Paul Bedard: Why Sarah Palin Would Make a Good President

U.S. News and World Report has an article about the 10 reasons why Sarah Palin would make a good president. Now don't get all crazy on me now and start touting U.S. News and World Report as an endorsement for Palin. Tomorrow they will post 10 reasons why she would make a bad president. I'll give them credit, though, for at least being fair and balanced.

What caught my attention was something that was just posted on Conservatives4Palin.com about some comments that were posted on the article.

What immediately followed those [positive] comments made it all the more post-worthy:

I didn't know all that stuff about Sarah Palin. Wow

“I didn’t know” It’s that simple. This comment emphasizes how people have been affected by the LSM’s attempts to misrepresent her record. However, slowly the message is getting out and people are getting to find out the truth. It’s up to us to follow the lead of those commentators who take the initiative to fisk the blogs and post the truth educating people one at a time.

That my friends is what happens when you successfully convince someone that the media lies. Wow, I could have had a V8!

Here is my comment on the U.S. News and World Report post:

We Need Common Sense and Outside the Box Thinking

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Politics in Washington is always business as usual. Sarah Palin would make a good president because she is a citizen politician - one of us - who doesn't think like a Washington insider.

She is capable of making gutsy decisions not based on the prevailing political winds and working closely with her staff as well as the legislature as demonstrated by how she governed Alaska pre-2008 election.

If you read Going Rogue: An American Life, you'll get a flavor of how this woman thinks. That would be a refreshing blast of fresh air if it ever blew through Washington.

Remember, those who think inside the box tend to believe what they hear and read in the mainstream media. If someone ever tells you they don't think Sarah Palin could be president, don't argue Sarah Palin. Argue the media lies. First determine if they're a liberal. You can't convince a kool aid drinker. If they're not, the key is to undo the brainwashing that has been done to good honest Americans who just don't have the time to do the research that we bloggers do.

Ask people what their source of information is. They will almost always name a media source. Convince them to do independent research and learn how rumor and innuendo get run up the flagpole and how it gets into the mainstream media - especially ending up on biased networks like MSNBC, CBS or CNN.

If you really want to read an article about how a radical off the wall left wing loon Trig Truther site made it up the media flagpole and became the main source for a Keith Olbermann commentary, read here.

Sarah Palin: The Media Lies

Yesterday, I compared Time Magazine to the WWE because, as we all know, their writing is like wrastling: it's entertainment but it's not real. What a great smackdown it was last night on Hannity when Sarah Palin jumped into the ring and clobbered Joe Klein, Time Magazine and the mainstream media. Palin articulated the lack of credibility in what she calls "the lamestream media" effectively -bolstering the reasoning behind my favorite catch phrase: the media lies.

There is another post that's worth a re-read: Isn't it Great They're Smearing Palin Again? Check out the link to the Glenn Beck show and be prepared to laugh your ass off. On February 7th, I slammed Joe Klein in that blog post for calling Tea Partiers un-American and for attacking Palin. I was made happier for the writing of that post when our modern day journalistic Joe McCarthy went at it again calling Sarah Palin seditious as he continued his "conservative dissent borders on being anti-American" meme in his latest piece. Caleb writes on Western Journalism:

As Time-Warner continues to try and figure out why no one readers their fish wrapper of a magazine they may want to check up on Joe Klein. The guys pretends to be objective and a real “journalist” but in reality he’s just a hack for the left and he always has been. His latest affront? He’s now gone and accused both Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck of sedition.

Joe Klein is simply a clown. "Yes, what a piece of work that Mr. Klein is for the piece that he wrote, Palin told Hannity last night referring to this post and this appearance on Chris Matthews' Hardball. "That is something else."

Here's the money quote from Palin on Hannity last night:

You know you would hope that the powers that be at a, quote, unquote, reputable organization like TIME magazine that they would hold their employee — and I assume that Mr. Klein gets paid for the columns that he writes — that they would hold their employee accountable and they would actually ask him what is it that I or others in the conservative movement have said that would rise to the level of this inciting of violence and revolt and all these other things that evidently he claims.

For them to allow things like that to be printed just really discredits TIME magazine and other organizations that would allow that kind of rhetoric and false reporting, misreporting. They're lies.

Palin also hit the media for its hypocrisy on the Goldman Sachs debaucle when she tweeted:

Hey Media: want 2 earn some credibility?U hammered Bush 4 Enron contributions,but ignore GoldmanSachs 10-fold influence on Obama?Change that

Sarah Palin wrote about the media and the leftist smear machine in Going Rogue: An American Life. She pointed out how the left used ethics complaints to smear Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House and how it is similar to the way they used ethics complaints against her to grind the government of Alaska to a halt. She pointed out how the left trumped up the ethics charges so that they would be picked up by the mainstream media. She says that the media and the Alaska bloggers did so much to try to get her out of office and then they had the audacity to come back and criticize her for resigning - for doing the one thing they wanted her to do.

Articles continue to pop up in the media this week claiming that Palin resigned so she could make money. Palin explains her position best in her book when she writes "They [the media] just couldn't believe that a politician would willingly give up power and title for good reasons."

Hannity raised the issue of the media smear machine last night: "Governor, you have been attacked for the clothes you wear. Your family has been attacked. Your intelligence has been questioned. Your governance has been questioned. Your motivations has been questioned." Palin let it rip:

It's about the message that's just this common sense conservative solutions that are needed to get this country back on the right track.

They don't like it. They can't handle it. We rattle them when we talk to these liberal elites about what it is that most Americans believe in. Those time tested truths that built America into the greatest country on earth and we want to get her back there. We want to be able to embrace that exceptionalism again.

And when we talk about things that we can do to put us back on the right track, it drives them crazy. It makes their heads spin. And I don't know, I think we should look at it kind of as a compliment that we are effective.

The media lies and Sarah Palin wears the vitriol they spew at her like a badge of honor.

Time Magazine: Is Worldwide Writing Entertainment Fake?

Now this is funny - pathetic funny. Joshua Green and Andrew Sullivan are killing each other over which one is the most credible Sarah Palin Hack in the world of opinion writing. Since both are just completely incapable of stringing together an objective analytical thought, it's more akin to watching the WWE than it is to watching professional writers debate intelligently on a subject that is important to the future political landscape of America.

Michael Scherer puts on his WWE referee uniform and writes this:

This debate boils down to an interesting question of analysis: Is Palin's popularity of the political or entertainment variety, is it People Magazine or TIME magazine? (People tends to outsell TIME at the newsstand, but a People cover matters far less in an election year than a TIME cover.) The reason this is such a tough question to figure is that so much of the political debate now is driven by self-described entertainers--Jon Stewart, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck. We don't know where politics ends and entertainment begins. Either this is a permanent shift in the electoral landscape or a media fad that helps sell overpriced gold coins to gullible political ideologues. The personal attacks aside, this is the issue that Green and Sullivan are debating.

Let me help these gentlemen out before they start putting each other into sleeper holds and hitting each other over the head with metal chairs (does WWE stand for Worldwide Writing Entertainment? We know that's fake, too, right?). Palin gets coverage for two reasons: 1) Palin supporters want her to run and it draws viewership. 2) Palin haters see it as an opportunity to lie about her and distort her record - tell a lie enough times and someone's bound to believe it. Personal bias aside, my political science degree and years of observation lead me to believe that she's running. And if I'm wrong, it has absolutely nothing to do with her wanting to be a celebrity or because our political culture has strayed toward entertainment.

Now let me help out Mr. Scherer. We don't know where politics ends and entertainment begins. We didn't when Obama got elected by a coalition of the pop culture and the media elite and we won't know next presidential election either. We are an "American Idol" society as cynical as that may sound. But we still try to vote for who we think the best candidate is. Sarah Palin is the Chris Daughtry of American politics. If Daughtry could compete again knowing what we know now he would win. Fortunately, in politics the contestants can come back on next time around. And yes, this is a permanent shift in the electoral landscape. There are polls that show we are trending more conservative. It's not either or. Media fads trend the way of the culture - and this time it's trending right.

"The press would not go easy on Palin," Scherer writes and I will cede that to him. But he needs to explain more clearly why "she still polls terribly despite her media stardom, and it seems that there is little upside to trying to lead a ticket--with all its ancillary limitations and agonies--when you can wield power behind the curtain." This would have been the perfect opportunity to point out that those who still allow themselves to be led by the nose by the mainstream media still think that watching Green and Sullivan kick a rubber ball back and forth to each other is real news. Once people understand that the negative opinions of Palin that pollsters seem to pull muscles to reflect in their data come from ignorant people who listen to people like Green and Sullivan then it will be easier to make the anology that a lazy man who formulates his opinion on Palin by listening to the mainstream media is like asking someone who doesn't speak English for directions and believing every word they say.

You don't see people arguing over whether Romney or Gingrich are running, do you? That's probably because, although they would be unpalatable to liberals, a Palin presidency is the equivalent of the nuclear annhilation of liberal political philosophy. They could survive Mitt or Newt. Those people have stuff that doesn't have to be made up to use against them even if they, too, are qualified to be president. Palin's too clean. They can't afford Ronald Reagan II. And although liberals will tell you their biggest mistake was underestimating Reagan, they can't explain why they are doing it again with Palin. But it does explain the fervor with which they continue to try to smear Palin. Maybe they think if they try harder this time than they did with Reagan it might work. Yeah, and maybe if Obama tries harder than Jimmy Carter that just might work too.

Keeping the meme alive that Palin is just a fad or a media phenemon the likes of Octomom is just a backdoor way of saying "we still need to keep doubt in people's minds, but let's use a two pronged question instead of an open ended statement about how dumb she is."

Liberal writing is like drugs. As long as there are still users, the product will sell. Don't expect to see the drivel you are reading about Palin to ever go away. It didn't during Reagan. It's just that enough people "stopped using" long enough to sober up and realize that there is something wrong with the press then and it is happening again now. Dummies don't topple regimes like the Soviet Union and dummies don't have the kind of political impact that Sarah Palin has. The real dummies are usually the ones who believe what Green and Sullivan write.

Just like WWE wrestling, "WWE" writing is well scripted. It's entertaining. It's a legitimate marketable product. But it's not real.

Biased Media In Denial

Some of us who are old enough (like me) remember waching Godzilla movies on TV back in the 70's. It was always amazing how the military would fire artillery, rockets and bullets at the thing but it just got more crazy as it started pulling down the high tension wires and smashing buildings with its feet. The conservative revolution is the left's monster and they seem to be taking the same approach to it. This tells me that while they continue to fire hit piece after hit piece, they are in denial about the ineffectiveness of their campaign.

We have had much time to analyze, report on, give commentary about and write articles describing the obvious liberal bias demonstrated by many in the mainstream media. The 2008 election is a textbook example of how media bias works when the citizens are unaware of it. The Tea Party movement is a textbook example of how it doesn't work when the citizens finally catch on.

You would think that journalists and journalism teachers would recognize the perils of using the straight media for advancing a hidden agenda. We all remember Chris Matthews in his role as news anchor (not in the role of analyst on his own show) getting a thrill up his leg after hearing an Obama speech. MSNBC pulled him from all future objective reporting. But the mainstream media continued to run negative story after story about Sarah Palin even as Joe Biden bumbled his way through the 2008 campaign. It turned out that all the negative stories written about Palin were not true. One may say it worked as her poll numbers went down in direct proportion to the number of hit stories. But it is in fact just starting to backfire now. Those who lie and cheat their customers for short term gain always end up losing those customers long term.

Greedy merchants mistakenly believe it more profitable to rip someone off by selling them a slick looking product that ultimately breaks down after the sale is made. But those who get burnt will never shop there again once they realize the salesman lied to them. There's a reason why a certain auto repair shop lost thousands of dollars in future business from me long term when it ripped me off for a few hundred short term bucks up front. And there's a reason why newspaper readership is dropping as is viewership of the nightly news on the three major networks. They got people to fall for the Obama hype and now there is a lot of buyer's remorse. The media lied to us. We're figuring it out now. And we're pissed off.

While those who are falling by the wayside are the same outlets who trashed Sarah Palin and the conservative brand, the one network which has the long term vision to see that she is going to be a major player in American politics for years to come is making a fortune and gaining viewership. Fox News is the merchant you can trust. Fox' growing ratings indicate that there are not only a lot of "repeat customers" but also a lot of "first time buyers," many of whom are looking for a better "product" than the one they were sold in 2008.

Just like the folks fighting Godzilla in Tokyo, the mainstream media continues to absurdly insist that it can "destroy the monster" by using the same old ineffective tactics. Joe Klein is trying to make us believe Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are seditious even as violent pro-illegal immigration protestors throw bottles at cops and attack photographers without a peep from the mainstream media. Joe, put it back in the dog house - it's not hunting anymore.

The last thing the mainstream media needed was a real group of violent lefties like those in Arizona. It will be nearly impossible to juxtapose the Tea Partiers with them now. If they continue their Tea Party violence meme it will simply become as laughable as the anti-Palin meme is now.

Even before SB-1070, I couldn't understand how working family people from all walks of life were worse than smelly hippies throwing molotov cocktails and burning American flags during the Vietnam war days in the eyes of the mainstream media. One's man's "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" is now becoming another man's "oh crap, our hypocracy is showing." Yes, the media has been lying to us since the Tet Offensive and we're only realizing it now.

The longer the mainstream media continues to lie to us, the weaker their brand becomes. As fresh hit pieces on Sarah Palin, the Tea Party movement and conservative movement continue to hit the newstands and websites across America, the more it is becoming apparent that the mainstream media is in denial. They will be unable to destroy the monster they inadvertently created.

Quote of the Day 04/23/10

"First off, the people involved in writing government regulations are often lobbyists from the very industry that the new laws are supposed to regulate, and that’s been the case here." - Sarah Palin

Quote of the Day 4/21/10

S.E. Cupp is our Palin Warrior of the Week for this quote:

And [Ron Reagan] has the balls to criticize Sarah Palin’s career arc? I love guys like this, who are so disconnected from reality that they enthusiastically serve up totally nonsensical drivel—with pride and a shit-eating grin!

Somewhere in Heaven, Ronald, Sr. is wishing she would have smacked him, too.

Quote of the Day 4/19/10

Today's quote comes from Whitney the Pipsqueak at The Palination:

At one point she stated during the speech that the next Lincoln or Reagan may be sitting in the audience. In my head, I thought, "the next Reagan is standing behind the podium!"

That's the first time I've ever seen Sarah Palin miss something as obvious as that.

Richmond Tea Party

Read about it at Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Charles Payne from Fox Business News Speaks to
the Richmond Tea Party (I found out the zoom
doesn't work very well on my phone camera).

I was introduced to the Republican Liberty Alliance.
A friend of mine told me to check it out because it
was right up my alley. We spoke with a girl named
Rachelle who was handing out flyers. Note to the
left: Rachelle is African American. So forget about
trying to brand any literature that she was handing out
as racist.

We Have Found The One Who Can Lead Us

Sarah Palin spoke in Boston today where she rallied the movement by hitting all the key points she has been making in an extremely well delivered and well written speech. She was concise when discussing energy, taxes and the free market. She also crafted her words perfectly when explaining that the differences in world views and the differences in opinion is "nothing that a good old fashioned election can’t fix." Most of all, she proved to us today that she can lead us with her excitement, her ideas and her optimism.

"America's best days are yet to come," Palin cheerfully told the crowd. Using the Boston Marathon as a motivational analogy she said "so get your second wind, America!" She may not have realized it, but when she told the crowd "the dream of Washington, Lincoln and Reagan... lives on in you," she was the personification of the ideals she was reflecting as she became the ultimate mirror of all that we feel.

Palin reached out to all Americans: registered Republicans, Reagan Democrats and independents. She even reached out to those who voted for some on the left in a most amazing way.

I’m not calling anyone un-American. But the unintended consequences of these actions, the results, are un-American.

I don’t want anybody to feel bad if they had supported some of those on the left in that last election. Because how would a lot of folks have known? We had a complicit media that did not do its job completely. Some tried, but some did not - not vetting the candidates, all the intentions there.

Now, don’t feel bad though because most Americans were busy. We’re busy living our lives, raising our families and running our businesses. So, how were some to know? But now we do know. That’s the point. Now we do know. We know what the problem is. And now we’re going to fix the problem.

Once the hair stopped standing up on the back of this blogger's neck, I realized that she was articulating a position I had taken when trying to explain to people that it's not about selling Sarah Palin or conservatism, but rather selling those who voted the wrong way on the fact that the media lies in order to win them back.

Sarah Palin used the EXACT strategy for taking it back that I've been outlining in previous blogs and on my web pages. I've written this:

The American people had become so busy just surviving the economic climate that they not only deferred their fact finding responsibilities to the media, they also deferred their conclusion drawing abilities to them too. So called "straight news reporting" was focused on McCain's Republican party as the overseer of a financial crisis that occurred on its watch while glossing over the root causes of the crisis which should have been examined more deeply by researching the policies and statements of Democratic representatives Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.

And I've written this:

Let the record be straight: media malpractice is the reason so many fell for Obama. McCain got 46% of the vote and 58,343,671 people voted for him. Obama got 53% and 66,882,230 votes. That means the 8.5 million of those that make up the spread are also the same ones that can be flipped once they realize the media duped them. John Ziegler said "...far too many of us simply down whatever the media spoon feeds us and that we don't do a lot of critical thinking or research on our own." The key to winning elections for Republicans is going to be their ability to get Americans to understand how deeply the left has been methodically controlling the media with The Great Left Smear Machine, which is explained by Rowan Scarborough in Human Events. And this task is not daunting when you consider it's not about converting 66 million people. It's only about converting 8.5 million.

We will win the moderates with our fiscal conservatism. We will win young libertarians with our limited government and personal liberty theme. And we will win the "sheep" who believed everything the media fed them at face value with a campaign to urge them to do their own research. This is not to put down people who are sheep. This is to motivate and encourage them to seek the truth instead of giving in to a shallow position of following leftist pop culture so as to appear cool or sophisticated. When a sheep wakes up and realizes it's been sheared, it will not go to the pen so easily next time. Besides, we may even be able to convince them that our anti-establishment counter-culture is so much better than anything the leftist "elites" have to offer. The moderates will defect when the leftists' government spending gets out of hand and the libertarians will defect when the leftists impose on their freedoms. There are your 8.5 million swing voters.

As for hard core liberals, the kool aid drinkers themselves, we cannot win them over. Thus, there is no need to change the fundamental core of the conservative philosophy. We can win elections without them and eventually reduce their numbers through sheer intellectual argument while simultaneously using their own tactics against them.

1. Convince people that the media lies to us and expose liberal bias and double standards frequently.

How amazing it was to hear Sarah Palin validate everything I feel and believe. Like Reagan, she is a rare politico who can take everything that many of us are writing and thinking and put it into several concise sentences that she delivers back to us in a perfectly articulated form.

Just look at what she's overcome to get to where she is. Just look at how beaten down the American people were as Obama rode roughshod over their will. Like Sarah Palin, we too were down and bloodied, clinging to life in our fight against the left. Now we are standing strong with stiff spines and we are on offense.

Sarah Palin didn't retreat. She reloaded as her father Chuck Heath would say. After a vicious 2008 vice presidential candidacy and a return to Alaska only to be attacked relentlessly by bloggers and the mainstream media, Sarah Palin has pulled it all together with her book Going Rogue: An American Life, her Fox News gig, her speaking events and her role in the Tea Party movement.

My original website evolved from an earlier webpage "The American Page" into this blogger's full blown thought on conservatism and the conservative movement. It was born during a morning of yearning when George W. Bush was named the 2000 GOP presidential nominee. And while it far from declared Bush as the next Ronald Reagan, it acknowledged that Bush had been handed liberty's lamp and would have to lead us in the political shadow of the person who he described as "Our leader" in his statement on the Reagan's death.

The page has since been updated and changed somewhat, but kept in its original format. I remember writing the page in 2000 with a deep felt, almost melancholy yearning for the kind of leadership this country had under Ronald Reagan. I even put a link on there "THE FUTURE Who Best Can Support and Continue the Philosophy?" But, I also accepted the fact that it was highly unlikely that a leader of Reagan's caliber would be coming along anytime soon. By the time John McCain had won the 2008 presidential primaries, I was even surer there was no Reagan in the field of candidates Republicans were putting up on the national level then.

Then, we met Sarah Palin.

That's when I changed "THE FUTURE" link and pointed it to an article about her.

On my Fight for the Right page and in subsequent blog posts, I outlined exactly what I wanted to see the conservative movement do. I expressed a hope in the movement when the Tea Party was in its infancy and Sarah Palin was down and out in Alaska. Since then, Sarah Palin has been executing the plan better than anyone could have ever dreamed. Her merger with the Tea Party is beyond amazing.

The yearning is over and there is no longer a need to search for someone to lead us back to that shining city on a hill and to make "Patrick's World" one with Ronald Reagan's world again. We have found that leader. It is with prayer this blogger believes that conservatives will come to an understanding that we can be successful in the hard fought but glorious journey back to the greatness of America with Sarah Palin as our leader.

The Daily Caller: 'Sarah Palin has definitely arrived'

I just love to go back to October 2008 when I told people if you think Sarah Palin is big now wait until 2012 when she is a behemoth. Gamers may understand this: Sarah Palin is going to continue leveling up until she can reach the final screen where she defeats the undefeatable and helps us takes back America. Someone call Nintendo even if the meme of the game might be too close to Zelda to make it viable. And if Nintento can't sell it in game form, at least the Daily Caller sure can sell the concept in written form much better than this blogger can.

My post "Palin Takes The Next Step Forward" on Palin Twibe Blog and Sarah's Web Brigade was a nice try at pointing out another important moment in the evolution of Sarah Palin. But Jedediah Bila just simply lands it when she writes:

If you had any doubts before, make no mistake: Sarah Palin has definitely arrived. And whatever her future plans may be, rest assured her voice will be resolute, her approach refreshing, and her contributions pivotal.

Read the whole article. And keep the duct tape handy as it will probably blow your mind. Liberals will also need the duct tape in case their heads spin off. And as a rising star in the media herself, Bila appears to give off the right shine at The DC where the conservatism is good but where the Palin coverage needs a little polishing. Just as she's done the last two times she appeared on Hannity, Bila has slammed it home in her final sentences.

But don't just believe the Palin kool aid drinkers.

Even moderates like Joe Lieberman are starting to say things like "I do disagree with her on some of the specifics that she has said, but I think anybody who underestimates Sarah Palin as a political force in America does so at some peril, because she is speaking for a lot of people out there." In October 2008, Lieberman alluded to the fact that Palin would need some training. Things have changed.

There are still going to be those who don't want to accept the rise of Sarah Palin. But with writing like Bila's and comments like Lieberman's, it will be very difficult to overcome the obvious now that the smearing and the bogus stories about divorces, federal indictments and reality shows aren't sticking. In some of the latest liberal columns, it's becoming evident that the attack, smear and destroy approach has failed miserably and their tactics are changing. They are beginning to accept her as a force to be reckoned with now as they turn to their research departments to at least come up with some viable opposition to Palin on policy.

Another Warning to the Tea Party

The Radical Left is Trying to Sabotage the Movement

Check out this website. We need to weed these thugs out. Pay attention Tea Partiers and let's look for these low lifes at our rallies. We can spot them by racist signs and erratic behavior, or if they try to bait us. Don't fall for it. Ask them to leave. Then surround them. Then call law enforcement.

I first got wind of this here.

Read this, too.

Palin Takes The Next Step Forward

Speaks at Southern Republican Leadership Conference

We are mere mortals watching the evolution of a political giant the likes we have not seen since Ronald Reagan. While Barack Obama the candidate appeared to be the coming of the next great American leader, his presidency is quickly dispelling those notions. It is actually the woman with tears in her eyes as she watched John McCain give his concession speech who has been greatness among us for the longest time. Fire has replaced those tears in her eyes and she is on offense now as she goes after the man who tried to destroy her politically in 2008. She knows it is not just her he was trying to destroy, but the nation which he claims to serve. She's come to help us take it back.

Liberals are waking up to that fact. The silly attacks no longer stick. The media is even waking up. In an article for National Journal Magazine, Paul Starobin warned readers (particularly liberal ones) to not get caught up in the she's dumb meme or the caricatures.

Evidently, there is something about Palin that drives her critics crazy. But if they can pause for breath, they might take a lesson from history as to the wisdom of mocking a political figure for a supposed lack of intelligence. The caricature of Eisenhower as Donald Duck did not stop him from twice defeating, in Electoral College landslides, the cerebral Adlai Stevenson, the darling of the intellectual crowd. The Georgetown set's view of Reagan as "an amiable dunce" did not keep voters from giving the Gipper landslide wins over Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer known for his propensity to micromanage, in 1980, and Walter Mondale in 1984. And Bush won re-election over John Kerry in 2004 despite being pilloried as Cheney's puppet.

He goes on to say "Palin's critics would be wise to marshal the best assault they can on the basis of her convictions -- on the substance of her vision of America and her policies for fulfilling that vision."

The conservative strategy could be paying off. By defeating the liberals on their own board at their own game, they are being forced to come back into the arena of ideas where mature politicos can conduct their policy debates civilly yet vigorously. This is how democracy is supposed to work. When the electorate hears the debate of ideas instead of the mocking of people or the misinforming of them, our country is stronger for it.

Palin spoke in depth today on the nuclear issue, the energy issue, the Iran issue and the Israeli issue. There can be no doubt that despite a few notes on her hand and a couple of folksy anecdotes, this woman was there to talk substance. Palin knows her shit and no wet behind the ears community organizer playing president is going to tell her any differently.

There are those who will read this and figure I'll spill the kool aid all over the keyboard before I'm done. But, don't take it from just me. Look at it. This is not about a blogger that is gushing over Sarah Palin. This is about a woman who has electrified the political arena. This is about watching the evolution of our next great American leader. If you are an intellectually honest fan of American politics regardless of your ideology, you should find the next two years very very interesting.

Obama was just a flash in the pan. He was a one hit wonder who sold millions on a stump speech that was filled with hope, emotion and a vision he was unwilling to carry out once he got into office.

Sarah Palin is the real deal. Keep watching. The movie gets much better than this.


More on her speech:

Sarah Palin's Keynote At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference
SRLC Open Thread
Welcome to the Party Pal
Sarah Palin Rocks New Orleans!

UPDATE: Awesome Article on The Daily Caller by Jedediah Bila
Palin’s bull’s-eye in the Big Easy

The Defiance of Sarah Palin

It has got to be quite unnerving to liberals to see Sarah Palin still talking about "targeting" districts and "reloading" in the face of hot criticism that she is inciting violence. It seems the more they bring this up, the more she repeats those words. On Hannity last night she pointed that out. She explained that she's not going to stop saying it because people are not dumb - they know she is talking about the ballot box and not the battlefield.

Sarah Palin, the woman who was hammered on a regular basis by the mainstream media and the left wing blogosphere, could have easily thrown her hands up and went back to Alaska. After all, why would anyone want to deal with the nonsense if every time they stepped foot out of the house there was someone there talking smack about her kids, about her intelligence, about her lack of qualifications for higher office and about her self absorbed ambition. After all, she was writing a book, landing a sweet job on Fox News and giving speeches at $100K a clip.

A lesser person would have given the world the Italian salute, booked a week at a resort and partied on while the nation crumbled around them.

But not Sarah Palin.

Barack Obama was barely finished giving a joint news conference with his Russian counterparts before Sarah Palin just ripped him apart. Barack Obama sneezes the wrong way and there's a posting about it on Sarah Palin's Facebook page. She is relentless in her criticism and she is dead on optimistic about our country at the same time.

Given all the crap that she has had to take from the media, her opponents and in the blogosphere, it's only fitting that Sarah Palin is now going after Obama like a pitbull with lockjaw.

Those who tried to destroy her with a media smear campaign, bogus ethics violations and venemous blog posting after blog posting are about to understand what happens when you punch a kid in the face on the playground. Regarding Obama's nuclear policy, Palin told Hannity last night "[i]t's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate.'"

Palin was not only punched in the face. She was beaten to the ground by the liberal bullies. She is up now and she is on offense. She is punching them in the face. It's only going to them hurt more and more.

Sarah Palin is a badass. She will own the playground where she was once bullied.

The last person who was that defiant took a wall down.

Want to Fix This in 2012? Read the Directions.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter supporters chanted "four more years" at his rallies. 28 years later, they have gotten their wish. Historical parallels are often not as glaring as this one. But anyone who knows the pain of putting together a desk or a bicycle without reading the directions understands how conversations with other "non-readers" always end with "so that happened to you, too?" It's 1978 again.

What makes today's situation worse is that we have a president who is actively tunneling through our political system disconnecting vital pieces of free market infrastructure and prepping those sections for domestic socialism while disarming our nation and responding in an ineffective way to the growing nuclear threat in Iran.

Yes, this is the same Iran which took American hostages in 1978 and plunged our country into an internal debate on national security. Back then, Tehran had gone from autocratic rule under the Shah to religious rule under the Ayatollahs - a serious shift then but nonetheless not as serious as the shift we see now. Taking 53 Americans hostage for 444 days is a big deal, but not as big of a deal as leaving a glass hole where Tel Aviv is.

The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. But Russia and Venezuela are forging an alliance stronger than that between Moscow and Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua in 1982. Back then, the Soviets noticed Carter's foreign policy weaknesses and invaded Afghanistan as a result. Just as our military-industrial complex found a way to do just enough to shore up the Afghanistan resistance then, it does so now in preserving our lead in the War on Terror today despite the months of back and forth required to finally convince President Obama to send in enough troops so that the thing didn't end up a disaster.

Carter was a big proponent of arms control and the reduction in nuclear weapons just as Obama is today. There is nothing wrong with that unless you unilaterally disarm and stop recognizing evil in the world, or what critics back in the Carter days used to describe as being "a paper tiger."

Israel is about to become the new hostages. As President Obama unilaterally reduces our nuclear arsenal and proposes shifts in defense policy away from using the nuclear threat to prevent first strikes on America or its allies, rogue nations of the world will see this as their golden opportunity to move in and fill the vacuum created by our reduction of power. Queue up Nightline again and see if we can get a Ted Koppel look alike in there when the nuclear stand-off begins between Iran and Israel.

Jimmy Carter became president when the American people rejected the Republican Party after years of corruption and not listening to its conservative base. In a historical comparison to where we are now, Con Coughlin of the Telegraph.co.uk writes:

Americans have, of course, been here before: in 1976, sickened by Watergate, they elected a naïve and inexperienced peanut farmer from Georgia to clear away the cynicism that came to define the Nixon era. From the moment he took office in January 1977, President Jimmy Carter made it clear that he wanted to make a new start in America's relations with the rest of the world. Gone was the hard-nosed Realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. Mr Carter transformed US policy by insisting that human rights be placed at the top of the agenda - with disastrous results.

This was written in June, 2008 - five months before Barack Obama was elected president.

Many people who are 45 or younger probably don't understand what happened in 1978. If they want to understand what happened in 1978, they simply can experience the "replay" today, or they can go study the Carter administration and the reasons why Ronald Reagan rose to the presidency.

During Carter's years, he was dogged by a former governor who took every opportunity to criticize him in op-eds, speeches and radio broadcasts. This former governor strongly believed that our country was headed into obsolescence at the hands of Carter. He felt we stood on the line between greatness and darkness. And he was darned intent on seeing to it that we headed toward the light.

Our capitalist structure was being torn apart. Government regulation was growing. Taxes inched higher and higher. People lost jobs. The cost of energy was rising. The world was destabilizing militarily. The American people remained patriotic, but they grew less patient with each passing day of the Carter administration. What most people don't remember is that despite that "malaise" Carter said Americans felt, they did not embrace Ronald Reagan immediately. It was not until after the "There you go again," line in the first debate with Jimmy Carter that he actually jumped ahead of Carter in the polls for the first time.

The media lambasted Reagan. They mocked him, calling him a stupid hockey mom. Uh, sorry, let me fix this. They mocked him, calling him a B grade actor who barely could hold his own with a chimpanzee in a movie. His appearances on GE Theater and on the speaking circuit were seen by critics as Reagan's way of getting in with big business and the rich. It was about making money and advancing the agenda of those who made money. Scandalous, isn't it, that someone would dare admit that openly to being a capitalist free marketer at a time when liberals were in control of our economic system?

At one point, a poll suggested that Gerald Ford could beat Ronald Reagan in the 1980 primary. According to Encyclopedia.com:

As Reagan gained momentum, former president Gerald R. Ford toyed with the idea of challenging him, asserting on 2 March that "a very conservative Republican can't win a national election." A CBS News/New York Times poll for 12-15 March showed that Republicans preferred Ford to Reagan by 52 to 27 percent and that Ford was the only Republican all voters favored over President Jimmy Carter (47 to 42 percent). Yet on 15 March Ford withdrew from the race.

I couldn't imagine having to talk Palin supporters off the ledge if a poll like that ever came out right before the 2012 primaries. But it wasn't Reagan's high popularity, good looks and outside the box thinking that was going to win him the presidency. It was sheer hard work.

In 1976, after failing for a second time to win his party's presidential nomination, conservative Republican Ronald Reagan had begun almost immediately to plan for 1980. From 1977 until he announced his candidacy in November 1979, he earned more than $100,000 a year from taped radio editorials and newspaper columns while delivering speeches all across the United States. He also established a political action committee (PAC), Citizens for the Republic, which contributed more that $600,000 to Republican candidates in the 1978 elections. Other Republicans had PACs as well, but Reagan's PAC spent more money, offering support to 234 House candidates, 25 Senate candidates, and 19 gubernatorial hopefuls—as well as 122 other Republicans running for state and local offices. In 1980 Reagan was able to call in a large number of political IOUS, thereby demonstrating a far broader base of support than he had in his two earlier tries for the presidential nomination.

Would you consider appearing on Fox News today's equivalent of taped radio editorials? Would you consider writing Facebook columns today's equivalent of writing newspaper columns? Would you consider delivering speeches all across the United States today's equivalent of, well, delivering speeches all across the United States? The rest of the stuff described in the above quote is just starting to happen now. What happens in 2010 is going to be extremely important.

Americans are very good at figuring out when they have a problem. We recognize when something's wrong. We recognized it with Jimmy Carter. We recognize it now with Barack Obama. We're just not that good at seeing the solutions right away. We have a Tea Party movement that knows we have to get back to fiscal conservatism. We have a Republican Party that knows the day of the RINO is over. But we don't know who our leader is, do we?

Americans can be angry and bitter, though they are also hardworking and optimistic. But it always takes an optimistic leader to bring that out of them. During World War II, Americans were pumped up by FDR's "fear is fear itself" speech. In 2001, Americans were pumped up by George W. Bush's "we will not falter and we will not fail" speech.

But, we will never admit to ourselves or reveal to ourselves who that leader will be until the last minute. Americans always do things at the last minute.

Pearl Harbor - last minute. Cuban missile crisis - last minute. 9/11 - last minute. Tea Party movement - after Obama's election (the sheep are already in the shearing pen and we finally get moving).

And so it will be in 2012.

Understanding history is the key to understanding where we are today.

Here's what we should look for:

With Carter's obvious weakness, a large Republican field turned out for the competition. Reagan did have a definite advantage. He had been traveling the country for three years building networks, raising money, repeating one simple message: "Get the government off our backs." After a setback in the Iowa Caucus, Reagan went on to win the New Hampshire Primary and roll to the Republican Convention.

There will be a lot of people in the 2012 primary. It will probably be like the Kentucky Derby. Read what it was like for Reagan. They even had a bigger RINO problem back then than we do now!

Ronald Reagan didn't write on his hand. He dropped a bunch of index cards and messed up a whole speech. What a dope! Ronald Reagan was called an extremist. He was called dumb. He could never be president. He was "trigger happy."

Ronald Reagan did not become president because of Team Reagan or Conservatives4Reagan or Texas4RonaldReagan or Ronnie's Web Brigade or because of the then day's equivalents of talk radio hosts like Sean Hannity or Mark Levin. Don't get me wrong. Building that kind of an army definitely helped position him. But, he didn't win in 1980 just because his loyal army loved him (and yes they loved him deeply). He won because the American people had enough of Jimmy Carter. According to PBS:

Though Carter managed to raise enough fears about Reagan to keep the race close, in the end the economy, the hostages, and Carter's weak image proved too much to overcome. Reagan won in a landslide, winning the popular vote by 10% and all but six states.

The rest of America didn't see what Reagan's truly devoted saw until 1984 when it was morning in America.

This writer told you that the difference in 2008 was 8.5 million people. They've swung back and more. Obama is at 44% favorable now. The American people were a nervous wreck in 1980. Here's this "extremist" former governor who has been mocked ferociously in the press whose foreign policy credentials are "we win, they lose" versus a skinny kid who nearly drove our country into the ash heap of history. I could be talking about Reagan and Carter. But I'm really talking about Palin and Obama.

The day is going to have to come when - after the bicycle doesn't ride or the dresser drawers don't open - that we're going to have to read the directions. And when we do, it won't be "that happened to you, too, huh?" It'll be more like "okay, pass me the Palin so I can tighten up this last screw."

Breitbart: N Word Allegations Were A Set-Up

Andrew Breitbart has written the definitive article that supports all of the things I wrote in my March 25, 2010 post A Warning to the Tea Party Movement: You Are Being Set Up.

Breitbart lands the point that the smear campaign against the Tea Party is a set-up.

Those in the movement who are Hispanic or black are given the Clarence Thomas treatment: mocked, ridiculed and marginalized. The Democratic party cannot afford for minority groups to break from the pack, so they show that apostasy is met with high-grade ridicule. Those willing to withstand vile and hateful un-American taunts are some of America’s greatest patriots.

The press went straight to petrified Republican leaders like John Boehner and Michael Steele over the falsified “N-word” allegations, who dutifully offered apologies that they were not qualified to give. It was a set-up.

The relentless running of stories up the media flagpole are clear evidence that the government and the press are not interested in dispelling the lies about the Tea Party movement. Despite this, the Tea Party image is maintained in proper perspective in the new media and on Fox News.

The government is committing soft thuggery on us and the media lies to us as part of that thuggery. It is the likes of Andrew Breitbart that keep the movement advancing and getting its message out in a proper and balanced way. He is the balance.

Here's the money paragraph:

The Democrats need to kill the Tea Party movement. They need to marginalize and demonize those who would stand up to their hardball, toxic and anti-democratic tactics. Their strategy is to bait and incite the Tea Party and to use whatever they can get to silence the awakening giant. They have failed, epically, and the American people now see these tactics for what they are. At long last, new people every day are beginning to understand the kinds of people we are dealing with here.

This is a popular movement made up of mainstream Americans - people with families, jobs. According to polls more people in America equate themselves with the Tea Party than they do the Democrat or Republican party. Thus, the government and the media have chosen to try to marginalize the largest plurality of American citizens in the electorate by calling them violent and racist. That's tyranny.


Related: Liberals Launch Downright Nasty New Attacks on Tea Party Movement

Pam Stout on Letterman 03/30/10

This is a must read and a much watch. Pamela Stout is right on the money.

David Letterman gives the Tea Party the best showcase it's ever had

Every Day is April Fools Day For Sarah Palin

Since being named as John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin has been the subject of numerous (understatement?) stories written about her in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. As we all enjoy being pranked and punked today, we laugh because the nonsense lasts only one day and everybody knows we're all kidding. But for Sarah Palin, April Fools Day is every day.

Whether she opens up the New York Times, switches on MSNBC, checks out her local newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, picks up a Vanity Fair at the supermarket or happens to throw a Newsweek on the counter while she's picking up some make-up at CVS, she has to be thinking that at any moment someone is going to jump out from behind the wall and yell "April Fools!"

-Sarah Palin is a book banner. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin charged rape victims for their rape kits. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin's son Trig is not hers. April Fools!
-Trooper Wooten is an upstanding citizen and Walter Monegan is not really an at-will employee. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. April Fools!
-"Hi Governor Palin, it's Nicholas Sarkozy." April Fools!
-Here are 18 April Fools jokes that even judges and personnel boards have laughed at.
-Sarah Palin resigned her governorship because of a pending FBI Investigation. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin told her family that she was finished with politics and that she was going to write a book and give speeches just so she could get rich. Good one, Levi!
-Alex Rodriguez knocked up Willow. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin came to the door in a towel. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin doesn't know that Africa is a continent. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin's hair is thinning. April Fools!
-"Death Panels" don't exist in the Health Care law. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin's getting divorced. She threw her wedding ring in the lake during a fit of anger. April Fools!
-Sarah Palin didn't write Going Rogue. April Fools!
-Only a few hundred people showed up at her book signings. April Fools!
-She's getting a reality show like the Osbournes. April Fools!
-She raided an Oscar Suite before going on Leno where her performance was enhanced by a laugh track. April Fools! Okay, she did go on Leno but there was no laugh track.
-She got free health care in Canada. April Fools!
-She called on Tea Partiers to take up guns and kill liberals. April Fools!
-She personally interviewed LL Cool J and Toby Keith for her Fox News special. April Fools!
-She agreed to speak at an RNC fundraiser the week of the SRLC convention. April Fools!

I can't wait to see the new ones that come out. Geoffrey Dunn is working on a whole bunch for us as we speak.

Quote of the Day (April 1, 2010)

Jedediah Bila:

"I’m submitting to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s called OCPD: Obsessive Compulsive Palin Disorder. Symptoms include fierce anxiety stemming from Palin’s mention of the words life, common-sense, drill, and those two particularly terror-inspiring utterances—free market and you betcha. Subjects are prone to arrogant, Olbermannic rants, a preoccupation with making unfunny jokes (see Letterman, Family Guy, and Maher for details), and an infatuation with Palin’s wardrobe, accent, and the writing on her hand."

In the rare event of an unhingement lasting more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical help to avoid long-term mental injury.