Palin And The Elitists

Editorial - October 24, 2008 - Investor's Business Daily

New York Times columnist David Brooks declared Palin "a cancer," and Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league." National Review's Christopher Buckley called Palin "an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that." Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan sighed "there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office." Slate's Christopher Hitchens summed it up: "Palin is simply a disgrace."

What does one make of such negativity from people whose work has otherwise been good? They all seem to no longer connect to either the heartland or a new kind of leader who didn't make her way up through elite colleges or through a husband's or father's connections. Maybe that's too hard to absorb for those who inhabit the stratified, elitist political ecosystems of New York and Washington.

I am a Palin defender, but some of her supporters are themselves so lukewarm as to be useless.

The one Palin defender (if only moderately on her side) I am most angry at is Jonah Goldberg. He has remained a defender of Bush even when Bush has vastly expanded the scope and power of government. At no point has he stopped being an objective (in his mind), above the fray, defender of Bush, even when Bush has been incompetent at his most important duty (explaining to the American people why we are at war). Now he is "defending" Palin, but in such a way as to be essentially useless.

In his role as "peacemaker" above the fray, only a week ago Goldberg was defending Palin's attackers, even as he disagreed with them. His position was summed up in the ludicrous, "Cant we all just get along" posting. In it he was hypothetically asking those who disagreed with the Palin attackers to ingore the attacks until after the election. The reason that we are going down in flames is that there is a political war being fought by extreme liberals and we are not fighting. Jonah Goldberg wants to be reasonable and convince Republicans that slowing down the inexorable move to socialism, the way Bush is doing it, and the fellow travellers who promote this as the Republican way, should be welcome to continue their attacks on other Republicans like Palin. Be nice in response seems to be his mantra.

I reject nice. I reject that becoming a socialist nation slowly is a better solution than the Obama surge to tyranny. I reject that rational dialog with Republican elitists is better than outright war with them as well. The left is waging war. It is time that we Republicans decided what we are, evict those who do not agree from our party and wage war for our view of a free and prosperous future.

We are NOT waging war right now. We currently practice the Jonah Goldberg program of let's declare defeat by getting along with our enemies and always be nice now. I reject that as surrender without fighting. I want a fight.

Goldberg is no better than our enemies.