that vision of the Gipper, painting a picture of that shining city on a hill and expressing the confidence that we can still find our way toward that idyllic place.  But, in promoting that visions, she’s become more of a cheerleader than a policy leader.   (more…)

It seems a truism of contemporary political discourse today that if a liberal pundit or Democratic politician can’t defend his actions, he will accuse his critics of harboring prejudices against a particular minority group.

As most of you know, on Tuesday, a blogger at Wonkette, a left-of-center website, posted a piece “attacking Sarah Palin’s Down Syndrome baby Trig on his birthday.”  The blogger also suggested that Palin’s husband Todd slept with their daughter.  In response, several advertisers, including Papa John’s pizza, pulled their ad from the site.

Now, Ace reports that the folks at Wonkette are accusing the pizza place of animus against gay people:

In a tweet, Wonkette announces that their former advertiser, Papa John’s, is not only “shitty,” but “homophobic.” Clarification/Correction: The tweet was by “Wonkette” and not necessarily Ken Layne, as I first assumed. Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s some other shrieking ninny. I don’t know who does their tweeting.

Homophobic = not giving gays a pass on every nasty thing they say or do. That is the only possible definition of the word he can be using to get to this conclusion.

The site was just as gay when Papa John’s was advertising on it before. The only difference is that they posted that nasty Trig post.

It’s not anti-gay to hold someone to account for crossing a certain line.  And Wonkette went way over the line in mocking the child of a prominent conservative leader reviled on the left.  As would a conservative blogger who mocked the president’s children — or the children of any Democratic politician. It’s one thing to criticize Sarah Palin and take issue with her ideas, it’s quite another to attack her children.

It is telling that they’re now playing the anti-gay card.  Their critics have won the argument.  Instead of conceding the point and acknowledging their error, they choose to personalize the matter.  They just can’t let the right win.  But, here it’s not the right that’s “won”, but common decency that’s won out. (more…)