
I’ll start by disclosing that I am a season ticket holder for Team Sarah. I drank the Kool-aid and then I ordered seconds. I’ve held off from talking about Sarah Palin on this blog in the past because I didn’t see any point in it. There is another reason for my silence, too, and that is my general resolution to refrain from blogging when I’m angry. I try not to analyze things when I’m overly emotional. Whenever I talk about Sarah Palin, I get angry, so I’ve abstained totally from discussing her in public. Be that as it may, I do not see anyone else out there in the world of politics or government representing my opinions about Mrs. Palin today. No one in the media, apparently, sees this quite the way I do.
So yeah. It’s time. I’m gonna talk about Sarah.
Last week, Sarah Palin announced that she will step down from her position as the governor of Alaska. It is the overwhelmingly negative media response to this fact that prompted me to write about this today. Even on talk radio, all I hear is, “I cannot understand why she did this,” and “it’s a mystery to me,” or “I have no idea what she’s doing here.” I have three things to say in reply to all this hand-wringing and finger-pointing.
First, shame on the right-wing commentators who are dumping insult upon injury from behind a microphone. Today, I heard a chorus of obtuse arrogance like, “I get threats every day, and I didn’t quit,” or “You should see the horrible things people say to me, and you don’t hear me complaining.” If you really think your situation is analogous with Sarah’s, let me disillusion you. You don’t have your children being used as the butt of sexual jokes on national television, and you don’t have a list of frivolous ethical and criminal charges the length of your arm on your desk that keep you away from your microphone 3 days out of 5. In addition to these facts, most of you are multi-millionaires. The Palins are not. I don’t expect you to relate to the financial ruination this could bring to the Palin family, but it certainly should have occurred to you before you opened your mouths to call her a dirty quitter. There is no comparison that you can possibly make between the hate mail you receive and the untenable situation in which Sarah Palin now finds herself. She is not quitting because of the name-calling, the insults, and the hate mail. It is arrogance and deliberate blindness for you to behave as though she’s taking some sort of coward’s way out in all this. I expected that brand of filth from the left. It’s inexcusable coming from conservative talk radio, however, and I’m ashamed of all of you.
Second, Sarah Palin was very specific about why she stepped down. She stepped down because she was not able to do her job for Alaska in the current political climate, and she stepped down because her family was suffering terribly under the weight of the hatred they’ve been daily receiving since August 29th of last year. Her family has been excoriated in the press in a way that no politician’s family has ever been asked to endure before. Her husband Todd, her son Trigg, and her daughter Bristol have all been under a microscope filled with hatred and malignant cruelty the likes of which America has never allowed before toward the family of a candidate. It was beyond uncivilized. It has been barbaric. Yes, her family signed up for a campaign. They did not sign up for what they got. As to the accusation that Sarah is betraying the people of Alaska, I will remind everyone that spending the vast majority of her time with lawyers to combat frivolous lawsuits is not what the people of Alaska hired her to do. She’s not abandoning them. She’s doing the right thing by getting out of the way so that her distractions will not drag Alaska down with her. Her lieutenant governor is a competent and involved man who will ably carry on the administration’s goals. His name was on the ticket, too, you know. They didn’t just vote for Sarah. They voted for Palin/Parnell.
Third and finally, I’m hearing a lot of panic from the right about how this will damage Sarah forever and she’ll never get an opportunity to run for president with such a blemish on her career. That’s ridiculous. I read an article on the Laura Ingraham message boards today that was posted by another commenter there. The article, called “The Palin Potential,” was written by Dr. Jack Wheeler on Monday, and it discussed Nixon’s rise in the 60’s. Nixon’s career was over by 1963. He lost a presidential election to Kennedy in 1960 and then he turned around to lose the gubernatorial race for California in 1962. He was finished…totally irrelevant and irretrievably ruined in national politics. Then, he used his fame and ability to draw an audience to help scores of Republican candidates for Congress all over the country win or keep their seats in the next election. He went state-to-state delivering speeches, shaking hands, energizing the base, and gaining loyalty, respect, and favors from everyone in the party. The next time he put his name in the hat, you all know what happened. This game is not over. If Sarah wants to play the game, there is still more than enough room for her on the field. She has 15 months to get out there, draw in the crowds, help Republicans win back Congress, and learn the things she needs to know in national politics. She is neither down nor out in my book.
The sad thing is that in today’s cynical political world, no one knows how to recognize the truth when someone says it straight out. Sometimes, there’s not anything between the lines to read. Sometimes, there’s no grand conspiracy to sniff out. For most of us living out here in the unwashed mass, when we say something out loud…well, we mean it. Sarah Palin isn’t like one of you. She’s like one of us. It really can be that simple, Y’all.
For those, like me, who look kindly upon Sarah Palin, we see in her that “something different” we’ve been begging for since Ronald Reagan moved out of the big house. Palin is a true, capital-C Conservative. Her first allegiance has always been to her causes…never to her party. She is an American first, a Conservative second, and a Republican somewhere much, much further down the list. She is a poster child for average America. She is not wealthy. She is not an elitist fresh from the ivy-choked halls of a patrician university. She is committed to small government and willing to suffer the career consequences of remaining stalwart in that commitment (such as being called a “slut” on Letterman and being forced by conscience to give up her gubernatorial title amid accusations of having ulterior and mercenary motives). She is incorruptible in many ways because she can be held over the flame by neither money nor a desire to maintain her standing with the elite social class in Washington. She has never had either and consequently cannot be threatened by their loss. She doesn’t belong to the Beltway. She belongs to us. We love her strength. We love her principles. We love her background. And…we love that she is still green. We don’t care that she has a lot to learn because we know that she will learn it by the time we need her to know it. We see in her a woman untainted by the poisonous amorality and avarice of Washington. It’s honesty. It’s charisma. Together! When was the last time we had anyone trustworthy in D.C.? When was the last time someone who made the moldy machine nervous on both sides of the aisle stepped into the fore? She doesn’t fit. She doesn’t match. She doesn’t belong. And, yet, there she stands. This is what we see when we look at her, and her stepping down reinforces that for us plain, unwashed folks in the American trenches.
So for Rich Lowry, Juan Williams, Joe Pagliarulo, and even Laura Ingraham…stop being shocked and remember who we’re dealing with here. No one called Obama, Hillary, or McCain quitters for leaving-without-leaving during the presidential campaign. Politicians check out from their jobs without leaving anyone there to fill in for them all the time without being called on it. There are lame ducks all over Congress, and no one calls them names. Sarah Palin stepped up…and when the situation required it of her…she stepped down. It’s a fair ball, Ladies and Gentlemen. I’m just sorry that so many of you refuse to see it that way.