Don't Pile on the Rabbit

We wouldn't want Paul Jenkins to think that we're haters. We're just a bunch of regular folk who have a slight problem with people saying some really nasty stuff about a really great lady from Alaska. Got a problem with that?

Now, not that Palin supporters want to make a big deal or anything, but...



Paul Jenkins and Why Halibut Should be Clubbed

Worry About Obama, yes. Worry About our Military, no.

Our military is taking the correct tactical steps toward bringing this North Korea thing under control. As we set up our ships off the coast, we can position ourselves to provide tactical guidance against North Korea.

We should be prepared to provide guidance and assitance to South Korea, and make sure they target and take out those targets as North Korea sets up its artillery.

Obama will serve no purpose giving a speech Monday night. Instead, he needs to let action speak louder than words. In international power politics, words are not a language. The ability of our highly efficient military to assist the South Koreans in being the ones who take out the artillery targets that North Korea is using to fire at them will speak louder than any speech to the nation that Obama can give.

It will continue to be good policy if Obama backs the treaty and allows the provisions in that treaty to be protocol for military policy. It would also be good policy if he doesn't try to micro-manage this thing.

Let the military do its job. Cancel Monday Night's speech. Wake the president up when it's over and let him give a speech then to explain to us how we kicked their asses.

It's only a few targets (for now). We can take them out no problem, by proxy.

GOP Establishment Will Help Palin Make Her Decision

If you have some time, please listen to my rant on my BlogTalk Radio program from Wednesday night. But more importantly, even if you don't have the time (like I did, brushing my teeth, making breakfast), listen to Tammy Bruce's interview with Sarah Palin (below). The keys to the connection between Palin, the hating left, the plotting GOP Establishment, the media, the feminist movement and her loyal followers are contained within that interview. Yet, the super sleuths at all the mainstream media outlets completely missed it while they were too busy focusing on an insignificant misstep when Palin accidently said North Korea when she meant to say South Korea.

Governor Palin told Tammy Bruce:

If within the hierarchy (again those self proclaimed movers and shakers and the pickers of the winners and losers in a political primary especially ), if they keep making it so difficult on good average Americans with some commonsense solutions - if they make it so difficult, virtually imposssible to run for office - that's going to be the death of the GOP. They need to wake up and realize that. It's going to keep good people from running for office.

They're not going to get me to sit down and shut up. If I believe its the right thing to do in running for president I am going to do so. But, these GOPers (who think that they have their thumb on the pulse of America and they're going to tell us instead of allowing competition that can breed success), if they're going to tell us who it is that can surface as an ideal candidate through a primary without letting the process work, then they're going to keep some really good people from running.

Tammy Bruce had the perfect question:

If they're afraid of you, Governor, how in God's name can they run the United States of America and face the evil bullies that are out their in the world? If they can't handle you, Governor, how can we allow them to take this nation?

Sarah Palin referred to anonymous sources in giving Tammy's perfect question, the perfect answer:

You guys are going to cure the world's economic woes and [take] on these dictators who want to destroy us and our allies, but you can't put your name behind criticisms against somebody who's trying to do the right thing. If you can't put your name on criticism. It's a wimpy wimpy thing that they're doing.

It is an exremely newsworthy and interesting exchange which starts at the 6:00 minute mark.



Palin and Bruce went on to talk about how people reveal themselves by the way they react to Palin. Sarah reacted to how politicians react to her by saying politicians talk out of both sides of their mouth. "Man this is why I really don't like politicians," she told Tammy. "It reveals who they really are."

The GOP Establishment is making the same mistake that the liberals have been making for two years now. They are manifesting their own monster. The more they try to stop her, the more it will motivate her and the stronger it will make her. They only push her closer to running for president the more they try to attack her. The more they do this, the more it demonstrates to Palin and those of us in the conservative movement that there is a problem within the GOP Establishment. They try to discredit her at their own peril.

If We Should Ever Give Thanks, It's Now

In early autumn of 1621, the 53 surviving Pilgrims celebrated their successful harvest, as was the English custom. Our national holiday really stems from the feast held in the autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to celebrate the colony's first successful harvest. Contrary to what killjoy Richard Greener of the Huffington Post writes, Thanksgiving is not "a complete invention, a cleverly created slice of cultural propaganda, just another in a long line of inspired nationalistic myths."

Those of us who look toward higher angels and a higher power to inspire our lives can give thanks for the contrast that those who just wallow in the mud of revisionist history and their own self-loathing provide us because our spirits are further enriched by knowing that we possess an inner soul that seeks a light greater than ourselves and a vision more powerful than those who seek darkness. When this light shines, it casts the long shadows over those with lesser sense who focus on the misery of life in order to tear down a world view that encompasses faith, love of fellow man and rugged individualism in order to advance a collective cause based on the Marxist slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

It is the contrast between these two types of people for which we can give thanks. This contrast could not exist as a reminder to us without the haters, the negative naysayers and those who choose to use their forum at websites like the Huffington Post to try to convince us that we are a bad nation whose traditions are based on evils like the killing of Indians or the slaughtering of natives (I'll save that one for my Columbus Day column).

It would be easy to become complacent and forget to give thanks if every day was a cake walk and there was no threat to the American experiment of freedom and liberty. In fact, during the times in which our country has been in existence when things have gone well and we have forgotten that there is always a wolf at the door, this is when liberalism and secularism have done their most damaging work.

We can give thanks for living in a prosperous and generous nation. As we emerged from the Reagan years and Clinton years with a strong economy, turkeys in every oven and cars in every driveway, we did not notice those in the shadows who were planting the charges and (after years of preparation and effort to erode the foundation and fabric of our society) were ready to take out our ideals with one final plunge of a lever or button in a voting booth in 2008.

Had it not been a mass revolt of sheep being led to a slaughter shortly following Obama's inauguration, we would have probably been sheared, our wool redistributed to those who don't work for it, and slaughtered, the meat of our hard work cooked and served up to a constituency that awaited their great messiah's redistributive plans to help them pay their mortgages, put gas in their cars and follow the drum beat of their unions or community organizations.

We need to give thanks to the liberals, the progressives, the socialists and the communists. We need to give thanks to the Left wing for awakening a sleeping giant and for motivating a silent majority to speak out, get out of their comfort zones and take to the streets to fight for what's right at rallies and Tea parties across America.

We were that close, folks.

We nearly lost it all. Our nation stood on the brink of fundamental transformation. But in their zest for power and their will to power, the progressive Leftist movement in America tipped their hand. When we realized they had an ace up their sleeve and that they were using the complicit media to rig their game, we woke up. They saw their intellectual community organizer who could give rousing campaign speeches as their best hope to put into action a plan of dominance that they thought none of us could stop. When he could not come through for them, their progressive movement collapsed and the rest of America saw right through it.

The battle between good and evil or right and wrong may be told in simplistic symbolic terms, but good and evil are not as easy to recognize as we think. The Left wants us to think that we are an evil nation. But this is just a cloak they put on their narrative so as to play to our inner sense of right and wrong. The concept of social justice, the portrayal of the nativity as a fairy story of a baby and a manager and using our modern sense of civility to put a twisted focus on brutal events or behavior of our ancestors during a colonial time where people had to fight everyday just for their very survival are all tricks of the light that leftists use to sway people to their point of view.

Satan is not just some red devilish figure with a pitchfork tail. He is a subtle seed of a thought that can be placed in the minds of Americans who can be led to question their heritage when history is portrayed in a revisionist, liberal light. The Devil is not some guy who knocks on your door and asks for your soul. Instead, he waits outside until you least expect it and your soul, like a dog or a cat, wanders outside a door you left open by accident.

Today is the day we give thanks to the Lord God for all that we have and all that we can become. By focusing more on the true Divine nature of our existence, we can become more aware of how the great deceiver actually plays his game. When we wander from the ideals of faith and a God who encourages us to use our free will to accept Him as the greater being, we inadvertently allow the weeds of our spiritual housing to grow large enough so that we cannot see the evil one lurking in the shadows.

When the Tea Party or Sarah Palin sheds light on the Constitution, American exceptionalism, freedom and liberty, it is as if we are watching a scene from the Exorcist every time we hear a liberal's response to this. Notice how heads spin and green puke flies from their mouths every time the "holy water" of commonsense Constitutional conservatism is sprinkled on these people.

Go forth today and give thanks to the liberals for showing us what a morally and intellectually bankrupt philosophy really looks like. If we know that the inner core of what is presented to us as hope and change is as ugly as the hell toward which they want us to move towards, we can see our true meaning and true ideals clearly standing out brightly against such a dark backdrop.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

GOP Establishment: Suckers For the Left

The Jabberwocky continues as the left starts to embrace the Republican Establishment’s “stop Sarah Palin” meme. In an article for Salon.com, Steve Kornacki suggests "Palin's poll numbers with the GOP base will only ebb if base voters are exposed, more than once and from more than one voice, to criticisms of her.” His liberally motivated column is aimed at Republicans suggesting that they plant “insistent reminders that maybe she's not suited to represent the party on its national ticket again.” By praising Matt Labash, Karl Rove and David Frum, Salon’s news editor presents a strategy to his liberal readership that encompasses the use of Republicans to achieve a goal that the liberals have been incapable of doing on their own.

The Left is genuinely afraid of Sarah Palin. Obviously, she is a threat to beat them in 2012. Otherwise there would be no need to use up bandwidth for Kornacki’s column. The Frums and the Labashes of the world are merely the suckers - tools - that liberals hope to use for their political purpose. It's a shame that the suckers on our side don't have the same confidence in Palin’s ability to win as they do. The left are scared to death that she'll win. The GOP Establishment is scared she'll lose. The Left is genuinely fearful. The GOP Establishment are cowards.

The liberals are showing us what we knew they thought all along. They knew Palin's not an idiot. They just said that hoping we'd believe it. They know she's qualified. They've been trying to hide that fact with lies and smears for the last two years. Their gig is up and now they need help from our side to convince us otherwise. They know that the smear campaign against Sarah Palin has only galvanized the conservative base. So in their minds the strategy needs to be adjusted. Now they are going to the GOP's weak and wimpy and hoping this time it works.

Watch how Kornacki advises the GOP Establishment “not to be harsh” and instead “just be gentle” in planting the seeds of Palin doubt. In other words, the full frontal assault complete with kitchen sink and all didn’t work. So now they'll try to be more subtle and slip into people's psyche by using the Establishment door. They are giving the GOP Establishment the benefit of their experience (that the vitriolic route didn't work) and telling them to try a different angle.

Yes, there are traitors in our ranks and the real enemy is now seizing the opportunity to use them as pawns in their last ditch effort to save their failing effort to stop Sarah Palin. Think of this as reverse operation chaos or the foundation for the formation of a “Journolist” group on the right.

The alarm needs to be sounded and it needs to be sounded loudly. Conservatives and Tea Party activists are not going to affiliate themselves with the Republican Party if it doesn't field candidates that takes issue positions that are Constitutionally sound, conservatively principled and consistently opposed to business as usual in the party back rooms as well as in the halls of Congress. If RINOism and the strategy of moderation for political expediency survives the 2012 election, it will be because we were not capable of destroying the thing that has stopped us from beating the liberals in the past: Republican insiders or what Ronald Reagan called the Republican fraternity.

The idea that Establishment Republicans want to aid and abet the enemy by deliberately pushing anti-Palin memes when they should be allowing the candidates who will run in 2012 to win or lose on their own merits is repulsive. These RINOs, crony capitalists, party insiders and sludge slingers will easily show themselves in columns and commentaries as we come closer to the 2012 primaries. You won't need a scanner or a pat down to tell what these people have underneath.

Those in the GOP who want to stop Palin are no better than the Democrats. They can join their comrades and help save Democratic Party from a Palin smackdown of epic proportions if they want. It might actually be good for them to show themselves now and get it over with. This way if the GOP loses because of their lack of a spine, the blame won't fall on Palin. It will fall on them.

Then political scientists and analysts will look back on the Republican Establishment and remind the future slaves of statism that history was altered as much by people in the Republican Party as it was by those in the Democratic Party.

If Palin is such a bad choice, how come the GOP Establishment keeps looking for someone better than her? How come they can't find that person? Is it possible there isn't one? These are the same types of  people that resisted Ronald Reagan back in 1980.
It will be repeated until this blogger is blue in the face and his fingers fall off from typing it so many times. This is the opportunity to get behind the best shot there is and push her all the way to the top. It's obvious the GOP Establishment still thinks division is the answer when those who know what it takes to win understand that it's really about multiplication and coalition building.

It’s no wonder the liberals want to get into bed with the GOP Establishment. They obviously must like the smell. Besides, they've worked so well together in the past.

Follow Me There (Open Thread)

Sarah Palin is about to go on a roll in the upcoming week. Her documentary series Sarah Palin's Alaska continues tonight at 9pm ET on TLC. Tomorrow night, she will be on Hannity for an in depth interview. Her book America by Heart is released Tuesday.



If you want to get some good tips on how to debate the Establishment and the Left when they say that Palin is thin skinned when it comes to the media or that her resignation is a liability, please read my post In Defense of Karl Rove. Don't let the title throw you off.

Stand up and Shout!

Vote early and vote often tomorrow for Bristol Palin on Dancing With the Stars. If the Left and people like Geraldo Rivera want to accuse us of "voter fraud" then you know what, let's get out the vote. Greg Gutfeld said "if you're going to be accused of a crime you never committed then why not just commit the hell out of that crime."

Is it possible the Palin army is so big that even if each member voted just once that Bristol will win?

Overcoming Media Bias Against Conservatives

media malpractice and how to combat it

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's 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.

2. Infiltrate the pop culture and produce mainstream center right movies, music and video games.

3. Infiltrate academia and teach history, constitutional law and fiscally sound economics.

4. Talk to people about how dangerous government over-spending really is.

5. Talk to people about how big government always eventually erodes individual freedom.

6. Celebrate freedom of religion and acknowledge the Creator's role in our country's founding principles.

When the media attacks our movement's stars, never take it at face value. Always dig deeper for the underlying truth. Learn how to differentiate between the real self-inflicted wounds of a Mark Sanford and the ginning up of non-events into events such as what was done to Sarah Palin. Rob Harrison of Conservatives4Palin.com tells us to Look for the Smoke Machine.


writer's note: I wrote this right after Obama's inauguration.

The Ironies of the Day

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If You Like Palin But Think She Can't Win, Guess What? The Media Wins.

It's an ongoing narrative. People believe there is this groundswell of dislike for Sarah Palin. The same media pundits push it. The same left wing publications push it. The same GOP Establishment people push it. It's a myth, people. It's a psychological ploy to get you to believe that Sarah Palin can't win because she is not popular enough, too polarizing or just not qualified.

There are people who say they like Sarah Palin, but they don't think she can win. Ask these people if the media has hurt her chances to become president and they will tell you yes. Then they will tell you she can't win because she's damaged goods. Okay, which is front here, the cart or the horse?

Alan Reasin, a 65-year old retired nuclear power plant engineer from Conowingo, Md and who is on the steering committee of the Cecil County Tea Party Patriots told the Daily Caller "She’s got too many negatives, not for me, but for too many people."

Where are all these people for whom Palin has too many negatives? We need spines, people.

Where are all the Palin haters voting against Bristol on Dancing With the Stars? They don't exist. Where are all these new anti-Palin blogs popping up everywhere? They don't exist. Why? Because there is no AstroTurf campaign underway right now. When she runs, you watch how many screennames and blog titles people in their pajamas are able to get.

Our numbers are real. Trust our numbers. Should Palin run, damn the torpedoes. Forget the media. THE MEDIA LIED TO YOU and now they want to subliminally get you to give up.

If in fact those who like her but don't think she can win because of the above mentioned reasons, then the media wins. All those lies, smears, hit pieces and nonsense being spewed out in the pop culture will be a worthy venture for the liberals who have pulled out all the stops to prevent her from becoming the next Ronald Reagan.

Don't let that happen.

---------------------------------

Check out my Townhall Blog:
Why Didn’t the American Economy Just Go to Rehab Two Years Ago?

Keep an eye on this story, it bears watching:
Deafening silence: MSM fails to report explosive Obama scandal

When Dealing with the Media in Rome…

One used to wonder what the crowd reaction in ancient Rome would have been if the Christians beat the lions, especially given how their media was so biased against the Christians. But, we found out how that would have gone Sunday night when 5 million people cheered for Sarah Palin’s Alaska while the rest of the media was still in shock that she would even dare step into the arena. Despite all the media hits leading up to the airing of the show, the lions never stood a chance.

Renee James at the Daily Caller takes on the modern media by using Parker – Spitzer and Sarah Palin’s Alaska as examples of what’s wrong with the media when people who should supposedly “fade out of the national consciousness” are given a forum from which “you can’t be missed if you never go away.”

A commenter, goldie, stands up for Sarah Palin and calls James’ column “boneheaded.” Yes it is boneheaded to use a piece like that to criticize Palin especially since James is making a more valid point about the game rather than the player. She starts from a good point, but just doesn’t go into why it is that way or why she uses Palin as her example.

There is one cynical point that will always saddle this blogger’s otherwise positive forward looking nature: we are an American Idol society. It is not the dealer, but rather the user who is driving up the demand for this kind of media drug.

The American people are resilient. They respond to adversity well. They help their fellow man. They desire the best for their families and friends. But if there is one thing that will cause me to stumble into the room of intellectual elitism, if only but briefly, it’s that the American people are dumb as stumps when it comes to what they watch on TV.

We can take down kings, kaisers, communists, emperors and fuehrers. We can build the best products. We are faithful – we go to church and believe in God. We join hands during times of national emergencies. But put us in front of a television set and it’s moron time at the zoo.

Many would rather be immersed in the fantasies of daytime soap operas than dealing with the realities of their own problems. They escape by watching movies where buildings blow up and people are covered in soot and blood, but quickly forget the reality of what happened on 9/11.

Maybe they’re just watching the wrong “reality.” There’s nothing wrong with reality TV. I love watching sports. The competition is real. I watch the news. The news is real. I watch the weather. The weather is real. Americans can call what they watch reality TV, but what they’re watching is really fantasy TV. They’d rather be on the Jersey Shore than in Sarah Palin’s Alaska. That’s the problem.

More young people today get their news from Stephen Colbert than they do from regular news outlets. They get their opinions of celebrities and politicians through tabloids and from the late night talk shows more so than by actually meeting or seeing them in person, researching them properly or even seeing them as real people rather than the personas that the media try to portray them as.

Getting back to the American Idol society, it’s important to note with no cynicism pushed aside, that reality is reality. Wishing that everyone would stop feeding their brains this junk won’t make it go away. Just being critical or judgmental will not solve the problem. The only way to solve the problem is to infiltrate it and let some of what our side has to say seep in. As long as we walk the earth, we will always have to breathe its air. Let’s start making it smell better.

Since we cannot end the American appetite for mind numbing TV then let’s at least take a look at what is being served and see if we can’t offer something better. We forget that what’s in the idiot box IV bag that feeds the mental bloodstream is not the harmless saline solution it may look like. When taken directly from screen to brain, the concoction of sexualization, glorification of violence and caricaturing of personas and values that results in our passive submission to the views fed to us by a mostly a liberal medium leads us to do and think stupid things – like telling people that Sarah Palin is dumb because we believe she said she can see Russia from her house or voting for Obama because we think he’ll govern as a moderate.

Junk in will always equals junk out. Just as you are what you eat, you are also what you put into your brain. With thousands of channels (it used to be 13, and we all know what Roger Waters wrote about those in the Pink Floyd song “Nobody Home”), there is so much out there to infiltrate the mind. We just need to get more of a market share.

It needs to be explained to Renee James that Sarah Palin’s Alaska exists because of shows like Parker – Spitzer. When Kathy Griffin goes on the rubber chicken circuit to poke fun at the Palins and to talk about Levi’s Johnston, it makes more sense why Bristol Palin is on Dancing With the Stars. Complain all you want about how you hate sword fighting, but don’t use the Palins as an example for your argument if all they’re doing is pulling out their swords to take on an enemy that has already unsheathed.

James complains about the media culture by rebuking its players. But she misses it by not understanding a game that will not go away just because she or anyone else says so. Constructive engagement is the only way to tame it.

Palin's use of the media to reach out to the pop culture and to non-traditional news viewers is as easy to understand as the damage that was done by the late night talk shows and Tina Fey. It also helps to offset the left wing media's caricature of her as shallow. Shallow people don't do all the work that Sarah Palin has done. In a nutshell, Palin's appearances on Fox News, radio shows like Bob and Mark and in her documentary Sarah Palin's Alaska (as well as Bristol's appearances on Dancing With the Stars) is her way of telling the left wing culture taste my nightstick!
 It is befitting our American Idol society that Bristol Palin goes on Dancing With the Stars. It is befitting that the writer of a Conde Naste hit piece gets abused on Palin’s show. Regardless of what you think of Renee James’s complaint, the existential fact remains. It’s just a game. All we can do is play.

So when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Just be better at it than they are if you want to win.

Another "GOP Strategist" Beclowns Himself in the LA Times

In a well written article by Matea Gold at the LA Times, she gives a fair and balanced assessment of Sarah Palin's Alaska. She quotes different opinions, some more favorable, some less. But you get a gist of the potential that Sarah Palin's Alaska has not only as a documentary, but as a great way for people to get to know her better.

Starring in her own reality show is a canny way to play to a public skeptical of the traditional press, said Michael Maslansky, chief executive of maslansky luntz + partners, which researches how people respond to forms of communication.

"As a form of political media, this is quite possibly the evolution of the personal biography," he said...

The only really out of whack statement in her article comes from supposedly one of ours, "GOP strategist" Scott Reed  who beclowns himself (particularly after Palin's speech about Quantitative Easing) by dribbling this all over himself:

 "If Palin is going to be serious about affecting the terms of the debate in the Republican Party, and I think she is," Reed said, "she's probably better off doing some deep dives on policy, rather than rock climbing."

It's the last sentence of the article. Journalists use an inverted pyramid structure to their articles so that in the event the article has to be edited or cut for space, the least important stuff is at the end of the article. This quote made it, unfortunately, for Mr. Reed who will probably not have any future in a new Republican party if the insiders and the Establishment continue to alienate the rank and file the way they have since Steve Schmidt puked all over himself following the 2008 election.

CNN: John Ziegler vs. Kathleen Parker on Obama, Palin

John Ziegler clearly lands it on CNN's the Parker-Spitzer show.

Read more here.

Dance Little Sister

“They’re going to criticize me no matter what I do, so I might as well dance.” – Bristol Palin

"Yes, they’ll criticize us no matter what, so I might as well climb and fly and trek and build and hunt and fish and share with you the awe-inspiring beauty of Alaska...and because I wanted my family along for the ride, I want your family to come along, too. Follow me there!" – Sarah Palin

Follow Me There! (To Alaska!)

Race car great Mario Andretti once said, “If everything’s under control then you’re going too slow.” In Alaska, we have two speeds in the summertime: fast and faster – that’s because Alaskan summers are so short and sweet. We always try to cram it all in before the leaves change and snow flies again. Seasons change so quickly up here that we’re full-speed ahead to capture every minute under the Midnight Sun doing what we love to do in the great outdoors.

read more here.

Keep up with the Conservatives4Palin Meet and Greet:

Thomas S. Schmitz

Tammy Bruce

Jedediah Bila

SE Cupp

Karen Allen

Look, I wasn't going to say this, but....

The Establishment is the reason why we didn't get more Senate seats.

I really didn't want to say that. I consider myself a good Republican, a Reagan Republican. I don't believe in speaking ill of other Republicans. I don't believe that you do intra-party fighting the same way you do inter-party fighting. I believe you stay positive and play as a team.

It bothers me that some Republicans in the party and in the media found it necessary to downplay or criticize certain candidates or try to pin blame on Sarah Palin, Jim Demint or the Tea Party for not winning the Senate.

Before you nail me for the first sentence of this article, let me point out that it was just illustrating a point. We can blame it on each other if we want to. But in reality, if we are a tight party, no one in the party cost us the Senate. We lost it together - just like we won the house, governorships or state legislatures together.

We weren't supposed to win the Senate, anyway. Our objective was to take the House and keep going as far as we could. We did that. We picked up 6 seats in the Senate. Good job guys. We kicked their asses.

Now let's enjoy our holidays and wait til we reach a point after the new year where candidates start announcing. Folks, be true to your horse. But don't come out of your lane and bump the other horses. This is not Conservative on Liberal combat. That's serious stuff - and we need to use everything in our arsenal for them not on each other.

We are the grown ups. We have an opportunity to show the negative, nasty, smear minded liberals that we're not like them. We need to sell to the American people that when the GOP wins the White House in 2012, that they can have confidence in a leader who takes a more mature approach toward governing. Putting the adults in charge is a pretty good selling point on the campaign trail.

We need to blow them out intellectually. We need to do what Sarah Palin did this week with her widely praised analysis on Quantitative Easing. They are not the intellectual elite. They are a bunch of sniveling bomb throwers, name callers and fact twisters. We have the truth and, yes, we are going to look intellectually smart if we articulate it properly.

They're going to go back to the old playbook and run parodies about Sarah Palin. That's played. The people see through it now. Now, convince us of a positive, libs. Convince us why socialism is so great.

If you can't do that, step aside.

You see, our vision of the future of this country is one in which the "governed class" is weened off the teat of big government. The more we can do for ourselves, the more free we will be. Whoever can deliver on that (okay, you know who I think that is, but run with me on this), should be our leader.

There is no other way. It's always been that way throughout history. All conflicting philosophies have failed. For those who believe in evolution, limited Constitutional government the way our Founders set forth is the winner in the survival of the fittest war. It is both Darwinian and Divine. This combination should tell anyone with a half a brain that it's the direction we should be going.

Tonight, Karl Rove praised Sarah Palin for giving a strong speech in Phoenix on quantative easing. It's a start. He gave a fair analysis of the pending race for 2012. It's a start.

So, it is with great hope and great faith that instead of pointing fingers at each other, Republicans, that we keep the finger pointed where it needs to be: statist liberalism.

I know the candidates will have to point out certain things about other candidates in the primary. That's cool. Be classy, though. Let's run a good race and let the best person win. If we do it right, the party will be strong - a beast. If we do it wrong, we will have to patch wounds, limp in after a long hard race and try to figure out what went wrong in time to run an effective campaign for the general election.

Onward to victory.

Open Thread: Great Reads For the Day

There's no need to write a new post today because what has been written is already well done, and does not to be re-written.

I have one comment, though, that I would like those who have come to this post to keep in mind. Is Sarah Palin riding a wave toward triumph or what?

This week will be Conservatives4Palin's meet and greet. You can follow it at the Conservatives4Palin website. Tammy Bruce, SE Cupp, Jedediah Bila and a bunch of other big names will be there. Thomas S. Schmitz of Palin Promotions is there and he is covering it as well: C4P Chicago Meet-up: The Early Birds Prequel.

Also, keep this thought in mind as well. Are we willing to deal with a failed Republican Establishment when we the rank and file have the real ideas about conservatism and are asking our representatives to stick to principle?

Read today's Human Events column by Jedediah Bila: Principles over Party

Dan Riehl at Big Journalism:
Memo to Michael Gerson: Republicans Defeated Castle, Not Palin
Media Acknowledges Obama’s Declining Influence

Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin:
No, Governor Palin Did Not Cost the GOP the Senate

Michelle Malkin:
Tina Fey recycles Palin rape kit lie

New York Sun:
Sarah Palin’s Seoul

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
Obama fails to get G-20 to scold China for what Obama is doing with QE2

James Lewis at American Thinker:
Great Nations Don't Decline -- They Just Get Tougher

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. at The American Spectator:
Out of the Wilderness

And, if you haven't read these yet, here's my perspective on a couple of things:
We Want to Fight the Left, But the Republican Establishment is Distracting Us
Death of the Idiot Meme: How the Discussion of “Is She Qualified” Qualifies Palin

Speaking of the stupid "Is she qualified" question, Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC tried to get my great Governor Bob McDonnell of my great commonwealth of Virginia to give her a sound bite. But instead of getting the soundbite that she wanted to hear, she got the soundbite that we want to hear. Ha!

"During an appearance on MSNBC’s 'Andrea Mitchell Reports' Wednesday, Gov. Bob McDonnell [R-VA] said he believes Sarah Palin 'is qualified' to be president: 'I think Sarah Palin’s been a mayor, she’s been governor of a state. I happen to be partial and think governors make great chief executive officers and have the experience to be good chief executive officers of the United States.'" - From Texas4Palin
Quote of the Day (November 11, 2010)

And also from Texas4Palin, Sarah Palin seems to have gotten rave reviews from financial experts for what she has been saying about Quantitative Easing:
Brett Arends: Is Sarah Palin Right About Inflation

Paul Gigot agrees:
Governor Palin "Leading the Pack" on Monetary Policy

Hope you enjoyed the reads. I know, I know. Obama is ruining our country. Hang tight and fight hard. Help is on the way. Sarah Palin is coming.

We Want to Fight the Left, But the Republican Establishment is Distracting Us

-cross posted from my Townhall blog The shining City on a Hill

Okay, here’s the rule: if you are a Republican and want to badmouth Sarah Palin, please step aside and let those of us who have guts lead the charge to take back the Shining City On a Hill. I’m not one for silencing dissenters, but this is war. And the war is against the Left, the Obama agenda and the progressive movement. If you are a Republican, then this is where you need to be fighting. Tearing down Sarah Palin or feeding people false memes about gravitas and polarization only helps the Left and hurts the Republican cause.

Don’t let the liberals define our candidates. Have you not learned the lesson of 2008? In 2008, the Left chose our presidential nominee. They also convinced moderate and independent voters that we needed to move to the center to accommodate a (falsely pushed theme by the media) leftward swing in the electorate. Liberals voted in open primaries and when they couldn’t vote in a GOP primary, they cheered from the sidelines.

Had Huckabee or Romney become our nominee, the Left would have had to deal more directly with the reality that our country still is a center-right country. When McCain was chosen, the Left breathed a collective sigh of relief knowing that the road to the White House would go right past a man speaking to crickets and a few stragglers in a field or a gymnasium somewhere while the “messiah” was packing the house with fainting sheep and gullible lemmings. The GOP Establishment strategy basically was handing it to liberal socialism since it would easily have more credibility if it beat a moderate instead of a conservative.

Then John McCain named Sarah Palin to be his running mate and the Left went nuts. While they would go on to win the election anyway, it took a mobilization of the mainstream media, an orchestrated smear campaign that involved heavy AstroTurfing, the parading of whining cry baby malcontents from Alaska, the full might of Hollywood and a well timed (even if coincidental?) financial crisis to stop the ensuing slide in the polls. Ultimately Obama won by 7 points because those were the people he duped into believing Sarah Palin was not qualified.

This writer put forth early on in 2009 that the strategy for beating Obama in 2012 would not be one that required us to turn 67 million Obama voters around. McCain got 46% of the vote and 58,343,671 people voted for him. Obama got 53% and 66,882,230 votes. That's a spread of 8.5 million. It was and still is this writer’s heartfelt assertion that if you convince enough people that the media lied about John McCain, Sarah Palin and the conservative movement that at worst these people (the 8.5 million) could be won back.

And we were doing such a good job, too.

A couple of weeks ago, those people voted with us. These people are not the hardcore conservatives who were electrified by Sarah Palin, Rick Santelli or Glenn Beck. These are regular folk who hear what both sides have to say and then they go to the polls. They don’t read blogs. They will probably never read this article even if Sean Hannity read it on Fox. They watch the Nightly News. They read newspapers. They work. They have lives. Some of them still think Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house even if they think Obama drove us into the ditch.

So what do we want these people to hear?

We certainly don’t want them to hear that there is friction in the Republican Party because of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. Yet, every time one of these “Karl Rovian” coordinated attacks are deliberately delivered on Fox News, at the Weekly Standard or (for some odd reason – where Karl Rove works) the Wall Street Journal, somehow those of the ones we want to win back who listen to the mainstream media hear it. I don’t know (shrugging my shoulders like Glenn Beck). Maybe all of a sudden the mainstream media has taken an interest in the Republican Party?

You see, there is friction in the GOP over Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. But it’s the Establishment that’s causing the friction, not Palin and the Tea Party. When you see “conservative” pundits and political consultants go on TV or take to the keyboard to deliberately bash or underplay Sarah Palin, this is coordinated. This is being orchestrated from within. It’s like Journolist for the right. Read Whitney Pitcher’s article and you tell me if this doesn’t seem coincidental that it is happening in unison and right before we head into 2012 primary season.

I’m not going to name names here. I want bloggers like Whitney, Republican activists and Tea Party activists to do that. But, I will jump into the fray, too, after this. We should plan on slamming anyone who hurts the cause, even if they’re on our side. We should want a lean mean fighting machine going into 2012. I don’t want a bunch of mealy mouthed wussies fighting this battle. We saw how that worked out in 2008, didn’t we?

If there’s going to be a fight then let’s do it now, not on the convention floor for the world to see. Let’s clean house now. The Tea Party has begun its infiltration. Sarah Palin has knocked back the lamestream media. And the Republicans are a majority again. Take notes Establishment types and members of what Ronald Reagan pejoratively called “the Republican Fraternity.” Do you remember 1980? It’s happening again; unless of course you want to turn it into 1976.

Those who ride the Reagan wave which has put silver spoons in their mouths at the expense of forgotten principles or who have earned their wealth on the rebuilding of a compassionate quasi-Rockefeller wing of the GOP while using Reagan as a prop are not understanding something about today’s new and emerging GOP: Homie don’t play that game. True Reaganites would not diss the similar nature of the anti-Establishment theme coming out of the Palin camp. Nor would they break Ronaldus Maximus’ 11^th commandment.

Guys, this is the same Republican establishment that nearly turned this country over to the progressives, the new world order people and the socialists two years ago. How the heck can we allow them to control the GOP narrative or handpick the 2012 nominee again after all their great failures?

There is a very good possibility that the GOP rank and file will choose Sarah Palin to be the nominee should she run. If I was wrong about this, we wouldn’t see the knee-capping and there would be no need to write this article. The establishment is scared she can’t win in 2012 and rightfully so. She can’t win if they undermine her the way they did Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle. If the establishment can’t man up, suit up and strap on their gear without fear and stand behind her and help push us to the top, then we are going to have to work that much harder on our end - on the Tea Party end.

It will ultimately be the Establishment’s decision whether the Grand Old Party lives on or chokes on its own caviar.

You know those people who the President said were standing on the side of the road drinking slurpees while everyone else was trying to get the car out of the dish? That’s the Establishment. They’re standing there complaining “she’s not doing it right.” But they sure as hell aren’t lifting a finger to get in there and help.

The Establishment is sipping their fancy drinks with their pinkies stuck up talking in the Glenn Beck “intellectual elite” voice he uses to mock them. They’re saying “those Tea Partiers are useful because they vote for us, but God forbid any one of those rumpled suits or uncouth backwoods women with motor oil under their fingernails gets too much power.” Just look at how they are reacting to Michele Bachmann as she gets closer and closer to a committee chairmanship. They are cowering like sniveling babies in the backroom, but when they come on TV with their white boards and their polished analyses, it’s always about “the good of the party.”

This is not the time to leave the party or go off half cocked complaining about the Establishment by talking third party or getting cynical about politics again. This is about whooping their butts and taking it over. Get their hands off the GOP wheel and we’ll drive. So what if we’re not 100% polished yet and fully vested in Congress. We can’t wait. The last time we waited we went from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. Time is of the essence.

Sarah Palin is willing to lead this fight for us. She has said if she runs, she’ll “be in it to win it.” The woman is willing to go to the matt for us. Let’s do the same for her, our party and our country.

Why would the GOP Establishment make the same stupid mistakes that the liberals have been making for the last two years? The more they bash Palin, the more it drives her to work harder, to become better, to be more aware of her surroundings. She has told us this! It’s odd that those who are so afraid she might run would motivate her even more by egging her on like this.

Some will read this and say, aw shucks, it’s just Palin propaganda. No it’s not. Do you see anything in here that bashes Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich, Santorum or any of the other candidates? No. That’s why we have primaries. That’s why we want the grown ups back in charge so that the whining, the sniveling and the foot kicking will stop – on both sides of the aisle.

Now I’ve figured out why the liberals got so strong. It’s because of the Establishment. The political games, the lip service to conservatism and the fancy suits and fundraisers all mask a crony insider game of musical chairs that gives it to the next in line and sells the electorate on how many points of light there can be or how compassionate they are. And every time the people smell this, they run to the other side.

That’s not my party. My party is represented by the ideals of a great man who once told us that our better days were ahead of us.

Put up or shut up. May the best man or woman win – fair and square.

Quotes of the Week - Who's With Us in the Fight?

We know who's with us. And we are finding out more and more everyday who's not. Stick a knife in Sarah Palin's back, "Republicans," and you will not have my support. This is a fight to the death with the liberals. You're either in the foxhole or not. This bullcrap about who's qualified or who's too polarizing is not how you run a political party. You suit up, you strap on your weapons and you go into battle knowing you can trust each other. If you can't do that, leave now and let us big boys who have the guts, the balls and the resolve to take this back. And we WILL do it with Sarah Palin.

Now on to the quotes of the week.

Nancy Seddens at Helium:

She definitely knows how to duck and weave as demonstrated by her resignation of the governorship of Alaska. As Governor she was a sitting duck for frivolous lawsuits and ethics violations and in spite of every one of them being thrown out of court, she and her husband as well as the state of Alaska incurred huge expenditures.

The state had to investigate every ethics charge and the Governor and her husband were required to pay their own attorney fees. Rather than continue in office while, not having the time to do the job justice, going deeper into debt (about 500,000 in lawyer fees when she left) and seeing her state’s coffers drained, she stepped down and turned the reins over to the Lieutenant Governor. The sitting duck declined to sit still any longer.

Jedediah Bila at Human Events:

Much like her decision to resign from the governorship after facing a slew of bogus, costly ethics charges, Palin’s choice of endorsements doesn’t appear to be based on what will or won’t preserve her political future. Rather, it seems to be based on her principles—like them or not. Regardless, a 71% success rate can only do her political future—if she wants one, that is—a whole lot of good.

Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin:

Last night Governor Palin face-palmed a lazy Wall Street Journal reporter for not even knowing what was printed on the pages of his own newspaper.

John Podhertz at Commentary Magazine:

Sarah Palin in National Review:

The meaning of the 2010 election was rebuke, reject, and repeal. We rebuked Washington’s power grab, rejected this unwanted “fundamental transformation of America,” and began the process to repeal the dangerous policies inflicted on us. But this theme will only complement the theme of 2012, which is renew, revive, and restore. In 2012, we need to renew our optimistic, pioneering spirit, revive our free-market system, and restore constitutional limits and our standing in the world as the abiding beacon of freedom.

This political formulation is — I use the word advisedly — brilliant

Michelle Malkin:

Moreover, Palin boldly defied the Rove machine and lent support to conservative third-party candidate Tom Tancredo in an effort to help spare us Democrat governor-elect John Hickenlooper and the Soros-ization of Colorado . Tancredo ultimately lost, but so many of us taxpayers here in this state will be forever grateful for Palin’s help. Gerson sneers at Tancredo as “one of the most divisive figures in American politics.” But in a manner of just weeks, Tancredo managed to unite former and current Republican officials and leaders in Colorado and across the country, libertarians, Tea Party activists, immigration enforcement advocates, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and 48 percent of unaffiliated voters behind his upstart candidacy.

...

Okay, one last, last point while we’re settling scores: Rove has questioned Palin’s “gravitas” for promoting her home state of Alaska in a multi-part TV series.

Yes, God forbid Republican women look like they enjoy their lives and their families and the natural resources and gifts America has to offer outside of D.C. and away from the boardroom.

How out of touch can these Beltway boys be?

Josh Painter at Texas4Palin:

They tried to stop Reagan, too
*
Charles W. Dunn, a professor of government at Regent University, warns the GOP establishment of the perils of underestimating Governor Palin:

Mrs. Palin appeals to the very same people Reagan appealed to, including conservatives of several persuasions - economic, political, religious and social. She is the one person in the Republican Party who has burnished credentials in all spheres of the conservative coalition. Her every word commands center stage on television.

John Ziegler via Hot Air (h/t Texas For Sarah Palin:

"There is no doubt that the coverage of Palin has evolved in her favor and she deserves credit fot that. In the ultimate karate move she now gets stronger every time one [of] the usual suspects with nothing else to complain about levies an unfair attack on her. Of course, the ultimate irony here is that since the media covers nearly everything she does, it gives her infinitely more power, and the reason they do that is not because they like/respect her, but because she is great for ratings... But make no mistake, if Palin runs for President, especially if she wins the nomination, the media bias against her will be beyond extreme."

Jennifer Cabellero at Cubachi:

Well, we have our first victim of Palin Derangement Syndrome after watching [Sarah Palin's Alaska], foaming at the mouth.

The New Yorker‘s Nancy Franklin’s level of vitriol and venom against Sarah Palin and her family goes beyond the pale. Yes, liberals work for the New Yorker, but when you are reviewing a TV show, this goes beyond a critique of a television show, to spiteful and malicious smear of a family.

Stacy Drake at Conservatives4Palin:

The author of the NY Daily News hit-piece is a "well connected" man by the name of Thomas M. Defrank. According to his bio, he "was Newsweek's senior White House correspondent for a quarter century and also served as deputy chief of the magazine's Washington bureau for twelve years." Mr. Defrank should know by now the difference between ethical journalism and writing a hit-piece designed to smear reputations. It's clear he has no problem publishing the latter.

Death of the Idiot Meme: How the Discussion of “Is She Qualified” Qualifies Palin

As a business owner and a manager both past and present, this blogger has some understanding of what would qualify someone for a position. As a voter, this citizen also has to consider qualifications when choosing a candidate for whom to cast a ballot as well. So when we see all these pundits and reporters asking people trying to trick people into a sound byte that they can use to discredit Sarah Palin, it has to make one laugh that the question would even be out there. The simple existence of the question about someone who garners more attention than any other candidate is more than enough to put it to bed.

If Mark Ingram was not qualified to win the Heisman Trophy, his name simply would have never come up. If this blogger was going through resumes to fill a position, those who did not have the qualifications would probably not even be called in for an interview. Do the media ever question whether Krystal Ball is qualified to be president? What about the other potential presidential candidates for 2012? Anyone catch a Lamestream Media reporter doing some crack reporting by asking Cher if Mitt Romney is qualified to be president? Or Mike Huckabee? Or Ron Paul?

And where are the thousands of hit pieces on how Ron Paul has a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming president? If a poll comes out tomorrow that says Ron Paul is the favorite, I can put money on it that there will be hundreds of hit pieces across the internet describing him in negative terms and denigrating libertarianism. Look what happened to Rand Paul once he started doing well in the Kentucky race. The left can pray all they want, but Acqua Buddha didn't show up until the poll numbers were there.

Here’s the point. Is she qualified? Just ask professional people, writers, teachers, business owners, lawyers, blue collar workers, housewives, economists lawyers and so on that give their time and energy for her. If she wasn't qualified, would all these types of people be be wasting their time? These are serious people with serious lives. This is not a cult. This is not a fan club. This is the future of America.

When the Left and the establishment see how she is resonating, it sends them to the bathroom with soiled underwear. So when you see someone try to elicit a “not qualified” from a guest or interviewee, a newspaper article with an unnamed source that tries to convince you that former President Bush doesn’t think Palin is qualified or a celebrity putting her down, consider the intention behind the responses. These are not the objective reviews of a candidate that a professional would make when reading an applicant’s resume. These are the reviews of partisans who are trying to simply will away the inevitable.

Rush Limbaugh has been telling us that the Left will tell us who our nominee should be by who they fear. If you take a poll of all the people who are scared of Sarah Palin because they see her as a threat to their cushy position in the establishment or because her message is, as Monica Crowley has said, an existential threat to liberalism, Palin wins the qualification question in a landslide of wishful no votes.

Reality isn’t working out very well for Palin detractors; and right now their last ditch attempts at distorting that reality aren’t faring as well either.

Sarah Palin and the Three Kinds of People

Sarah Palin laid out her brilliant message in her National Review Online piece yesterday. "The meaning of the 2010 election was rebuke, reject, and repeal," she wrote. "But this theme will only complement the theme of 2012, which is renew, revive, and restore." She laid out a political strategy of controlling the narrative, fighting back the lies immediately and consistently, getting out the vote (and being proactive about voter fraud) and carefully crafting a winning conservative message. Herein lies an unwritten language - a language of success.

After two years the same question keeps popping up over and over again. Where is that "dumb woman" the Left keeps trying to tell us about. I just don't see it.

I see that there are three kinds of people in this world. As John M. Richardson Jr. said "When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened."

Sarah Palin and her army are the ones who can make it happen. She is a leader. She has the ability to motivate people to achieve a common goal.

But there are liberals, naysayers and negative people who will look back in 2012 and wonder what happened. These are the people who boo Rudy Giuliani on The View. These are the people who continue to go to comment boards, blogs or to their columns to write hit pieces on Palin. These are the people who tell you "she's not qualified." They live in the bubble of their own troubled or misquided minds.

But some liberals are warning their lemmings not to take her lightly. According to Texas4Palin:

Lefty Eleanor Clift at Newsweak:

"Frank Rusciano, a political-science professor at Rider University, a small liberal-arts college in New Jersey, says Democrats dancing around at the thought of running against Palin may want to recall how the Carter White House in 1980 relished the opportunity to face Ronald Reagan, an aging B-list actor who proved to be the GOP's modern FDR. Taking Palin seriously is the first hurdle a lot of Democrats would have to get over."

This brings us to those who watch what happens. These are the ones who look at the polls and tell you her unfavorables are high or that she doesn't beat Obama in a head to head. These are the people the mainstream media has been targeting since 2008. They believe everything they read. Write a hit piece without regards for the facts and these lemmings believe it. These are the people who look out their windows all day and gossip about what the neighbors do while their own lawns grow high and the mail piles up in the box.

You can forget about the first group who wonder what happened. They're brain dead. But it's the second group that for the last two years watched as the media perform mental contortionism to get them to believe that Sarah Palin was Tina Fey. But watch now. They watch. They don't move. If we just change the movie for them and show them SarahPac videos, intellectual masterpieces like the one Palin just wrote for NRO and we tell them "everybody likes her now," they will buy it.

Unfortunately (and I'm sorry for being a cynic here), like my dad used to say, you can sell anyone anything if you just put it in the right bag. For the last two decades, the political powers that be have been packaging up the crap for us and have been putting it in a pretty nice bag. On the other hand, we got a great product, but the bag isn't pretty. Let's fix the bag, not the product.

We started doing this in 2010. We were able to package the discontent with Obama and sell it. Yes, it was a hungry audience and an easy sale. But if we didn't get up off our couches to go to Tea Parties, Town Halls, blog, call Congress or campaign and if Sarah Palin flipped the malcontents the bird and just went home to collect book royalties none of this could have happened.

2012 is not about "can Sarah Palin do it?" 2012 is about making it happen. We all need to get behind her and push her to the top. This is about doing - not wishing or hoping. Don't allow the media smears or the timing of polls to throw you off. Sarah Palin is a brilliant woman with the right attitude, the right message and the right values. The American people may sometimes miss these things, but they're not unreasonable. Like Ronald Reagan said "given the facts, the people will make the right decision every time." Some who are uncertain now will eventually recognize Sarah Palin's abilities and vote for her mainly out of dislike for Obama. Others will see her for who she truly is. Either way, it's up to us to make that happen.

Quote of the Day 11/04/10

Sheep no more

From Frank Burke at American Thinker:

Discovering that they have been betrayed by the traditional media, the people have created an informational and intellectual infrastructure that speaks with an increasingly authoritative voice. It has come to include a variety of sources, including websites, blog posts, e-mails, books, magazines, the Fox News Network, and other communication tools. Now, it is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for formerly unnoticed laws, regulations, earmarks, or entitlement extensions to slip under the radar. Many of the senators and representatives who sponsored and supported the odious legislative products of the administration are being called to account, and their successors are aware that the game has changed.

Phase One: The People Have Spoken

You can tell by the President's tone and the questions the press corp asked that word is out. The people are being heard. However, this is just one step, one phase, of the restoration of America to greatness that is so needed at this time. And again, he heard. Does it mean he gets it? That's something we can't wait to find out. It took a lot of "political bloodshed" just to get him to hear us. There is a lot more work to be done. Phase one is the people have spoken. Phase 2 will come when the people have acted.

As newly elected Senators and Representatives go to Congress next year, they will be tempted by the apple of power. They will be invited to drink the Potomoc water. It will be here where the test will either be passed or failed.

President Obama has told us what his side is going to do. They believe in their principles and they don't want to compromise on the core stuff. He said he would be willing to take Republican ideas such as fixing the small business 1099 provision in the Health Care law to reduce the paperwork and bureaucratic burdens. We know the President is good at words. He seems to have learned some kind of lesson from this. But don't sit back now thinking he's going to give in.

This whole thing is not about compromise. It's about principles. What we learned last night is that there are still two distinct groups in America who are not willing to compromise on those principles. Do we continue down the road of vicious discourse and the politics of personal destruction or do we foster an environment where compromise is not horse trading, but more like pragmatic bull riding?

There are lessons for all of us to learn from this. The Democrats found out that if they don't listen to the will of the people, they're out. The establishment Republicans have learned that if they complain about the candidates that have come out of the political process, particularly Tea Party candidates, they harm their chances for 2012. The Tea Party has learned that they are the truest and purist in the philosophy that is needed to get this country back to its Constitutional roots but that they are not always the most prettiest, most savvy or "best dressed" candidates.

It's time for the Democrats to be the ones who do the compromising. It's time for the Republican establishment to welcome the Tea Party into the tent and show them around. It's time for the Tea Party to learn how to turn the levers of power.

Power works like anything else. There is a science to it. It, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. But power corrupts when those who work the wheels are they themselves corrupt. And in this regard, the Tea Party has a major point about the GOP establishment.

In fairness to the GOP establishment, it's understandable that they would be concerned about people who have never worked the wheels before having to go from a field where dirt flies in the breeze between the Gadsden flags to the inner halls of Congress where a certain decorum and demeanor are required to work those wheels and where actual governing decisions need to be made.

But it is here that the GOP establishment has a crossroads moment in how they are going to treat the future of the Republican Party. If they don't see this influx of the grassroots as its party's future, they are destined to watch the party go the way of the Whigs. If the GOP establishment wants to "Bogart" the wheels of power and continue with business as usual in order to protect their own inner power structure, the principled newbies are not only going to be ineffective. They will leave the party.

This is a second chance for Republicans to be what they said they would be not so long ago, Marco Rubio said. The last thing America needs is its most principled people and its most Constitutionally conservative members to be demotivated by criticism that "they don't clean up well." If they pull out, it will create the vacuum that will result in the "Pottersvilling" of America. We were almost there in 2008. If it was not for the Tea Party, we'd probably be beyond the turnaround point by now. All hope for restoration would be gone.

If the Republican establishment is smart, it will open the hood, hand the Tea Party a wrench and say "let's get to work." There are some mechanical things the Tea Party can learn from the establishment.  But when the establishment tries to take a short cut, rig the job or compromise on the value of the workmanship that goes on under that hood, it's time for the Tea Party to say "nope, we're going to do the job right this time."

It's time for the Republican Party to ride the tiger, not beat it. It's time for "the establishment" to begin to hand it over to the next generation, the "new establishment" that will be made up of mature Tea Partiers when the time is right.

If the establishment sees the Tea Party as a threat and tries to knee-cap it, or if it looks down on the Tea Party in a condescending manner, the battle to beat the liberals and to take back the Shining City on a Hill will be severely compromised and our energy will be diverted from the task at hand.

Christine O'Donnell gave a great example of this on the talk shows this morning. According to the New York Daily News:

[O'Donnell] said she wished the state and national Republican party backed her more enthusiastically during the campaign.

"I think the only thing that really would have made a difference is if the Delaware GOP had unified," O'Donnell told "Good Morning America." "Unfortunately, that still hasn't happened."

Amy Kremer, chairwoman of the Tea Party Express told Megyn Kelly on Fox News Channel that the Tea Party is proud of the work it has done and will continue to work toward electing conservative candidates and getting the Republican Party to move back to its platform.

The fact that the punditry and some inside the GOP establishment are saying that the Tea Party is a double edged sword or that they hurt the party's chances of picking up more seats do nothing to positively help either the cause of the GOP or the cause of the Tea Party.

Consider that the GOP establishment also fielded candidates who lost and consider the simple nature of the beast that you can't win them all. Winning every seat is like winning a football pool. You might do well, but there will always be a field goal kicker, a quarterback or some stupid play that costs you a game here and a game there. Recognizing life for what it is and being thankful for the victories the GOP had last night is too positive a suggestion even for those among our own ranks who would choose to complain and point fingers.

Sarah Palin pointed out that CNN exit polls show that if Mike Castle had been the Delaware GOP candidate, he, too, would have lost to Coons.

How is it possible that Harry Reid, who had some of the lowest approval ratings for a candidate going into last night could still win?

Don't blame the Tea Party. Understand the nature of the beast before you beat it with a stick.

For over a century here in the United States and for centuries in Europe, people who have clustered into big cities and high population centers have always had a need to be told what to do. It is normal human belief that when large groups of people live in such close quarters that there needs to be rules and codes of conduct. And for centuries they have chosen their leaders to be both nanny and disciplinarian.

In more open areas where there is more of a rural or pioneering type setting, people tend to want to self-regulate. They don't want groups or other people to tell them how to live, what to do with their land and most of all don't want themselves being forced to give up things that they earn from the sweat of their own brow so that people can live comfortably in large cities where services and peaceful living are considered entitlements rather than issues of personal responsibility.

When Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and Sharon Angle lose their elections, it's not because they were horrible candidates chosen by the Tea Party. It's because they were candidates who shook up the big city mentality and got a lot of people thinking during an election which, if it had been run at any other time than now, would have easily been won by the liberal candidates with no further discussion from the talking heads. The fact that Barbara Boxer, Jerry Brown and Harry Reid had to fight for their lives against "such inferior candidates" says a lot more than many want to admit at a time where sore losership trumps clearer thinking on the GOP side.

Winning in 2012 and beyond is going to take more thought than just whining about choosing electable candidates. Let's face it. An electable candidate in Texas or Kentucky may not be an electable candidate in New York or California. "That O'Donnell and Whitman performed roughly the same despite the fact that O'Donnell characterized herself as a Tea Party conservative while Whitman characterized herself as a moderate should tell everyone that the deep blue hue of California and Delaware mattered more than anything related to the Tea Party," writes Ian Lazaran at Conservatives4Palin.

What should be more frustrating to the GOP establishment than the quality of candidates fielded should be the colors on the map. Nothing burns a conservative more than looking at a map where all the precincts are red except for a few small blue spots that just happen to be near or in the inner cities and then they look up at the election numbers and see their candidate down by 4%.

It is the failure of the GOP to recognize that while we are successful at open field hilltop to hilltop political combat, we simply suck at urban house to house warfare.

No one is saying the GOP shouldn't be working on finding the best candidates. Candidate training is a part of the Tea Party movement. If the GOP can help out rather than lash out, maybe this can be achieved more quickly.

But more importantly, beyond focusing on changing the quality of their candidates, the GOP and Tea Party should be working on winning over the hearts and minds of the city people with cluster mentalities that have lead them to a false sense of security based on their beliefs that a nanny state federal government is the same as having a well run apartment complex with a good super or a community with a good association whose rules keep the quality of life nice.

These are the people who need to be convinced that local government is the best government. It is these people who need to believe that the GOP is not out to take away their essential services or interfere with their social lives. Instead, they need to be empowered to pay for these services themselves and live their lives as they see fit without coming to the federal government with their hands out or a laundry list of laws that ask others who are not like them in other areas of the country to conform to.

There are two philosophies. The inner city philosophy of top down rule and the rural more outside suburbanite philosophy of small limited government with bottom up rule. These will always clash unless those with the inner city mentalities who vote liberal like lemmings can be convinced that their lives will be much better off once they are weaned off the teet of the federal government (and ultimately unwilling taxpayers who don't live in or near the big cities).

The Shining City on a Hill need not be polished off the sweat of the brows of those who live in the valleys. Those who live in the city need to take responsibility for their own pad or plot and take pride in their communities and complex enough to believe that we are all capable of making the country a better place when we stop micro-managing  and over-complicating things and take a more common sense approach to solving our problems.

The Tea Party has a lot of work to do, not because they are doing things wrong, but because there is a lot more right that needs to be done. It now needs to hold the candidates who were just elected accountable and see to it that it continues to improve as we head into 2012. We've come a long way since the Tea Party was a rag tag army of sign waving Gadsden flag holding members of the "mob" in a field protesting the government. Those who criticize them today fail to recognize the potential for tomorrow.

The time has come to continue to move forward. We've done so much good so far.

We had a great victory last night. But it was a politically bloody battle. We took casualties. We crushed our opponents. We took the gavel from Pelosi. We took Obama's Senate seat. We won crucial governorships in Ohio and Florida among other states. We achieved the ultimate objective of taking the House.

Yes, we didn't take out Harry Reid. Yes, we lost Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell. Miller and Rossi may also be lost. Carly Fiorina was badly wounded, but she will be back. It wasn't a totally pretty win. But it was a solid win.

It was also the next phase in the evolution of Sarah Palin whose great victories give her more clout than ever before and whose toughest losses give her a more clearer and more concise picture of what needs to be fixed as she moves forward to possibly running for president in 2012. These are all good things. If someone wants to shoot off their mouths and criticize the Tea Party or criticize Sarah Palin, that is simply stinking thinking. Success is not a destination, but rather a journey. Statues have been erected for those who have succeeded in the past. But you never see a statue erected for a critic.

It's time to move forward. We are advancing. Stage 2 is the big one. And, it's only two years away.

Enjoy the banquet today. Tomorrow we saddle up for the next big battle.


For more, check out this excellent article by Cubachi:
Last night was a win for the Tea Party, conservatism, and mama grizzlies

Patrick's World USA Election Coverage

We will be updating this post tonight with election coverage.

UPDATE 2: Daily Caller Live Blog

UPDATE 1: Raese and O'Donnell lose. So far we have picked up 2 Senate Seats: Paul-KY and Boozman - AR.

Alan Grayson lost FL-8. Sweet!

From Fox News

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Now lets go win!

Crack Journalist Sarah Palin Gets it Right on Fox News

Shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I wrote that the key to winning our country back would be to convince the people that the media lies. Polls on the media have shown that the American people are convinced now. In fact, the public views journalists the same way they do politicians. But what do you do after two years of smear and hit pieces come pumping out of the lamestream media machine with the regularity of parts on an assembly line? And what do you with the truth when it can’t run up a media flagpole that only allows falsehoods to get to the top where they are aired as news by anchors and journalists at CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN?

Sometimes if you need to get something done, you just have to do it yourself. Sarah Palin did just that yesterday on Fox News. First, she appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and broke the story about a CBS affiliate in Alaska whose reporters were heard scheming a “Rand Paul moment” for Joe Miller on a voicemail of a call that didn’t disconnect like the journalists would have hoped. Then she appeared On the Record with Greta Van Susteren where she dissected, debunked and destroyed the Politico hit piece on her timed appropriately with the help of GOP insiders to make a party that is on the verge of a major victory tomorrow look like its being run by a bunch of idiots.

Exclude Michael Steele from that list of idiots. At least he was able to come off as the grown up here stating that he would be happy with Sarah Palin as the party’s nominee. Rudy Giuliani went on Fox and Friends this morning to make the same point that I’ve been making: let the process decide who the nominee should be, not the party insiders. Fox News provided the perfect forum for Palin to get the Joe Miller story up the flagpole at the same time the Politico story flew with ease given the mainstream media’s lust for anything negative about her.

That therein lies the journalism lesson for tomorrow’s students. If someone says they heard that someone heard that the Palins had an argument or that her resignation was prompted by a pending federal indictment, it ends up on a stupid website like Immoral Minority or Mudflats. From there it is processed into word taffy that gets chewed on and regurgitated by MSNBC. It then hits the wire to be printed in newspapers across the country and quoted on straight news stories across the lamestream television media.

This is followed by the debunking process on conservative websites and across the Palinosphere. But does anyone in the lamestream media report on the debunking? No. This explains why my friend in New York doesn’t like Sarah Palin because she kills turkeys.

Now facts, on the other hand, move like led up the media flagpole. Correct explanations as to why Palin resigned are sketchy across the media landscape. Journolister conspiracies to destroy Sarah Palin take nearly two years to get reported. Sarah Palin herself has to write a Facebook page to explain Pete Rouse’s position in the circle of the smear merchants who viciously and with no human dignity went after her reputation in the 2008 election because no one else in the LSM wants to do it. Has anyone even cared to ask how much contact Rouse had with official DNC blogger Linda Kellen Biegle or MSNBC contributor Shannyn Moore during that time?

How could the press find the time to explore that angle given the fact that their heads were so deeply down into Palin’s garbage can?

Chris Wallace did not know that there was a recording of two journalists plotting a negative story on Joe Miller until Sarah Palin told him. Yes, the story was on Big Journalism, circulating through the Twittersphere and slowly making its way to other conservative sites. But most Americans don’t sit there and peruse the internet with a fine tooth comb the way I do. They come home from work, they put on Katie Couric and they believe everything she says because, well, it’s a straight news show. This is not a putdown on Americans. They’re busy. They have jobs and families that consume their time. They need their news given to them quickly. But it should be given to them properly.

Apparently, the media world is so blind to what really needs to be reported that even a top shelf journalist like Chris Wallace had no briefing, nothing to tip his hat at or no one in the newsroom who could come to him and say “check this out.” He had to get the story from Sarah Palin live on the air. After investigating it, he told Megyn Kelly and the Fox News audience that it was in fact a story after another guest tried to insinuate it wasn’t. Having given it his journalistic credibility, it was only then that Fox finally started running it.

So what’s a girl to do? “Hmmmm. I got a journalism degree. I’m going to be on Fox News today. I have a copy of the tape. Hey, why not report on it? No one else is.”

These dopey journalists who have been making fun of Sarah Palin for two years now have so much egg on their faces you could make omelets for the homeless. They just got one upped by the one they demean when she broke a real news story while the rest of them were reveling in the embarrassment to somebody that might come from an anonymous report that they don’t wax or someone else who may have child molesters at their rallies. The sad part is when Sarah Palin comes on Fox News and pulls the lamestream media’s pants down exposing them as impotent and limp garbage-meisters that they are.

So the next time you need to get the truth about what’s happening in the conservative movement, read the internet and verify what you read. Turn off the television and throw out the newspaper. The truth won’t be found there unless you’re watching Fox. And even then sometimes, you might just need a top notch crack journalist like Sarah Palin to get it on there.


More: Does the GOP Establishment Have a Death Wish?