Understanding Why The Media Are Liberal 'Political Arsonists'

40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, 35% consider themselves moderate and 20% consider themselves liberal according to a recent Gallup Poll. 37% of Americans call themselves Republicans and 33.7% call themselves Democrats according to Rasmussen. The rest would be independents. A quick look at these numbers would make one think that we have a robust body politic with a competitive two party system. Then why are the media so biased to the left?

Nicole Coulter at Conservatives4Palin provides us with stunning numbers and a stunning insight into what is happening with our completely out of balance and out of touch media.

After the 2008 election, the right-leaning Washington Examiner learned through a records search that 88% of the campaign donations made by network news employees, including writers, producers, reporters, and executives, went to Democrats. Just 88%, huh?

Not coincidentally, a Harvard study conducted during the 2008 election found that 47% of the print and broadcast stories about Barack Obama were overtly positive vs. only 12% positive for John McCain, while the Washington Post’s own ombudsman acknowledged that Obama received three times more front-page coverage than McCain, and that reporters went over the top in their scrutiny of Gov. Palin compared to then-Sen. Biden.

This demonstrates a tremendous disparity between the real America and those who are charged with the privilege of providing the country information and acting as the fourth estate whose function was considered highly important to the preservation of our republic by our Founders.

These should be seen as highly disturbing numbers by not just conservatives, but by the moderates who make up the 35% of an electorate that when combined with conservatives equals 75% of our country. Yes, 75% of our country do not consider themselves liberal. Yet the press has an almost exactly opposite make up.

Fred Barnes cites a 1985 poll  of 3,200 reporters which "found them to be self-identified as 55 percent liberal, 17 percent conservative." When journalists caught on in 2004, the numbers were "34 percent liberal and 7 percent conservative," according to Pew. Barnes goes on to explain how the media numbers are still completely different from those of the general public.

Over 40-plus years, the only thing that's changed in the media's politics is that many national journalists have now cleverly decided to call themselves moderates. But their actual views haven't changed, the Pew survey showed. Their political beliefs are close to those of self-identified liberals and nowhere near those of conservatives. And the proportion of liberals to conservatives in the press, either 3-to-1 or 4-to-1, has stayed the same. That liberals are dominant is now beyond dispute.

Studies by the Media Research Center going back to 1981 and the Pew Research Center going back to 1971 show a consistent imbalance in the political affilitation of journalists and the American people. Bob Roper of the Columbia Daily Tribune points out an absolutely mind blowing stat.

Polling of MSM journalists showed they voted 9-1 in favor of Bill Clinton over George H.W. Bush in 1992 and voted in the same margin for John Kerry versus George W. Bush in 2004. No surprise, then, that the Center for Media and Public Affairs found Kerry received 77 percent favorable coverage in 2004 while Bush received 34 percent favorable coverage — quite a chasm, in my view.

The public agrees that the media is biased according to Roper.

In 2008, a Rasmussen poll found huge numbers of people are concerned about this issue. The poll showed 55 percent of voters believe MSM bias is a bigger problem than big campaign contributions (the breakdown was 68 percent of Republicans, 62 percent of independents and 37 percent of Democrats). Several years ago, Brill’s Content showed that 77 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats believe there is a liberal bias in the MSM.

It's a logical conclusion from looking at these numbers that something like the "Palin problem" is more the result of the fact that the minority has the majority of media platforms from which to shape opinion. Discussions about her electability, qualifications, level of intelligence and why she is mocked are first generated by the media and then discussed by them as if it is news formed outside of their bubble when in fact there is nothing like this going on in real life. In an ideal world, the the media would objectively provide an accurate analysis and provide a proper reflection of actual opinion in the real citizenry.

You see the same dynamic in reporting on the Tea Party, other conservative leaders like Michele Bachmann and Jim Demint and the 2010 midterm elections where conservative candidates, particularly Tea Party candidates, were portrayed by the media as extreme and in some cases outright mocked.

Awareness of this problem really picked up after the 2008 election. Nicole Coulter at Conservatives4Palin quoted a Media Research Study that shows why Obama and Biden were able to skate by their gaffes, but Palin was scrutinized.

The networks downplayed or ignored major Obama gaffes and scandals. Obama’s relationship with convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko was the subject of only two full reports (one each on ABC and NBC) and mentioned in just 15 other stories. [...]

The networks minimized Obama’s liberal ideology, only referring to him as a “liberal” 14 times in four years. In contrast, reporters found twice as many occasions (29) to refer to Obama as either a “rock star,” “rising star” or “superstar” during the same period.

In covering the campaign, network reporters highlighted voters who offered favorable opinions about Obama. Of 147 average citizens who expressed an on-camera opinion about Obama, 114 (78%) were pro-Obama, compared to just 28 (19%) that had a negative view, with the remaining five offering a mixed opinion.

The Tucson shootings broke the thing wide open as mainstream media outlets tossed aside their responsibility of reporting factually on the shootings and instead turned to manufacturing a discussion about blaming conservative rhetoric which they reported as news. A majority of the public never saw this connection. This is an example of how the media manufactures a biased discussion on rhetoric and then reports on it. It's political arson where the arsonist returns to the scene as the firefighter. They have done the same type of "opinion manufacturing" with political candidates like Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul. This distorts the political landscape and creates a greater margin of error for the public who might mistakenly rely on the media's bad information when making a voting decision.

While the public is about 3-1 non-liberal, the media remains 3-1 liberal. The documentation and chronicling of our center-right country is being done by leftists who come from an academia that has indoctrinated them into a bubble that is completely out of touch with the reality on the ground in the real world.

Nicole Coulter explains why the media is so tilted to the left.

In journalism school, Republicans are viewed largely as caricatures: heartless and greedy, and as always attempting to shove religion down people’s throats by opposing legalized abortion.

If you step foot on any major college campus, you will gain an insight into why journalists are liberal. Colleges bring together large numbers of people who run to the ideological left. Indeed, universities (especially humanities and communication departments) are havens and hotbeds for people who don’t fit in ideologically with the larger community or the center-right country at large. They are mini-Berkeleys and Haight Ashburies.

And so are newsrooms. For three years, I worked for a daily newspaper in Logan, Utah – one of the most conservative cities on the planet. But you’d never know it from the newsroom, which was filled with environmental extremists, hardcore feminists, and leftover 60s radicals. This small-town newsroom was so disconnected from the community it served, it still blows my mind. It was like a time warp. Outside the newsroom it was 1990 … Inside, 1970. Newsrooms, in general, are filled with iconoclasts, curmudgeons, and cultural rebels, even in small towns – and perhaps, especially in small towns. While a whopping 80% of my community was Mormon, I can only recall two reporters out of a dozen or more I worked with who were active members of any faith, let alone the predominant religion. I would dare say 80% of the newspaper staff was either agnostic or atheistic, especially among the editor ranks. Most of the staff, in fact, were secular East Coast and Upper Midwest transplants who flocked to Utah for the outdoor environment, not the cultural landscape.

This troubling imbalance adds an extra level of strategy which will be required by Republicans going into 2012. While they will have Fox News, talk radio and the new media to provide some cover, they will be taking on an opponent who will not only have the incumbency and all the normal Constitutional advantages which come with it, but who will also have a wide swath of the mainstream media to do his bidding at no cost to his campaign.

Getting the American people to go beyond the half hour they spend at dinner time each night watching the same biased nightly news program and to research the candidates and issues through a variety of media will be just as important as getting the people to the polls on election day.

That screen you turn on each day and the newspaper you pick up off your porch may be laced with as much propaganda as the campaign pamphlet a Democrat party activist may have slipped into into your screen door the night before.

These are Must Reads for 11/27/2011

I wrote a post yesterday about the State of the Union address, but some lady from Alaska outdid me in a much better piece. Check out:
Obama’s Message to America: The Era of Big Government is Back, Now Help Me Pay For It

Here's an article from a guy who hits on some key points I've been making since 2008:
Sarah in 2012? (h/t Texas for Sarah Palin)

[Historian and commentator Victor Davis] Hanson believes that Palin is “scary not so much in 2012” as an antidote to Barack Obama, but that “she could be around—and around in an evolving way—for a long time to come.” Here I would be inclined to vary, however modestly, from Hanson’s analysis of the menace Palin represents to the liberal-left constituency. The veritable tornado of hatred and defamation to which she has been subjected argues something far more immediate in its implications. What the Democrats and their supporters earnestly fear is not only that Palin may be around for the indefinite future, but that she is indeed potentially electable in 2012 and must be stopped at all costs. This is perhaps the principal motive for so libelous a spectacle as the left’s all-out debauch of vilification.

I have always referred to Sarah Palin as an evolving candidate. The key component to understanding her evolution is to understand where the false narrative of Palin comes from and to find the areas where she is strong.

We need to remember that the liberal-left ideology which seems so potent and widespread in contemporary America is to a large extent the creature of a progressivist elite and its media organs, busy collimating their quarry. It does not speak for the vast majority of Americans but, as Arthur Brooks clearly sets out in The Battle, accounts for at most 30% of the nation. What he calls the 30% coalition, grounded in “European-style statism…expanded bureaucracies, increasing income redistribution, and government-controlled corporations,” advances an agenda that is not shared by the remaining 70% of the population. And it is precisely here, in the preponderant sector of the electorate, that Palin’s real strength lies.

From this 30%, we get opinions and commentary from the minority who hold the majority of the mics and pens at major media outlets. So after identifying who the real Palin haters are and why, we need to address the issue of media bias and understand why and what it is they are doing in their campaign to turn the other 70% against her (they doth protest loudly, don't they).

The reason, then, that Palin may appear “dicey,” a long shot for the White House and unconvincing as a savvy political player is owing not to any calamitous personal deficiencies—after all, she has succeeded brilliantly in most of her undertakings—but to the well-coordinated offensive launched against her by the media, the special interest groups and the entrenched Beltway power brokers. That is, she has been targeted for extinction by the 30% minority who control the levers of power and influence. They have her in their “crosshairs.”

But this is to ignore the 70% majority of center and center-right Americans, many of whom have become more and more skeptical of the press and who are correspondingly fed up with the techniques of character assassination employed by the agencies of the generic left. Paradoxically, Palin’s electability can be reckoned as an inverse function of the virulent campaign intent on her delegitimation. The “war against Sarah” is a clear indication of the feasibility of her candidacy for the presidency. The greater the fury and bluster and dissembling she is met with, the greater the likelihood that she poses a genuine threat. One does not raise a mallet to crush an ant.

And after getting past the media bias, we then have to deal with those that I call "trembling tigers." These are the folks who tend to be more wishy washy, but don't drink the Obama kool aid. They need constant nurturing and reassuring. They're not junkies like us. They take everything they see and hear at face value and don't research things as in depth.

It won’t be a cakewalk. As received wisdom has it, the public is notoriously fickle and uninformed. Still, the plurality of the disaffected may prove otherwise and a large if amorphous majority may gradually trump the chicanery of a tenacious and concentrated minority.

David Solway hits the nail on the head in this fantastic piece. This is textbook political science for Palin supporters. Understanding this article will help everyone digest why Palin is perceived the way she is and why she still can win the presidency. It will be up to her supporters and her (performance in a primary campaign) to change the narrative and overcome the lies, libel, slander and bias of the minority who claim to steer our national narrative on television stations and in print media across the country.

Another good read from Whitney Pitcher. This is important to understand since the key component to creating jobs in America in conjunction with reducing spending, creating a fairer and flatter tax system, reforming entitlements and reducing regulation is the awakening of our industrial energy giant.
Governor Palin on the Issues: Energy Regulation

There is so much about Sarah Palin that America doesn't know because of the disingenuous media. It's time to tell them the real story about her!

State of the Union: The Both Sides of Obama’s Mouth

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery. - Sarah Palin


President Obama wants to get reelected. Now that there is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the days of ramming through unpopular programs like the Stimulus and Obamacare are over. The president admitted this in an unspoken way during the State of the Union address by not delivering as partisan a speech as he did last year and by abandoning the rhetoric of “punishing our enemies” and “they can sit in the back.” Instead he struck a more amiable tone as he expressed the need for members on both sides to not only “sit together tonight, but work together tomorrow.” His approach was to give everyone something they wanted - or at least make it sound that way. As a result, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth.

Rush Limbaugh called it a campaign speech.

He talked about medical malpractice tort reform but completely ignored a necessary matching component: the sale of health insurance across state lines. Roughly translated, I’ll call the lawyers off if you don’t repeal Obamacare. The president talked about reducing the corporate tax rate while eliminating tax loopholes to pay for it. Roughly translated, his proposal is revenue neutral and will not save corporations the needed money for hiring more employees. He talked about freezing spending at current levels. Roughly translated, the era of big government is here to stay but it won’t get any bigger.

"The ledger did not appear to be adding up Tuesday night when President Barack Obama urged more spending on one hand and a spending freeze on the other," Calvin Woodward of the AP wrote.

See how that works? He tells conservatives he’ll move toward the center while telling liberals he will protect what he’s gotten them already. We are watching a man walk a political tightrope who only goes to the center when it means saving his hide or not falling off the wire. Yesterday’s state of the union included “investments” for green technology and infrastructure for the left and a consolidation of government agencies for the right.

Where he bombed is when he said he wants to work with Republicans on keeping the costs of entitlements down but in his old Obamaistic way drew an extreme allegory by saying this:

To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

Roughly translated, he is saying no privatization options for social security. When discussing entitlement reform, the president wrongfully assumed Republicans would want people putting their social security money into volatile investments such as aggressive emerging growth mutual funds. That’s simply demagoguery and is far from what we would expect Republicans to offer as part of a private option for a portion of money that is withheld for social security.

Should the Republicans get everything Obama offered them last night, our national debt will continue to rise, although much more slowly than it is now. And, only way to “reform entitlements” without a private option will be through huge tax increases that will come once liberals have let the crisis grow to a level where they will no longer be able to let it go to waste.

Don’t be fooled by the president’s rhetoric and tone last night. Community organizers who are well read in how to transform societies into European socialist democracies don’t just change overnight. They just hide it better until after they are hopefully reelected. He hasn't given up on redistributing the wealth.

And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply can't afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. (Applause.) Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break.

Tonight, we will hear from Sarah Palin on Greta Van Susteren’s show On the Record. It will be interesting to get a clear contrast to Obama’s speech. If there’s any inclination on where Palin may go with her remarks, it would be to think that it is most likely that she will highly agree with Paul Ryan who Palin has expressed high regards for in the past. Don't expect doublespeak from Palin tonight. Expect to get it straight, just as Paul Ryan gave it to us straight last night in his response.


-Please listen to my Blogtalk Radio show tonight at 11:00 pm ET

Is America Ready for President Palin?

The media has made Sarah Palin a stranger to America

If you read the polls you might be tempted to believe that America is not ready for a President Palin. Since the 2008 election, the liberal media has been trying to tell us what to think by placing their unfounded doubts and their derangement about Sarah Palin into the heads of American voters. To some extent they have succeeded. But to what extent have they gone, and how badly have the liberal media damaged their own credibility in their effort to change the minds of an electorate who loves optimism and respects those who can overcome great adversities? America should be ready for President Palin, but the “state run” drive by media doesn’t want you to see it that way.

When a young, little known state senator from Illinois began his journey to the White House, the media ignored a sordid past which included questionable political associations such as that with William Ayers, a seedy land deal with Tony Rezko, drug use and other indiscretions as a young man, poor grades and a strong propensity for progressive wealth redistributive philosophies that he spoke and wrote of all during his days leading up to his run for president. Heck, whether you believe he’s a citizen or not, they still can’t even find his birth certificate.

Just imagine if this was Sarah Palin. Imagine if she had walked the same path as Barack Obama. The consequences would simply be devastating. The same media which contends that the use of a term (that had previously been used in the same context by other writers without any notice) like “blood libel” disqualifies her for the presidency saw nothing wrong with a pre-presidential Obama attending a dinner with William Ayers where anti-Jewish racial slurs were tossed about more than the salad.

Imagine a parallel universe in which Sarah Palin organized communities with an unrepentant terrorist, used drugs, roused rabbles "to organize for the purpose of registering dead people to vote, shaking down corporations and using the race card as a bludgeon," and whose pastor of 20 years spewed anti-American sermons about chickens coming home to roost. Imagine if the first two years of a Palin administration resulted in practically bankrupting our country, destroying its health care system and weakening its image on the world stage. In that universe, she’d be hailed as a great leader by the media only because she would have a D next to her name. Despite the damage being done, all she would need to do would be to give the appearance of moving to the center and give a state of the union address to Republicans and Democrats sitting together holding hands singing Kumbaya and all would be forgiven.

At the same time in this parallel universe, a hard working family man whose worst vices were that he never attended an ivy league school or he missed a couple of questions during a media interview would be vilified if he had been the one who came from Wasilla, Alaska. Put an R next to Obama's name and give him Palin's life and watch as the media which loves him in the real universe portrays him as dangerous and stupid in the parallel one. His impeccable character would be impugned daily. His family would be mocked. His entire life would be scrutinized under a microscope incapable of finding a birth certificate yet which easily found the words “refudiate” and “blood libel” from the millions of words eloquently spoken and written over the course of years.

Think about this seriously. Just see how blatant the liberal hypocrisy really is. Imagine Barack Obama as a Republican and Sarah Palin as a Democrat. How would the media treat them? What if Sarah Palin's agenda matched that of the media's and Barack Obama was seen as the threat? Surely, the media would have so much more to work with had the shoes been on the other feet.

There would be no need to manufacture scandals or misrepresent Obama's intelligence through caricature. It's never right when the media uses non-related events to portray a preordained picture of someone for the purpose of libelling them. However, anyone with half a brain can figure out that if the media had to smear Obama the way it smears Palin, Obama would make his own sauce likely lessening the need for creativity on the part of the writers who would bring their "opinions" to paper.

America elected Barack Obama based on a false narrative fed to them by the mainstream media. America has been looking for the optimism and hope that Ronald Reagan once spoke of. When they thought they had it in Obama, they took it hook line and sinker. But now that the media has discredited itself, it will not be possible to do that again. Or at least we hope so.

One may think that America knows everything about Palin because of the intense media coverage of her. But it's that same media coverage which really makes her a stranger to America because it's disingenuous. America has been telling us in the polls that it's not ready for the caricature of Palin. But, America is certainly ready for the real President Palin. They just don't know who she is yet.

Will we see a presidential Sarah Palin on Hannity tonight?

Everyone is waiting for Sean Hannity's interview with Sarah Palin tonight on Fox News Channel to see how she responds to the false accusations against her regarding the Tucson, AZ shootings and to see how she reacts to the criticism she has been getting in the mainstream media for her video where she we responds to those accusations. The responses to tonight's interview will be predictable - particularly those coming from the Left. Rest assured we will see an articulate Palin who stands strong on her principles while acknowledging the firestorm that surrounds her. But rest equally assured that you will see a mainstream media backlash again with a focus on how presidential she comes across.

Liberals can begin writing their columns now. We all know that even if Sarah Palin unveils the cure for cancer tonight on Hannity, tomorrow's papers, news websites and blogs will open with the aces they already have up their sleeves. You will hear talk about how she is too sensitive to criticism (they will ignore the death threats). You will read commentary about how polarizing and divisive she is even as some liberals concede the reasons for the outrage against her for Tucson isn't true.

All the Left needs to do is complete the bodies of their articles and leave room for a quote or two from Palin, which they will find after microscopic scrutiny of the transcript of tonight's interview. If she says one word that enters a grey area, if they find a sentence that can be spun to their delight or if they can find a head movement or eye response from her that can be embedded as video, all the left wing media has to do is find the part of their template and copy and paste the quote or video into the section where they have already prepared their attack in advance.

On the other hand, conservatives - particularly Palin supporters - will rush to their keyboards to write articles and blog posts hailing Palin as having been presidential.

It will be those articles and posts that will cause the liberal media to go into a tizzy. The follow up to those articles will be more blood libel. Palin's presidential timber will be chain sawed and axed to saw dust with utter disregard for the facts or her actual statements. It will be the pure fear we will see once again when liberals see articles praising Palin and pointing to facts that show how she is clearly a viable and qualified candidate for president.

The support of Sarah Palin will not be broadcast on the mainstream media. As people praise her and heap accolades on her for her interview performance, mainstream media will stand in a position to block the scene from the public. They will tell you "move on, there's nothing to see here." They will tell you that we cannot have a president that draws such vile from the public.

Following the Jets victory over New England today, you will still have the nay sayers that say she can't do it. You will have those who will predict her demise or declare her political career over. These people need to be reminded that until we see her in a primary where real people vote, these types of predictions are about as useful as those which declared the Patriots the winner of yesterday's game even before the coin had been tossed.

We know in advance what is going to happen tomorrow in the media and in the blogosphere. Rule of thumb for all objective readers: if it's spinning (whether it is a sentence or a liberal's head), it's not worth reading. Watch Palin's speech tonight and use your own brain. Don't rely on the brains of media idiots.

The Out of Touch Media Destroyed By Focus Group

Don't expect the mainstream media to report any time soon that they are so out of touch with reality that average people don't believe an iota of their analyses of Sarah Palin's America's Enduring Strength video. In a scientific study by Media Curves, according to Conservatives4Palin, Palin's "sincerity, believability, and likeability scores improved after the group of 1,437 self-reported Democrats, Republicans, and Independents viewed her speech." Wishful television pundits, some of whom played the Palin video and gave obviously conflicting side by side analysis of it, may find themselves irrevelevant after these findings.

When real people view the video and are asked to give their genuine feelings on it, Palin comes off well. This focus group may not change the mind of kool aid drinking liberal Democrats as their numbers didn't change much in the study (which confirms this blogger's assertion that they are not our target market anyway), but it does indicate something honest evaluators have been saying all along: that Palin can win the nomination if she can run a strong and convincing campaign. Managing her image is going to be key. Whether you disagree with some of Nate Silver's assertions, the overwhelming premise for this blogger is that regardless of what has happened up until now, her ability to campaign effectively will win over the non-PDS afflicted who are not so sure just yet.

Despite the media's manufacturing of psychological reactions which may push some towards thinking Palin might be damaged as a result of what they are seeing in the media, the fact of the matter is people like Larry O'Donnell, Norah O'Donnell, Keith Olbermann, David Frum, Joy Behar and even detractors perceived to be on the right like Joe Scarborough and Charles Krauthammer are a small minority who just happen to have big microphones. A poll conducted by CBS News showed that 57% of the public believe "the heated rhetoric of late played no role in the tragedy" and that subsequent polls concurred. T.A. Frank wrote an article titled "How the Media Botched the Arizona Shooting" on New Republic which clearly substantiates the point.

A note to Joe Scarborough: this is not the end of Palin's political career, King Nothing. It's the end of the media's grasp on the minds of America.

The fact that people are flocking to Palin's defense despite the obnoxiously loud megaphone of the media could mean that we are finally seeing a shift and backlash that bodes well for Palin down the road as she campaigns for the hearts and minds of the undecideds. This backfired "blood libel" that was unleashed upon her and fellow conservative is resulting finally in the backlash that has long eluded us following Media Malpractice by John Ziegler, the Ethicsgate video about the Alaska Bloggers and the smoking gun of the Journolister scandal.

Palin's video is the unveiling of the presidential Palin. It is in a sense, her first moment of presenting herself not as a Fox News contributor, not as a political activist, not as an author and not as a professional speaker, but rather as someone who will now be addressing national issues as she possibly prepares to run for president.

Stop believing the media. The primaries are when they let the real people in the game. That's when you will get the real analysis of where Sarah Palin really stands. That analysis will not come from pompous, out touch, self-serving and agenda driven talking heads. That analysis will come from us, the people who vote and the people who understand the real deal sans the fantasy and fiction.

The Political Assassination of Sarah Palin

It’s obvious that we are watching a smear campaign with millions of tentacles which uses selective outrage to manufacture talking points where there is no real basis in fact in order to try to destroy Sarah Palin. Watching the liberal media perform intellectually dishonest mental gymnastics (which are probably better described as sleight of mind tricks) is akin to watching a little kid who knows he’s about to lose move the ball on the pool table when the other kid isn’t looking in a last ditch effort to turn the game. These political air benders defecate on the face of journalism and the American people when they trade in their journalistic credentials in order to distort the analytical process so brutally just for the sake of destroying those with whom they disagree. The evidence of a deliberate effort to destroy Sarah Palin is now self evident.

David Frum and David Corn juxtaposed comments that were completely out of touch with reality when "critiquing" Sarah Palin’s video yesterday on Lawrence O’Donnell’s Last Word on MSNBC. It was like watching two pundits split screen with a video of a cloudless blue sky trying to tell us that it was green and cloudy. Karen Tumulty continues to spew out hit piece after hit piece on Sarah Palin at the Washington Post. Her latest hit piece performs journalistic contortions of the circus variety in order to unilaterally (okay with the help of co-writer Peter Wallsten) name herself queen of the world and declare that Palin’s video backfired because she used the words “blood libel.” Scour the internet and you find numerous articles praising Palin's video. But don't tell that to Tumulty. Radio talk show host Michael Savage, far from being a Palin supporter, said Sarah Palin has shown herself to be a true leader after watching the video.

This whole "blood libel" gin up seems to make these crazy liberal journalists, writers and pundits sound as crazy as Arizona shooter Jared Loughner with his complaints about people's grammar. But we really know what they're up to. It's not just about "blood libel." It's about the political destruction of a force that they fear will destroy their credibility forever.

Think about this. More manufactured outrage was directed at Sarah Palin and the American Right than at the shooter. When people are genuinely outraged and shocked, they react in many different ways. There is no blueprint for how we handle tragedy. People who don’t know each other don’t go on Twitter and all tweet the same things. However, when outrage is manufactured for political purpose, the boilerplate that has been evident so many times before becomes stunningly obvious.

It’s clear from the fluid effort on the part of the media that their talking points and the timing of their responses to Sarah Palin are flowing in a pre-ordained time frame. The tragedy happens and trained bloggers and tweeters hit the internet within 30 minutes.

Play it out further. Once the Twitter sphere and blogosphere is saturated with the vitriol, the next step is for the liberal media to pick up the meme and begin discussing the role of Palin’s rhetoric in the shooting. Then, they pull out the file they have been waiting to use since prior to the 2010 elections which include a picture of the Take Back the 20 map complete with crosshairs and a clip of speech where Sarah Palin uses the words “don’t retreat, reload.” Had Sarah Palin left a candy bar wrapper on the ground outside of a CVS three months ago, they would have pulled that out, too.

Follow this up with complaints of Palin remaining silent on the issue to set up the next talking point that she is interjecting herself into the story. Print it up and have it ready to go. Leave the time and date blank. You know she’s going on Facebook. It’s just a matter of when and then bang, hit send and the preordained media narrative now becomes what they planned it to be the day before. Rush Limbaugh pointed out that the media made Palin part of the story on purpose.

Which brings us to today’s move, which comes complete with coordinated talking points like “her political career is finished” and this is “the nail in her political coffin.” This tells me that if you had gotten the talking points memo this past Saturday, those points were already scheduled for today in advance. Whether she said “blood libel” or not is irrelevant as they would have gone with something else. Attacking Sarah Palin is simple for those who make it up as they go. It’s a fill in the blanks template.

If Sarah Palin had cured cancer last night, MSNBC would be all ready to run with the story about how a self-aggrandizing woman cures cancer in a cynical political move to revive her poll numbers. It’s gotten so predictable that the hits on Sarah Palin are so far removed from the actual things she does that they aren’t holding water like they used to.

The media knows this now so they are using the psychological tactic that if you tell a lie long enough it becomes the truth. The current smear campaign causes disbelief and outrage with 57% of the American people, yet the media are not concerned. The mere fact that these memes are circling Palin and the president remained quiet until last night (Rush Limbaugh suggested he was waiting for polls to determine whether or not the Palin meme worked - which it didn't causing him to temper the rhetoric of the speech), allows the psychological factor to work again, or so they think. However, this time, most people reject their notions.

What the media is doing is advancing the ball on the simulator trying to get you to think that this is what’s actually going on in the game. In the old Soviet Union, propaganda ministers would totally misrepresent the facts knowing full well that there was no one there who would have been allowed to take photographs and talk directly to witnesses. However, here in America they do it in broad daylight.

We are witnessing a political assassination in which the killer in full view of witnesses and television cameras executes the victim and the media reports it as a suicide. When confronted, the media not only stands by their story, but express outrage and anger at those who call them on it.

We’re watching a political gang rape in which the perpetrators are hoping that the people mistakenly believe that the victim was asking for it.

It would be a devastating blow to the Left’s surreal vision of America if the people finally figure out that the elitists have been pulling their strings for nearly a century. Their only response would be the one we see now: scapegoat and demonize all of those who are on to them. We are witnessing the political genocide of the Tea Party and talk radio listeners while the elites play a nasty game of kill the queen with Sarah Palin.

When you watch David Frum and David Corn sit there side by side with a video running of Sarah Palin giving a sober and well written speech while they flat out lie to you by saying she is angry and disjointed, you know the Left has either completely gone off its rocker or they’ve just become so insanely intoxicated with arrogance. It’s their way of saying to the American people, we are the power and you will not stop us no matter how blatant we are in wielding that power.

What it ultimately comes down to, like Ronald Reagan said, is that given the facts the American people will make the right decision every time. Although at times it seems Sarah Palin’s fate is in the hands of the media or the political chattering class, the truth of the matter is it is time for the American people to take responsibility for how fellow citizens are treated by the media and chattering class. The unwarranted smearing of Sarah Palin will not come to an end until the American people themselves stand up and say enough is enough.

It’s an insult to the intelligence of the American people who are now fully aware that this is how the corrupt media lies. If anything, they should elect Sarah Palin as a punishment to the mainstream media so that these types of grotesque totalitarian tactics on a private citizen are never used again.

All Americans, whether you agree or disagree with Sarah Palin politically, should be outraged that anyone at any level of influence in this country could even have the power to destroy anyone at will simply because they are a threat to their immoral power structure.

Any one of us could be the next Sarah Palin. Whoever demonstrates the biggest threat to the power source ultimately falls into the elitist and media crosshairs. Those who think that if Sarah Palin goes away that all of this stops is deluding themselves. If Sarah Palin goes away, it doesn’t solve the problem for the next one who steps up and demonstrates enough of a threat to scare the media and the elitists. The media and the elites will stand atop the wall scanning the landscape until they see the next threat to their castle of power and they will take aim on them.

As they establish the blue print for how to destroy their existential threats, we need to be establishing a blue print for how to stop them. The American people can no longer tolerate this. It’s time for all of us to stand up and say “no more!”


For more, read Lori Ziganto : Thoughtful, On-Target Palin Responds To Attacks; Left Loses Last Grip On Reality

Palin's Positive Message of Hope

This blogger has been following Sarah Palin since she was announced as John McCain's running mate in 2008. I have never felt stronger as a supporter of hers than I do now. Her statement today demonstrated leadership. It should serve as proof that she is presidential. But that's not today's issue. Today's issue is that she blew me away in both exposing for me my own personal strengths and personal weaknesses.

This blogger has been focusing on the evil of what the Left has been doing to her. What it took me three blog posts to say, Palin in her eloquent and brilliant style said in one sentence. "No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent, and we certainly must not be deterred by those who embrace evil and call it good."

I've always gotten that part.

But this writer missed something. She opened my eyes. She clarified for all us how the greatness of our nation allows us to have a free and open political discourse. And although we disagree, heatedly at times, the Left will have no choice but to embrace the realities of how imperfect men and women debate.

It is time to put the Palin haters aside and embrace Palin's positive message of hope.

America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week. We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we endured in the wake of the tragedy. We will come out of this stronger and more united in our desire to peacefully engage in the great debates of our time, to respectfully embrace our differences in a positive manner, and to unite in the knowledge that, though our ideas may be different, we must all strive for a better future for our country. May God bless America.

As for those who wish to continue to hate, I pray for their souls. And I thank Governor Palin for helping me find the goodness within my heart that was being buried under all of the Left's vitriol and my reaction to it.


Please listen to my Blogtalk Radio show tonight at 11:00 pm ET.

Is Palin qualified to be president? Arizona changes everything.

Prior to the shooting incident in Arizona, the debate seemed to be focused on whether or not Sarah Palin is qualified to be president and if she could beat Obama in a general election. It was a mixed discourse with some adamantly saying she was, some saying she wasn’t and some not certain yet. Palin’s biggest challenge seemed to be with those in the undecided category. It was this blogger’s analysis that the media was driving the meme to the point where people were incorrectly misinterpreting the meaning of polls this far out and being adversely affected by the play up of perceived damage to Palin’s image which was due to no fault or misdoing on her own part. This all came to a halt Saturday as the media seized upon the tragedy to take another angle at destroying Sarah Palin. This time it is backfiring badly, and it will change everything about the discussion of her from here on forward.

When Rush Limbaugh said the attacks on conservatives like Palin were attacks on the majority, us, it clicked.

Now, what they've done is essentially take aim at a majority of the people in this country.  A majority of the people in this country identify more with the Tea Party movement than with the Democrat Party today, with liberalism.

The liberals finally destroyed their credibility by seizing upon the opportunity to score political points by creating the myth that Palin was somehow complicit in the killing spree because she posted a map with surveyor symbols that resembled crosshairs on one of her web pages. Most Americans are reasonable people and see through that just as they see through the fact that the Oklahoma City bomber was not a mainstream conservative either.

The hellish scorched earth approach taken by the liberal media and their cohorts in the blogosphere and on social media lit up the landscape so brightly that the proof of the cries from Palin circles that the media lies is now clearly visible in the light of day and will become moreso as the smoke clears and the country has grieved.

A glaringly telling sign of how this will all play out down the road has been evident on Twitter since the shooting. Those who are normally engaged in the “Palin electability” debate from all positions amongst grass roots Republicans and conservatives are suddenly united in their outrage against the Left and are fighting for Palin as vigorously as the Palinistas are. Many are being attacked by liberals and standing up to these attacks quite well – a sign that the courageous conservatism required for keeping the movement strong going into 2012 is there.

Those of us who argued with each other over Palin are now in agreement that the egregious political play on the event by those on the Left makes us all sick at a time when we should be praying and grieving. Even Charles Krauthammer is defending her.

The conservative movement is unified again because the Left’s unwarranted attacks have interrupted and possibly changed forever the debate over Palin’s electability. Watching those who this blogger has called “trembling tigers” take to their keyboards with a vengeance in defense of Mrs. Palin demonstrate how effective we are as a unit if all of us fight for the same cause. This is an unintentional example of how great and effective we are as a movement when we all band together and stand up for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement.

No one wants to (nor should they) use this catastrophic event for political purposes. These observations are not born of a political agenda, but are rather an assessment that Sarah Palin will benefit from all of this whether we like it or not and whether we talk about it or not. It’s what Tammy Bruce calls the unintended consequences of what happens when the liberal reaction helps to "reinforce solidarity among the decent."

Because Sarah Palin is a good hearted person who knows not to exploit the situation or try to game the Leftist attacks for sympathy, she has remained quiet on the subject with the exception of an email to Glenn Beck where she clearly conveys how upset she is about violence. She is praying, letting the events play out and seeing to it that her star power doesn’t overshadow the grieving process that the country and the families are going through.

It will be how she demonstrates leadership and character during this event that could, without intent or the typical scheming that politicians do in order to enhance their images, be the game changer that causes many to take a second look at her.

Having seen the media’s handling of the situation, it's obvious to most conservatives and Republicans now (with the exception of the GOP Establishment which remains silent on the matter) that the media is intentionally hell bent on destroying her. They knew that before, but they never knew the depth of it until now. As a result, everyone who is not afflicted with Obama kool aid intoxication or Palin Derangement Syndrome will have no choice but to give Sarah Palin a second look. It will almost be a requirement for all honest voters to revisit Sarah Palin and re-learn her without the media filter.

So forget all that was ever said about her in the media in the past. Deciding whether she is qualified will have to be left to observing how she handles the campaign and how well she articulates her message. The liberals have fed the beast at their own peril. This is appears to be the breaking point where it all crumbles for them.

Irresponsible Citizens, Media and Celebrities

If there was ever a time to learn a serious lesson about our culture and our media, it is now. The Arizona shooting showed us that there is a lot of dangerous, potentially violent provoking thought being expressed right now in America – and it’s not coming out of the Tea Party or conservatives like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It’s coming from the Left, which is ginning up ideological reasons that don’t exist for this shooting.

What they are doing should greatly damage the credibility of liberalism and progressivism in the minds of stable, mature and intelligently thinking Americas – both on the left and the right. To watch no name loons and rabidly liberal individuals take to Twitter to blame the Tea Party, Sarah Palin and other conservatives is one thing. To watch celebrities and well known people in well known media outlets do the same is another. These people have an obligation to react responsibly to events as professionals and should communicate in a responsible way. Watching them feeding into a satanic, rabid and irrational type of negativity perpetrated by amateurs is very disturbing to those of us who are concerned about the future of our republic.

"If you are blaming Sarah Palin and/or the Tea Parties for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, you are identifying yourself as a person who is so deranged with hate that you should not be taken seriously on any issue," Da Techguy wrote perfectly on his blog (h/t Texas For Sarah Palin).

Warner Todd Huston at Big Journalism writes "Whatever the final facts are that we find out about this crime, the early assumptions by the Old Media linking this incident to conservatives is irresponsible."

Nicole Coulter at Conservatives4Palin writes:

received a particularly maddening message on Facebook from my former boss. The essence of his strange wall post dart: See, Nicole, your Sarah Palin put Giffords in her rifle scope crosshairs. See what you Tea Baggers have wrought? What do you say now?

One of the reasons I left liberalism behind was because of what I perceived as its inherent juvenilism. Class envy is straight out of Adolescence 101. The tendency to blame America for all that is wrong in the world little more than a teenage railing against authority.

And so we see this immaturity again in the rush to blame Gov. Palin and Tea Party America for a terrible act of violence.

Except when 52-year-olds like my former boss behave like juveniles, it’s not cute. It’s symbolic of the rot and irresonsibility that I believe lies at the heart of modern liberalism. Somehow, in some way, someone else always is to blame. Not the individual who committed the atrocity.

For the last two years, the Left has been manufacturing a meme that Tea Partiers are violent and that Sarah Palin advocates violence despite all the clear incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. We must show everyone why their credibility has been destroyed. We need to show everyone why they are so infantile, irrepsonsible and hold no right to a serious place at the table in the national discourse when they demonstrate such a mentally feeble grasp on such a serious subject.

Progressives, liberals or whatever you want to call them who put forth the insane notions that somehow the Tea Party movement or Sarah Palin is responsible for the atrocious act we all witnessed yesterday provide a false psychological justification for people who may be predisposed to harming her or people like her. Harp all they want about Palin and the Tea Party, but by projecting their inner turmoil onto the right, they have released the real language of hatred and produced the real thoughts that could cause violence.

The shooter has posted rambling, sometimes incoherent tirades which demonstrate deep psychiatric issues and which are far out of touch with the truth. There is not much difference between his postings and the postings of people who blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. When people are that far out of touch with the truth, they are dangerous. They are capable of doing anything. And therefore, the rhetoric coming from these types of individuals is purely incendiary.

If you don't believe me, take this tweet for example from Adeyemi:

I can dream cant i RT @ReaganTMan RT @MelissaTweets: RT @ewerickson: The left and media, in perpetuating the lie that the shooter was a tea party activist, may incite violence against the right

While free speech is our right, stupid speech should be seen as our barometer as to who is stable and who is not. This isn’t strictly a liberal versus conservative thing. This is a positive versus negative thing. This is good versus evil. There are good hearted liberals who have chosen to not participate in the politicization of the event just as are there bad hearted conservatives.

Negative people tend to gravitate toward other negative people. Positive people tend to do the same. But it’s not always obvious who’s who. Yesterday’s event gives us a great moment in time where the snapshot is taken at roll call.

PatrickRuffini tweeted: "Thanks to Twitter, we now have a second-by-second view of how common sense descends into mind-blowing stupidity"

It’s as if Satan did roll call and all the hateful Palin / Tea Party bashers raised their hands and said “present.” Now we know who these people are.

Erick Erickson tweeted: "It becomes sadly easier on days like this to tell the saved from the damned."

We need to seriously separate ourselves from these people. Publications like the Daily Kos, columnists like Andrew Sullivan and celebrities like Jane Fonda need to be ostracized. These are the folks who need to be marginalized and set to the side when having our national dialogues.

The liberal media has gone beyond jumping the shark in its flushing of its credibility down the toilet by even buying into these memes. If the fear of political correctness stops those on the right from telling the truth, why is there no societal mechanism in place to motivate those on the left from telling lies?

You are a Danger to Society if You Think Palin or Tea Party Has Anything to Do With Arizona Gunman

A deranged Arizona gunman with incoherent postings online and described by some as possibly being a leftist or an anarchist has critically wounded Arizona Dem Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killed 4 and wounded 10 others today. Responses from stable adults on both sides of the aisle range from shock to disbelief. These people pray and wish condolences and best wishes to the victims and their families. On the other hand, the unstable people, particularly those on the left, who are somehow drawing a non-existing nexus between Sarah Palin or the Tea Party and the gunman are a danger to our society.

People who respond to things in irrational or incoherent way on some or maybe more levels demonstrate the types of thought patterns as exhibited by the gunman. Will all the trolls and hateful sacks of feces who post comments blaming Palin or the Tea Party for the tragedy commit acts of violence themselves? No. But is there a chance that one might? Yes.

Given the ramblings of the suspect prior to the shooting, one can only reason that people with irrational thoughts that border on the derangement as displayed by those who will attack others online for being Palin or Tea Party supporters are capable of committing such violence.

This blogger recommends that anyone directly attacked by someone on Twitter, Facebook or in a forum or comment section of an article keep a record of the screen name of the attacker or attackers.

Anyone deranged enough to think that Palin or Tea Party supporters have something to do with the shooting are deranged enough to hallucinate that Palin or Tea Party supporters are violent and could in fact react psychotically believing they have to defend themselves. As a result, they could become violent themselves being under a false delusion that Palin or Tea Party supporters are violent.

Also, anyone mentally unstable enough to blame Palin or the Tea Party for the tragedy are unstable enough to do anything... for no reason at all.

I'm serious. Keep an eye on these people.

UPDATE: Tweet from MelissaTweets:

RT @ewerickson: The left and media, in perpetuating the lie that the shooter was a tea party activist, may incite violence against the right

Are Liberal Journalists And Bloggers Trying To Have Sarah Palin Assassinated? In A Word, Yes.

This is sick: I hate it when I wake up and Sarah Palin is still alive. h/t Rush Limbaugh

I'd hope the media would spend chunks of air time and page space to tell me I can't win the presidency

I'm thinking of running for president. I'm a private citizen with no title. I have a Facebook page. I tweet. I write. I have executive experience. I've been on Fox News (well not really. Brett Baier read a sentence from a post I wrote on Team Sarah once). I know it sounds silly, but for the last few months I have been scouring the internet and there has not been one article written suggesting that I could not win. And with the confidence of knwoing that no one in America discounts my chances, I am thinking of throwing the Rusty Wallace cap into the ring.

Of course I've been doing my research and checking out the polls to get a lay of the land. From what I'm reading, Mitt Romney will be my most formidable opponent. They don't write much about him, but when they do they use words like "it's his turn" or "he has the money to do it." But if he, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Pence, John Thune and Donald Trump spread the electorate enough, I could squeak by in the early primaries which will help me with my name recognition and fundraising.

Many people are probably wondering by now why I haven't mentioned Sarah Palin. Well, it's simple. There are hundreds of articles and video clips of pundits from across America which go to great lengths to explain in microscopic detail that she can't win. They've ripped apart her poll numbers, questioned her gravitas and discounted her base as uneducated celebrity worshippers. Based upon what is being written and said in the media, it should be a piece of cake to beat her. I won't even address her during the debates.

How will I know if I'm viable? This is going to be the key to my making my decision. Don't get too excited yet, supporters. I have to make sure this thing is a lock, like Baltimore winning the 1969 Super Bowl or New England winning it in 2008. My pollsters and advisors are going to make sure that I have at least as much of a shot as George H.W. Bush did in 1980 or Hillary Clinton did in 2008. If I poll anywhere near Bill Clinton did in the summer of 1991 or where Ronald Reagan did at the RNC in 1980, I'm out. I'd hate to be the next Palin with everyone in the media talking about how I couldn't win.

Hey wait a second. My neighbor Billy can't win the presidency. Why isn't the media paying all that attention to why he can't win the way they are with Palin? I'm confused.

Polls Schmolls

Calling All Palin Patriots: Pre-Season Is About to Start

As we enter the new year, we watch a continuation of the revolution that started when Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie won their respective governorships in 2009. Since then, Republicans have taken back the House of Representatives with freshman Tea Party candidates being swept in by a tide of dissatisfaction with the growth of government and out of control debt under the Obama Administration. The GOP has picked up seats in the Senate and have continued the wave of gubernatorial victories in follow up to the off year wins in Virginia and New Jersey. Now we head into the pre-2012 primary season. It's pre-season. There is one final puzzle piece to put into place to make this whole thing happen.

Don't stare too hard at the hypnotic circle. The Left, the media and the Republican Establishment don't want you to vote for Sarah Palin. They know how the movie ends and while it ends well for America, it doesn't end well for them who will be ousted from their comfy positions of power and who will watch as a system of cronyism that has run this country for over a century is pushed aside for true free market, true merit based systems of mobility and advancement.

The current approach they are using is to try to convince the American people that Sarah Palin is unelectable. They are using polls to try to convince you now. The Daily Caller published an article yesterday and an article today that cites Sarah Palin's falling poll numbers. It is another attempt by the Establishment to place doubt in our minds. Polls will by flying fast and furious in the upcoming months. Some will show Palin up, some will show Palin down. Don't get too crazy about any of them.

Mark Blumenthal at Huffington Post writes:

Speculation about the 2012 Republican nomination is already underway and, as always, national "horse race" poll questions are central to that conversation. While we will certainly track those polls on HuffPost Pollster, anyone hoping to make sense of the battle for the Republican nomination should be forewarned: Over the course of the next year, such polling for national primaries will have little value in predicting the ultimate winner.

It is crucial that activists begin to prepare to do the internal battle required to select the 2012 nominee. But it must be done fair and square. Palin has been targeted. That needs to be offset so that when the candidates hit that campaign trail, they start out on equal footing. This is about choosing a horse, not knocking another one down.

This is not about just undoing what Obama has done. This is not about getting it back to the way it was. This is about moving it to a level it has not been at since Ronald Reagan was the president. Only this time, it needs to go deeper and further so that it never gets erased the way Ronald Reagan's influence was erased. The final puzzle piece is taking back that Reagan city on a hill and making sure we really secure it this time. Now, who do you really think can do that if we support her with all we have?


Check out this awesome post by Josh Painter at Texas For Sarah Palin and please read my post on Organize for Palin to really understand what we're getting at here.

I'll be talking about this tonight on my BlogTalk Radio Show at 10:30 pm ET.

When Good People Allow the Media and the Establishment to Win

I wasn’t so much disturbed by Erick Erickson’s selection of Mike Pence as his candidate for president as much as I was disturbed by his reasoning for why he didn’t go with Sarah Palin. “… as much as I love Sarah Palin, I am adamantly convinced that she cannot win given the ridiculous smears and hate thrown her way by Democrats and, frankly, by a lot of Republicans,” Erickson writes on RedState. “She has been made radioactive.” In essence, it's an admission that the media and the Establishment are winning in their effort to stop Sarah Palin.

The media and Establishment strategy has always been to hammer Sarah Palin relentlessly, lie about her without regard and plant (or should I say pound) seed after seed of doubt into the minds of even the most faithful not because they wanted us to believe what they were saying about Palin was true, but because they wanted to make us believe she couldn’t win.

Erickson and many like him know that Sarah Palin is not an extremist fanatic who made rape victims pay for their rape kits, banned books, passed her daughter’s son off as her own, appeared at her hotel room in a towel while meeting strategists for the GOP 2008 campaign, raided an Oscar suite in Hollywood, keeps the people in Wasilla in a constant state of fear lest they speak to the media, killed wolves from her own personal helicopter or killed turkeys when she was supposed to be pardoning them as governor. It's not that people are buying the lies. It's that the relentlessness and frequency of the lies creates an illusion that she is too damaged to win.

Yes, there are still people who think that Sarah Palin is the only politician to ever flub a question during a 3 hour interview. Yes, there are still people who think Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house. And yes, there are still people who think Trig is not hers. But these are the kool aid drinkers who know it’s not about the truth, but about their own personal desires to see her destroyed. Those people don't need to be convinced. They are not the target audience for the anti-Palin smear campaign. The rest of us are.

It was never the media’s or the Establishment’s strategy to present factual information that would be damning to Sarah Palin’s future political aspirations because there wasn't any. Since there was no love child, bribery scandal, shady land deal, cigar, intern, hike along the Appalachian Trail, same sex affair while governor, text to a young page, footsies in the bathroom stall or a visit to the gigolo dude ranch where she would be assigned a client number, it was pretty obvious to her opponents early on that there was nothing there. They couldn't even find legal basis on which to take Troopergate to the next level. In fact, their only response was to trump up a couple of dozen even more frivolous ethics complaints not to win them, but just to say that they were there.

The media and the Establishment realized around the time Sarah Palin walked off the stage after debating Joe Biden and after searching through every garbage can, dumpster, landfill and skeleton closet in Wasilla and the surrounding area that there was nothing there. Their biggest fear was that a clean conservative could become president (or at that time vice president) fair and square. And because of that, they unleashed a smear campaign second to none that has lasted for over two years.

The size of the lie didn’t matter. Retracting the lie didn’t matter. It was the number of lies that mattered. Send a legion of satanic angels relentlessly over someone’s house everyday for over two years and some people are going to think there’s something wrong with those people even if they like them.

Right now, some blogger in their pajamas who has the only disc that contains the Wasilla Project’s now removed website is thanking their lucky stars that the smear campaign worked. Right now, Journolisters, the Alaska Bloggers, the editorial and anchor staff at MSNBC, David Axelrod, the Huffington Post and the Daily Kos are reading Erick’s column. Palin haters are slapping each other on the back.

I have a confession to make, too. For the last two years, I thought the smear campaign was directed at Sarah Palin. I just found out that it was really directed at us, the American people (just as the smear campaign against the Tea Party was). We are being brainwashed in broad daylight even though we now know the media lies.

The destruction of Sarah Palin has been described by some as death by a thousand paper cuts. They had Sarah Palin tied up in the basement with her head tilted back so that the drops of water could hit the same spot hoping she would crack and promise to not run for president. It didn’t work on her. So they turned to us. It’s really us they have been torturing day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. We’ve been watching Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schulz, David Letterman, Kathy Griffin, Jimmy Kimmel, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove denigrate Sarah Palin on many different levels relentlessly for two years. That stuff isn’t directed at Palin. It’s directed at us. And finally, some of us, like Erick, are cracking.

We are soldiers in an army to take back the Shining City on a Hill. Their psyop team is very effective. If they can get to someone as good as Erick, they can get to any of us. Whenever you hear someone say “I like Sarah Palin, but…” just remember the old adage and how it applies to the mind: garbage in, garbage out. They have put enough garbage in and some of it is starting to come out – even out of the mouths of people on our side.

Sarah Palin is one person. She can take her millions of dollars, flip everyone the bird and go live happily ever after. They tried to mock her after the 2008 election. She came back. They tried to bankrupt her. She re-loaded. They have tried everything they can to destroy her and it hasn’t worked. But there is one last hope for them. It’s us. They can’t get rid of her unless they can thin or stop the growth in the numbers of those who will support her.

The more that they can get Palin supporters, potential Palin supporters or just regular undecided voters to dismiss her, the more they win. The media beat us in 2008 by making us believe that Sarah Palin was a ditz. This time, they will beat us in 2012 by making us believe that she is unelectable. The last time they did it under the guise of “the objective news media.” This time, they’re just doing it right under our noses.

Fool us once, shame on them. Fool us twice, shame on us.

Think about how successful the progressive movement has been in infiltrating our culture, our media and our academia. Many of those things that cause doubt in the minds of even well meaning people have been planted there over generations. We were raised on blue bloods, ivy leaguers and polished politicians. We were spoon fed collectivism and big government the first day we called the cops on our neighbor (and it worked) for playing the stereo loud rather than walking next door and asking nicely if he could turn it down.

The antidote to this is unity. If every single person in America who is against the Obama agenda backs Sarah Palin, we win. Yes, this sounds idealistic – a lot easier said than done. You don’t deprogram a century’s worth of mind control just by throwing out a platitude like "okay everyone follow Sarah Palin and we win." But it is that simple. It’s just not that easy. Winning never is easy.

Because we’re up against that, we are going to have to be stronger. We are going to have to look after the undecideds and the independents in a community-like (not a communal-like) way. We are going to have to be the examples. We are going to have stand up for Sarah Palin. The more leadership we show, the more leadership it appears she has. The psy-ops campaign can work both ways. We now have legions of bloggers and tweeters. Sarah Palin has infiltrated the pop culture and the media. There are Palin supporters in the print and television media to counterbalance those who are against her. One can say that she is a genius at keeping her name out there and that her supporters are the strongest supporters any candidate has. But this is just one firehouse fighting a media and cultural blaze that has been burning for decades.

We need to step it up.

And when we see fellow Americans, whether they are good conservatives like Erick, or just some independent who is lost in the woods, wavering or succumbing to media and cultural pressure, we need to help them. Erick wrote that if Palin did get the nomination:

I would, however, still gladly vote for her and support her. I’d rather go down with her than up with some of the others.

He is principled in motivation for saying this. But he and many others need a strong dose of faith - a belief deep down inside that Palin can win. We need to encourage them. We have to overcome the thinking that she’s going to lose. She hasn’t even announced yet or put up one flier!

I know she can win. I was alive when Ronald Reagan did it. I’ve seen it done exactly this way before. But for those who have not lived it, they need faith. Erick, have faith. She is not radioactive. She is kryptonite.


UPDATE: Sheya at PalinTV has this excellent post:
If Palin Is Unelectable In 2012, So Are All The Other GOP Candidates

UPDATE 2 : Special Thanks to Sheya at Conservatives4Palin for the cross post.