President Palin...NOT [?]
Updated

We’ve yet to hear Sarah Palin speak on behalf of John McCain in a way that can be reconciled with her recent speech at the Tea Party Convention, and so we’re not prepared to totally retract our view (below) that supporting McCain is an indication she’s not tough enough to be President. But we’ll give credit where credit is due—her Tea Party Convention speech gave voice to the concerns of millions of Americans, and her willingness to do so and in the process defy establishment wisdom that advocated keeping a safe distance from tea partiers, shows some backbone that few modern political leaders have.

Even more important, she’s showing an increasingly savvy read on the biases and irrelevance of the mainstream media, and a fearlessness in saying so that is far more than just a breath of fresh air. It is an affirmation that the curtain has fallen once and for all on these “Wizard of Oz” channels of liberal groupthink and political correctness.

Very specifically, when Palin was discovered to have cribbed a few buzzwords on her hands as part of her preparation for the Tea Party Convention appearance, the mainstream media thought they had found the pot of gold to crush her with. You could hear their thinking, “Aha!, proof once again that she’s not smart, and even low class.”

Never mind that we have a President who can’t speak to sixth graders without a teleprompter—which is just a higher tech form of cribbing—and never mind that for a huge chunk of her fans, the idea of writing reminders on her hands just endears her even more as ‘one of us’. The real news out of this incident was her next day appearance campaigning on behalf of Texas Governor Rick Perry. She had written ‘Hi Mom’ on her hands, and made sure the cameras caught it. This was a Hall of Fame-level media tweak that only the truly confident (tough?) could even think of attempting. This was disarming and disabling political enemies by making fun of them.

Other observers have said that whatever her weaknesses, Sarah Palin is nothing if not a quick study. She’s proving them right, and in fighting back against a media that has been determined to destroy her, she is causing millions to rally to her. And the more they rally to her common sense values, down-home decency, and fearless spunk, the more likely they’ll just give her a pass for supporting McCain. They’ll accept that she had to do it as a matter of political loyalty and gratitude, or they’ll believe that in her heart-of-hearts, she really does think of McCain as an American hero who is close enough to being conservative enough of the time to be worthy of continued support. Either way, her other plusses will outweigh any McCain related doubts.

President Palin?

She’d be better than Obama/Soros by orders of magnitude, and the American nation would respond to her and rebound with an energy and power not witnessed since Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Paul Gable

February 8, 2010

Yes, we know loyalty can in some cases be a virtue; we know Sarah Palin’s respect for McCain’s military service and POW experience is honest and heartfelt; we know she and her campaign advisors can and will spin these factors as best they can, and the media will actually help out because they love that McCain is not a conservative and they will love that Palin is enlisting to help break the momentum of Tea Party conservatism that they so despise. Plus 2012 looks far away, so maybe Palin thinks the people won’t care or won’t remember what goes on in 2010 in Arizona. We think she’s dead wrong.

What is going on in this country transcends political ‘strategery’. It is an awakening to America’s heritage of individual freedom and responsibility under God, as captured and forever enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. It is a renewed and deeply invigorated determination to throw off godless intellectualism, political elitism, cronyism, and irresponsible incumbency, and restore and honor the America of the founding. Americans are wide awake throughout this country, and they are taking it back.

Everyone can agree to respect and honor John McCain’s wartime service, but he long ago became part of the elitist political class that have presided over the dismantling of the Constitution, the bankrupting of the nation’s finances and the turning upside down of America’s Judeo-Christian culture and society.

In the very week Palin’s support of McCain was announced, the Supreme Court finally acted to void major parts of the First Amendment abomination that was and is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. McCain has also been on the wrong side of freedom and responsibility with his positions on immigration, and his disgraceful, inexcusable and unforgiveable unwillingness in 2008 to confront Obama about Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, etc., etc. contributed to the election of a grossly unqualified and radically dangerous and inexperienced man who is pursuing an agenda that intends to destroy the America of the founding. For these reasons alone, McCain deserves to be thrown out of office.

Palin’s knows how out of step McCain is with the grassroots conservatism that is sweeping the country; she knows how McCain’s campaign staff undermined her during and the 2008 campaign and continue to undermine her to this day. She did not have to campaign against McCain; she could have simply politely declined to take a visible role in an Arizona election. But her decision to be visible indicates she fears the wrath of McCain and his surrogates more than she trusts the power of the American people inspired by right ideals. Either that, or it simply reeks as yet another example of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours-regardless-of-what’s-right-for-the country political elitism that the American people are absolutely sick of. Either way, she comes out looking foolish, tone-deaf and weak. And if she and her staff think all of this can be contained to the borders of Arizona and not be noticed around the country, they are also delusional about the nature of political discourse and knowledge in the wired world.

Sorry, Sarah, we were on your side, and ready to jump in with both feet for 2012. But this decision has hurt you far more than you know. We’re glad you’re on the political scene with Fox News, and your intuitions about right policies for America are definitely more right than wrong. But your decision to actively support McCain is not the decision of one who is in step with the American people in 2010 and ready to be President.

Palin has stepped in it big time, and is likely out of it for 2012. Mitt Romney is not viable unless and until he acknowledges that “RomneyCare” in Massachusetts has been a mistake and a failure, and that he understands why. Mike Huckabee seems to be viable, but his bigoted religious attack on Romney in the 2008 campaign places a ‘bigoted religious’ label on Huckabee that leaves a lot of Americans uncomfortable.

Be on the lookout for Rick Santorum—a rock solid conservative former Senator from Pennsylvania who’s getting ready to run for President in 2012. He lost big in 2006, and conventional wisdom will deem him buried and not viable as a result. But conventional wisdom is taking a beating these days, and 2006 belongs to an era long gone. Radical leftism has placed conservatism on the ascendancy. So far, the indications are that Santorum gets it.

Paul Gable

January 23, 2010