SQUEALING LIKE STUCK PIGS...
Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 10:21AM 
I've been trawling through the UK and Irish Sunday press this morning and am struck by how even in the more allegedly "conservative" newspapers such as The Times and The Mail, Sarah Palin is mocked and ridiculed by our elite journalists. As I have said here before they just DO NOT get the appeal of Palin!
I laughed at the headline in the Irish Sunday Tribune..."She can cut, kill, dig and drill...but can she save the Republican Party". You see BECAUSE she can cut, kill dig and drill there is every good chance she will both save and reform the Republican Party. All the talking point smears concerning her family are spewed out with media delight here and the consensus is that McCain has got it totally wrong. All the things the liberal media here despise about Palin are what make her such a great choice in America.
You see this is why I loath the British and Irish media. They are so effete, so primly high-minded and multiculturally-refined that they have no political instinct whatsoever. Palin is an inspirational choice and the polls are showing it. My goodness she shows a HIGHER approval rating than even the Chosen One (After the media deification process he has been granted!) so she must be doing something right in her first week or so in the spotlight.
Yes there are 60 days to go and a lot can happen. I'm hoping it will - and that she and McCain will connect to that rich vein of common sense that runs through the American people - left and right - and see her become the next V-P. Because if we have a Vice President Palin in 2008, anyone care to bet that President Palin in 2012 looks more and more likely? Best of all - it will horrify the intellectual and moral pygmies this side of the Atlantic ocean. Roll on Hurrican Sarah, the more you speak out the more our media filth will hate you and that sure gets you my vote.
View Printer Friendly Version
Reader Comments (37)
I don't know, David.
I still think she'll make a balls of it somewhere. That's not me, as a liberal, hoping she will (to be honest, I hope she doesn't) but I just have a feeling she'll make a mess of things.
We'll see.
One British left winger who realises how damaging and counter productive the Palin hate fest is, is Nick Cohen:
"Democrats had only to maintain their composure and the White House would be theirs. During the 1997 British general election, the late Lord Jenkins said that Tony Blair was like a man walking down a shiny corridor carrying a precious vase. He was the favourite and held his fate in his hands. If he could just reach the end of the hall without a slip, a Labour victory was assured. The same could have been said of the American Democrats last week. But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/uselections2008.republicans2008
I think those who see themselves as sophisticated, the metropolitan elite, just do not get the appeal of Sarah Palin. She embodies everything that Conservative values-voters are looking for - no nuances or dissing of traditional principles. I only wish there was someone or a party over here who simply and unapologetically stood up for true Conservative values.
Terry -
I watched the speeches by Giuliani, Palin and McCain, often with the Stars & Stripes as a backdrop, in front of an audience decked in red, white and blue, talking of their country with all of those patriotic statements.
And I couldn't help thinking that not a single Tory politician would dare display the same love of their country, such is the hollowed out have we been by the treasonous Left. But then they cannot do so and get away with it, since the Tory Party has a 40-year record of favouring foreign rule in Britain.
Simply, any Tory who believes that the British people have the right to govern themselves, make their own laws and do what is best for themselves, is in the wrong party. When you hold that the British people are rightly ruled by foreigners, what else have you got?
Listen to the content of the party speeches starting here soon. There won't be a word on foreign policy, Russia, Georgia, NATO and all the rest of it, or on energy (now incredibly crucial) or on immigration.
They won't mention these things because our Parliament has handed to foreigners our right to govern ourselves. Policy in all these areas is decided abroad and faxed here.
The unions can whine all they like about Brown ruling out help for those who can;t pay their heating bills, but Brown can't do a thing - EU directives don;t allow it.
Now whether you think the state should or should not help Britons is irrelevent - the matter is that the British government is barred from helping your shivering grandmother because foreigners say so.
People with the same raw guts, fortitude and determinination as Ms Palin currently displays kicked Brit arse 200+ years ago. So she can't be all that bad.
She embodies everything that Conservative values-voters are looking for - no nuances or dissing of traditional principles
Huh? You must be talking about a different Sarah Palin. The one we saw here endorsed pro choice values and has knocked up teen daughter we must not pass comment on. All moral conundrums conservative abhor. (Though from her speech you would think her only skillset for the job was that family we, um, must not pass comment on..)
Indeed Eddie. Dallying lightly with Alaskan seperatists as she does.
But the media believe that the US election is about them - and it's not as we are now seeing. I really can't wait to read the tantrums thrown by the MSM when Mccain/Palin win and compare it to what the weight of real opinion is on the net. It's exactly this contrast that the MSM fails to understand.
Palin is loved because she is in fact so normal. She is one of us - paying bills ,working, raising a family, dealing with family problems. She makes Biden and Obama look like the elitist in crowd they are.
I always knew that meme - the so-called "historic" moment of a "woman in the White House," or a "black man in the White House" - applied only to liberal women or black men -- that identity politics is simply a tool used to sway a nation to promote liberalism - a cynical ploy used to get a liberal elected.
And the media here - and the late night comedians - are now so sexists that it is appaling. Commenting, and joking about, Palin's daughters "gash" (hockey term as well as female term) as well as "lying" about pregnancy, or telling Palin how to be a good mother. It's really appalling.
Patty
Who made the "gash" comment?
Well aside from the commentary on her family (which I think she will have to ride out as open season as she used them to her advantage herself) I agree Patty. The way people went on about Hillary's c*** and actually came up with badges with that on it was truly shocking. Palin's own supporters waved placards about her 'hottness', the mindless zombies. So it is bound to quite quickly get turned on its head to become insulting.
Alison, why are Palin's supporters "mindless zombies"?
Are followers of Hillary or Obama classiffed as such?
Because Alison doesn't agree with them.
Phantom: Late Night with Conan
Alison: I think feminism in 2008 is not about choice for all women, rather following the liberal party line for all women.
Conan
Never thought that he was ready for prime time, and there is your proof
Patty: Not sure what that has to do with mindless zombies who fixate on women's hotness, c**** or g***** in politics. I think it's odd how people feel sexism is the preserve of right or left or not likely to emerge in either political camp. The left is just as capable of being sexist as the right and vice versa and always will be.
Re your point. I don't at all. Since noone forces me down any route, left or right, I don't see how what you say is possible.
Patty: For example. It was a conservative woman who asked senator mcCain "how do we beat the bitch" re Hillary. Here in the UK the Left mounted the Ditch the Bitch campaign against Thatcher. And Republican operative Roger Stone created a 527 group, C.U.N.T. to "educate the public on what Hillary Clinton Really Is."
Available on the Internet is a Hillary toilet brush (the sales pitch: "You can have Hillary Clinton as your 'First Cleaning Lady.'")
Clinton's wardrobe, figure, hairdo - even her laugh - have generated detailed and often unflattering commentary.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh said of her: "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?"
How is that different to Conan etc please?
Patty posted:
I think feminism in 2008 is not about choice for all women...
So that's why she wants to make abortion illegal? Because she's a feminist?
Alison
I think you are wasting your time with some of the Palin supporters here. Sexism is only wrong to them when it is directed by lefties at a Rebublican woman. When the Right used it against Hillary it was either completely fine and justified or just a 'harmless joke' that only the humourless harpies would whinge about.
Colm
Well said. Double standards are in their DNA.
Can you imagine how Rightworld would have reacted if one of Obama's daughters was having a shotgun wedding?
I think Peter that the would rightly question it, Obama's daughters being like 10.
Yep we right wing hypocrites are very much against 10 year olds getting married.
Surely only if it's a gay marraige Ross ;)
Alison: I'm referring specifically to NOW (National Organization of Women) and Gloria Steinem, and other self-professed "leaders" of the woman's movement. They have come out and made public statements of the most sexist nature about Palin - these organizations profess to represent all women, and they don't.
They represent women who are Liberals. And they should just come out and admit it:"No women with Conservative views allowed."
Identity politics is a tactic normally used by liberals, by the Democrats - NOT the Conservatives - to win elections.
Now, this does not mean that there are not racist sexist individuals who are also Conservative. Rush's comment regarding Hillary's looks is a personal, and sexist comment. (although he does have a point given the youth obsession of our culture) But I'm addressing the tactic used to win elections, the tactic of citing "the historic moment of a woman president" , and the fact that the tactic is based on a lie.
Self-identified feminists - political activists, like NOW - are not looking out for the freedoms and choices of all women. They are looking out for the freedoms and choices of liberal women.
Patty
Sorry to to interject.
"Self-identified feminists - political activists, like NOW - are not looking out for the freedoms and choices of all women"
Neither is Sarah Palin.
Why would feminists endorse a woman who is not in favour of women being given choices?
Patty
When Palin was chosen you did say it was an example of McCain falling too for the identity politics line.
I do agree with you though about the line taken by NOW and feminists in general. It is true that they only want women to have the freedom to be succesful so long as they are on the left.
Colm -
Sexism is only wrong to them when it is directed by lefties at a Rebublican woman.
Sexism isn't necessarily wrong, and sexists like me know it. Our juvenile glee is at the spectacle of the 'anti-sexist' warriors of the Left suddenly training their guns on Palin in a quite splendid display of hypocrisy. I hope they keep it up.
Chris: "Neither is Sarah Palin." No kidding! (sarc.) she's not a "feminist." COnservatives don't run on identity politics - normally.
Colm: Yes, you're correct. Originally I thought McCain was making a cynical play for Hillary's female voters - playing identity politics, which I abhor. But he's not -- he's making a play for "blue collar Republicans" - the same voters that Biden is after - this includes Michigan (a state in play ) as well as a play for all the other voters who crave "change" - He interprets "change" as an end to Washington politics and a shaking up of the do-nothing elected officials we have serving our country.
Palin in her short time as GOvernor of Alaska has cleaned up Alaskan politics, severed the tie between big oil and the govt. elected officials by intorducing competition and basically represents the "straight talk" that McCain represents.
Brilliant really....it makes Obama/BIden look like yesterday's news.
I wonder why Palin's nick-name is "the baracuda"?
Could it be because she's a decent, compassionate, human-being or perhaps its because she thinks it's fine to laugh on-air at a political (GOP) rival who had cancer and was being described by the patriotic right-wing schock-jock as a "cancer witch"?
Alison: Here's Conan's crude joke about a 17 year old girl (it was a pun on "protecting the crease" not gash ..I don't know much about hockey)
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=168923
Patty
I note that you choose to ignore Palin's aim to make abortion illegal in the USA.
Never mind her support for creationism being taught in schools as if it was a viable alternative to Darwin.
Never mind her dalliance with Alaskan secession from the union.
Even some conservatives are questioning the wisdom of the Palin choice:
I am not denying that Sarah Palin may have great skills. She may well. I am insisting that neither you, nor I, nor John McCain has any valid reason to believe that she does. This is not an argument about the attributes she lacks. It's an argument about the information we lack. I am pleading with my fellow conservatives: Please demand more and better knowledge before you commit yourselves to a political leader. That's all.
David Frum
Peter, all three of those have been debunked as untrue.
If you're going to play the same game you keep loudly deploring, at least try to keep up with the latest smears against Palin.
Daphne
Please link to the debunkings so we can all see.
Peter,
In fairness she shouldn't have to. It's up to those making the claims to support them.
But, I will say that some of the initial information about her views doesn't seem to be right.
She's painted as anti contraception eduction - seems to be false.
Creationist - yes, but has done nothing to promote it.
Secession - not a member of that party, but her husband was a member (cue all the conservatives who leapt on Michelle Obama for not being proud of her country) and she did associate with them.
This is also an interesting data point, from a Wasilla resident who knew her back then:
CLAIM VS FACT
o "Hockey mom": true for a few years
o "PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
p "NRA supporter": absolutely true
o social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).
o pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.
o "Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.
o "Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska.
No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.
o political maverick: not at all
o gutsy: absolutely!
o open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.
o has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
o "a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.
o fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
o pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.
o pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents.
o pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.
o pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.
The whole thing is worth a read: http://www.snopes.com/politics/info/kilkenny.asp
Palin is causing the Democratic Party Power Structure sleepless nights, and for that alone I thank her.
Obama and Biden are going to have to do better if they want to win. I think they believed their own hype and thought they would waltz in. If Obama doesn't start tacking towards the center, not just playing both sides, he is going to be returning to Illinois.
Patty, Palin claims and has stated her stake in feminism and plays the gender card. She also leans on choices she would deny others. I cannot see why women for women's full choices with half a braincell, would in any way endorse her.
I'm enjoying the Republican side stepping and tip toeing around the issues they hold up as major party principlea or sticks to beat the Dems with. For that alone I thank her.