In Defense of Mrs. Palin
My good friend and fellow conservative Paul Mulshine is a columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger who I had the pleasure of befriending during the recent Republican primary in New Jersey. Today he posted an entry to his blog that is critical of Governor Sarah Palin. I responded to his post but wanted to take this opportunity to share my response with you.
She first came to prominence parading her pregnant daughter and the daughter’s soon-to-be-ex-fiance around the national Republican convention.
Recently the lad has been making the rounds of talk shows informing the country that Palin let him share a room with the poor girl when she was a mere 17 years old. Perhaps I’m revealing my age, but when I was a young lad in the tutelage of the nuns, that sort of lapse would have been considered more scandalous than a mere joke on late-night television. Yet the more Palin’s supporters hear of this kind of thing, the greater their ardor for her potential presidential candidacy in 2012.
Most of these people seem to perceive Palin as some sort of a conservative political leader. Nonsense. She has never given any indication that she has an identifiable political philosophy, conservative or liberal. She is not so much a political figure as a sort of national fertility symbol, the Venus of Willendorf reborn as the Venus of Wasilla.
Palin’s supporters argue that there is some sort of liberal media conspiracy against her. Again, nonsense. The liberals in the media love to promote Palin as the face of conservatism, for the obvious reason that this makes conservatives look stupid. But to call her a conservative is to deprive the word of all meaning. She simply flails about, denouncing such key conservative concepts as school vouchers or tort reform when they conflict with her urges.
There is not the slightest evidence she is even aware of the great issues of the moment, such as the debate between traditional conservatives and the so-called “neo” conservatives on the proper uses of the U.S. military. The same goes for monetary policy, legal theory, education reform and so on.
I responded to Paul on his blog at a sufficient length to warrant reposting it here. Now before any of you go crazy and dish out a ration of poop to Mr. Mulshine it’s worth noting that he most certainly IS a bona fide conservative - not a RINO or a Beltway pundit - and while his particular brand of conservatism is markedly stronger than mine (we differ over U.S. involvement in Iraq), we are nevertheless in the same book, so to speak, even if we are not on the same page.
I’m presenting this exchange as an example of how conservatives can debate each other on contentious points without drawing blood.
********************
Paul, I believe you are overly harsh in your critical evaluation of Governor Palin.
The messiness of her family life might just as well be the messiness of anyone’s family life. From Billy Carter to Al Gore III, siblings and children have often disappointed their parents and acted contrary to the expectations of our better traditions, and while we are certainly uplifted and inspired by the Cleaver family model, these days it is the exception and not the rule.
Mrs. Palin and her family may appear to resemble the clan from the old Roseanne sitcom more than they do the Huxtables, but that is less a barometer of her own dignity than it is a metric of the snarky double-standard gleefully employed by the self-proclaimed doyens of taste and haute couture who dominate the Beltway and the mainstream media these days. To hold that as a negative mark against her ability to govern is, in my humble opinion an unreasonable expectation.
True, she is not the distaff answer to Bill Buckley, but then she never claimed to be and, again, I think too many people are expecting more from her than reason would ordinarily allow. That she is not a policy wonk with a mile long trail of doctoral theses and theoretical dissertations in no way diminishes her acumen for executive leadership - it only means that while a lot of people can talk the conservative talk, she’s busy walking it through snowdrifts. Alaska is not Texas or California or New York, but neither is it Delaware; even a frontier wilderness state with a relatively small population has its share of unique governmental challenges that she appears to be handling with grace and aplomb.
And, yes, she is a conservative. Perhaps she is not as orthodox as you or I or any number of those who prefer Burke to Marx, but there is no question in my mind to which of those gentlemen she would instinctively gravitate. I understand she objected to the reduction of the amount of punitive damages awarded to Alaska in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster. On the other hand she leads the only state in the union where lawsuit losers pay the legal fees and expenses of the winners; were she an opponent of tort reform I’d expect her to oppose this system.
While her opposition to school vouchers is certainly regrettable it is nevertheless not whimsical: she argues that it violates the state constitution and she is correct.
I’m sure we can go round and round all day long arguing the minutia and nuances of Gov. Palin’s political worldview and very likely find a great many things with which we disagree just as I’m sure we’d find plenty of things President Reagan did that likewise appear to contradict his core philosophy - the 1986 Amnesty Act is a glaring and regrettable blotch on an otherwise stellar record of conservate leadership.
Mrs. Palin is not a Rhodes scholar, June Cleaver, or Ronald Reagan but neither is she a bimbo, Lillian Carter or John McCain. As such, she offers much more to the Republican Party than she takes away from it - in spite of what her detractors say and we do neither her nor ourselves any justice if we make conservative perfection the enemy of conservative good.
If she were truly a burden and a handicap to the Republican Party, the liberals and statists in the Democrat ranks who otherwise despise her would be urging her on and giving her all of their support. After all, when an enemy tries to commit suicide the first rule is to let him do it and, if possible, hand him the implement of his own self-destruction. It certainly explains the love affair they and the Obama-fellating media have with Colin Powell and the RINOs.
Instead, they attack her with a venomous, unhinged fury - obviously she terrifies them, and if the throngs of the Republican rank and file who flock to every one of her appearances are any indication, the Democrats’ fear are justified.
On most issues you and I are simpatico, my friend, but on this one I must respectfully disagree.
Just what the doctor ordered, Gohawgs. Thanks!
Also just read over your compilation of “other options” at
You’re right. That is a sad list.
Mostly good men in and of themselves, but leaders?
Not a one in the bunch…
You must have missed this video … Note, it’s not the jewels, or the lack thereof, dangling between one’s legs that garners the office of the POTUS respect.
Obama has traveled around the world apologizing for America’s misdeeds. What message do you think that sends to dictators, mullahs and various other leaders around the world? And are they not emboldened by his lack of testicular fortitude? And I’m just talking about issuing statements!! It’s not about respect. It’s about fear. They should fear having the full weight of American might thrown at them should they step out of line. What fear do they have that Obama would strike back or even preemptively strike? They understand all to well that the Prez has no intention of using the military might (for a credible threat) that he has at his disposal. They don’t have to respect the office of the POTUS but they should very well fear it.
I do most heartily concur.
*eats*
No that’s funny..
NOT!
There’s no doubt that anyone (conservative, or otherwise) who cannot tolerate a heated discussion in opposition of their premise, is extremely insecure in said position (not the doggy one).
Is Paul Mulshine perhaps the libertarian-conservative twin of Al Gore and seperated at birth?
If that’s the case, who could possibly be the parents?:
James Carville and Mary Madelene?
No wonder Gore and Mushine are acting like they’re still in diapers…someone got their age wrong.
Oh! Spare me the sanctimony!
At the rate we’re going as a country, we can civilize our discussions all the way to a CIVIL WAR!!
Then what of all these “nice people”?
Huh?
I’d much rather “draw blood” and get a point across, and thereby prevent another Civil War, than be accused of being nice at my obituary reading.
What is with you on eastern coastal water stream!?
May I suggest a water distiller to filter out all the bio-mass in your water?
Hell, I don’t respect him either, but that was not what I was posting about.
I’m sure there was no pun intended here…….
She just stood up to a corporation and a string of political corruption list longer than the trail to Alaska and the only reason it’s still only an appearance to you, is because you haven’t experienced what she has done, personally.
We can only concur that she would do the same in higher office, just as Obama has proven that he reverts back to type.
Your intrepidation of her in higher office is due to watching and getting info. from too much faux journalism.
The day we worry about what non-Christian countries think of us, you might as well - in the words of Charlotte - go ahead and SHOOT US!!
What media!?
You mean the ones that keep on going for and becoming broke, with plunging ratings?
The same ones that Ronald Reagan ignored and talked over?
What’s your point, again?
Oh… The utopian idea of bringing together the nation as one…
Yea..I remember Sept. 12, 2001, like it was yesterday.
I, for one, felt all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing that we are all one in this country, and with the unexperienced Penis Of The U.S. in office, I am thinking that next time I will feel even warmer, so warm in fact, that I fear I might melt and become one with the glass in my window.
Sarah, the person we know as Governor of Alaska, was never about being the first woman of ANYTHING!
That meme is all generated by the media whores and deviants that you are so afraid of and insist that she gain respect of!!
Sarah was taught by two very intelligent parents, ie: that, a woman can do anything that a man can do (excluding of course what sexual deviants might say) and as result she NEVER SAW SEX AS EITHER AN OBSTACLE OR ADVANTAGE!!
Where were you or what were you SMOKING when we learned this?
This fact was repeated so often by Sarah and her parents, that you couldn’t have possibly missed it!!
Unless of course you did.
In which case, go study Sarah and then come back and pontificate about her.
Until then and otherwise, screw you.
N4646W on June 22, 2009 at 12:46 am
Because Sarah is tough as nails.
Mulshine is wrong, but I understand his thinking. He wants perfection. He is where many conservatives were before Reagan’s rise.
Here is where we are at:
1) The MSM will attack ANY prospective danger to their Messiah leading up to 2012. That person is Sarah. She is feared.
2) Sarah is a natural leader. She has charisma, character, and most important, courage. If I were Russia, I’d much rather have Obama as the POTUS. Internally, they don’t want her as POTUS because they probably know more about her than DC does. She is a big pro-defense executive.
3) The last thing I want in a POTUS is a wonk. I want a leader. Reagan was a great leader because his beliefs were by and large bigtent conservatism and he talked to US, not the elite. Brains can be hired. Character, leadership, courage are woefully in short supply in this country. Nobody in the GOP camp even comes close to Sarah in these CRUCIAL characteristics.
4) Sarah is an outsider and because of her fiscal conservatism will at some point merge with the Tea Party Movement and become the point of the spear pointed directly at Washington, DC. This anti-Washington, anti-government, anti-federal government crusade is already gathering steam.
5) Putting Sarah in the Senate would be like sending a baseball player hitting .345 with OBP of .410, and OPS of 1.000+ to AAA. Completely IDIOTIC, not to mention she won’t do it because she knows she is an executive, not a sideliner. She’d chafe at the bit and pace like the tremendous tiger that she is.
6) It doesn’t matter what Mulshine thinks about whether she is conservative. We know she is certainly conservative enough and only Newt Gingrich is certainly conservative. Who can win? Sarah. I love Newt (he signed my Sarah poster at CPAC), but he can’t win the POTUS unless nuclear bombs take out NYC, thereby changing the demographics to allow the GOP to win NY state.
7) Sarah inspires like no other GOP candidate since Reagan. It isn’t even close. With one wink, she could send me with dynamite into a cafe. But she is such a really GOOD person, believing she really is there to serve the people of her state, that she would never ask something like that of any of us.
Contrary to N12345678 or whatever his number is along with Mulshine,…
MEN WILL FOLLOW SARAH TO THE VERY END.
And if you think a GOP candidate will ever win another Presidency without millions of loyal followers willing to work for nothing, give money til it gets them thinking where their next meal is, suffer and feel the fatigue but not waver, you are then living in fantasyland.
This war never ends between the statists and those who love life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Like Mao’s Long March, Sarah is sharpening her weapons, unfurling her banner, forming her officers, and keeping in touch with the grassroots. Her crusade is coming.
And if you laugh at the idea of a crusade, then you’ve lost already. Obama was a statist crusade. It takes another crusade of the opposite force to take him down.
Sarah is that hope for millions.
By the way, today is the anniversary of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the blitzkrieg attack on the Soviet Union. Over estimating his nation’s ability to knock out Russia, Hitler threw his armies into the soon to be meatgrinder of the Eastern Front.
Just like Obama is overextending his ambitions with government healthcare, capandtrade, stimulus, ACORN, IG firing’s, weakness to foreign leaders, cowardice in the face of Iranian protests.
His poll numbers are starting to erode, like thick and heavy snowflakes in December on the cheeks of the Wehrmacht soldiers, gently reminding them that they had no winter uniforms.
Like the Russian bear awakening, and growing, Mommabear is growing too. She is done licking her wounds. She sprung forth with cubs in tow, and after feeding for a summer will be in fighting shape again.
Well done Sapwolf, wow, those are my feelings and sentiments EXACTLY!!!!
Like wise idiot!
You all missed the point. This was not a personal attack on Palin or any of you.
The problem is you made no point at all.
We, or nobody else is electing Sarah as a woman, for the reason of her being a woman. That is ALL MSM media driven!!
Your problem in not seeing this point, is that you pay to much regard and respect to the MSM and non-Christian nations.
We on the other hand don’t GIVE A SHIT about what the MSM and non-Christian nations think!!
You do.
That’s the difference here, and that is the reason why we are butting heads.
You could make your claim of: Hillary Clinton, as she is a liberal Democrat who got into her position because of her status as a woman, through being a Democrat, as her party plays identity politics.
But, that same party will then turn against her in favor of another identity favorite, as was the case in Hillary vs. Obama.
You’re entitled to your opinion and we welcome head-butting debates, but just don’t assume that at the end of the day, your opinion is going to carry any weight, or, effect policy and/or change opinions, and/or alter facts.
The facts are thusly:
We in the conservative Republican party, however - at least those of us who conserve the founding principles - don’t do such things, therefore, ALL of your accusations of Palin and/or the election of the same are patently and blatantly false.
Sarah Palin (that’s spelled S.A.R.A.H. P.A.L.I.N.) got to where she is, through personal responsibility and initiative, which is the founding principles at work.
Hillary Clinton got to where she is by playing identity politics in her Democrat party.
If you still don’t get it, why don’t you listen to this, one really smart dude!?
Oh but it was, N. It very much was. You have blatantly stated that because Palin is a woman, and because our enemies will not respect a woman leader, that she is unfit for the position and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.
I for one take that as a very personal insult. And by the looks of the size of their rants I’d say Charlotte and MD do as well.
If our enemies will not respect our leader, then we do what disrespected leaders in the past have done. We MAKE them respect us… or at least fear us and be unwilling to rile our aggression. Safety and peace through superior firepower. It worked for the noodle-spined Dubya, regardless of his other failings; I for one am fairly confident Sarah’cuda can pull it off with one hand tied behind her back.
*eats*
I am floored. There is hope for the youth of the nation after all.
The comments as expected are moronic. “This kid’s never gonna get laid” Yes, as if that is the be-all and end-all of one’s worth in life…
*eats*
Yep, poor Hillary played the “I’m a woman” game all her life and then when it was all on the line, she found out much to her chagrin, that the black thing trumps the lady thing.
Now she realizes she’s really nobody. Never even had an identity of her own. She’s an administrative lackey who got her position by selling what was left of her empty soul.
I almost feel pity….almost.
Hillary doesn’t have an empty soul, she has a dark, entitled, troubled, sinister soul and has her entire adult life…
I agree with the further description of Bill Clinton’s wife…
You were wowed by that?!
Check out a Google search result for: Jonathan Krohn
You can start salivating now.
All I have to say, further, at this point is that except for Manly’s comment posted at Mulshine’s blog, pretty much ALL of the remainder commenters that he attracted with this hack write-up piece and hit-job on Palin, are a bunch of doofusses, and as such, I would have been loathe to even post over there.
Sorry, Manly, but the fact is, with this Mulshine piece you are being far too generous in your criticism, thereof.
Everything that he accuses Palin of being and everything he accuses his commenters of being, he in fact is himself.
Just one instance is where he is asking the conservatives to backup with facts, their “assertion” that Palin is a conservative (and then chimes in that there isn’t any facts).
Well, I have some news for Mulshine: Sarah actually does stuff like governing and therefore has no time to write.
In my next post check out the how many people had to write about her because she’s too busy governing and simply doesn’t have time to write BOOKS and articles, unlike Mulshine, who merely writes about the stuff that Sarah does.
But first, before we get into the multitudes of books that have been written about Sarah (because she doesn’t have the time to write STUFF, because she is busy doing STUFF), let’s see who Mulshine thinks is a conservative, shall we?
Any guesses?
Hmmmmmm…….. Bob Barr?
Well he’s a libertarian
conservativeto be exact, obviously, because he was the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election.Being a part of the ACLU sure doesn’t hurt his Libertarianism:
Here’s a tasty one:
Have you ever been to a Libertarian gathering? I have, and it’s sickening to imagine where these misfits could have possibly come from, in fact, they sound just like the remainder of the commenters I mentioned above, in that, they can’t even put a intelligent cohesive sentence together.
Now, if you check the Bob Barr profile on Wikipedia, you will see how I picked and chose certain words and sentences to paint him a certain color, don’t you?
Right.
But Paul Mulshine wouldn’t do such a thing of anybody now, would he?
You would be wrong.
In fact, he relies on what we call: “Hearsay” (Does that remind you of something, like repeating what the young “lad” said instead of what Sarah said?)
Let’s just title this piece: Mr. Mulshine’s Use of a Misleading Hear-say Quote Explains Well the Demise of his Beloved Newspaper:
So you say, well MD, what are you up to and what is all this about?
Well let me tell you what: my instincts, that’s what.
When I saw the comments over at Mulshine’s Palin hit piece (let’s just call a spade a spade) my mind flipped back to a gathering of Libertarians that I’ve attended previously, coupled with Charlotte’s bullshit detector screeching into high gear in the first comment at this post.
So, when I came home I did a very simple Google search: “Paul Mulshine”.
And as they say, the rest is history.
Here’s the bottom of the story on Paul Mulshine, Charlotte.
I hope you like it.
Paul Mulshine is a traditional intellectual journalist/writer who thinks too highly of himself and is threatened not only by politicians who ACTUALLY get stuff done like *Sarah Palin, but also **citizen journalism.
And, with his hit piece on Palin, it is quite likely that he is also a misogynist.
No.
Scratch all that!
He’s merely hired to be an opinion columnist for the Newark Star-Ledger.
An opinion columnist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (see second link below - To wit)
*Sarah Palin, who by the way, is a fellow Libertarian at heart, but was hampered by John McCain,
**To wit (emphasis mine):
And with that model quote, do we need to go any further on the bottom of Paul Mulshine?
Still not convinced?
Then do a search for: “why sarah palin hurt john mccains presidency bid” at the Star Ledger and pick out the ones that Mulshine wrote.
Which brings me to a two word conclusion on Paul Mulshine: Incoherent Opinionist .
OK.
Now for the books that have been written about Sarah Palin and her accomplishments (which she didn’t have the time to write, because she was so busy doing those accomplishments)….
First of all, how many books do you guess are written about her?
3, 5, 8, 10 or 12?
Well your guesses were all wrong!
At this time there are thirteen (13) all total.
Here goes the list:
1.Sarah Takes On big Oil.
2. Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down.
3. Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader.
4. Sarah Palin The Real Deal .
5. Sarah Palin, Faith Family Country.
6. Trailblazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin.
7. Terminatrix: The Sarah Palin Chronicles.
8. Sarah Palin - The Alaskan Barracuda.
9. Sarah.
10. God, Prayer, And Sarah Palin: Sarah Palin And The Power Of Prayer: The Power Of Prayer And Sarah Palin.
11. What Does Sarah Palin Believe?
12. Sarah Palin: Poised to Become America’s First Female President
And last but not least #13: Sarah Palin: The Rise of a Political Star .
Now a question for you all: Do you think that Paul Mulshine has even read ONE (1) book about her to learn what she has done and believes in?
THE ANSWER OF COURSE IS: NO!
Because you see, an opinionist cannot be bothered to read up on facts, because they might, just might, change his/her opinion.
Thanks for all your research, Mad Dog.
Not surprising in the least…
I hope I never meet this guy in person.
My thoughts exactly.
He better be wearing a mask that resembles Mother Teresa.