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.