Sarah Palin’s Political Relativism
For the most part, I try to avoid talking about Sister Sarah in this blog. For one, it always feels like I am either preaching to the choir or my words are falling on deaf ears. The real problem is finding a serious way to respond to her incoherent ramblings without bringing myself down to her level of discourse and intellect. This past week, however, found her in the news nearly every day and I feel compelled to comment.
It began with a facebook post accusing Rahm Emanuel of insensitivity for privately calling some Democrats “fucking retards”. The week ended with her defending and excusing Rush Limbaugh’s multiple use of the same pejorative on his radio program. In between trumpeting these two inconsistent positions, she appeared at the Tea Party convention and gave a speech that was devoid of policy ideas yet filled with even more hypocrisies. She condemned the fact that the Christmas Day bomber was read his Miranda rights despite the fact that to not do so would be a violation of our Constitution. She also ignored the fact that the Bush administration applied the same standards to the shoe bomber, Richard Reid in 2001. She claimed that conservative candidates had won three big races in a row but conveniently forgot about the Democrats winning the NY 23rd house seat. This, by the way, was the only race in which she played a significant role. She even took a shot at the President by calling him just a “charismatic guy with a teleprompter”. It was only revealed later that she needed to write crib notes on her own hand just to remember key conservative principles like “energy” and “tax cuts”. If you need secret notes to remember your own core talking points then you have no right to criticize anybody else for using a teleprompter.
These examples are just a few of the many mistakes and inconsistencies that we heard in the speech on Saturday. While they may seem somewhat insignificant by themselves, when you place them in context with her entire political history they form a pattern of willful hypocrisy that the American public should find insulting. From the very beginning of her national exposure, the challenge was to mold her spotty and sparse record into a resume consistent with John McCain’s message of national security experience and earmark reform. First they tried to sell us on the idea that she had more “executive” experience than Obama because of her term as mayor of Wasilla and her one year in the Alaska Governor’s mansion. Then they assured us that being the governor of a state that borders Russia made her a foreign policy expert. Finally, they touted the famous “bridge to nowhere” fiasco as proof of her commitment to fiscal responsibility and earmark reform. However, they conveniently forgot that she was for the bridge project when she was running for Governor and only canceled the project once it was clear that Congress was not going to authorize any more funds.
After Palin and McCain lost the election, she next gained national media attention by unexpectedly resigning the Governorship. During her rambling announcement she asserted that continuing to serve as Governor of Alaska would be the “quitter’s way out”. She also blamed the intrusive media for forcing her into this decision and then invited the very same media to meet her for interviews during her family fishing trip. Her intended message was to show the world once again how “mavricky” she was. The real message was that she was only out for herself and had no real sense of responsibility.
Again, these are just a few highlights from the last 18 months. You could throw in the David Letterman episode, the troopergate scandal and the $150,000 worth of designer clothes and still just scratch the surface. This list doesn’t even take into account any of the propaganda that was ghost written for her in her book.
Any other politician with the same troubled track record with the truth would have lost all public support by now. Republicans, however, have a habit of forgiveness and turning political losers into conservative heroes. As long as they swear allegiance to the primary principles of God, guns and taxes, they will get all of the support they need. Throw in Sarah Palin’s unabashed willingness to publicly attack all Democrats at any time for any reason and she will continue to be a conservative superstar. Conservative hero worship, however, will only get you so far. The longer she occupies the attention of the national media, the more the political middle of this country will be exposed to her hypocrisy. She may have dazzled the Tea Party convention in Nashville and she may even win the Republican nomination for President but a wink and a smile and an incoherent string of worn out conservative sound bites will never win her the ultimate prize.
Thank you for posting the truth about Sarah Palin. I have been blogging about this person and the conservative Republican’s attack on the true meaning of Government by The People for The People. I will first make an additional comment about Sarah Palin, the Conservatives have failed to mention she walked away from her duties a Govenor, to go rogue? Didn’t she mean “going for the money” she left a post that she took a solom oath of office for, to do book signings all over the world and making big bucks on the speaking tour. By the way the State of Alaska’s oath of office, ends with so help me God. She swore to that oath, with God as her witness, the double standard of conservative values at it’s best. As for the Tea Party group that paid over a $100,000 for Sarah Palin to speak about fiscal responsibility, and conservative values. They compromised their own values with that kind of spending, when they could have gotten any Conservative Republican to do it for free. They could have gotten Sean Hannity for free and Fox News could have covered it and put file footage from the Super Bowl, showing the massive crowds at the rally.