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!