printThe following is an excerpt from my new WND column, “Who’s Stupid? Not Sarah.” It is the first in a series of three (unless the news cycle changes the plan):
“Governor Sarah Palin’s alleged lack of cerebral alacrity is probably less in doubt after the first Vice-Presidential Debate. Prior to that, a bipartisan consensus had been developing among the ideologically converging political class and their parrot pundits that she was indeed an idiot.
The biggest hitter was conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who demanded that Governor Palin bow out of the race. “Only Palin can save McCain, the Party, and the country she loves. Do it for your country, please,” pleaded Parker histrionically.
How like a woman to implicate causes not in evidence for the country’s undoing.
Where was Sarah Palin when the Bush/Bernanke bulldozer was running up debts and deficits financed by promiscuous printing and borrowing? Whodunit? Who so debased the country’s coin? …
Sarah Palin … has an alibi. When these characters were gassing-up the economy with hot air, she was in Alaska getting her house in order. This does nothing to excuse Sarah’s subsequent sell-out, but it doesn’t put her at the original crime scene.
Elementary, my dear Ms. Parker: Palin quitting will not save your Party or the country.
…. At the very least, the developing consensus as to Palin’s aptitude, I venture, is premature. …”
Read the complete column, “Who’s Stupid? Not Sarah.”
Update: A reader sent this YouTube clip along with the comment, “Explain this about your precious Sara! [sic].”
He apparently had not understood my column, wherein I condemned Palin for turning her back on a laudable cause she and Tod once supported: peaceful secession, which is as American as apple pie. I’ll repeat what I wrote:
Palin slammed a cause she had, at one time, saluted: that of the Alaskan Independence Party. It advocates what was once a fundament of the American founding: peaceful secession. As leading economic historian Tom DiLorenzo has documented in rich detail, the Union was a voluntary one. If the states had believed it was a “one-way Venus flytrap,” they would never have ratified the Constitution.
“Sarah Palin: Palling Around With Secessionists” convinces me that by joining McCain, Palin has forfeited a previously held, laudable libertarian principle.
I urge the reader to read “Quebec May be the Guard of Our Ultimate Freedom” and “Raise a Toast to Western Separatism and Canada’s Good Health.” Since Sarah seemed to have once supported peaceful secession, I am all the more convinced that she was a patriot, and has sold her soul by adopting McMussolini’s creed.
Palin/ McCain. I wish it was this way. Sarah is starting to go after Obama and his relationship with Ayers. That is good and needs to be exposed. But what really troubles me about McCain is the fact that he refuses to address the abomination that Obama refuses to salute the Flag. If I were running for president against Obama, at the very first debate I would have said at the very beginning of my first chance to speak, WHY is Senator Obama even being considered for this job when he refuses to salute the Flag he says he wants to represent, serve, and defend???????? I believe that Sarah would say this, but I don’t think McCain will let her. He claims he is a super patriot being a POW in Vietnam etc, and talking about the other prisoner who sowed the flag. Well enough of this wormy behavior!
Martin Berrow
The original flag salute was similar or identical to the Nazi salute. So I will pass on saluting a colored piece of cloth. Plus the flag no longer represents what it once did.
If the Constitution was put on the flag, I would salute that. The US was not meant to be just another blindly patriotic country. We are running on “gut feel” in this country instead of principle as we should be doing.
Under Bush, the US has become nearly a fascist dictatorship. The only purpose I can see for US flags or pins is to fly them or wear them upside down.
However, Obama’s objection to wearing a flag pin may be less principled than mine.
I will write in Ron Paul’s name in 2012.
Palin a “bedrock conservative?” Such a description is “too charitable.” In the very least it is too speculative.
Everything she’s said in the 2008 political campaign must be taken with a grain of salt because it has been spoken through the McCain filter. As far as I can tell, her history in Alaska is more evangelical populist than Reagan conservative, despite her contention that Reagan is her hero.
Has she ever written an article, essay, opinion piece…anything prior to this year which might give us an insight into her true political philosophy (if any)?
Thanks Ilana for another thoughtful and witty review of the herd. There is something noble about you. A great blend of Tomboy willingness to punch out liars and confidence men maquerading as conservatives, an intuitive sense for the goodness in others and a sporty/feminine way of writing that makes me laugh when I am not crying over the truth of what you say. Thanks again for this one and keep’em coming.
McCain is acting like a prisoner of war with a deadman walking death sentence handed down from Socialists and Communists, a supposed Republican who has surrendered to the liberal establishment New World Order, which seems to be intentionally trying to lose the election to the Democrats, and treasonously betraying the Republicans who have stupidly supported him. McCain and his political advisors are idiots, who if they had any political intelligence at all, would have strongly opposed the Wallstreet Bailout Swindle, which a great majority of Americans had opposed. McCain is a pretender, similarly as Obama is a pretender; McCain is a liberal moderate pretending to be conservative Republican, and Obama is a radical socialist pretending to be a liberal Democrat, with the allies of the liberal establishment lying and treasonous News Media.
WHY is it that conservative women would want to put down Palin anyway? I would think she’d be their dream come true. Who are these women?
About Sarah: (1) Being President, in theory, means being smart enough and WILLING to follow the Constitution – the latter, regrettably, in extremely short supply, (2) The Presidency isn’t nuclear physics – my old profession – in fact “dumb” Ford, Harding, Ike, Coolidge, and Reagan were much better at it than “smart” Wilson, Hoover, Nixon, Carter, and Harvard MBA Bush II (3) but if Albert Einstein (or Ilana) had to defend the McCain-Bush-Lieberman record on the War, “big government conservatism”, illegal immigration – he (you) would have to ingest major psychotropic and anti-nausea medications in order to regurgitate stale “talking points” like Sean Hannity and the GOP turkeys, (4) desperado attacks on Obama’s Chicago pals are going nowhere and will doom Palin as box-office poison in 2012. Well, Sarah let ambition cloud her judgment but Tina Fey will be disappointed unless some Republican miracle happens.
Explain this about your precious Sara!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniG9l_7its
Persistence of “chatter”, only with “personalities. . .”
We need “SKIN” …
Nobody in the “political arena” has any “skin-on-the-table.”
Hence, it is difficult for any “honest,”
“thinking” individual to “cut-to-the-chase.”
Nobody wants to “pay” to even find out.
[ Your job, Ilana !]
We all know that America is being “shaken-down.”
Intelligent “folk” do understand that banks exist on
the spread between their “deposits” and their “loans,”
(contrasted with us lowly “individuals,” who must save
for our own futures — forget Social Security).
Since we are ALL apparently headed toward some “brand”
of Socialism . . . it becomes a matter of WHAT DEGREE . . .
Consequently, McCain needs to “add” to his proposal about
having the Feds take over the forsaken mortgages . . .
I believe it should be “pure Capitalism” . . . that is,
an “equity stake” for US, taxpayers. And, this would be
simple.
Ultimately, all property becomes “marketable.”
At whatever “time of sale,” taxpayers would not only be paid-back fully,
but “we” would also “share” (aka: “Socialism”) in accordance
with the “equity” due to the then “bailed-out” homeowners.
Perhaps Sarah might be allowed to suggest this more
palatable form of Socialism.
Szasz
DSA,
Dang, are you trying to tempt me to vote for Sarah? The states voluntarily entered the Union; if they want to leave it indicates that Union is no longer desirable to them.
Give the states the power that was transferred to the Federal Government and why should they want to leave?
I believe it’s the Arctic National wildlife Refuge, not the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve. Alaska is not and has never been a nation.
Other than that, it was an excellent column. Keep up the good work.
“Palin abused executive power” – tonight’s headlines. Looks like the Mainstream Media is going to finish her off. A real 10th Amendment and a means of secession as an alternative to abusive usurpation of federal (Washington or Ottowa or…) power is a good idea. Alas, poor Sarah had some decent tendencies but she will have to recover back in Alaska and maybe try for higher office from Alaska and eventual rehabilitation. She appears to be toast in 2008.
I would like to see Palin bow out for other reasons. Mostly to show that she doesn’t approve of the man she is working for. If she stays in this until election day when she and McCain will surely get stomped; I will have a hard time ever trusting her in the future. If she quit now and told us all why; it would go a long way toward waking up the comatose masses. For now, I will just have to be content writing in Ron Paul.
“Explain this about your precious Sarah!”
Well >> DSA
Maby this will help you grasp the situation.
The Liberal Media like conducting Polls.
I would bet if tax payers were polled and ask if they wanted to start a new Country that would spend their money wisely, govern by the US Constitution, enforce the existing Laws, stop the FREE Checks to the Cadillac-driving drug dealing Liberal crowd.
Stop sending billions to foreign governments.
Stop bailing out greedy white-collar bankers.
They might want to start a new country. I for one can’t fault a State for being fed up with the CRAP of the US Government.
Elect Nobama and we all will want to move to Alaska and start a new Country.
[Please see instructions for posting: http://barelyablog.com/?p=484. No capitals, normal sentences… . Thanks for your passionate mail.-IM]
Sarah Palin to a heckler “Bless your heart sir, my son is in Iraq fighting for your right to protest”.
I have not yet figured out whether people who say such things are stupid or delusional.
Call me a cynic, but I suspect that some of these “conservative” ladies don’t like Sarah Palin because she’s very pretty. I suspect that some, if not many, are jealous of her good looks (and her handsome husband.)
That said, I don’t know what her foreign policy prescriptions are (or indeed if she has any other than what she’s been force-fed by the McCain camp) but she did well by the citizens of Alaska in cutting taxes.
Sarah Palin isn’t much, in my opinion. And I’ve never seen her husband (who has?)
Her foreign policy prescriptions are hyper-paranoia and world-wide war.
“… wisely steering her boundless energy and excellent instincts in excising the cancer from the body politic.)”
You nailed it, Ilana. THAT is what I like about Sarah. So much potential, if only wisely steered. I hope she hasn’t sold her soul or at least can buy it back. But of course I can’t vote for her since I will write in Ron Paul’s name.