Posted on 09/12/2009 12:47:05 PM PDT by DB9
When history is written, the summer of 2009 will be seen as a pivotal moment in American History. A newly elected and seemingly popular president was running roughshod over American ideals of liberty and limited government. The opposition to his policies was weak and diffuse. Indeed one wondered if the Republican Party even had the inclination to carry out their duty, to oppose these disastrous policies, in the first place.
Early in the summer, there seemed to be no stopping President Obama’s radical left-wing agenda. He passed an unprecedented $787 billion stimulus plan through Congress which stimulated nothing, other than the unemployment rate and the national debt. He and his unaccountable “czars” were taking over private sector businesses and forcing their executives to resign. The banking industry was being micromanaged by the same people who brought us the sub-prime meltdown…in the name of cleaning up the sub-prime meltdown. His budgets were (and are) projected to double the national debt to over 80% of GDP by 2019, perhaps even higher. And, to top it all off, his two signature issues, nationalizing the health care and energy sectors, were both sailing through the Democrat dominated Congress.
Obama, with the enthusiastic assistance of a sycophantic mainstream media, was foisting his extremist agenda on the American people at will. There were no Washington Republicans with the backbone and gravitas to effectively stand up to Mr. Obama on any of his radical programs. It seemed there was little reason for those of us who love our country and the foundations upon which it was built to be optimistic. There appeared little hope for stopping the transformation of America into something we’re not by a president who clearly doesn't not like the America he was elected to lead. Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism. If he did, he wouldn't spend his time traveling the world apologizing for our great country.
The one bright spot in all the gathering clouds on America’s horizon was (and is) Governor Sarah Palin. However, unlike any other governor in the history of the country, she was literally shackled to her governor’s desk in Alaska. She was prevented from participating in national politics to an unprecedented degree by an odd cabal of mentally unstable ankle-biters, publicity seekers, and a state legislature which consists primarily of lazy, corrupt, hypocritical, and dishonest RINOs. Add to this bizarre mix a local media which is, at best hebetudinous. The link between Obama and his minions in Washington and this wretched cast of characters has been well-documented in this video.
On July 3rd, in what may have been the most brilliant tactical political move I have ever seen, Governor Palin completely changed the game and obviated the entire Democrat strategy to keep her tied up in Alaska. At the time, of course, the ankle-biters claimed there was some scandal which precipitated the surprise move. There wasn’t. Even many Republicans thought it was a bad move on her part. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
The conventional wisdom doesn't apply to Governor Palin. She is not a conventional politician. Most politicians are highly egotistical and enter the public domain solely as a means to perpetuate their own self-importance. Barack Obama is a perfect example. Governor Palin, on the other hand, seeks only to serve and improve the quality of life for everyone, not just herself. This is a quality that is virtually non-existent in Washington today.
What Governor Palin's move did was free her to engage in the national debate in a way which would have been impossible if she remained as governor of Alaska. And she did just that. Governor Palin's first foray into the national debate, post-resignation announcement, was her July 14 Washington Post op-ed on Obama’s cap and trade energy tax, which emerged from Henry Waxman’s Energy and Commerce committee under the moniker, “Waxman-Markey". In her op-ed, she put Obama on notice that there was finally a prominent Republican who is not afraid to take issue with his idiotic economic policies:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
The immediate response to her op-ed from the left can only be characterized as hysterical. That very day, Obama water carrier Conor Clarke, of the loony left Atlantic, wrote a comically misleading piece which was methodically taken apart by Rob Harrison. Clarke’s factually challenged article was followed up Democrat Representative Ed Markey’s incoherent rant in PDS-afflicted Tina Brown’s tabloid, The Daily Beast. Markey is a liberal from Massachusetts who co-sponsored the cap and tax bill despite the fact that he knows nothing about energy and has never held a private sector job, having been a politician his entire adult life. His rant in The Daily Beast was destroyed here, here, and here.
The Atlantic and Daily Beast articles were unsuccessful in discrediting Governor Palin so two more prominent liberals, Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry (who, I’m told, served in Vietnam), felt compelled to attack Governor Palin’s op-ed with a Washington Post op-ed of their own. Their op-ed was also thoroughly debunked, which is not surprising since they know nothing about energy and, indeed, know nothing about much of anything at all. Even an Obama surrogate group, the left-wing hate site Moveon.org, felt sufficiently threatened by Governor Palin’s op-ed that they solicited donations to fund a smear campaign against her.
All this activity to discredit Governor Palin’s views on cap and tax occurred despite the fact that the left assured us that Governor Palin is not a serious politician and has no future. Unfortunately (for them) they miscalculated. The rumors of Governor Palin’s demise were greatly exaggerated. The cap and tax bill is now shelved for the year and is effectively dead for the foreseeable future. This is in no small part the result of Governor Palin’s entry into the energy debate.
With cap and tax off the front page for the time being, Governor Palin was free to focus her attention on another of Obama’s priorities: ObamaCare. A little over a week after officially stepping down as Alaska’s governor, she joined the healthcare debate by posting a scathing rebuke of ObamaCare on her Facebook Page. An excerpt follows:
As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!
The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
That Facebook note was a game changer. The entire complexion of the healthcare debate changed overnight. Obama has been on the defensive ever since. Not only did it focus the attention of the American people on the inevitable health care rationing that must occur with a government takeover, but people began seriously questioning the sanity of having our healthcare system being run with the same efficiency as the post office or the Katrina cleanup. Such comparisons, to say the least, do not advance the argument of government-run health care.
Governor Palin was immediately attacked for her metaphoric use of the term “death panels”. However, the point of that brilliant alliteration has been supported by numerous experts as an inevitable result of rationing health care to the elderly and special needs communities. She crystallized and focused the debate with that term, and an ever increasing number of people, particularly seniors, now reject the entire concept of government-run health care.
Since that initial Facebook note, Governor Palin has followed up every few days with additional statements on health care, all of which have been prescient, pointed, and supported by numerous footnotes. She has been utterly relentless in her assault on ObamaCare and, unlike anyone else, effective, a foreign concept to the establishment Republicans in Washington.
In an August 21 Facebook note, Governor Palin fired a shot at the hypocrisy Obama demonstrates in his approach to “health care reform” by completely ignoring the travesty that is the U.S. tort system:
So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?
Democrats are, of course, totally owned by the plaintiff’s bar and would never do anything to cross them. Incredibly, Howard Dean admitted this in late August. In bringing the tort issue up, Governor Palin was the first prominent political figure to put this issue front and center. It was rarely mentioned in Washington before her Facebook note. This again illustrates Governor Palin's unique ability to make Obama uncomfortable and force him to talk about issues he would prefer to ignore. This inimitable talent of hers was first displayed during her unforgettable RNC speech.
During that speech, with a smile on her face, she repeatedly poked at Obama's paper thin facade and exposed him as a narcissist with zero accomplishments and a radical agenda. No other Republican, before or since, has managed to do this as effortlessly and effectively as Governor Palin. If only more Americans had heeded her words, we wouldn't be faced with the specter of nearly 3 and 1/2 more years of Obama in the White House.
Throughout August, Democrats in congress were mercilessly derided and mocked at town hall meetings and other venues. Americans, many inspired by Governor Palin’s leadership on this issue, were turning against government-run health care en masse and showing up to let their representatives know that they weren’t interested in what Obama was selling. By the end of the month, ObamaCare was clearly in serious trouble.
Obama’s privately stated but publicly denied socialist ideal of a single-payer health care system was coming apart at the seams. Obama therefore felt he had no choice but to engage in a bit of theatrics. This resulted in his decision to deliver his speech to a rare joint session of congress on September 9th.
As is her pattern, Governor Palin was a step or two ahead of Obama. On the morning of September 8th, she released a letter she had written to the New York State Senate in which she, lucidly and methodically, took ObamaCare apart. She wasn't finished. Later that day, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed in which Governor Palin not only further pummeled Obama's health care plan, but proposed a few logical reforms which would actually improve, rather than destroy, America's health care system.
Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.
With these two contemptuous critiques of ObamaCare, Governor Palin seized control of the debate. So much so that Obama was forced to respond to her, through White House hacks and friendly press, on the morning of his big speech. Governor Palin, unlike other Republicans, is not afraid to fight back and she did just that, effectively and with alacrity. By this point, it was as if the whole dynamic was upside down. Instead of the Republican's giving the response to Obama after his speech, it had turned into a situation where Obama was giving the Democrat response to Governor Palin, responding to her Facebook notes!
During Obama's speech/pep rally, he essentially called a private citizen a liar, consistent with his complete lack of class and civility. I can't recall a president ever stooping this low. Of course he had no facts to back up this claim. So narcissistic is Obama that he believes that we will simply take him at his word because, if he says something, it must be so. Governor Palin, in the real Republican response to Obama’s partisan rant, didn’t back down one inch:
In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” -- so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.
What governor Palin has done in the short time since she resigned her position in Alaska is nothing short of astonishing. In the space of two months, not only has she put Obama’s two biggest domestic priorities, ObamaCare and “cap and tax”, on life support, but she has breathed life into those who are opposed to Obama’s radical makeover of America. She has reinvigorated a movement.
We see this reinvigoration in the thousands or ordinary citizens who show up at the town hall meetings with their representatives and shout “enough”. We see it in the faces those who are attending the Tea Party events across the country, thousands of whom are congregating on the Mall in Washington as I write this. We see it in Obama’s falling poll numbers across the political spectrum. We saw it in the crowds in Evansville and Auburn. Change is coming.
Governor Palin, to use a sports analogy, is akin to an elite offensive tackle. She is spearheading the charge through the enemy lines. The rest of her teammates can only follow her lead, some willingly, some not so willingly. But follow they must, for if they don’t, they will find themselves going the way of the Whigs, Dixiecrats, and other political relics of the past.
When I hear pundits, such as MSNBC clown Joe Scarborough, claim the Republicans lack a leader, I can only conclude that they have been hiding out on the dark side of the moon during the past summer. The Republicans have a clear leader and she is Governor Palin. She is not afraid to fight for what is right and has clearly shown us, the opposition, how to oppose. This is something other Republicans are unable or unwilling to do.
The mainstream media largely ignored or minimized her devastating response to Obama’s Wednesday night “campaign rally”, much as they are trying to minimize the enormous Tea Party rally on the Mall today. They are pulling out all the stops to marginalize her because they know she represents an existential threat to them and their Dear Leader. But in this endeavor, they will fail.
Sooner or later, Governor Palin will begin attending campaign events for politicians who share her ideals. When she does so, nobody will be able to ignore the tens of thousands of cheering citizens who line the streets just to see her or hear her speak. And the throngs of people who show up will do so spontaneously and of their own accord. There will be no “astro-turfers”.
Governor Palin is a natural leader. She inspires people to follow her. She has a rare combination of traits from some of our greatest past leaders. Like Winston Churchill, she has that "head of the table" trait. When she enters a room, the atmosphere immediately changes and all attention is focused on her. Whether giving a speech or writing a Facebook note, everyone is aware of where she is and what she's doing.
Governor Palin also has the wit and clarity of conviction possessed by Margaret Thatcher. Her conservatism, like Thatcher’s is instinctual and self-evident. She doesn't need to explain or defend it. Like Ronald Reagan, Governor Palin has an unabashed love of country. Her conservatism is optimistic and infectious. She really does see America as that "shining city on a hill" Reagan so eloquently spoke of.
Governor Palin loves her country and is proud and honored to be an American. She will never, ever, apologize to anyone for American exceptionalism. She bleeds red, white, and blue. This is something the left is incapable of understanding and is why, in the end, she will defeat Obama and everything he stands for. This is exactly the type of leader we need to save our country and our freedom.
As the past two months have clearly shown, the opposition to Obama has a leader, and that leader is, without a doubt, Governor Sarah Palin. We don't need beltway pundits to tell us who is leading...we already know.
“Nature abhors a vacuum.”
We haven’t seen any other leadership from the Republicans.
God Bless Sarah Palin and her family.
Look, this isn't a slam on Palin by any means, but this is a grass roots movement and Palin IS NOT the driving force behind it.
WE THE PEOPLE are!
There is no doubt that only Governor Palin has the charisma, the skills and the conservative core values to be in this position, she is definitely a force.
I despair to imagine where we would have been after Obama’s victory in November 2008 if she had not been around to draw the flames and stir the fires and give us all something to rally around. I think the republican party would have collapsed into a state of defeatism and bloody infighting, for which rino was going to serve as Obama’s yes man and as our 2012 nominee to politely be defeated by him like a good Bob Dole or John McCain or Herbert Walker Bush should.
I think they’re just trying to make it look like these folks are driven by devotion to one person. No! These people are drive by devotion to our Founding Fathers, our Founding Documents, and a love of this nation and what it is supposed to stand for.
If Obama wants to govern in this manner, let him shop this crap around in some third world hell hole, like his buddies Chavez, Castro, and AmaWhackJob.
Exactly, even Palin would say she is not the leader, she is one of us.
Pray for America
Palin should have been in DC today.
Exactly why I objected...
I think you’re right on target with that comment.
Thanks Bray. I agree.
Great, now how do we get past the problem of Democrats, who won’t need to vote for 0bama in the 2012 primaries, registering R and voting ABP?
Ping!
Palin is the voice, however. No one else has been able to cut through the static.
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