Sarah Palin hits the RESET button
By: Noemie Emery
Examiner Columnist
July 8, 2009
Sarah Palin's early retirement from Alaska's governor's mansion has been called erratic, unhinged, and irrational, which isn't surprising: Her ten-month career as a national figure has been marked by erratic, extreme, and unhinged behavior, most of it emanating from the other side.
How rational is it for a once-noted blogger to obsess for months over Palin's gynecological history, insisting that her younger son, born in April, 2008, was really born to her 18-year-old daughter, although the daughter was already pregnant with her own child, born eight months later, in December of the same year?
How rational is it for a reputable pundit to call her a "cancer" on the Republican party, for reasons he seemed to feel deeply (they had something to do with not reading Niebuhr), but couldn't exactly describe?
It was rational to critique her lack of experience, (though Barak Obama had less as a senator), and her lack of knowledge of foreign affairs (which was typical of most governors, and could be assuaged with tutorial sessions); but the real objections to Palin were of other kinds.
A McCain-style maverick, who fought her own party and put social concerns on a fairly back burner, the moose-hunting mother of five was transformed within days to a backwoods fanatic, who banned books when not burning them, opposed contraception, wanted rape victims to pay for their treatment, wanted Alaska to secede from the Union, believed, (said Yuval Levin) "that the Iraq war was mandated by God, that the end-times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were nearing," and that the world had been made in six days.
None of this was true, but this failed to bother the "fact-based community," for whom her actual record didn't exist. In fact, her record was never brought up by her most intense critics, who focused instead on their inchoate feelings.
"Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy the Left [and part of the Right] had ever held about the views of evangelical Christians," said Yuval Levin. Oddly, the main complaint leveled at Palin was that she was not tolerant, and she disdained logic and reason for appeals on the purely emotional level, geared to primitive yearnings and fears.
And how tolerant was it to "gun for her children," as Peggy Noonan and others have said? A comedian joked about her 14 year old being "knocked up" at a ball game, and then explained it by saying he meant the 18-year-old daughter instead.
Her husband was portrayed on Saturday Night Live seducing his daughters. She was mocked as a slut, hung in effigy, and called a fit subject for rape by a number of feminists.
And the special-needs child? Don't ask. Pictures were photoshopped that showed him with the head of a freak or a monster or criminal. Critics said she had cornered the "retard' vote; which she would have done anyhow." She said that the "world needs more Trigs, not fewer," complained one blogger recently.
"Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a large HEAD-START program...Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter. This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job."
It's class all the way with these wonderful people. Perhaps she's resigning because her husband was getting an ulcer, repressing his impulse to shove them through walls.
Part of this descends from the Clintons' "nuts and sluts" strategy, and part from the campaign in 2004, when Mary Cheney emerged as a culture war issue, because, in the words of the Democrats' fixer, she was "fair game."
Now everyone is fair game to the party of reason and tolerance, which may finally have pushed things too far. They'll have Palin to kick around a bit longer, but from the top of a pile of money, free of their lawsuits, and perhaps with a microphone or two in her arsenal.
She's not quitting, just shifting the terms of the battle. Nixon survived a disjointed "farewell," and he became president. Twice.
Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
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