Is Sarah Palin a Loser?

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

Stuart Schwartz wrote a spot-on article today for the American Thinker. It's the type of article that is hard to excerpt because it's so rich in its entirety. I must determine which parts to post here, but please do go over to the original piece and read it fully.

In a nutshell, Schwartz ably points out what those who respect Governor Palin for the person she is already know: she operates on principle above everything--above Party, above politics, above power. She stands for what she does, not because it serves some selfish purpose, but because she believes it best serves America. Sadly, people aren't used to this anymore. This is one of the main reasons the Establishment--yes, the Republican Establishment--wants to "stop Sarah Palin." And it's one of the main reasons we, the people, want President Palin. The Karl Roves of the world whine and complain about her because she is the antithesis of business as usual--and they're knee-deep in business.

The article reads:

Sarah Palin, the biggest loser.

That seems to be the consensus of the grandees inhabiting Washington and New York and pockets of glitter beyond. There is a variety of interpretations of the midterm Republican wave emanating from the wine bars of upper Manhattan and the salons of Georgetown, but most include the notion that for Sarah Palin, this election was the political equivalent of the hit ABC show "The Biggest Loser." When push came to shove, she stood on...principle?

Media and political elites may disagree on the many consequences of what the president called a "shellacking" by the voters, but they largely agree that the biggest loser was Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin has once again been flagged for her unwillingness to play the game according to how the media and political professionals want it played. For them, it is a game, with taxpayer dollars as Monopoly money. But for Sarah Palin, it's about beliefs and values and service -- which disqualifies her, in their view, from life between the political lines. Sure, she won -- having helped more than sixty candidates to victory -- but, as Rush Limbaugh pointed out, the political and media elites are "a little miffed" at how the Tea Party and Palin put principle ahead of politics. C'mon, lady -- professionals don't do core beliefs!

It was her principles that represented the biggest negative for Karl Rove, whom Lee Cary of American Thinker characterized as the "lead consigliere for the Republican bluebloods." Rove attacked Palin as unfit for political leadership after she insisted on endorsing candidates based on their beliefs in limited government and traditional values. Principles, he sneered, are for amateurs; professionals believe in winning. In response to the attack of the former Bush advisor and Fox News analyst, Hot Air blogger Allahpundit reminded him that she is effective in large part because she is "authentic and unpretentious." Exactly, Rove thundered in return: those qualities have no place in Washington!

Immediately following the election, the nation's elites went on Sarah Palin Alert. They have worked hard to strip taxpayers of hard-earned dollars and make Washington, D.C. the center of wealth, with six of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States bordering the Beltway. And it was Karl Rove who slammed his foot down on the accelerator of government spending during the Bush presidency, handing Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama a government poised to careen out of control. And it has: now that great centralized motor vehicle bureau known as the federal government has twice as many $150,000-a-year bureaucrats as it did when Obama took office, all extravagantly paid to scowl, fill out forms, and say "no" to the hapless citizens underwriting their million-dollar homes.

Small wonder that Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, a veteran of almost two decades inside the Beltway, looked at the Tea Party-inspired Republican sweep and saw only danger...from Sarah Palin. He said of her Herculean effort in creating a Republican wave: she cost us the U.S. Senate! Stop her! he screamed. And the media answered with a barrage of articles offering advice on how to stop Palin. For example, a former Wall Street Journal editor who had bolted when the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, bought the news outlet and put an end to its leftward drift laid out a plan to "derail Palin for 2012."

The mainstream media have been only too happy to oblige, for, as Allahpundit reminds us, Sarah Palin represents virtues alien to political and media elites. Should God offer a new beginning and utter the words, "Let there be honesty," a new Left Behind series would begin in empty Ritz Carlton meeting rooms and mainstream media offices all over the East Coast. Remaining would be the Sarah Palins of the world, the people who think Manolo Blahnik is the name of the guy who dishes up those great fish tacos from the truck just inside the entrance to the state fair. That's why the media elites immediately joined the Republican political establishment to highlight the "urgent task" resulting from the midterm victory: "Stop Sarah Palin."

[...]

Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker and the disgraced former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, have put together a show that is mainstream media right down to its "bomb" in the ratings. Parker lets us know that she is proud to have led the "assassination" of Palin in the days following the Alaska governor's vice presidential nomination. Rove is right to slam Palin, for she has "earned her ridicule" for her outrageously extreme positions. Palin believes that abortion is wrong, that Israel is courageous and admirable, that traditional family relationships are a strength and blessing, and that God is a part of all that is good and true -- extremist positions, Parker claims, repugnant to the real heart of America...Washington, D.C. This "dangerous" woman represents a "fresh terror" for "establishment Republicans," who, like Parker and Spitzer, are professionals. This election has now put the professionals on alert: Palin must be stopped.

[...]

And so Parker and Spitzer join with Noonan and Rove and others of the political establishment to stop the greatest threat to come out of the midterm Republican victories: Sarah Palin. By winning, she has lost, for they all understand that there's no hope of her joining them, of compromising her principles.

And so expect Rove to go after Sarah Palin again and again and again. And expect him to wear his black socks while doing so. You betcha!

Read the full article here.

(h/t Kelsey)

The American Thinker: Media's Self-Defeating Attacks on Sarah Palin

The American left and its tame media desire -- with an intensity that normal individuals would find impossible to understand -- to treat Palin the way a pit bull would treat a rabbit: tear her to pieces and toss her aside broken. But each new encounter ends with the governor stronger, more powerful, and more popular than before. What we're seeing is the latest example of the left's habit of creating its own nightmares […]

The technique never varies. The left, most commonly by way of the media, targets a particular group or politician, evoking a mammoth, sinister, but unclear threat to the public good. The attacks begin with an air of reasonableness and good faith -- the Cronkite/Moyers method -- but soon mount in rabidity to the Olbermann/Schultz level. The goal is not simply to oppose or confront the individuals involved, but to destroy them. Within weeks, the left as a whole is involved not only through traditional media, but also through blogs, comment threads, and sites such as DU and Kos. 

But in many cases, the issues and personalities involved resonate with the public. When this is true, the forces arrayed against the targets cause no serious damage, instead serving only to increase their visibility and popularity. It's as if the energy being expended is working in the victim's favor. Eventually the effort goes hyperbolic, ending in large-scale hysteria and eventual collapse. A wounded left staggers off, whining about how "dumb" and "ill-informed" Americans are […]

The legacy media views politics through exactly that lens: rid the world of Goldwater, of Nixon, and then we will all walk into paradise together. But it never works out that way. After Nixon comes Reagan, and Gingrich, and Palin, and Jindal, and Brewer, and Haley...so it's all fantasy. There are no climactic battles in politics any more than there are climactic battles in getting up and going to work in the morning. 

Politics is not Armageddon. It is an aspect of life, one requiring daily effort. It comprises a guerilla war, won not by mammoth all-or-nothing collisions, but by continual low-key encounters on the level of the commonplace. This is something that a politician would understand, a media figure not at all. 

The media's scorched-earth strategy is innately self-defeating. In attacking Trig Palin, the legacy media insulted every woman raising a disabled child. In making light of Bristol's woes as a single mother, they infuriated every family suffering through the same crisis [...]

On the other hand, much can be learned from a close study of Palin's response to such attacks. After a naïve slip confronting the adorable Katie Couric, Palin has established a record of manipulating the media unmatched since Reagan's heyday. A single tweet from Palin's phone sends tsunamis roaring across the international media sphere. Palin has developed into one of the most media-savvy figures on the current scene.

But that shouldn't be surprising. There's one singular fact that the media, with all its research, all its prying, has failed in root out: she has a journalism degree.

Source:

The American Thinker: Media's Self-Defeating Attacks on Palin By J.R. Dunn

Cross Posted:

Governor Palin 4 President

American Thinker: Sarah Palin's Walmart Strategy

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

Talk aimed at dissecting where Governor Palin is and is not going on her Going Rogue book tour started as soon as she released the schedule. Talking heads have been bobbling with chatter about what they call an avoidance of big cities like New York and Boston. J. Robert Smith, in an American Thinker article, does some dissecting of his own.

While none of us can pretend to read the governor's mind, or know her future plans, he does offer an interesting assessment of her chosen tour stops. He calls it "Sarah Palin's Walmart Strategy."

What's notable about Sarah Palin's book tour, which starts midweek, is where she's not going. She's not going to L.A. or New York, Boston or San Francisco. She's going smack dab to the middle of the country. Fly-over country, liberals call it. And it's a shrewd move, not only in selling books, but positioning herself for a presidential run in 2012, if she chooses.

It's a strategy right out of the late Sam Walton's playbook: go where there's demand and the competition ain't. Walton, who could have run and won political campaigns, built Walmart into the behemoth it is today by opening his discount stores in small towns in the heartland, towns that the eight-hundred pound gorilla K-Mart ignored.

Walton conquered the discount retail category from the heartland out. He didn't so much as clobber K-Mart as steal a march on it. Palin may just prove that a heartland strategy does more than sell blenders and books. It's the foundation for winning a national election.

Make no mistake, right now, heartlanders (and heartlanders in spirit) are feeling awfully ignored by Washington politicians. The president and Congress are intent on ramming through a health care reform measure that an ever-increasing majority of Americans oppose. They're spending as if using someone else's credit card (in fact, the people's); they play Americans for dupes by calling an old-fashioned pork barrel bill an economic stimulus; and, for toppers, President Obama is playing Hamlet about Afghanistan, thus putting brave soldiers there at greater risk every day.

What Palin will bring to places like Noblesville, Ind., Washington, Pennsylvania, and Fort Bragg, N.C, is her brand of popular conservatism: upbeat, optimistic and certain. It really is an offshoot of the Reagan brand. And the Reagan brand has its roots deep in the American character.

[...]

Sam Walton once said:

"Each Walmart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community."

The same holds true for politicians' relationships to citizens. It's not happening now in America. Sarah Palin has the opportunity to change that for the better.

Is it possible Governor Palin is employing Walmart's strategy of reaching out to heartland Americans whose needs had been largely ignored until then? J. Robert Smith says yes. Read his entire article here.

(h/t Ray - SarahNET.net)

American Thinker: Palin, Obama's 2012 Competition

By Adrienne Ross - www.motivationtruth.com

As President Obama fumbled badly at the UN and G-8 last week, Sarah Palin began redefining herself as presidential timber.

With these words James Lewis begins his American Thinker article. In it he highlights the disaster that was President Obama's speeches before world leaders last week but praises Sarah Palin's speech in Hong Kong. While the president seems to be on a downward spiral, showing himself to be unprepared to deal with many things, including America's enemies, Sarah Palin is showing herself to be stepping further into a leadership role to take America forward.

So we are seeing a president who is way over his head. Obama has great political talent, but not nearly as great as his overweening pride. So he keeps over-reaching, and there is a good chance that we will see him hit the first massive brick wall in his health-care power-grab in the coming weeks. The Democrats may pass a symbolic medical package to save face for Obama --- but then watch American seniors turn out in the tens of millions next year to throw the bums out of the House and part of the Senate. Seniors see their Medicare being stolen from them and they are not going to forget that by election time 2010.

Obama seems to be incapable of controlling his own egomania, and that means further humiliations in the years ahead. Remember that Bill Clinton looked unbeatable in 1992 and was impeached by a Republican House in 1998. No president since Richard Nixon has been brought lower than Clinton was ten years ago. Today we may be seeing Obama at the very peak of his ballistic orbit, and just beginning to curve down.

But you can't beat a strong candidate with a weak one, and the GOP notoriously nominates some real duds. Palin has scared the Left into mass hysteria because of her star quality on the campaign trail with a visibly creaking John McCain. Sarah Palin is our only charismatic leader at this profoundly dangerous time. That is why her actions are so important to the fate of the GOP, and to the future of this country and the world. Her use of Facebook to make public policy statements has been both effective and smart. Palin is using the web just as Reagan used radio and TV, to get around the murderous filter of the media.

Sarah Palin gave an extraordinarily well-crafted speech in Hong Kong, a real Reagan speech. It almost sounds as if Henry Kissinger is advising her.

[...]

Since the election campaign, it seems that Sarah Palin recruited a top-notch team of advisors and political talent. The Hong Kong speech goes straight to her alleged weakness in foreign affairs, and it is a very good first step toward re-making her media image to be more substantive. The truth is that most of our media heads would not recognize foreign policy substance if it hit them right between the eyes. But they know the image of substance, and the Hong Kong speech was good on both appearance and reality. She demonstrated "gravitas" -- in the pop slogan of the early Bush years. We need more of the same, but she has now shown convincingly that she can do it.

Obama is in for real competition in 2012; since world peace and our national well-being are clearly at stake, the more strong conservatives emerge, the better off we will be. Obama is the very worst president for these times. It is important to defeat him in a fair fight. Palin can do it; so can some others, but she is exceptionally talented.

Sarah Palin, now calling her own shots rather than being mishandled by the McCain camp, has only just begun her fight for America. As James Lewis points out in his article, she can get the job done, and she'll use--to borrow the words of Governor Palin herself--"commonsense conservatism."

Read the entire article here.

Dr. King and Governor Palin: March On!

By Adrienne Ross from www.motivationtruth.com

"I Have a Dream" is arguably the most-eloquent, most-respected, and most-recited speech in American history. Dr. Martin Luther King gave that unforgettable speech forty six years ago today, and forty six years from now people will still be listening attentively to those words that he gave in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Dr. King was assassinated before I was born, but as I reflect on the man behind the dream, I see someone who carried a message of freedom and justice, though he knew what it was to be called on the carpet for it. I see a man who loved his country and wanted to see her reach her full potential. No, he didn't believe America was perfect, but he loved her nonetheless. It was that great love that caused him to stand up and speak out when others shouted for him to sit down and shut up. He chose to fight the fight because the liberty of American people was on the line.

Dr. King once stated,

Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

Sounds like today, doesn't it? Sounds like what the masses of Americans are crying out right now--from tea parties, from town halls, from Facebook and Twitter.

I believe Martin Luther King would have gotten Sarah Palin. More than that, I believe he would have had great respect for her. Although they clearly would not have agreed on every point (who does?), Dr. King knew what it was to use his voice to speak up for the country in which he lived. He knew what it was to cry out for freedom to the point of self-sacrifice. And he knew what it was to be a threat to the establishment. He came against the powers-that-be, and he did it with a boldness that was driven by a sense of right. There's just something about being right that emboldens those who believe it's their destiny to declare it.

Like Dr. King, Sarah Palin refuses to be silenced, though the mainstream media is begging for her to be quiet rather than speak up for the freedoms of Americans, freedoms which perhaps have never been so attacked since Dr. King's day.

I remember last year when Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention. I must admit that toward the end of her speech, I cried. I did not cry because her speech was so moving or her husband was so promising. Please! I cried when she drew attention to it being the 45th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. For the first time since the campaigning had begun, I was hit with the awareness that history--to which I was directly related--was in the making, that here was the first Black man to have won the presidential nomination--and I could not vote for him. That realization made me sad in a way I never expected. Now, perhaps you don't understand those emotions, but I just remember what gripped me in that moment. It took 45 years, I thought, and this is the best we could come up with?! It cut me to the heart.

As a Christian, nothing trumps values for me--not race, not gender, nothing. Therefore, I could never have voted for Obama. Shoot--I couldn't even stand to look at him. But I suddenly felt robbed of participating in that moment, and it hurt.

The tears were fleeting. They left as quickly as they came...and the next day Governor Sarah Palin stepped onto the national stage, and I was smiling.

I have never cried those tears again, for I remember the man whose speech we remember today. Dr. King so wisely said,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Translation: There are more important things than race. And while the Left continues to race bait, while they call white conservatives like Sarah Palin "racist" and Black conservatives like me "sell-out," I know Dr. King got it, even forty six years ago, and what's more important, I get it.

Perhaps the American Thinker expressed the difference between Dr. King and President Obama best:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a perfect example of a true leader, and the antithesis of an Alinskyite community organizer. Dr. King wasn't leading a movement of complete strangers. Nor was he dropped into Atlanta by a gang of professional troublemakers, intent on gaining political power. Dr. King, and his father before him, were echelons of the black, upper-middle-class community in Atlanta. They had lifelong friends in every black community south of the Mason-Dixon. They were so well-known, so utterly respected by all, that when Martin spoke, people - black and white alike - knew there was absolute substance behind his thunderous voice. Even the Democratic Party racists who opposed him, gave him grudging private respect.

King had no need of deceptive Alinsky tactics; he had moral authority steeped in roots going back generations in the same home town.

Such is not at all the case with what Alinsky euphemistically called the "community organizer."

Some may think it's a stretch, but I don't think so: Sarah Palin is more like Dr. King than President Obama, and I believe he would have held her in very high regard. He, like she, was a public servant. He paid the ultimate price for opening his mouth for freedom; he would not shut up because too much was on the line. I see the same spirit in her as she continues to fight the fight for the unborn, health care, energy independence, limited government--for freedom.

American Thinker on Palin vs. ObamaCare

By Adrienne Ross from www.motivationtruth.com

Sarah Palin gets it, and The American Thinker knows that she gets it. People are not letting this health care issue die. While I hear some like Geraldo and Juan Williams still reprimanding Sarah for exposing the dangers of the health care bill, I can still hear the warning bell ringing from people who understand that she's not crazy. As is pointed out in the American Thinker article, "The impulse toward euthanasia is already active in American culture." The impulse to devalue life--period--already exists within our culture. Surely, Sarah did not pull her concern from nowhere. In fact, did she not have to say over and over to an unrelenting Katic Couric that she believes we must embrace "a culture of life"? And was it not at that point that Katie became even more vehement in her attack of Sarah Palin? Absolutely! So, excuse us if we don't trust others, including Washington bureaucrats, to make the right decisions when it comes to life and death decisions for the American people.

Sadly, it is not a preposterous notion that Americans must fight for transparency from the powers-that-be when it comes to care for our loved ones. If we don't fight, we get lies, generalities, or silence--and we cannot afford either one. So I say, "Thank you" to Sarah for putting her neck on the line once again and fighting the fight.

Through the elimination of Section 1233, Palin has accomplished more for this country than any of those people ever have or are likely to do. This action will loom very large in the legend of Sarah Palin. From here on, Palin is no longer simply a politician; she's on her way to becoming a historical figure. We await her next actions with fascination.

No doubt, Sarah Palin's willingness to stand up for this issue is something for which multitudes are grateful today and future generations will read about.

Read the entire American Thinker article below:

August 20, 2009
Palin v. ObamaCare
By J. R. Dunn


Once again we're presented with evidence that the health-care debate is occurring without adequate attention being paid to the record of established nationalized health-care systems overseas (Dunn, 2009, ¶1).

This has arisen as a result of Sarah Palin's superb maneuver in forcing the administration to drop Section 1233 of the ObamaCare act, entitled "Advance Care Planning Consultation." Section 1233, which we might as well call the "Let's Wrap it Up" clause, calls for "planning sessions" for Medicare clients in which the "continuum of end-of-life services and supports available" would be explained in detail. This "continuum" includes "palliative and hospice care", but is unlikely to be limited to that. Palin accused the administration of opening the door to euthanasia, with Section 1233 amounting to a first step toward "death panels" making life-and-death decisions amounting to such action (Dunn, 2009, ¶2).

Last week Section 1233 was dropped in toto. Palin forced this result through a single Facebook posting, a stroke that if carried out by anyone else but Lady Deerslayer would have been praised far and wide as masterful. But instead we got the usual attacks on Palin's personality, intelligence, and motives. In large part this involved such usual suspects as the mass media, Huffington Post-type blogs, and Obama himself. But center-right figures were also heard from, including (inevitably) David Frum. If Palin were to save the planet from alien invasion, Frum would have something kind to say for the invaders. But the editors of National Review were also critical in their customary indirect way: (Dunn, 2009, ¶3)

"To conclude... that President Obama's favored legislation will lead to "death panels" deciding whose life has sufficient value to be saved - let alone that Obama desires this outcome - is to leap across a logical canyon" (Dunn, 2009, ¶4).

In fact, it's no leap whatsoever, as would be apparent to anyone who has been paying serious attention, as opposed to media-level attention, to the problem of health care. The British National Health Service, the mother of all nationalized health systems, has had what amounts to a "death panel" system since 2005. Under the terms of the Mental Capacity Act, patients unable to communicate with hospital personnel are considered to be "due to die" and are removed from all forms of life support, including food and water. In other words, given the same treatment meted out to Terry Schiavo (Dunn, 2009, ¶5).

The most notorious recent case involving this act occurred last year when Mrs. Ellen Westwood, an 88-year-old retiree, entered Birmingham's Selly Oak hospital for shoulder surgery. While recovering she caught the inevitable iatrogenic "superbug" infection, a daily occurrence in British hospitals, and one which costs up to 30,000 lives a year. Without further ado, the Selly Oak doctors declared Mrs. Westwood "due to die" and began the process of shutting her down (Dunn, 2009, ¶6).

But the Westwood family refused to cooperate. After demanding that treatment be resumed, they were threatened with law enforcement action and effectively chased from the hospital. Returning with another doctor, they obtained a second opinion and had their mother released into their care. Once home, she recovered in short order and survives to this day (Dunn, 2009, ¶7).

How many times the Westwood story has been repeated remains unclear -- it's not, after all, something that the NHS would be willing to boast about. But it appears undeniable that "due to die" is standard procedure within the NHS system. Nor is it limited to older patients. There are several cases on record in which mentally disabled individuals have been left to die under the same circumstances: a girl whose easily-treated cancer was allowed to metastasize without treatment, a man whose broken leg festered to the point of infection and death, and a middle-aged man who was starved to death over the period of a month after suffering a stroke. That last individual's disability was Down syndrome, the same suffered by young Trig Palin (Dunn, 2009, ¶8).

"Such a system," to quote Governor Palin, "is downright evil." The connection between the Mental Capacity Act and Section 1233 are easily grasped. In this country today, a simple line exists. There are certain things you are not allowed to do. Once that terminus is erased, there is nothing to stop society from sliding into straightforward euthanasia, as has occurred in the UK. Forget any talk about "guidelines" or "safeguards"; they did not help Terry Schiavo, they did not help Ellen Westwood, they did not help the unnamed retarded man dying of starvation in his lonely bed. Quite simply, they are not meant to (Dunn, 2009, ¶9).

Why euthanasia is so critical to the progressive project is not so easy to grasp, but it is undeniable all the same. Consider the "Project on Death in America" established by George Soros. Funded in large part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this project was intended to promote palliative care as a method of dealing with end-of-life challenges, but somehow transformed itself into an exercise in promoting euthanasia in hospitals, hospices, and medical centers nationwide. (The Soros death project is covered in detail in my upcoming book Death by Liberalism. Be sure to order two copies -- one for yourself, and one for mom to read during that lengthy upcoming hospital stay.) (Dunn, 2009, ¶10)

The impulse toward euthanasia is already active in American culture. Sarah Palin understands this, as Obama, Pelosi, Romney, and sadly, the editors of the National Review do not. Through the elimination of Section 1233, Palin has accomplished more for this country than any of those people ever have or are likely to do. This action will loom very large in the legend of Sarah Palin. From here on, Palin is no longer simply a politician; she's on her way to becoming a historical figure. We await her next actions with fascination (Dunn, 2009, ¶11).

References

Dunn, J.R. (2009, August 20). Palin v. ObamaCare. The American Thinker. Retrieved August 20, 2009 from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/palin_v_obamacare.html