Wednesday, May 18, 2011

What-Happened-To-Palin
Mystery Solved

by Noemie Emery - May 17th, 2011 - The Washington Examiner

Some of the best, though not last, words about Sarah Palin come from Joshua Green of the Atlantic Monthly, trying to square the circle between Palin I, the prenomination wildly popular centrist reformer, and the polarizing, divisive, culture-war icon that is Palin II.

As governor she was the very antithesis of the boneheaded ditz of our snottier pundits: a shrewd, canny, focused and very effective state governor.

"The Alaskan Palin fought corruption within her own party, attacked the nexus of government and big business, avoided polarizing feuds and cut successful bipartisan deals," Ross Douthat tells us, someone who settled "insoluble" problems and put her state on a glide path to fiscal integrity.

Compare her at this stage to Barack Obama at a similar point in his life, and she is by far the more accomplished political figure, and by far the less partisan, yet within months she was fixed in some people's minds as a wing nut and a cretin. What occurred?

An early-in-the-campaign reporter round-table of both leftists and conservatives asked what they should do with Sarah Palin, considering that she didn't fit in with preconceived notions of what either party represented. Incredibly it was Peggy Noonan whose solution that day was, "Kill her, and do it quickly."

Noonan has never stopped. She has been a constant critic of Sarah Palin from the beginning, writing vitriol against Palin that has left Noonan despised by a major element of the conservative movement even as moderates abandoned Palin because of the smears. A number of other moderates who pretend to be conservatives have joined Noonan in her smears of Palin.

Of course the left has never stopped their constant Alinsky smears either, going even further to denigrate Palin with lies, half truths and irrelevant smears. They have even smeared her husband and children with lies.

One of the ironies of the smears is that Palin, like Ronald Reagan before her, does not believe in government telling people what to do about abortion, the most contentious issue for which she is attacked. The left has successfully spread the lie that she would take away abortion rights. The truth is she refused when given the chance. She believes abortion is wrong and, for both her daughter and with Trig, did what she believed is morally right in her personal life. However she believes just as strongly that it is a sin and that government has no role in making someone else make the same decision she made. Sins are between you and God, not you and a government goon.

Sarah Palin is still the same "shrewd, canny, focused and very effective" administrator she was before the smears started. She is still the same decent non autocratic everyday American that made her the most popular governor in America. She may not be capable of changing the obscene caricature that the MSM (along with a handful of inside the beltway Republican moderates) have created in the public mind. That is a shame. A very decent person's reputation has been destroyed by lies and smears. That is America today.

That is the horrified Republican "beltway leadership" of today too, equally aghast at Palin's rectitude and determined to destroy her as Noonan predicted in that early round-table so she does not interfere with their "conservative big government" goals. "Kill her, and do it quickly." With this as the view of Palin by Republican leadership, why is anyone surprised at the results? I wonder how America survives when corruption motivated smears dominate the public discourse?


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