A couple readers of this blog (who never comment, by the way) asked me via e-mail for my take on this whole Sarah-Palin-quit-as-governor-of-Alaska thing. Since her resignation announcement, I’ve let it mull over in my head.
Considering I haven’t been listening too much to the news (basically, the news nowdays is nothing more than left-wing liberal-speak), my take on it is based on what I might do if I was in her shoes.
Here goes.
Imagine yourself being selected as the running mate for the Republican nominee for the Presidency of the United States. It rapidly devolves that you are more ‘Republican’ (read that as ‘conservative’) than your running mate. Imagine beginning to see bumper stickers with your name, THEN the Presidential nominee’s name. Imagine hearing and seeing screaming, cheering throngs wherever you give a speech, whereas when your running mate speechifies, he or she garners little more than respectful applause, much of which seems more and more forced as the campaign goes on.
It wouldn’t take you long to realize that you’ve been roped to a dying horse in the most important race of your life, right?
Now let’s imagine that, because of your popularity among the masses, the Enemy (in this case, the opposition party) and their henchmen (and women) in the media begin chopping at you like a bunch of demented loggers in an old-growth forest. Personal attacks, such as those on your intelligence, your faith, your family and friends, grow increasingly hostile and, to a greater and greater extent based on thin truths, lies and outright whole-cloth fabrications. Imagine having to endure vilification day after day, month after month.
Now imagine that, slowly but surely, members of your own political party begin joining in on the bashing. Rather than extolling your virtues and your values, they too begin to vilify you in the press and in person. They call you ‘extreme’. They call you ‘ultra-conservative’. They call you ‘inexperienced’. Even your running mate – that dying old horse – refuses to stand by you under the assault.
Then the inevitable happens: you and your running mate lose. But the vilification, name-calling, fabrications from whole cloth don’t stop. In fact, they increase, turning from what was once pretty typical (albeit vicious) electioneering mud-slinging into vile slanders and personal attacks that wouldn’t be acceptable in a waterfront bar-fight between a band of hookers and a cadre of drunken sailors.
Add to this ever increasing diatribes and vilification from members of your own party. Imagine being blamed for your running-mate’s loss, simply because of your gender or your ‘ultra-conservatism’. Imagine having your faith belittled by talkingheads who worship nothing less than the modern gods of Power and Political Correctness. Imagine these same talkingheads verbally attacking your own children and offering their opinions that your daughters are brown-bag lunches for rapists or that your son – afflicted by a genetic disorder and requiring specialized care and affection – isn’t yours (he’s actually your daughter’s, and you’re guilty of allowing such a ‘deformed’ child to live, taking on the responsibility of the child so that your daughter’s reputation doesn’t suffer, nor does your own political career).
Imagine being falsely accused of and pilloried for the very same sins and iniquities of which your accusers are guilty of on a daily basis.
And now imagine that the political party you belong to, the party for which you spent over a year of your life running from state to state in a bid to keep them in power in the White House, turns on you completely.
Would you want to be a member of that party? Would you want your political future linked to a party which is rapidly becoming exactly like the opposition in its mindless, frothing hatred for those things which had actually made it an opposing political party in the first place?
I certainly wouldn’t.
Sarah Palin, IMHO, is not a Republican. She’s a Conservative (big-C Conservative, mind you). She resigned the governorship of Alaska, but I think, more importantly, she resigned from the Republican Party (at least in her heart and head she did). When an alliance no longer embraces the tenets you joined under, it’s time to move on. Sarah sees this in the Republican Party, so, rather than be tarred by the same brush as people like McCain, the Congresscritters from Maine, and every other RINO in the herd, she’s divorcing herself from them.
But don’t count her out. As has been noted by a few other blog-pundits out here in the Ether, it’s quite possible Sarah may be the vanguard of a new and improved Conservative Republican Party.
We conservatives are looking for Hope and Change, just like the Fifty-Two’ers who put Captain Hopey McChangeitude in the big leather chair at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in November. Perhaps in people like Sarah Palin, our Hope and Change is coming.
