Knocking Out Sarah Palin: The Challenge

Everyone seems to want a piece of Sarah Palin.  Leftists and Obamists want her to lie down and die.  Tea Partyers want some of her sparkle and sex appeal.  Sedate and aging right wing women such as Peggy Noonan and Heather MacDonald want her to shut up and let them talk.  Some libertarians are jealous of all the attention Palin is getting.  But the news media just wants to knock her out and have her stay down on the mat.

Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric -- using creative editing and the best interview tricks they knew -- tried to knock out Palin during the 2008 campaign.  News agencies actually took reporters off sensitive terrorism cases and flew them to Wasilla, Alaska, to sift through dumpsters and dig up trash on Palin.  It was an all - out war against the little lady from the north, and it helped to elect Obama -- beyond a doubt.  But it failed to knock Palin out of the public eye, or to make her impotent on the national scene -- as the media clearly wished.

So we are back to the media war on Palin, albeit at a lower level of sniping and whining -- somewhat muted from the attempted nuclear attacks against her during the campaign.  Many in the media must be wondering what they have to do to knock out the plucky lady from Wasilla, one of whose nicknames is "Sarah-cuda".

Progressives traffic in the politics of name-calling and character assassination. They have forfeited any goodwill presumption of credibility when it comes to objectively criticizing anyone on the Right, let alone their most vilified American citizen target, Sarah Palin.

...Before the Progressive Left jumps all over that [AF: notes on her hand] as proof of some deficiency, they should consider the teleprompter-in-chief. He consumed almost a BILLION dollars to get elected. He’s been in office for just over a year. That comes to $2,617, 801 per day, or $109,075 per hour. That should be more than enough to get him to appear in a 6th grade classroom without the crutch of Teleprompter-One. _BigGovernment

The critical jabs at Palin fell short because the public does know about Obama's teleprompter dependency -- despite the media's attempts to cover it up. In fact, both Palin and an ever larger portion of the public are becoming immune to the strident but weak punches the media keeps attempting to throw Sarah's way. It is the media that is weakening as the rounds go on.

The polls even in the Republican Party do not correctly speak to the power that Palin brings to the campaign trail—a mix of feverish Reagan myth and pop Fox iconoclasm. She is Annie Oakley; she is Joan of Arc; she is that rare thing in politics, a one-name phenomenon, “Sarah,” like “Ike,” like “the Colonel.” _DailyBeast

While at the edge of Obama fandom, the zombies are beginning to shake their heads and wonder how they were so bamboozled by a fake messiah, fans of Sarah feel a greater affection for her as they read her book, watch her speeches, see their incomes diminish and obligations to government rise, even lose their jobs under the Obama - Pelosi regime, and wonder how an inexperienced clown like Obama who hates the US managed to reach a position of such power to do harm.

As keynote speaker at the [AF: Tea Party]convention, Palin has undoubtedly given the tea party movement a new level of legitimacy and stature. Moreover, her decision to go ahead with the speech even as others pulled out suggested to many that she may be positioning herself as the de facto leader of the tea party movement.

Bolstering that view is Palin’s decision to turn down an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference later this month. The conference is widely considered a must-attend event for conservatives and Republicans lining up a run for office. _CSM

All of this is not to say that Sarah Palin should become the leader of any particular movement, or that she should run for any particular office. The news media and the pseudo-intelligentsia of academia will always oppose her with the viciousness of a rabid poodle. Jealousies from right-wing women whose better days are behind them, and from libertarians who could not assemble a crowd larger than thirty persons if they offered to jump from a high building, will add to the drama of the anti-Sarah melee and free-for-all.

Most people when faced with such vitriol and hatred would have shrunk from the public scene, never to be sighted again in the public eye. For some reason, it is not so easy to knock Sarah Palin out of the fight. She has something beyond looks, beyond winks, beyond luck, and beyond the political hucksterism of Washington DC and the Chicago Way, or the phony glitz of Hollywood and the NYC establishment. She has grit and confidence in herself, and is daily adding a wealth of information about using her unique set of assets to achieve what she wants to achieve.

For Palin to win, she simply needs to survive, grow, and learn how things are done on the larger stage. For Palin's opponents to deny her the chance of winning, they have to score a knockout punch. So far, they have not even come close.