I spend a fair amount of time at my local coffee shop. I like to do my writing outside and, besides, it gives me an opportunity to try and initiate political conversations with the people who pass by — my hope always being to begin to enlighten them as to what conservatives really believe (and not just what the leftist media tells them.)
Today, the conversation turned to Sarah Palin and my latest acquaintance blurted out: “Oh I hate her.” Since she did not yet know my politics, and since we were in Los Angeles, it is clear that she expected to hear back what you usually hear back in this city: “Yeah, I hate her, too.” Instead, I asked her why.
At this point I could have predicted her response because it’s the same response you get from liberals no matter who on the Right you’re talking about: “Because she’s stupid.” I replied: “Being stupid is no reason to hate someone, but tell me, which one of her policies do you disagree with?” It wasn’t hard to predict her response: “All of them!”
I continued to push. “Well, then, if it’s all of them, it should be easy for you to name one.” Her reply? “They’re too many to list.”
“So don’t list them, just give me one,” I said.
This went on for awhile until my new acquaintance finally admitted that she didn’t know any of Ms. Palin’s policies. Before she ran off – Democrats always run off when asked to provide facts to justify their hatred for Republicans – I looked her in the eyes and said, “If you don’t know any of her policies, perhaps you should look into them.” She promised she would. She won’t. If there are two things you can count on with Democrats, they are filled with hate and empty of facts.
But it got me to thinking. Given that these people don’t know any of Ms. Palin’s political positions, what is it about her that they hate? It has to be her life story. Now, to all decent people, Ms. Palin’s life story could not be more laudable. She married her high school sweetheart to whom she remains married and with whom she is apparently still in love. In the harshest of climes, she and Todd started a small business which, apparently, they ran well enough to purchase a home and raise a family.
Despite the long hours required to run a family business and raise children, when Ms. Palin saw that the public schools were not doing a good job in educating her children, she joined the local PTA and was so effective there that the people who knew her best – and in small towns like Wasilla there are very few secrets – elected her to be their mayor.
Apparently, Ms. Palin was so effective in that job that the mayors of the other small towns and big cities elected her president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. After a highly successful stint as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, she ran an uphill battle against an entrenched Republican governor and was elected to the top position, Governor, of the largest state in the nation. She did that job so well that her approval ratings – despite having ruffled the feathers of the leading political family in Alaska – bordered on 80 percent.
As Ms. Palin’s political horizons continued to grow, she found out she was pregnant with her fourth child, a baby with Downs Syndrome. Despite knowing in advance that this child would require even more attention and care than other kids, Ms. Palin opted to give her child – Trig – life.
So, given that those who hate – hate!!! – Ms. Palin know nothing more than these facts about her, what is it about Ms. Palin’s life story that generates this blind loathing? The answer is that, at every turn, Ms. Palin’s story debunks the myths of victimization and self-centeredness that is at the heart of the modern liberal ideology.
First, Ms. Palin is married with children. The Democrat Party’s treasured storyline is that women with children – especially those who take care of them themselves – are oppressed, victimized and doomed to a life without personal fulfillment. Ms. Palin’s life proves them wrong and the Democrats hate her for this. If Ms. Palin were a Democrat she would have offed the last child before he was born so that she could have more “me” time to pursue her own wants and pleasures. There is clearly something very “wrong” with this woman who allowed her “special needs” child to live. They hate her for that.
One of the most obvious demographic differences between the Left and the Right is that people without children – those too self-centered and jealous of others stealing “their” attention, angry and hate-filled “feminists,” radical homosexuals and school children too young to have started a family — are just about guaranteed to pull the lever for anyone with a “D” next to their names. Those married with children are just as assured to pull the lever for someone from the Right.
And Sarah Palin ran a small business. Democrats don’t run businesses. In fact, Democrats don’t do anything. If you eliminated from the voting roll everyone who did nothing other than talk – the academic, the newscaster, the actor, the politician – and those who game the system, collecting welfare and years of unemployment benefits and “workman’s compensation” and food stamps, how many people would be left voting Democrat?
Let’s put it this way, if having had a job – having done something that required either physical labor or risking one’s own money – were a prerequisite to work in the White House, Barack Obama would have to fire 94 percent of his top advisers. That’s a real number. Ninety four percent of Obama’s top advisers have never done anything like run a small store, paint a bridge, wire a house for electricity or anything else other than flap their lips.
This is the genesis of the notion that Palin is “stupid.” Liberals are convinced that there’s something “the matter” with people who have jobs. This is what they mean by “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” Kansas being a place where people work – Hollywood, Cambridge Massachusetts, the TV studios in Manhattan are places were people talk. To the liberal, anyone who has a job must be stupid, after all, not everyone is as good a talker as they are, but surely everyone can find one excuse or another to sit at home and collect welfare.
In fact, to the modern liberal, anyone who has a job is not just stupid, he (or she) is dangerous. These people “cling” to their guns and their religion because they toil for their reward. These people are constantly on the verge of violence, whether it’s an attack like the one they caused in Tucson (according to the leftist script) or just by going home and beating their children. Consider the lyrics of “the working man’s troubadour” by Bruce Springsteen:
Early in the morning/factory whistle blows
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes.
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning line
That’s the work, the workin’, that’s the workin’ life.
End of the day/Factory whistle cries
Man walks through them gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy, somebody’s gonna get it tonight.
(Why?) Cause that’s the work, the workin’ that’s that workin’ life!
Sarah Palin is stupid and dangerous because, well, to those who have made their millions by doing nothing other than talking, that’s the work, the workin’ that’s the workin’ life. Just in case you think that’s just one example of Springsteen’s take on anyone who has a job, consider the horrors of his “daddy” who “worked his whole life, for nothing but the pain.” In this song, “Adam Raised a Cain,” daddy, of course, beats his children, “now he walks these empty rooms searching for something to blame.” And, in fact, it gets worse because, clearly, a child who is beaten is going to continue that cycle of violence and beat his child (“you inherit the sins/you inherit the flames”). So, even to the most sympathetic leftist like Springsteen, not one, not two, but three generations are destroyed all because “daddy” had to go to work.
And they hate Sarah Palin because she joined the PTA and made things better. No, no, that’s not supposed to happen. Schools (read: the teachers’ union) need more money, only more money will solve the problems in the schools. Sarah Palin must be destroyed!
And, finally, they hate Sarah Palin because she was a successful mayor and governor. The Democrat Party narrative is that the American people are too stupid to successfully govern themselves and need Harvard and Yale elitists to dictate to them how they should live their lives. If a graduate of the University of Idaho can successfully run the biggest state in the union, then so can a kid who graduated from Texas A & M or even a kid with a degree from Eureka College.
If Democrats disagreed with Ms. Palin on the issues that would be one thing. But they don’t merely “disagree” with her, they hate her and they hate her without caring one whit about where she stands on the issues. They hate her because she is living proof that everything about the Democratic Party narrative is a lie and for this reason she cannot be allowed to be liked — because if Democrats liked her, they might actually listen to her policies.
Sarah Palin's happiness is what really irks liberals S.E. Cupp
This past weekend, I traveled to Chicago to speak at the Conservatives4Palin meetup, where Mama Grizzlies, Palinistas and "ordinary barbarians," as she's now taken to calling her followers, gathered to hear speeches, talk about conservative issues, celebrate a hypothetical Palin 2012 campaign and generally worship at the altar of Sarah Palin.
At one point during the program, Palin made a surprise phone call to the group, patched through one of the organizer's cell phones and played over a loudspeaker. The room burst into spontaneous applause and frenzied yelping as she launched into a warm and cheery 20-minute "thanks for all your hard work" chat.
I returned to New York from the Chicago gathering to find Palin again, not in my ear but on my television screen, bouncing gleefully around Alaska on her new TLC documentary series, "Sarah Palin's Alaska." She and Todd went fishing, rock climbing and bear spotting in between appearing on Fox News and ducking from their nosy new neighbor, who moved in just to write about Alaska's former first family.
It seems everyone wants a piece of Palin these days. Some are fans, some are hostile foes. Regardless, we just can't stop talking about her. Will there ever be a time when we decide that we've figured her out and there's nothing else to say?
Then it hit me. The reason Palin has become such a lightening rod, a kingmaker and a punching bag, a celebrity and a power player, is simple. It's because she's so gosh darn happy.
For her fans, like the ones I had the pleasure of meeting in Chicago, she's refreshingly upbeat and resilient, the bubbly friend from childhood who was always great at cheering you up and cheerleading you on.
For her detractors, nothing raises the ire of cynical liberals more than a happy-go-lucky, totally unburdened, freethinking and self-assured conservative woman who has everything she wants and then some. And without anyone's help.
Sure, she'll tell you that Todd, her parents and her children are an invaluable support system. After eight years of hearing that George W. Bush was a nepotism experiment gone wrong, Sarah Palin has made it here (wherever this is) on her own. John McCain's imprimatur certainly launched her into the national spotlight, but she became the youngest and first female governor of Alaska all on her own.
How dare she?
Liberalism, after all, needs to imagine an unhappy populace. Passing sweeping entitlement programs and convincing voters that big government is the answer only works if people are frustrated with their stations in life.
Thus Palin is a real threat to front-office operations.
Sarah Palin, more than almost any other public political figure, represents the "can do" rugged individualism and self-reliance that liberals fear most. She's not just running her household. She ran her state! And in her new documentary series, we see that independent streak clear as glacier water. Whether she's casting for salmon or scaling the rockface at Denali, she's smiling - and just won't quit.
It isn't the angry, antiquated feminism of a Barbara Boxer. Or the pushy defiance of a Nancy Pelosi, who refuses to go quietly into that dark night. Or even the brash "I can make you regret being born" argumentativeness of an Ann Coulter.
It's the kind of ambition that comes from confidence in her convictions and the security of knowing that no matter what happens to her in the press, she's got a happy home life and everything she needs to survive in the wild - the Washington wild, that is.
If Palin's critics really want her to go away, they don't have to worry about her politics, her faith, or her folksy rhetoric. They need to worry about her boundless happiness which, like her favorite hunting weapon, is poised to be a warm gun for anyone who dares cross her path. __________________
S.E. Cupp, whose column appears on Wednesdays on NYDailynews.com and often in the print edition of the newspaper, is a political commentator and author of the book "Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity." She is also co-author of "Why You're Wrong About The Right." S.E. has a regular feature at The Daily Caller and is a contributing editor at Townhall magazine. She lives in New York City.
SarahPAC CLICK HERE
She is Palin, Hear Her Roar
By A.W.R. Hawkins
When Sarah Palin speaks, people listen. Her most strident supporters—traditional, Christian women who believe the womb should be a safe haven instead of an abortionist’s laboratory—applaud her love for Trig and the way she combines being pro-woman with being pro-child.
Her chief opponents—non-traditional, pro-Patsy Schroeder type women who believe it’s okay to treat the womb as a killing field—mock her every speech as vapid and express unmitigated outrage at the fact that she dares to imagine a world in which both women and children have rights to life and liberty.
Palin has snatched control of the pro-life vs. pro-death dialogue from increasingly obscure groups like the National Organization for Women (NOW) and brought it into the light.
With one “Well, Jeez” and a comment that the pro-death mantras sound like relics from “the faculty lounge at some East Coast women’s college,” she took the argument away from mustache-lipped women in academia and gave it to the normal mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends who attend her speeches and are sickened by the thought of killing a child for comfort, for convenience, or as means of “emergency contraception.”
Do you think I go too far by hinting at the fact that many of those who oppose Palin do so because of her opposition to using abortion as a rudimentary morning after pill? Then read the words of Jessica Valenti, who referred to Palin’s ongoing appearances around the country as an “empty rallying call to other women … who want to make abortion and emergency contraception illegal.”
Of course, we must understand that Valenti’s words aren’t novel. I could have quoted any number of angry feminists who would have said the same thing about Palin, and who are saying the same things even now. They are outraged that this woman and her message appeals to other women in way that NOW never did (and never will).
In some of the more entrenched sectors of feminism the anger toward Palin is mixed with a full-blown denial over the fact that men-haters and baby-killers are no longer controlling the debate. For example, Newsweek recently quoted Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of North America, as saying: “There’s nothing there. I don’t think Sarah Palin is going to change the national scene on choice or on feminism.”
The last time words rang as hollow as these from Richards, they were spoken by the “horny hick” from Arkansas in an effort to assure us that he “did not have sexual relations, with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
To be fair, Palin’s ongoing appeal to a substantial segment of American women doesn’t just offend leftist women but leftist men as well (I use the word “men” loosely). The usual suspects—Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Matt Lauer—either go out of their way to speak derisively of Palin or have guests on their shows to speak derisively for them.
But it’s all to no avail. For the more insulting they are toward Palin, the more protective conservatives will become of her.
It’s the same principle that’s at play behind Palin’s popularity: The more willing the left becomes to kill our unborn children for convenience sake, the more conservative women will flock to Palin’s message of keeping those children away from the abortionist’s scalpel.
Olberrmann can insult her, Schroeder can wish she was her, and Valenti can be outraged at her. But none of that will silence her.
She is Palin, hear her roar!
__________________
HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Military History from Texas Tech University. He will be a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal during the summer of 2010.
A Thanksgiving Message (to All 57 States)
By Sarah Palin on Thursday, November 25, 2010
My fellow Americans in all 57 states, the time has changed for come. With our country founded more than 20 centuries ago, we have much to celebrate – from the FBI’s 100 days to the reforms that bring greater inefficiencies to our health care system. We know that countries like Europe are willing to stand with us in our fight to halt the rise of privacy, and Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. And let’s face it, everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma and they end up taking up a hospital bed. It costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early, and they got some treatment, and ah, a breathalyzer, or an inhalator. I mean, not a breathalyzer, ah, I don’t know what the term is in Austrian for that…
(Editor's Note: You should be compelled to check these Obama quotes for accuracy. To make that easy, just hover your cursor over the quote, then click on it when you see the hand pop-up. The YouTube videos are much better, because these verbal missteps are delivered by "The Great Orator" Barack Obama in person - hence the fact check - and cannot be denied.)
Of course, the paragraph above is based on a series of misstatements and verbal gaffes made by Barack Obama (I didn’t have enough time to do one for Joe Biden). YouTube links are provided just in case you doubt the accuracy of these all too human slips-of-the-tongue. If you can’t remember hearing about them, that’s because for the most part the media didn’t consider them newsworthy. I have no complaint about that. Everybody makes the occasional verbal gaffe – even news anchors.
Obviously, I would have been even more impressed if the media showed some consistency on this issue. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue of mine into a major political headline. The one word slip occurred yesterday during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein I was privileged to speak to the American public about the important, world-changing issues before us.
If the media had bothered to actually listen to all of my remarks on Glenn Beck’s radio show, they would have noticed that I refer to South Korea as our ally throughout, that I corrected myself seconds after my slip-of-the-tongue, and that I made it abundantly clear that pressure should be put on China to restrict energy exports to the North Korean regime. The media could even have done due diligence and checked my previous statements on the subject, which have always been consistent, and in fact even ahead of the curve. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story? (And for that matter, why not just make up stories out of thin air – like the totally false hard news story which has run for three days now reporting that I lobbied the producers of “Dancing with the Stars” to cast a former Senate candidate on their show. That lie is further clear proof that the media completely makes things up without doing even rudimentary fact-checking.)
“Hope springs eternal” as the poet says. Let’s hope that perhaps, just maybe, they might get it right next time. When we the people are effective in holding America’s free press accountable for responsible and truthful reporting, then we shall all have even more to be thankful for!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin Tells Women's Group Washington Should Beware of 'Mama Grizzlies'
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday that "mama grizzlies" will help Republicans win this November's election, sweeping away the agenda of President Obama and the Democrats.
Addressing an anti-abortion group, the potential 2012 presidential candidate also said she understood how some women might consider abortion, citing her own experiences as the mother of a child with Down syndrome and the parent of an unwed teen mother. Last year, Palin said that "for a fleeting moment" she considered having an abortion when she learned of her son Trig's prognosis.
Palin said Friday that abortion is morally wrong and women should carry a fetus to term:
"It may not be the easiest path, but it's always the right path," she said.
Palin, the Republicans' 2008 vice presidential nominee, used a speech to the Susan B. Anthony List to remind activists why they rallied behind the Republican ticket and why they should work to stop Obama's agenda.
She said Obama is "the most pro-abortion president ever to occupy the White House" and asserted that the health care law would fund abortions.
In fact, Obama's health care law would not allow federal dollars to pay for elective abortions. Roman Catholic hospitals and organizations of Catholic nuns backed the measure. U.S. Catholic bishops and major anti-abortion groups opposed it, arguing that federal dollars could end up paying for abortions.
Palin challenged Republican women -- "mama grizzlies," she called them -- to help the Republicans "take this country back" and elect anti-abortion lawmakers. A grizzly is a bear. She praised female leaders of the Tea Party movement and invoked her 2008 acceptance speech where she compared herself to a pit bull.
"You don't want to mess with moms who are rising up," Palin said. "If you thought pit bulls were tough, you don't want to mess with mama grizzlies."
Tea party activists believe that government spending and influence should be limited. The movement's name is taken from the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 protest in which activists in the then-British colonies in America boarded ships and threw their cargo of English tea into Boston Harbor in a symbolic act of protest against taxes.
"This year will be remembered as a year when common-sense conservative women get things done for our country," Palin proclaims in the video. "It seems like it's kind of a mom awakening in the last year and a half . . . Moms kind of just know when something's wrong." The women power she evokes in her campaign for what has come to be known as the “new feminism” calls to mind Helen Reddy’s feminine anthem from the ’70s, which proclaimed,” I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore.” And Palin’s “Moms kind of just know when something’s wrong” nearly channel’s Reddy’s “Oh yes I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain.”
Go ahead and laugh. Liberal elites and news media made fun of Ronald Reagan too... until he accepted his second nomination. Then, of course, there were 4 more years of Bush-41 after that. Keep laughing... you may not be laughing long.
Sarah Palin rallies crowd at Tea Party Express
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made a guest appearance at a Tea Party Express rally at the Arizona State Capitol Friday.
Holding her son, Trig, and a sign reading, "Party like it's 1773," Palin spoke on freedom and urged the crowd to vote in her two-minute speech.
"Don't you just love your freedom? Aren't you proud to be an American?" Palin said. Trig clapped along with the audience.
Palin said she invited herself to speak because she was in the area.
"Nov. 2 -- we can see it from our house. Let's take America back," Palin said.
Palin joined the group during the first stop of its tour Monday in Reno, Nevada. The Tea Party Express tour covers 30 cities in 15 days, and ends Nov. 1 in New Hampshire.
Ron Rivoli, a performer in the Tea Party Express entertainment troupe, said the group welcomes celebrities and local politicians as special guests. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who rallied with the group Tuesday in Las Vegas, NV, also spoke at Friday's event.
A party spokeswoman said Friday morning a "big special guest" would appear, according to the Associated Press.
Michelle Ye Hee Lee
CLICK HERE: FOLOW THIS LINK TO THE ONLY WEB SITE ENDORSED BY SARAH PALIN
