Purging the Ranks

It's time to get rid of the dead wood. We are preparing to go into battle against the forces of liberalism, radicalism and those bent on the destruction of the United States. And yet we still have a few whining cry babies on our side who are throwing hissy fits because they can't understand that Sarah Palin thinks 55 electoral votes are important enough to winning in 2012 and she didn't pick "their guy." It's better to know now who will be there in the end. Cutting a few fringe right wingers to save our country may not be a bad move, even if it was an unintended outcome.

While I have no problem with any conservative that wants to back Chuck DeVore or feels in their heart that he is the better candidate, I find it bitterly distasteful that they would take their vitriol out on Sarah Palin. Word to the whiners: you would have eventually jumped off the "Take the Shining City on a Hill" Express at some point just because you didn't get your way down the road. I'm glad it's now rather than later. The last thing we need is a bunch of you "my dogma is more important than my nation" types getting pissed off and "tweeting from the hip."

I have a word to those who want to be negative. I don't shoot first. But I shoot back, sometimes with more rounds than are necessary.

If you're going to get mad at Sarah Palin because she didn't back a "strip the California budget to bare nothing and re-establish purism" Republican to win a Senate race in California then you're nuts. And by the way, Carly Fiorina is about as ideologically pure as Scott Brown is, maybe moreso. It's funny how some of you folks thought it was great that Brown won in Massachusetts, but Carly's not good for California? I would have loved to have seen the reaction after Palin's endorsement of Brown had a more conservative candidate been trying to split the ticket and hand it to a RINO like Tom Campbell.

I'm a firm believer in the 2nd amendment. I have no right to take away your rhetorical guns. But just remember, the foxhole will be filled with Americans that want people who will spend more time and energy going after liberals, Democrats and Obama than they will with having to deal with a bunch of babies who are crying because "Sawah didn't pick my guy."

Sarah Palin tested you to see if you were more interested in the cause of America or if you were just interested in bashing her. You failed the test.

I'm all for a big tent. If you're out, it's your choice. Say so now. The rest of us are going to continue charging the hill.

Quote of the Day 05/07/10

Ted Nugent hits the note on his argument against financial reform.

Not only is he great with a guitar or a gun, he handles a pen/keyboard pretty well, too. This is some top notch writing from the Motor City Madman!

America is going bankrupt not because of crooked and unethical Wall Street investment bankers. We are in this financial morass because of a bloated, ineffective, unaccountable and wasteful Fedzilla.

I'm going to break out the Cat Scratch Fever Album and have a cold one.

How to Ride an Elephant and a Tiger at the Same Time

Sarah Palin has straddled the border between party loyalty and political purity since the first day of her political life. When a political purist gets sucked over to the other side, they lose their soul. When a political purist stays on their side, they lose elections. So how do you find a way to keep your soul and win elections?

Sarah Palin takes a lot of unjust heat from the left. They manufacture lies about her. They make stuff up about her family. All in all, their discussions of Sarah Palin are worthless. They neither provide any intelligent political thought nor do they represent Palin properly. But when she takes it from the right there are other reasons for it. For some unknown reason - I don't know, maybe we're just grown ups and know how to communicate with each other - we can have a more lively and vigorous debate about Sarah Palin. And we can do it with real issues, too!

Sarah Palin bucked the Republican party and endorsed Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd. She supported Scott Brown. She endorsed Rand Paul. These are not your garden variety Republicans. People in Republican circles were saying that she couldn't become president because she didn't have the support of party insiders. She's too extreme. She's too closely aligned with the Tea Party.

Then she backed John McCain and Carly Fiorino. The GOP establishment that once hated her now started liking her and started pouring money into those campaigns like crazy. Some folks in the Tea Party who loved her for bucking the establishment on the other hand got upset with her. I wonder if they would say she couldn't become president because she's too much of a party insider. She's a RINO. She's too closely aligned with the GOP establishment.

Well, which is it?

It's neither.

Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin. Today she may endorse a Carly Fiorino. Tomorrow she may endorse another Rand Paul.

One thing I have learned is all the poli sci stuff I took in college doesn't apply to Sarah Palin. I'm not going to tell you I definitively know what she's doing. Pissing off a wing of the base is not textbook political science. The textbook says zip it and don't get involved in California. But Palin is not textbook.

In evaluating the Carly Fiorina thing today, it may look like a disaster. But if history dictates anything, whenever Palin appears to show symptoms of political illness it usually turns out to be an optical illusion that is better explained in hindsight after figuring out that it's another one of those outside the box things that keeps making more sense the further out you go. We're mere mortals. Palin is a long term thinker.

Today she's breaking conservative hearts and everyone is asking "why Sarah, why?" Who knows. Tomorrow we may all look back and call her a genius when she carries the state of California in the 2012 election. Look at her resignation. We all asked "why Sarah, why?" In hindsight we realize now that it was a stroke of genius, her Kobayashi Maru.

I understand how some in the Tea Party and conservative movement feel. I, too, was a little taken aback by the Fiorina endorsement. Like with Palin's resignation, I will come to understand it in time. I know this because I believe in Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin is building the big tent that we are going to need to take back the shining city on a hill. Sometimes some of the people she invites into that tent are not going to like some of the other people she invited into that tent and vice verse.

Our job is to go sit at whatever table we want to sit at and don't worry about those "Ronulans" over there or those "GOP Insiders" or those "Hucksters" and so on. You see, our real political enemy is Barack Obama and the Democratic machine.

Sarah knows she cannot sell her soul. But she also knows that alienating the doormen is not the best way of getting into the castle that sits atop the shining city either - even if some of the troops behind her are upset that she would fraternize with such "types."

I know purists are upset at Sarah Palin. I understand that. I believe in the Tea Party movement and see what it can do if it infiltrates and becomes the establishment. I believe in conservatism and see what it can do as a guiding philosophy for political leaders. I'm also a Reagan Republican. I believe in the Republican party and what it can do under the right leadership as well. The intended outcome should be a benefit to all these things.

Ronald Reagan may have been one of the unwashed masses; but every once in a while he had to don the tux and go sit with some party big whigs. It's an inevitable part of doing business. We're going to have to govern some day. While getting there may start with clinging to your dogma while waving Gadsden flags in a field, ultimately how you form coalitions and enact policy on the electoral playing field and in the halls of Congress requires a balancing act between purism and pragmatism.

If you wanted to run your company better, would you piss off the people on the board of directors or would you try to infiltrate them, mingle with them and eventually win them over to your side? It's better to improve the elements of your own company rather than to alienate them if you are trying to beat your competitor.

Somewhere along the way we are going to have to realize that the tent starts over at John McCain on the left and goes all the way over to Ron Paul on right. Obama's got a big army and we need numbers.

You can't please all the people all the time. If you do, it means you're either being all things to all people or you're just hanging around with a small base. Is that what you want Sarah Palin to do?

If Sarah Palin can ride the Tea Party tiger and keep it invigorated and ride the Republican elephant and keep it going in the right direction at the same time it will be political gymnastics on the purism-pragmatism balance beam the likes we have not seen since Ronald Reagan.

Testing My Loyalty To Sarah Palin

I remember my first "moment of doubt." The Fox News Alert flashed on my computer. It was Troopergate. I took a deep breath, researched it and waited for a response from Sarah Palin. Albeit a nervous response, Palin's response was consistent with the online research I did the night before. It was a left wing conspiracy and Trooper Wooten was a jerk. Alaska law said Monegan served at the will of the governor. I trusted Sarah and I believed her.

I remember my second "moment of doubt." A friend called me to tell me that Sarah Palin was resigning. I listened to her speech. The next morning I read her tweets and the letter she had written telling her fans to hang in there. I believed her. I realized then that I would always trust Sarah Palin. From that moment on I decided that I would handle anything else that would ever happen to her down the road like this: trust her and wait.

So with that, my position on this Fiorina issue has been queued up since July 3, 2009. Hit play.

"Regardless of what it may look like, I trust Sarah Palin."

This "third moment of doubt" is very different from the first two. It does not involve any outside forces acting on Sarah Palin which causes her to be forced to respond. This one involves an active conscious decision that Sarah Palin has made - one which she could have sat out. And this one doesn't involve me and how I feel about Sarah; it involves others.

Had people turned on Sarah because of Troopergate or her resignation, I would have chalked it up to weakness. Those who could not stomach left wing smears probably would be pretty wishy washy supporters anyway. If Troopergate had turned out to be true abuse of power or if her resignation was the result of a pending investigation or something she had done wrong, it would have been devastatingly heartbreaking. The closest thing I ever experienced to that was when Mark Sanford admitted his affair. I still well up thinking about it.

But this is not a Sanford moment even though some in the conservative movement may be reacting like it is. Endorsing Carly Fiorina is not going to cost Sarah Palin my support. But I understand why others would question her; and it does give me a worried mind that she may lose other supporters even if I'm not one of them. I understand political science. I understand that Sarah Palin made a very calculated decision and took a political risk that will raise some ire with some folks in the Tea Party movement.

I never liked playing the politics of hope: picking a candidate and hoping they would get out of a jam even when criticism was just. But there was a time when I hoped Reagan would survive Iran-Contra and there was a time I hoped Palin would survive her resignation. These are the only two moments I have ever gone against my policy on the politics of hope. I realized that my love and loyalty for these two individuals was an exception to the rule of how I view politicians. I only waive this rule when I have total faith. And it's only happened twice in 46 years.

I'm going to waive the rule again. It is unprecedented that I would waive it a second time for the same candidate. I've been through hell and back with Sarah Palin. I get my ass rhetorically kicked on line and in real life. But she's always been worth fighting for.

I pushed all in the day after her RNC speech. I have to play the hand. I will not fold unless they show me the video of her robbing the bank. I'm playing the hand to the end. When the final call is made and everyone turns over, I'm hoping my pocket aces are good enough to win. The river card isn't helping me right now. I just have to wait for the flop.

I am not going to give her the John McCain pass on this one. But in the same respect, I'm not a Californian. I wasn't a big follower of the race until now. I thought the winds were blowing in Devore's favor from what I was seeing in the blogosphere. But, I knew he was down on money and too far to the right for California (not that his ideology is too far right for me, far be it - I wanted Tom McClintock to win the gubernatorial primary years back but he was in the same boat as Devore is today).

I will say this. It is a gutsy call on her part. I understand the politics of it. A favor like this can be called down the road. Palin may even have a strategy to win California in 2012. In the past I have found that I am simply a mere mortal when it comes to Sarah Palin. While her genious is never visible at the moment she does something, when all plays out she ends up looking brilliant. She is an outside the box thinker. Our "by the textbook" brains are just not worthy of her. I feel so guilty about having a moment of doubt when it first broke on Twitter. I know I'm wrong. But it doesn't mean I'm not scared.

Palin could lose the support of her base or she can convince enough people that she is not the right wing zealot the media plays her out to be. Politically, this may not be a bad move given the fact that any support she might lose would come back to her if those people were ever forced to choose between her and Obama. Or it could be a disaster. Only time will tell.

I know, in the short term, this is going to kill her Tea Party base. But successful people don't think short term. So all I can do is swallow, respect the fact that unlike the loons on the left some of my friends on the right are going to have legitimate reasons to criticize her and hope they don't let this be the thing that breaks up the movement and destroys our chance of taking back the shining city on a hill.

Okay, Sarah. I trust you.

The Left Is Frightened About A Documentary?

ENVIRONMENTAL WHACKOS DO NOT WANT PEOPLE LIKE SARAH PALIN TO HAVE THE FORUM TO MARKET AND SHOW A DOCUMENTARY LIKE "SARAH PALIN'S ALASKA!"



Let's defeat them now by signing the petition in support of Sarah Palin's Alaska.

Also, please buzz up this article.

You can also call Discovery Channel at (240)662‑2000 to show your support (special thanks to liberal blogger Mike for providing the number).

Understand that the level of opposition to Sarah Palin will always be proportional to the level of effect she is anticipated to have. Even I at first thought it was no big deal that some people might be opposed to Sarah Palin doing a documentary on Alaska. But the usual red flags went up when I saw the level of effort that the left was putting into opposing this documentary.

Hmmm, maybe this video might humanize Sarah Palin and cause more independents to like her? Maybe she would reveal a truth about life in Alaska that blows their "environmental" cause out of the water?

Always look for the smoke machine when the left is afraid of something about Sarah Palin.

Liberal Blogger Gives Us Phone Number to Call Discovery Channel To Support Sarah Palin

Thanks to @MadMikeAmerica we have a phone number that we can call to register our support for Sarah Palin's Alaska documentary to be aired on the Discovery Channel. Click on his website through the link on his tweet and do the exact opposite of what he is asking people to do on his blog.

Please call (240) 662‑2000 to speak to Discovery Channel. Also click on the box on the right to sign the petition showing your support for Sarah Palin.

Thanks, Mike!

Quote of the Day 05/05/10

S.E. Cupp from her column in the New York Daily News:

Now there's another menace lurking in the shadows of the dugout, someone so ugly, so vindictive, so polarizing that with every word he utters he is bastardizing whatever sanctity remains of the game [of baseball].

His name is Keith Olbermann.

...

So let's get this straight. Limbaugh is too conservative for football, evangelical minister the Rev. Franklin Graham is too Christian for the National Day of Prayer, and Islam is too touchy for "South Park."

Meantime, Olbermann's misogyny, race-baiting and fear-mongering makes him a perfect voice for America's national pastime?

She writes with the precision of a surgeon.

"Tyranny of the Minority" - What My Townhall Blog Post Really Means

I hope you will find my latest posting on Townhall.com Tyranny of the Minority an interesting read. I've been in love with the shining city on a hill ever since the first time I heard Ronald Reagan describe it. There were two things which motivated me to write the Townhall posting: this and this. I strongly encourage those who are too young to remember the Reagan years to understand them in the context of today's political environment. Understand that it can be that way again if you are willing to fight for it.

Mark W. Hendrickson did the best job I have ever seen in making the connection between Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan. While some may think I live in the past, lamenting over the loss of the city, others may see me as looking toward the future - toward a day when we would get that city back. For some of you young 'uns who missed it the first time around: we're going to get there again.

Most of the people who read my blogs are like minded Palin supporting Reagan conservatives. But this post today is not just for them. It's for those who don't really understand fully what I'm talking about in terms of how the city can really shine. And it's for those who may want it to shine like I do but who don't yet have enough confidence or faith in Sarah Palin.

Trust her.

Understand why the liberal media lies to us and don't be taken aback by what they say about Sarah Palin. Mark W. Hendrickson explains it best when he writes "The political left is... desperate to halt Sarah Palin's political career now, before she can grow more formidable and possibly develop into her generation's Reagan."

For more, please read Liberty's Lamp

I Bet Your Iceberg against My Tsunami

Anyone who has been following the liberal / conservative battle for decades knows that prior to the Tea Party movement, conservatives were a very docile bunch. They were dubbed "the silent majority." They worked, raised families, built businesses, went to church and voted Republican every first Tuesday in August. They weren't rabble rousers who went to rallies which would end up with tear gas being fired and resistors were dragged off to jail. They didn't engage in the politics of personal destruction. They sure as heck would never be caught dead making propaganda videos or ginning up controversies on their blogs. They were "grown ups". They trusted the system - that the system would continously allow for "grown ups" to be elected to office. On November 4, 2008, they found out they were wrong and they took action.

It has always been a belief of mine that, like Ronald said, given the facts the American people will always make the right decision every time. But we were sheep being lead to a slaughter that we had no clue about. We followed the hope and we followed the change right into the pen. Then, suddenlty we realized that the media lied to us and we became agitated. We started clawing at the chicken wire. We wanted out and we were willing to get out at any cost. We were sheep no more.

Conservatives learned quickly that the liberals owned the board. They made the rules. As such, our only hope of defeating them would be to beat them at their own game. The "grown up" world filled with opportunity and freedom had been taken away from us. We were exiles from the shining city and we want to come home. Now.

With that drive and determination, we organized. We protested. We formed online groups and started blogging. We took over social media like Facebook and Twitter. We found a voice that was ours - a voice that had once been muzzled by Steve Schmidt in the 2008 election. But enough of what she was saying got out and people quickly ran to her rallies in droves.

While the Alaska bloggers and the mainstream media tried to silence that voice by spewing innuendo after innuendo and lie after lie, Sarah Palin kept talking and writing. They could not silence her even after 26 frivolous ethics violations were tossed out as frivolous. Every "iceberg," divorce allegation, perjury allegation, maternity of her child allegation and every other element including the kitchen sink turned up nothing. Zero. Nada.

Sarah Palin is the most vetted person in American history.

Using the Alinsky rules for radicals and the Shadow Party playbook, the right went to work. And boy did they do it right. Conservatives are smarter than liberals. Why? Because conservatives use facts. Liberals use spin. And while conservatives may have reluctantly decided to get their hands dirty, they knew it was either that or lose their freedom. The choice was an easy one to make. Where conservatives beat liberals at their own game is in one minor adjustment to the playbook. It's called telling the truth.

The liberals believe that if you repeat a lie long enough it eventually becomes the truth. So what if you repeated the truth over and over again long enough. Would it not become the truth too?

Polls suggest that most Americans now believe the media lies. With her followers repeating the mantra and Sarah Palin herself hammering it home, we can say that we have gotten that message to stick. According to Pew, 57% of the public have a negative view of the national news media.

As for the politics of personal destruction, let's consider this. For the last year and a half, liberals have been smearing Sarah Palin. What they have done to her is an abomination in the world of facts and journalism. But we were not going to sit idly by and watch the left destroy one of our great leaders and destroy our movement. We took to the blogosphere and fought for our cause.

The difference is we're not as reckless and irresponsible as the left. We don't make stuff up.

Let's look at how the media handled unfounded allegations that Sarah Palin's resignation as Alaska governor was because of a "pending federal indictment." According to rightpundits.com:

The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast, and Andrea Mitchell at MSNBC have all come out with the same story at approximately the same time. One would almost think it had been sent out in a memo to the Obama media to disperse as truth for it to have been so well coordinated.

Huffington Post writer Shannyn Moore was threatened with a lawsuit by Palin's attorney Thomas Van Flein after the FBI itself, in an unprecedented move, came out and immediately debunked allegations that Sarah Palin was facing a federal indictment.

Moore would later back track and defend herself by saying that she was merely reporting on rumors.

Okay. So the left has established under their rules that reporting rumors and false allegations is okay. Surely we on the right have just as much right to President Obama's garbage can as the left has to Sarah Palin's. What if there is an allegation about the president? Can we report that? We wouldn't be doing anything differently than what those on the left would be doing to one of ours had the shoes been on the other feet.

The National Enquirer is saying "top anti-Obama operatives are offering more than $1 million to witnesses to reveal what they know about the alleged hush-hush affair [between Barack Obama and campaign aide Vera Baker]." It kind of makes me feel a little better now knowing we can play that game too. The left has created a monster and now it's about to destroy their city. He who lives by the rhetorical sword will eventually die by the rhetorical sword.

It's sweet irony that their great "messiah" may now be facing the realities of something big and bad after all the left has tried to do to take down Sarah Palin. Just desserts are surely eaten best with a fork in the right hand rather than a spoon in the left. Is it possible that the right may actually be able to bring Barack Obama down using the same techniques that the left used on Palin? Stay tuned. Hotel surveillance tape is pending.

Not to turn this into a Keith Olbermann session where we quote non-credible sources as fact. Let me make this perfectly clear. As Shannyn Moore has said before: these are just rumors. Besides, if I thought the Olbermann-Palingates connection was a legitimate journalistic technique, I would have linked to Mofo Politics a long time ago (November 6, 2008 to be precise) to break this story - which also shows that these allegations have been bubbling under the surface for awhile. Only we're not children who get all giddy and run to our blogs to start running our mouths before we know what we're talking about. We don't get paid millions of dollars by MSNBC to connect crooked dots either.

We'll wait for the surveillance footage from the hotel where the two allegedly were staying.  We don't know if the president really had an affair. We're  just saying.

There's no iceberg folks. But there surely could be a tsunami coming.

Let's have a contest.

Jesse Griffin and cast, you keep spending all your time and resources trying to uncover the "mystery" of Trig Palin and I and those I'm aligned with in the conservative blogosphere will spend our time and resources trying to uncover the truth about Vera Baker.

I bet your iceberg against my tsunami.

May the best bloggers win.