David Karki
Jan. 20,2011
If Palin would make that awful a presidential candidate – to say nothing of a president, in the left’s eyes – then wouldn’t they want to saddle the Republican Party with her as their 2012 nominee? Or, if the establishment GOP refuses to go along, create the perfect wedge with which to permanently separate them from the conservative Tea Party base?
Driving them bat-bleep crazy.
With the opposition thus divided, President Obama could cruise to re-election. Either way, if the left is correct about Palin, then they’d stand to benefit greatly by ensuring she gets the nomination.
Moreover, the Democrats need to change the dynamic of the 2012 elections. They are coming off the biggest mid-term drubbing in modern American political history, which is usually very ominous for the re-electoral chances of the incumbent president under whom it occurred.
They have 23 Senate seats to defend in mostly red states that voted for McCain in 2008, while the GOP has only 10 – the biggest threat to which might just be Tea Party opponents in primaries. And the GOP will be able to use the 2010 Census results to draw districts that will re-align the House rightward for the next decade.
Suffice it to say, the Democrats will be fighting 2012 on a battlefield not tilted in their favor at all. (Oops, did I just use “overheated rhetoric” there?) And it would seem that the last thing they should want is to let the GOP not nominate someone who could produce another 1964 Goldwater defeat, and help them turn a tide that otherwise will flow strongly against them. What else could more quickly and effectively drive the independents who turned against Obama and gave the House back to the Republicans in 2010 back to the Democrats than the most polarizing candidate available?
Yet, for all these strategic reasons to build Sarah Palin up and ensure she gets the nomination – at which point the left could turn on a dime and destroy her, when it’ll be too late to replace her and prevent the negative coattails from dragging the GOP congressional effort down – the left instead is doing the opposite. Rather than sticking their opponent with a fundamentally flawed candidate when they have the chance, the left has become completely unhinged at the prospect of Palin at the top of the GOP ticket.
Why? Why give the GOP a chance to not be put in that vise of having to choose between accepting an independent-repelling Palin as their presidential candidate or infuriating the Tea Party by denying her the nomination? I thought this was the sort of manipulative politics-as-bloodsport that the far left lived for. And, until now, the sort of tactic they unhesitatingly employed – much to the frustration of conservatives who wish the GOP “leadership” had such brains and balls.
The best answer I can come up with – assuming that there in fact is any logical reason for this and that the far left isn’t simply stark raving mad – is that they do in fact see Sarah Palin as a legitimate threat to their power and existence. A big enough threat, in fact, that they must do whatever is necessary to keep her from getting in the race in the first place, regardless of how much self-inflicted public relations damage they incur in the process by using such over-the-top, scorched earth tactics. So big a threat, in fact, that the risk of having their media allies’ smear campaign backfire by inadvertently turning Palin into a martyr via blood libeling her is worth taking.
You’ll never get anyone on the left to admit this, of course. But if Palin is who they say she is, then they should not be doing to her what they’re doing – quite the opposite, in fact. The left’s actions toward and horrible treatment of Sarah Palin tell us all who and what they believe her to be: an existential threat to them so great that anything goes if it helps to destroy her. Nothing is beyond the pale.
She cannot be allowed to even get as far as primary debates – which will inevitably be dubbed “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” given how thoroughly weak and uninspiring the rest of the GOP field is – lest even those small opportunities to show her real self explode the phony image that the media has manufactured with its non-stop propagandizing against Palin.
Moreover, she would have the energy, huge crowds, and celebrity buzz that Obama had in 2008 while Obama would just look older (aided by the grey hair and accelerated aging the presidency inevitably inflicts on all who hold the office) and out of fashion, yesterday’s news. One certainty in politics today is that youth wins and age loses – witness Clinton/Dole, Bush/Gore, Bush/Kerry, Obama/McCain. The one who appeared to be younger, more energetic, and more vibrant won every time. Against any other candidate, Obama would still be on the good side of that equation. But against Palin, it would be the reverse. Admittedly, he wouldn’t be on the bad side by much, but he would be there. And it’s not a desirable place to be.
Not to mention that there would inherently be big momentum, perhaps unstoppable momentum, behind the first female major-party presidential nominee. The campaign would be historic, by definition. (A fact many have seem to forgotten, though I can forgive the left as they honestly believe Bill Clinton was black and Clarence Thomas was not.) It would cancel out at least a good chunk of the advantage that Obama would have against “just another white guy.”
And I have to believe that a lot of independent and even Democratic women are going to wonder just how the hell the Republicans got a female nominee first. Coming on the heels of Hillary Clinton being denied in 2008, they are going to be very unhappy. Given the abysmal level of the male vote they get, Democrats will need their votes at a very high rate, almost as high as the 95% they get amongst blacks. And women are 52% of the total population where blacks are only 15%; even considering the cultural gap between center-left women and Palin, the Democrats cannot risk any substantial portion of them defecting out of “loyalty to the sisterhood.” (If Palin is the nominee, I could see Biden quickly dumped from the ticket for a woman.)
Once all that got rolling, it might be impossible to stop such a runaway freight train with a strategy of destroying her after it was too late for the GOP to replace her. Thus, it’s far better to viciously smear her now, even at the risk of some collateral damage and impartation of martyrdom status, so as to intimidate her into never running in the first place. Or failing that, get the establishment GOP to view Palin as irreparably damaged goods.
So, when the Democrats and their media allies unleash their next slanderous verbal assault against Palin, just remember that what they are doing tells you who they really think Sarah Palin is. Their actions reveal it even as their words deny it.
I suspect the left’s top-level honest conversations behind the scenes sound much like the Emperor’s with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back:
“There is a great disturbance in the force.”
“Yes, I have felt it, my master.”
“We have a new enemy – Sarah Palin.”
“She’s just a girl…McCain can no longer help her.”
“The daughter of Alaska must not be allowed to become president.”
“If she could be turned, she could be a powerful ally.”
“Yes, she could be a great asset. Can it be done?”
“She will join us or die.”
But in the end, Palin becomes president despite it and defeats the Democrat Sith lords forever….:-)
The North Star National
