The Truth About Sara Palin

A lie that has been told so often that it has become a conventional truth, though not irredeemable (thank you Powell and Parker), is that Governor Palin was the ice on John McCain’s quest for the White House. Balderdash! In order to understand what went wrong for the republicans in the 2008 presidential election, only a  fool rushes into accepting the media tag-line that Sara Palin was a divisive figure who split the party.It was Sara Palin who lit the fire for the base.

It could and must be argued that in order to win the presidency the Republican Party had to court and win moderates, but if this were the only path to victory, than McCain was there for them front and center…top of the ticket, and to no avail, for he lost them handedly. In fact, if there were ever a moderate’s moderate, and simultaneously a thorn in the side of the conservatives, which for better or for worse is the base of the Republican Party, it was John McCain. The base, which was less than enthralled at best with McCain, and hostile at worst, was given a taste of the future with Sara Palin; a dash of spice to compliment the flavorless John McCain. To the base, often overlooked these days by republicans, it is conservative principles matter.

In 2008, well after Obamamania set in, American Thinker released the findings of a survey done by Battleground Poll that found nearly sixty percent of Americans consider themselves conservative*. While the website www.commondreams.com finds the reverse to be the case, let us safely assume that the country is evenly split.

What proof there is of Sara Palin’s appeal is evidenced by very demonstrable figures.

In Delaware, Joe Biden, drew a crowd of an estimated 800 supporters, a less than respectable number for the bottom of any presidential ticket. John McCain, on a bright and sunny Thursday afternoon, a mere four days before a truly historic election, in republican friendly Mentor, Ohio, drew a generously estimated crowd of 4,000 supporters (I was there). That same afternoon, just south in Cincinnati, Sara Plain spoke before an estimated crowd of 20, 000.

So if we are to believe the media’s hype about a divisive Sara Palin, we have to dismiss the fact that one party’s V.P. nominee could not draw 1,000 supporters in his own state. On the other side of the aisle, we have to believe that a party’s number one falls 15,000 supporters short of equaling his number two at two separate rallies on the very same day.

Simply put…John McCain’s problem in the past election was not that he’d chosen Sara Palin as his running mate, but that he was at the top of the ticket to begin with.

What was true of the media’s portrayal of Sara Palin and was truly a disadvantage, was that she was ill prepared to be president on day one. But, though true, in the past it has not largely mattered who the vice presidential pick was. Not because it should not matter, but simply because it has not mattered. We (the general public) were force fed a healthy diet of McCain’s frailty and a side dish of Palin’s inexperience. Some, who may have never considered this, were reminded of it daily.

The truth is that no one was voting for Sara Palin as president. She was and forever will be the 2008 vice presidential nominee; nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps not knowingly, those who showed her unconditional and even tepid support recognized the unlikelihood of McCain falling ill or, God forbid, dying in office. What I, and I hope my conservative friends believed is that given four years of inside-Washington experience would have crafted for us a truly conservative nominee in 2012.

Sara Palin is green. But…Sara Palin is bright. Sara Palin is formidable. Sara Palin is liked and respected by many and will rise to the top of the Republican Party whether they like her or not. She has four years to get on top of world affairs and having watched her perform in the Vice Presidential debate with but four weeks of international tutoring and hold her own against the presumed foreign affairs guru Biden, I think four years will do just fine. Having lost in November, She can now go back to Alaska to fulfill her obligations to those who elected her. Sara Palin has got to stay humble and she has to remain visible.

Perhaps We Need to Rethink Gay Marriage

Generally I am opposed to gay marriage. I suppose I believe in what ultimately can be understood as a natural order to things. Water finds the lowest spot. If a ball is thrown in the air it will fall to the ground. A man and a woman will have children if they persist in an intimate relationship, which creates a situation that is best resolved by the presence of both parents.

That is of course the practical side of my thinking. But we as a society evolve. Our cultural norms are guided through experience and often additionally for expedience.

My argument is not that same-sex marriage is an ideal partnership. It clearly is not. Because of the natural absence of the ability to procreate, the necessity to bond one man to another is far less pressing. A mere mutual understanding of faithfulness should suffice in a relationship that’s bond is solely love of one another.

But, we as conservatives have got to understand that there are consequences to actions. Our “action” to in the very least limit abortions, will if seen through, increase the number of unwanted pregnancies that as a matter of course will increase the number of unwanted children. That being an undeniable result of either the limitation of, or ideally, the elimination of abortion, we need to increase the number of two parent households in want of the unwanted. There are many couples willing to adopt, and as the system exists, there are difficulties in doing so not the least of which being cost and procedure. This is not to say that loosening standards is a first option. But allowing gays to commit to one another for life, will add to the stabilization of these same-sex unions. And while we may find in our hearts reservations regarding gay adoption, we should not prevent it. Allowing same-sex marriage will necessarily create far more two parent households.

Although blatantly anecdotal, it should be suffice to say that many man/woman relationships would crumble without the legal tangles of divorce which marriage creates. It is better for society to unite two people in a common interest. Establishing roots in a community for the sake of unity is beneficial for all. But more so than communal property, the benefit for children to be grounded by two loving individuals who would otherwise be shifting in and out of a system is incalculable. And while we know that gays are already adopting, the solidity of a stable partnership is essential, even if that partnership is less conventional.

We have to be willing as a conservative community to allow for some concessions when the benefit of those concessions out way the community perils of obstruction. If we oppose abortion, we should be willing to adopt. If we are not all willing to adopt, we should all be willing to create as many stable environments for those souls we save.

Wild Assumptions Become Conventional Wisdom (How the Media Creates Reality)

We are all familiar with the 24 hour news cycle. It is an inundation of information most of which we have know way of verifying. Sometimes, when a news story breaks, and it is on a topic that you yourself are familiar with, you might find yourself shouting at the radio or television in a futile attempt to add your two cents, knowing full well that the reporter had just perpetrated an act of all-too-common journalistic malpractice.

It is on all other news outside of our experiences that we rely on news and information programs to fill in our blanks. We expect them to be truthful above and beyond any other expectations. It has, it does seem to me, in that truth department where the media has let us down.

This Thanksgiving, while amongst my Family-in-Laws, I realized that the media bias which has far too often been downplayed by conservative authors and commentators has in fact infected the general population. I was surprised at what these otherwise educated and successful people believed they knew and more disappointingly what they did not know they didn’t know.

There were many conversations throughout the day that were politically charged. I avoided most because to open my mouth amid the total democrat majority would have been for me to reenact Tony Montana going down to the authorities. But what I heard was jaw dropping.

At the table, as the twenty or so of us dined on enough food to feed a hundred, the man of the house, speaking to a retired auto worker said that “…we’re all feeling this economy.”

I on the rare occasion this day spoke up.

“How so?”

He went on with a list that could have been compiled by Keith Olberman on any given day.

He told me how “We’re in a depression.” And so on.

So I plainly went forward telling him how during a depression there are soup lines. You would not see lines for the new ipod or Wii if we were truly in a depression. I told him how every single person at the table had a job and that as far as we were all concerned they were quite secure.

Now before you go on to think that this was some feast at Pemberly with Mr. Darcy; at the table was a retired auto worker and his wife who still works for one of the Big 3 and expressed to me that her job was secure. There was a therapist, a machinist, a legal clerk, a janitor, a contractor, a wedding planner, and an entire list of us blue-collar slugs, all of us admitting that we felt a sense of job security.

And so, while the economy could most definitely be better, why is it that so many of us, who are not in danger of our homes being foreclosed, who get up and are still going to work everyday, who are a bit overweight, are so concerned about the economy? Because a lie repeated enough…

I am not posting here to convince anyone that they will not face a time or two a financial crisis. What I am suggesting is that perception is reality, and it is time to realize that the media bias that creates reality is in control (along with leftists who need a crisis to implement there plans). Most people will fall back on reason. It is that innate gift of human nature that protects us from making rash decisions. But we can fall prey to propaganda. We have been victims of it here on the right. We believed in fiscal conservatism and were slapped in the face by the reality of big spending republicans. The left believes that the state will deliver them. If we all buy into the need for huge government intervention because we are convinced beyond reason that the financial crisis is too big for private market corrections, than we had all better duck under that umbrella of the federal government.

We Have to Be Consistent!

If you can go back over the last seven years to recall the anger you felt at various times towards the Left for going after Bush regardless of his not having merited such scrutiny over such things as the US attorneys firings or the Valerie Plame “leak”. If you can for a moment, remember that pit-bull defense you postured during the days, still ongoing in some circles, when the mantra on the Left was “Bush lied. People died.” Then you must draw upon the animosity you have stored from the behaviors you’d found so abhorrent among the Left and use them as the fuel needed to remind yourself that opposition for the sake of opposition is not opposition but emotional vitriol.

You must remind yourself how you viewed those people and temper your emotions.

We have looked upon those people for the last seven years as mere malcontents.

We heard the few pathetic things they had to say and then dismissed everything they said entirely. They were not to be taken seriously.

But, if you want to come off as informed, then you must avoid at all costs, opposing simply to oppose.

I have heard since November 5^th a few things conservatives have had to say about Obama. I have not been impressed.

For Sean Hannity, this is an “Obama” recession. I have to laugh.

While I’m sure there is some uncertainty in the market due to a lack of information regarding any specific Obama plan…let us not be so callow as to pretend that the market was not in turmoil before the election. The very intangible nature of the market system causes great uncertainty. Ask yourself where is the money right now that you deposited in the bank last Friday. While currently you may go in at any time to withdraw it, the actual money, which you most likely never held in your hand to begin with, is now in the ether of the market system.

It is this lack of knowledge on a global scale as to where the money is that is leading to most of the uncertainty.

Rush Limbaugh, who I greatly admire, has harped upon the Obama nomination of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State. Why? Did we expect him to nominate a neo-con? While Rush’s analysis is often uncanny, it feels very much like opposition for the sake of opposition.

Let us stick to the real issues, and we can not begin to know what those are until President Obama puts his signature on that first piece of paper on his desk in the Oval Office.