The Media, Left and GOP Elitists vs. Sarah Palin: A Lesson on How to Destroy a Leader [Bill Whittle]

[If you would rather hear and see this (and it's better with some vocal steam and supporting pictures), you can view the Afterburner version for free, here.]

THE DESTRUCTION OF SARAH PALIN

Well, Sarah Palin has stepped down as Governor of Alaska. Fighting a seemingly endless string of harassment lawsuits has taken pretty much all of her time and $500,000 of her money. That’s real money to the Palins. That’s real money to me, and probably to you too.

At least fifteen ethics complaints had been leveled against Governor Palin, and all of them have been dismissed as baseless. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? Decent people, like most of you out there, probably don’t appreciate just how easy it is to destroy someone of integrity if you have no integrity of your own.

Here’s how it works. Fifteen assorted bloggers and miscreants of various stripes launch unsubstantiated ethics complaints against the Governor of Alaska, who, because of Alaska state law, is not immune from having to fight them. Fifteen charges of corruption – no matter whether they are true or not – means that the public hears nothing but the words “Palin” and “Corruption” being solemnly reported by the press. Even the phrase “cleared of corruption charges” makes that subconscious connection.

Bill Clinton spent every second of his Presidency – every second – knowing exactly what to say if the words “Paula Jones” or “Gennifer Flowers” or “Monica Lewinski” came up in conversation, or at a press conference, or even in the middle of deep sleep. If Hillary just whispered the words:

…Bill would bolt upright in bed and sputter: “I did not have sex with that woman! Whichever one you mentioned!”

He’s ready for accusations because he knows he’s guilty. That’s what guilty people do all day: work on the explanation and the alibi. But an innocent person, when charged with corruption or lying or worse – well, it shakes them to the core, the same way it would shake you to your core if you were accused of some heinous act you did not commit. And if these false accusations came at you again and again and again, how many times would it take before you said, to hell with this. Who needs this? This is destroying my family. A guilty person has that factored going in; it’s part of their mental equation. But it’s enough to drive an innocent person out, and that was the goal. Wasn’t it?

There’s a reason the word Satan means “the Accuser” in Hebrew, and why “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is one of the Ten Commandments. A false accusation against an innocent person is often more effective than a real accusation is against a guilty one.

Now to simply say that Democrats had to attack this Republican is to miss the savagery of the assault, a viciousness that was evidenced on the first day of her announcement as John McCain’s running mate and which continued unabated long after the election. The example of Sarah Palin, you see, is fatal to the liberal worldview.

For forty years now Liberals have defined feminism in a binary way. You simply could not be a feminist – and by implication you could not really demand the opportunities that modern feminism promised – unless you categorically came down on the side of “choice.” You could go out into a man’s world, dress like a man, act like a man, achieve all the wealth and power of a man, perhaps even have a boutique single child — or two, if you could afford a decent nanny.

But Sarah Palin’s decision to see her Down’s Syndrome child to term was an act of such blinding moral clarity that it tore down the drapes and flung open the windows of Miss Havisham’s fetid little parlor. To see Trig Palin being held in his sister’s arms reminded the entire country that this choice has consequences. And furthermore, it showed that you could be Mayor, or Governor, or potentially President of the United States, and still have a big family, dress and talk like a woman, and get there with a mate who was nothing more or less than a good man and loving husband and commercial fisherman, and not ride to power on the coattails of a billionaire businessman, or media mogul, or political superstar.

By choosing life – a flawed life, some would say – Sarah Palin effortlessly displayed what once was the universal maternal instinct… and that put her way, way off the reservation. To present such a clear example of competence, achievement and respect while at the same time running full in the face of the liberal feminist first (and only) commandment, Sarah Palin earned the kind of hatred from the left that is only well and truly reserved for those people who so effortlessly put the lie to their entire philosophy. This is the kind of hate reserved for black Americans like Thomas Sowell or my own friend Alfonzo Rachel, who become traitors to their race as Palin became a traitor to her sex, for having the audacity – the gall, the unmitigated nerve – to have their own thoughts, and make up their own minds, and free themselves from the rigid – and racist and sexist – roles that have been cut out for them by the liberal establishment that perpetually shrieks that it is only working in their best interest out of a rarefied moral superiority.

And there’s another side of the Democratic Party’s mythical image of itself that she stole from under their feet: the Palin’s are working people, the kind of people the Democratic Party once claimed proudly as their irreducible base before they became the Limousine Leftists we see today. She comes home and makes dinner for the family while Todd – the now-former First Dude – is out in the garage releasing some of the tensions of a hard day at work by tricking out his snow machine for racing season.

No wonder Democrats and Liberals feared her so. And now we get to the heart of the matter. Because it was not just Democrats and Liberals who so fervently wished to see her destroyed. Many Republicans felt the same way. The LA Times reports:

“I am of the strong opinion that, at present day, she is not ready to be the leading voice of the GOP,” said Todd Harris, a party strategist who likened Palin to the hopelessly dated “Miami Vice” — something once cool that people regard years later with puzzlement and laughter.” The Times then goes on to quote one Stuart K. Spencer, who has been advising GOP candidates for more than 40 years, who says, “I can’t tell you one thing she brought to the ticket.”

Mr. Harris and Mr. Spencer, I’m not a GOP strategist, so unfortunately I am not able to associate myself with the glory and success that people like you have led the Republican Party to in these last several election cycles.. Here’s what I can tell you, though: as a person of small reputation in little backwater pools on the internet, I spent months – months – defending John McCain as the Republican nominee. Not because he was my first choice, or my second choice, or my third choice… because he wasn’t.

I did it because I felt I had some idea of what this Obama tsunami was going to bring. And I saw, with my own eyes – pay attention now, professional GOP strategists — untold numbers of life-long conservatives saying they were going to sit this one out…just stay at home on Election Day.

Then Sarah Palin came along, and those same people – those exact same people! – wrote about sending in hundreds of dollars and asking for lawn signs, because for the first time in years they felt there was someone who understood what their lives were like: someone who went hunting and fishing, someone who worked hard for a living, someone who had fought corruption where they found it, regardless of the personal cost, someone who had a son fighting in Iraq, someone who knew how to handle a gun and actually owned one! Someone who unabashedly loved America, someone who could be tough and decisive and still be feminine, someone who put family above politics and who was doing a job with quiet competence and who by most accounts did not spent every living day of her life maneuvering and plotting and kissing ass because she had some defective political gene that drove her to want to become President from the age of three.

Sarah Palin — clinging with an incandescent lack of bitterness to her guns and her religion — energized the base of this party in a way I have never witnessed before. Now, of course, I need to again remind you that I am not a GOP strategist. But just between me and actual Republican strategist Stuart K. Spencer, who does not know what she brought to the ticket, I’ll tell you right now. I’ll clue you in.

Those people – those actual conservatives that went out and voted – don’t think Sarah Palin cost John McCain the election. They think John McCain cost Sarah Palin the election. It was John McCain’s elitist genius advisors that buried her for two weeks after her knockout GOP acceptance speech – the one that put the McCain / Palin ticket up 7-15 points in the very week after Barack Obama’s Temple Coronation – and then hid her in a basement trying to polish her up to midtown Manhattan standards of sophistication and erudition before they walked her into back-to-back ambush interviews. It was these elitist “campaign staffers” that decided to buy $150,000 of high-end clothes for a woman who always looks best when she is dressed as who she is: a regular working person. And, of course, those clothes went on to become another of the “corruption” and “Diva” charges they leaked against her to protect their own miserable, cowardly asses so that they can continue to advise future campaigns into the dustbin of history.

This isn’t a fight between Democrats and Republicans, or even between Liberals and Conservatives. This is a fight to the death between the populists and the elites.

Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama. He is urban; she is rural. He preaches dependency on the government and she leads a life of independence. He consistently apologizes for the sins of the country he was elected to lead, and she is unabashedly proud of it. He opposes the war in Iraq; she has skin in the game. And on and on.

And that is why she had to be destroyed, by the Democratic Party, by the New York media elites, and by many of the inside-the-beltway voices of various and sundry GOP “strategists.”

She needs to be destroyed because the one thing that can never be allowed to happen is this: you cannot have a voice in this political debate. You know who I mean. You rubes, you hicks out there in flyover country. Your job is pay taxes, vote for who they have decided over cocktails makes them feel better about themselves, and occasionally provide your inbred idiot sons and daughters for the army or police force or whatever you people without Ivy League educations do with your tawdry little lives.

Meanwhile, the Harvard-educated elitist geniuses will run the country according to their infinitely brighter intellectual and moral lights.

And whatever happens, do not be distracted by inconvenient facts that you might stumble upon as you listen to Faux News, or your hate-filled talk radio, or right-wing nutjob blogs. Pay no attention to the fact that small banks, run by hayseeds like yourselves, were in no financial troubles at all lending money and writing mortgages to people who could afford to pay it back, but who are now are being forced to pay for the failure of genius-level Harvard Business School ideas like Collateralized Debt Obligations which essentially brought down the greatest economy the world has ever seen.

And remember, it’s just a coincidence that Harvard grads John F. Kennedy and Robert S McNamara not only got us into the Vietnam war, they also determined the genius-level rules of engagement that caused inbound Naval aviators to look down at, but not attack, the surface-to-air missiles being unloaded at Haiphong Harbor. They’d see those same missiles again in a few weeks when they were shot down and killed by them.

That’s genius-level, Harvard-quality thinking. Not like that simpering idiot, that commonplace dolt Ronald Reagan. I mean, the man went to Eureka College, for God’s sake! Who’s even heard of Eureka College? The fact that he defied forty years of Harvard-educated State Department officials and defeated the Soviet Union with plain speaking and common sense and some antiquated, embarrassing and– one might say tacky – belief in his country and its people… well, that’s surely coincidence as well.

Saul Alinski wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. Hillary Clinton wrote about it in her senior’s thesis. And if Hillary Clinton learned from it, Barack Obama taught from it: the term community organizer was coined by Alinski and was the centerpiece of his theory that the socialization of America could best be accomplished from within the system since Americans were alert to revolutions forced upon them from the outside.

One of the Rules for Radicals is Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. Think about the genius of that. Just let that sink in. When a Republican has an ethics scandal, it’s “hypocrisy” and “double standards” and all the rest. But when a Clinton or a Pelosi or a Charley Rangel or a Chris Dodd or a Barney Frank or a William Jefferson has an ethics scandal, no one bats an eye. Why? Because of course they’re immoral! They’re Democrats.

Alinski could see that moral people have to be held to moral standards when immoral people do not. We’d better learn a lesson from this, right quick. Here’s an example of the kind of lesson good and decent people must learn about people like Saul Alinski and his followers:

The Battle of Guadalcanal was the first real test of the US Marine Corps in World War II. There was real anger toward the Japanese after Pearl Harbor and the atrocities they had committed in China and to American prisoners at Bataan, but the Marines had not yet dealt with them face to face and still reserved a professional soldier’s decency towards surrendering troops.

A Marine recon unit reported seeing Japanese troops flying a white flag on an isolated spit of land near Guadalcanal, and so A Marine named Frank Goettge asked for volunteers to help rescue these surrendering Japanese soldiers. 25 men stepped forward, and when they reached the beach the Marines warily went ashore to help the trapped Japanese. Once they were all within range, the Japanese opened fire with machine guns, and after hours of fighting only one Marine was able to escape. As he swam away he looked over his shoulder, and saw the flashing Samurai swords of the Japanese officers as they hacked at and beheaded the survivors. When reinforcements returned they found that their buddies had been mutilated and dismembered, and any Marine corps tattoos had been hacked off their arms and stuffed into their mouths.

Alinski and his followers want you to believe that if you fight dirty in response to people fighting dirty with you, then you have lost your morals and in fact your identity. But that’s a lie.

We are in a political fight to the death with people who will stop at nothing – and I’m not talking about your average decent Democrat, but rather these Alinski radicals. And if we don’t face the same realization as those Marines on Guadalcanal and give back as brutally as we have taken, then we will lose.

Which is what they want. And if we do lose to these kind of tactics, there will be no more decent people left in politics. As of today, we’re one short already.

Nailed It!

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for the perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author all 100% to feel the need to share an article.)

I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of the good stuff that is worthy of attention.

You are welcome to browse the list of truly exceptional articles I pinged to lately. Updated on July 24, 2009. on my page.
You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

Besides this one, I keep 2 separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson and Orson Scott Card.

Those people – those actual conservatives that went out and voted – don’t think Sarah Palin cost John McCain the election. They think John McCain cost Sarah Palin the election.

I be one of them. When I wrote my checks to the campaign, I averted my eyes from McCain and focused on the conservative on the ticket.

I am not a fan of Palin. But the more she annoys all the right people, the more I like her. I am fascinated with that feral hate she generated. Something works on sub-conscience levels here. They can’t help themselves... And I just like how they squirm.

"Every good movement in the history of the world has been led by an infinitesimal minority . . . the perfect example, Jesus of Nazareth. Edmund Burke wrote, 'How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin by the seasonable energy of a single man?' Just a few -- ONE - is enough!'" - Dr. Leonard Read, Foundation for Economic Education

It has been said that "One man plus truth is an army."

That is why ideologues who wish to substitute government's coercive power (their own) for the inestimable "power of one" individual must attack and try to destroy that power.

After all, the meek and mild Spirit who came to bring peace on earth was subjected to ridicule by those who were far inferior accusers. So it is today. In over 2000 years, why believe that anything has changed in the makeup of likewise imperfect individuals who wish to impose their own wills on the rest of mankind?

America was founded on a different and unique idea--that individuals in the society hold the power through their own Constitution's provisions, and that those elected to positions of power in government are "bound down" (Jefferson).

"We conservatives need to take the gloves off and start fighting fire with fire."

Given the massive outpouring of rage from the left and their media allies, it appears that we are, and that it is working.

They ger REALLY, REALLY, REALLY upset when their own tactics are successfully used against them.

“They can’t help themselves”

It’s a mental illness with them. I used to laugh at the idea of an actual mental disorder known as Palin Derangement Syndrome, but after almost a year of fanatical, and vitriolic hatred just seeth out of some of these people, I know for a fact that PDS is real. We could easily fill every bed in every mental ward across the country ten times over with these folks. Electro Convulsive Therapy might help.

She needs to be destroyed because the one thing that can never be allowed to happen is this: you cannot have a voice in this political debate. You know who I mean. You rubes, you hicks out there in flyover country. Your job is pay taxes, vote for who they have decided over cocktails makes them feel better about themselves, and occasionally provide your inbred idiot sons and daughters for the army or police force or whatever you people without Ivy League educations do with your tawdry little lives.

Nailed it is right! Whittle hits another home run.

To those who think that the "Destruction of Sarah Palin" has happened, I say...

Do not calculate upon the amount of juvenile poultry before the process of incubation has fully materialized.

PSSSST...For those liberals who may be reading this, that means "Don't count you chickens before they hatch"

A great essay... although I wish he had spelled Alinsky’s name correctly. That’s the English teacher in me.

He’s sure as hell right about fighting the left, though. Using the tactics of the left does not mean adopting the politics of the left. The left means to destroy our country and culture; it is literally a fight to the death. They started the war, not us. If that’s what they want, so be it. I don’t want it, and I’m not even well-suited for it, but when I look at my son I think about his future, and I’m willing to make the sacrifice.

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.