Friday, July 17, 2009

Why I Like Palin

I'm a bit politcally exhausted now, as you can see by the paucity of recent posts compared to my clip in the previous weeks.

But there was this facebook "poll", you see, asking if you would support Palin for President in 2012. I saw one facebook "friend" answered it "No". And like I said I try to stay away from politics for the most part on facebook ... but when I see stuff like this, I feel the need to not Shut Up. To Stop an Echo. Not everybody thinks Palin's a crazy idiot.

Like me, for instance. Perhaps I should just lay it all out in one place.

So why do I like Palin?
  • She is against government waste, and has demonstrated a willingness to take it on -- and win
  • She is anti-big-government
  • She is for stronger States' rights, as originally outlined in the constitution
  • She is practical about energy independence
  • She defends the second amendment
  • She is for tough foriegn policy with countries that intend to do us harm
  • She respects our military men and women in far more than just lip service
  • She doesn't look down on people of lower social class
  • She respects human life
  • She generally pisses all the right people off (militant feminists, government expansionists, socialists, people playing the corruption game in politics in either party, anti-Christians, and the all-abortion, anytime for any reason people....)

And why do people hate her so much?

  • She's Pro-Life (that's probably #1 on their beef list)
  • She's a successful woman who has done it with out denouncing men, and is not one of the militant feminist crowd.
  • She is popular and is a danger to progressives in both parties because of it

This is why she was targeted for destruction by the Left and their propaganda arm in the mainstream media, and it's also why some Republicans are also involved in the pirhanna fest.

But what do we read from people commenting on why they dislike her?

  • She's an idiot (based on ... ???)
  • She's only popular because she's pretty (only ugly women need apply, I guess)
  • She dresses like a slut (really????)
  • She's not her son's mother (not true)
  • She's a Christian (so? And hasn't about every other president at least claimed to be one?)
  • She banned books (not true)
  • She said she's had foriegn policy experience because "I can see Russia from my house." (never said that)
  • She slashed the budget for special needs children (that would be her predecessor, whom she defeated)
  • She cut funding for pregnant teens (she cut the amount of proposed increases but still increased funding)
  • She's a hypocrite because her daughter had sex out of wedlock (how does that make her a hypocrite?)
  • She spent $250,000 on a wardrobe for campaigning (not true)
  • She doesn't read the news (based on her being skiddish about the question in the Couric interview once she realized this was a hatchet-job. There would be no 'correct' answer.)
  • She didn't know what Charlie Gibson's freshly coined "Bush Doctrine" meant (of course, nobody but Gibson knew what it was because he made it up for the interview)
  • She abused her office to force a police officer -- who had threatened one of her family members - to be fired. (apparently not)
  • a host of other charges which were also not true
  • and now, of course, "She's a quitter."

And of course none of the stuff that's actually true has anything to do with the merits of her stances on issues, except that her stance on issues is opposite of those who used these "arguments" ad nauseum . I've never seen so much fake dirt dug up on a person, and at the same time any real dirt on Barack Obama got swept under the rug via the Race Card. And we got that brilliant Joe Biden for a vice president instead.

I understand the knee-jerk "she's a quitter" response. She did quit. But if you listen to her reasons and not the political punditry's speculations ... the constant stream of frivolous ethics complaints was crippling her ability to govern, bogging down the state government, and bankrupting her family (half a million in legal fees defending herself against all of these things, all of which she was cleared of - but she still owes the money for defending herself).

And imagine going to a baseball game with your 14 year old daughter while in town for a charity, and some nationally broadcast late night TV host jokes about you dressing like a slut and your daughter getting knocked up at the game. This was coming from everywhere. Political activist organizations ... probably people active in the DNC, and some people in the RNC, news papers, "entertainment" shows. These aren't reasons to quit, mind you, but they also weren't the reasons she gave. The reasons she gave are consistent with letting the governor's chef go, getting rid of the governor's private jet, and refusing the "bridge to nowhere" funding ... while she was the governor. She quit because it was the best thing for Alaska, and the best thing for her and her family. Can't argue with that reasoning.

She may not be the most articulate person in the world. But if we wanted articulation, style over substance, we probably would have elected someone like Barack Obama, heaven forbid.

But the fact is barring a bunch of the country waking up to all this, she probably won't be running in 2012 if ever, at least not for President. She will be organizing and otherwise being politically active, using her pull to garner support for conservative political candidates.

What's not to like?

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