Impaling Sarah Palin

SARAH Palin's address at the Republican National Convention marked a return of the blazing politics of polarisation.

SARAH Palin's address at the Republican National Convention marked a return of the blazing politics of polarisation. And, boy, did the Left have it coming to them.

The skewering of Palin ever since her nomination as Republican vice-presidental candidate less than a week ago revives Richard Nixon’s 1970s political agenda, built around a polarisation of two Americas – the quiet majority versus the noisy elites. Nixon sided with middle America, mercilessly exploiting elite liberal values as out of synch with middle America. John McCain’s choice of Palin says he is doing the same. And the left-liberal Americans have played straight into McCain’s hand, this time whipping up an even more toxic mix of gender and class politics, opening up a divide for McCain to exploit. Palin is the perfect proxy for the disdain metropolitan elites harbour towards middle America. It’s now at the point where the more they attack her, the more they poke fun at provincial Americans.

There is nothing more comical or constant than the apoplectic Left when caught off guard. Within hours of Sarah Palin’s nomination as McCain’s running mate, the left wing intelligentsia sharpened their nails. Anger, disbelief, panic and pure snobbery fuelled their scorn for Palin. Anger and disbelief that McCain surprised them with an unheard of woman from Alaska. Panic that this 44-year-old woman was stealing Barack Obama’s limelight, dramatically transforming the political dynamics so close to the November presidential election. And snobbish elitism that a self-declared “hockey mom” with five children should dare aspire to high office, and even worse, that she could possibly speak to Americans. Quelle horreur.

Reactions came swift and fast. First, rumours that her baby was really her daughter’s baby. All untrue. The baby is hers. So then the media delighted in reporting qualms that perhaps Governor Palin should have been a little more careful about her birth control, given the chances of a “mother of her age” giving birth to a Down Syndrome baby. Then, when we learned that her 17 year old daughter was pregnant, it was a sign that the Palin’s parenting had gone awry.

Women in the media asked whether Sarah “could have made a moral difference, had she been available for her daughter?” “Palin’s desire to ‘shatter the glass ceiling’ is legitimising the societal phenomenon of the career-centric absentee mother…What message was sent to the mothers of America as Sarah Palin took the vice-presidential spotlight while her children watched from the shadows?” harangued Olivia St John.

The left-liberal New York Times morphed into a 1950s home journal, alluding to those who “wonder if Palin should have stayed out of politics in order to raise her family”. They reported about worried women who thought that Palin’s candidacy would hurt the careers of other working women. Her “campaign stumbles...could hold consequences for other working women,” moaned the NYT.

Palin was always going to upset the feminist sisterhood and the metropolitan sophisticates in the media and beyond. She loves to shoot moose but is not much a fan of aborting babies. Turns out if you’re conservative, you’re not meant to harbour ambition outside of being the perfect quilter, winning scone competitions and standing at the doorway of your perfectly kept house with slippers for your man.

Then they slated her and McCain for selling her amazing story. Huh? Hasn’t Obama been doing that since he attracted the nation’s attention at the 2004 Democrat National Convention? As Palin said in her address today about Obama – “this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state Senate.” The media loves a personal story if it’s about a black man rising from nowhere to excite left-liberals with his eloquent promise to take on Washington. If it’s a personal story about a white woman rising from nowhere to excite the nation’s conservatives wither eloquent promise to take on Washington? Pass. It’s just a woman with a personal story.

Palin proved that she has more than a good personal story. With deadly accuracy, the smiling Alaskan assassin pricked the empty rhetoric and exposed the two faces of the left’s favourite “community organiser”: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organiser’, except that you have actual responsibilities … The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of ‘personal discovery’. This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn’t just need an organiser.”

She wasn’t finished with Obama. While Republicans have spent months trying to deflate the Obama bubble, Palin, the novice nobody, did it best: “I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening. We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.”

Next, the moose-hunting Governor took aim at the hypocrisy and self-importance of the media and left-liberal elites. “I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”

“But here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.”

Much as the media is in fits about McCain’ s judgment – already asking questions of whether he will ask her to stand down in favour of someone else - Palin is the perfect VP choice for McCain. Not only for her outsider status, her “hockey-mom” background, her history of cutting taxes, taking on the “good ol’ boys network” and tackling political corruption. The woman who Republicans now call “Maverick Squared” is a shrewd choice because her nomination has unleased the left-liberals’ contempt for provincial America. And that has opened the way for a re-run of the Nixonian politics of polarisation.

The Left opened the gate. And Palin stormed through. Her address today, replete with mentions of her family, its ups and downs, the people she grew up with in small towns “who do the hardest work in America …who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars”, placed her on the side of middle America, the people that Obama needs to win over.

That’s why left-liberals hate Palin. Everyone’s talking about her. She has changed the dynamics which had otherwise pointed to a liberal dream – a black Democrat in the White House. But in their frenzied attempts to paint Palin as a provincial little upstart, with a hillbilly family with hillbilly names and an ambition that takes her out of her rightful place is society, the media has signalled their contempt for middle America. Who said the culture wars were over? And who said this presidential race was over for Republicans? Win or lose, Palin has scruffed up the left. And that is always entertaining.

Over to you…