Posted on 11/14/2008 3:46:26 PM PST by lewisglad
Attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin by McCain campaign staff at first appear to be a case of making her a convenient scapegoat, but the attacks have a more devious motive. This post-election barrage is the first volley of the campaign to choose the Republican nominee in 2012. The Washington, D.C. based establishment that rules the GOP wants her career over now. She threatens them.
Firefighting 101 teaches it is easier to stomp out a wildfire when it is small. Don’t allow the fire to grow, spread and become an inferno. Sarah Palin was the spark of McCain’s reform campaign. She ignited the campaign and gave the reform message legitimacy.
Those knifing Palin are the old-guard Republicans who don’t want to see her as the nominee in 2012. The old-guard GOP candidates are likely Gov. Haley Barbour or former Gov. Mitt Romney.
Sarah Palin brought a vibrant, fresh face to the Republican Party. The GOP elitists saw how she easily connected with voters. Palin drew huge crowds of up to 70,000 people anxious to see and hear her. The crowds flocking to see Gov. Palin bond with her culturally. She has the potential to garner Obama- or Reagan-like devotion.
The Republican Party needs this grassroots energy and her reform agenda after a decade of broken promises and the disappointing Bush presidency.
Looking back at history, you see resemblances of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in Palin. Both Thatcher and Reagan were dismissed and insulted by their own party stalwarts. “Useful idiot” was a term once leveled at President Reagan.
Palin hails from Wasilla, Alaska; Margaret Thatcher grew up in the apartment over her family’s grocery store in a small town in England. Thatcher’s father taught her never to do things because other people were doing them. He said, “Do what you think is right and then persuade others to follow you.” Like Thatcher, Palin’s political philosophy and economic policies emphasize reduced government intervention, free markets and entrepreneurialism.
Margaret Thatcher was willing to take a hard line and earned the nickname “Iron Lady” for her tough-talking rhetoric defiantly opposing the Soviet Union. Likewise, Palin is tough enough to stand up to present-day threats. While Thatcher earned the moniker of ‘Attila the Hen,” Palin calls herself a “Pit-bull with Lipstick” and others dub her “Sarah Barracuda.”
Human, likeable, personable and witty like Reagan, with loads of common sense and confidence, Sarah Palin lives what she believes. And the camera loves her as it loved Ronald Reagan.
Grass-roots efforts are sure to encourage Palin to run in for president in 2012. Meanwhile, she trusts a higher power, saying she is, “Putting my life in my creator’s hands—that is what I always do.” She also said, “I’m like, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, …don’t let me miss the open door…And if there is an open door in ’12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”
This rising star is now too bright to be extinguished by attempts at sabotage. She has addressed the criticism, setting the record straight concerning the purchase of clothes for herself and her family by the Republican National Committee, saying, “Those are the RNC’s clothes, they are not my clothes. I never forced anybody to buy anything. I never asked for anything more than maybe a Diet Dr Pepper every once in a while.” And then there’s the ridiculous rumors regarding the debate prep about NAFTA and Africa. Palin summed it up well, calling it “cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, and it’s unprofessional,” and said, “Those guys are jerks if they came away with it taking thing out of context, then tried to spread something on national news.”
Yet Palin realizes criticism is to be expected in politics. “Your life is an open book and you open yourself up to criticism and you’d better be ready to take that criticism,” she said. “In other words, don’t run for office if you can’t handle it.”
Those staffers guilty of anonymous attacks are cowards. Their agenda to control the GOP needs to be seen for what it is — an attempt to kill the career of Sarah Palin because it threatens them. Americans can see through the falsehoods and love the real Sarah Palin. Nearly 400 letters arrive daily addressed to Gov. Palin and are now piled high in big bags waiting for her.
-PJ
they may have something to do with it.
But there are also people here on Free Republic who are not religious and are supportive of Governor Palin.
I want the backlash against the Palin haters to be so severe that they just shut the heck up.
Well, I guess we Palinites can’t count on your vote.
They're simply identifying themselves them, and it's not unfair for you to come back at them with their own comments later.
But if FR starts establishing rigid and narrow positions and purging everyone who crosses one, just one, of those lines, then I'm probably out of here. I've got FRiends with whom I have strong disagreement on some one issue but not on others. If FReepers have to march lockstep on everything -- I'm outta here.
Your screen name says you're young. Have a little patience -- some of us have argued in forums where purges were not even possible (Usenet talk.politics.misc starting in 1985 in my case), and I have seen even the most able liberal debaters taken down when they were cornered and fell over the edge.)
Normally I would agree. I am not a fan of purging anybody. But this is a situation in which the attacks are so blatent and so ANTI CONSERVATIVE that they do fit in on a conservative forum.
Izzat you, Nicolle?
You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything
You've got to be your own man not a puppet on a string
Never compromise what's right and uphold your family name
You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything
She's a once-a-generation politician and leader...trust me. :)
I Agree. I remember the media and others going after Reagan. Thay called him dumb, stupid, just and actor, empty suit...
Well....
And if you don't get there, take note -- stockpile (archive them) the quotes AND the links to them, and gird yourself for battle.
Victory may be yours in ways you don't foresee.
I once saw a flaming leftie (and one of the most nimble debaters I've ever seen) take issue over a remark that one could see Cuba from Key West. He ultimately went down in flames when his inflexibility on the issue when faced with the physics of refraction led to his positing that the "edge" of Earth's atmosphere was outside of the Moon's orbit. (This was so classic I have a printout of the final transactions, inside my father's WWII military optics manual...)
Now is the time for calm. Zero isn’t in office yet.
It’s not your responsibility to defend her. And right now, none of it means a thing. The talk is intended to dive you and everyone who likes Sarah crazy. Can’t let them have that.
We need to quietly go after the Vichy Republicans and drive them from the party and from the government. We need to prepare the party for Sarah, not get caught up in defending her in the present. We need to do the advance work of clearing the way for her.
We need to continue the ‘Palin feva’ and continue to help build grass root support for her.
Maggie and the Gip would be proud.
We received your bumper stickers. Good job!
Yep. The GOP establishment fears her. A lot of people in Washington will fear her more and more. If Sarah Palin ever becomes President, a lot of very powerful people will lose their seat at the table forever. I pray for her protection.
You got that right! The RINO's and entrenched power brokers will stop at nothing to keep her from getting elected.
I don’t know about 70-30 (virtually impossible) but I certainly agree with you main point: without Governor Palin on the ticket it easily could have been an Obamanation landslide of 60-40 and running the table of nearly all states.
One of my favorite parts of Sarah’s biography is one concerning her father. During Alaska’s summer months, her father Chuck Heath pulled the plug on the TV and told the kids to go outside and play. A good father; a good lesson for Sarah.
Sarah is exactly the kind of woman who during the generations of our history built this country and made it strong. I don’t think anybody is going to bring her down.
She will get four years of the maximum $2400 per year from me if she does.
Diogenesis, you beat me to it. What is with these Romneybots, like Curiosity? I have about had it with them. NO Romney EVER!@!
The criticisms she gets here are as valid as the many others who over praise her. She definitely has some areas to work on and I bet you she could tell you each one. Still, when I think about what all she's done as listen to her speak without notes, it's obvious she is more than bright enough for the job.
She went into that circus and handled it fairly well, especially given her background and experience. And she's only going to get better. That's why they have to stop her. We need some retro-conservatism and she lives it.
Without Sarah it would definitely have been 65% to 35% and the Obamanuts would have been rubbing it in with salt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.