Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.

warbles airhead hackette Rachel Quigley ( @rachelq82 ) at the UK Daily Mail, referring to the recently published “book” about Palin written by Joe McGinniss. Quigley proceeds to list several of the allegations mentioned in the book and also references articles from the “National Enquirer”, an American supermarket tabloid.

With McGinniss being spit roasted even by such Palin unfriendly sources as The New York Times and Michael Smerconish one might fairly ask of Ms Quigley why she wasn’t a little more curious about the author’s credibility and motivation.

But then elsewhere the Mail publishes a vomit inducing puff piece which essentially allows McGinniss to offer a weasel defence against the criticism of the unattributable nature of his “sources” and you then begin to realise why a third rate scribbler like Quigley was wheeled in to pen such unmitigated rubbish.

She was probably ordered to write it (most likely in crayon on a large sheet of drawing paper) by the mysoginistic editor Paul Dacre who believes that women are best suited to be in the Mail’s right hand side bar to be ogled or derided for their appearance while the chaps do the heavy lifting of running the world.

Unlike the Mail, which has ever been a rag, the UK Daily Telegraph has always claimed to be a serious paper of repute. But the DT has consistently and gleefully treated Palin with a degree of contempt and disdain that almost rivals that shown by the liberal left media of the USA. So they have put their own third rate scribbler, Nick Allen ( @nickallen789 ), on the McGinniss beat with instructions to keep the pot boiling.

A few days ago Mr Allen was as high on his McGinniss crack as Rachel Quigley, prophesying that the book would destroy Palin’s political career. But sadly even the myopic Allen had to weave an element of truth into his National Enquirer musings when he was forced to admit that there was some evidence that support for her was growing rather than crashing.

We now await with bated breath how ace reporters Quigley and Allen react to the latest evidence which tends to buttress the belief, widely held outside the medieval chambers of the Mail and Telegraph, that McGinniss is merely pimping the delusions, lies and unfounded rumours being constantly recycled along the wilder shores of the blogosphere by a group of dysfunctional misfits…..

Is that crickets I hear?

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out and those styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot, what exactly is our opponents plan?

Remember someone saying that in 2008? Who was it…just remind me…

Well Rex Murphy at Canada’s National Post remembers – and he also recalls the scorn heaped on that person because she dared to wonder if indeed there really were any clothes on a certain emperor.

Three years later those columns are safely back in the studio lot – and the man with the plan?

Under Obama, America’s foreign policies are a mixture of confusion and costly impotence. It is increasingly bypassed or derided; the great approach to the Muslim world, symbolized by the Cairo speech, is in tatters. Its debt and deficits are a weight on the entire global economy. And the office of presidency is less and less a symbol of strength.

Murphy believes that a reckoning is due – with the media

American journalism will have to look back at the period starting with Barrack Obama’s rise, his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in it to the present, and ask itself how it came to cast aside so many of its vital functions. In the main, the establishment American media abandoned its critical faculties during the Obama campaign — and it hasn’t reclaimed them since.

But if the media went easy on Obama, transforming an inexperienced Daley machine hack from Chicago into a demigod no punches were pulled for anyone else

The media trashed Hillary. They burned Republicans. They ransacked Sarah Palin and her family. But Obama, the cool, the detached, the oracular Obama — he strolled to the presidency.
Palin, in particular, stands out as Obama’s opposite in the media’s eyes. As much as they genuflected to the one, they felt the need to turn rotweiler toward the other. If Obama was sacred , classy, intellectual and cosmopolitan, why then Palin must be malevolent, trashy, dumb and pure backwoods-ignorant.

Read the rest here. You and I know the truth of it and it’s a message that is beginning to seep into the ivory towers of the panjandrums of punditocracy themselves. But it bears repeating and it needs to be broadcast loud and clear into all the newsrooms, not just in the US but also across the globe because hacks everywhere took their cue from America’s network and newspaper bosses who clearly turned a blind eye to the airbrushing of Obama’s past.

Don’t ever let them avoid responsibility for the way they abused their power – so here, courtesy of one of the comments on Murphy’s piece, is a list of some of the guilty parties, exposed to sunlight after the “Journolist” debacle. It doesn’t include all the weasels – but it’s a start….

1. Spencer Ackerman – Wired, FireDogLake, Washington Independent, Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect

2. Ben Adler – Newsweek, POLITICO

3. Mike Allen – POLITICO

4. Eric Alterman – The Nation, Media Matters for America

5. Marc Ambinder – The Atlantic

6. Greg Anrig – The Century Foundation

7. Ryan Avent – Economist

8. Dean Baker – The American Prospect

9. Nick Baumann – Mother Jones

10. Josh Bearman – LA Weekly

11. Steven Benen – The Carpetbagger Report

12. Jared Bernstein – Economic Policy Institute

13. Michael Berube – Crooked Timber (blog), Pennsylvania State University

14. Lindsay Beyerstein – (blogger)

15. Joel Bleifuss – In These Times

16. John Blevins – South Texas College of Law

17. Sam Boyd – The American Prospect

18. Rich Byrne – Playwright and freelancer

19. Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Atlantic

20. Jonathan Chait – The New Republic

21. Lakshmi Chaudry – In These Times

22. Isaac Chotiner – The New Republic

23. Michael Cohen – New America Foundation

24. Jonathan Cohn – The New Republic

25. Joe Conason – The New York Observer

26. David Corn – Mother Jones

27. Daniel Davies – The Guardian

28. David Dayen – FireDogLake

29. Brad DeLong – The Economists’ Voice, University of California at Berkley

30. Ryan Donmoyer – Bloomberg

31. Kevin Drum – Washington Monthly

32. Matt Duss – Center for American Progress

33. Eve Fairbanks – The New Republic

34. Henry Farrell – George Washington University

35. Tim Fernholz – American Prospect

36. James Galbraith – University of Texas at Austin (professor)

37. Todd Gitlin – Columbia University

38. Ilan Goldenberg – National Security Network

39. Dana Goldstein – The Daily Beast

40. Merrill Goozner – Chicago Tribune

41. David Greenberg – Slate

42. Robert Greenwald – Brave New Films

43. Chris Hayes – The Nation

44. Don Hazen – Alternet

45. Michael Hirsh – Newsweek

46. John Judis – The New Republic, The American Prospect

47. Michael Kazin – Georgetown University (law professor)

48. Ed Kilgore – Democratic Stategist

49. Richard Kim – The Nation

50. Mark Kleiman – The Reality Based Community

51. Ezra Klein – Washington Post, Newsweek, The American Prospect

52. Joe Klein – TIME

53. Paul Krugman – The New York Times, Princeton University

54. Lisa Lerer – POLITICO

55. Daniel Levy – Century Foundation

56. Alec McGillis – Washington Post

57. Scott McLemee – Inside Higher Ed

58. Ari Melber – The Nation

59. Seth Michaels – MyDD.com

60. Luke Mitchell – Harper’s Magazine

61. Gautham Nagesh – The Hill, Daily Caller

62. Suzanne Nossel – Human Rights Watch

63. Michael O’Hare – University of California, Berkeley

64. Rick Perlstein – Author, Campaign for America’s Future

65. Harold Pollack – University of Chicago

66. Foster Kamer – The Village Voice

67. Katha Pollitt – The Nation

68. Ari Rabin-Havt – Media Matters

69. David Roberts – Grist

70. Alyssa Rosenberg – Washingtonian, The Atlantic, Government Executive

71. Alex Rossmiller – National Security Network

72. Laura Rozen – Politico, Mother Jones

73. Greg Sargent – Washington Post

74. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun

75. Noam Scheiber – The New Republic

76. Michael Scherer – TIME

77. Mark Schmitt – American Prospect

78. Adam Serwer – American Prospect

79. Thomas Schaller – Baltimore Sun (columnist), University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (professor), FiveThirtyEight.com
(contributing writer)

80. Julie Bergman Sender – Balcony Films

81. Walter Shapiro – PoliticsDaily.com

82. Nate Silver – FiveThirtyEight.com

83. Jesse Singal – The Boston Globe, Washington Monthly

84. Ben Smith – POLITICO

85. Sarah Spitz – NPR

86. Adele Stan – The Media Consortium

87. Kate Steadman – Kaiser Health News

88. Jonathan Stein – Mother Jones

89. Sam Stein – The Huffington Post

90. Jesse Taylor – Pandagon.net

91. Steven Teles – Yale University

92. Thoma – The Economist’s View (blog), University of Oregon (professor)

93. Michael Tomasky – The Guardian

94. Jeffrey Toobin – CNN, The New Yorker

95. Rebecca Traister – Salon (columnist)

96. Cenk Uygur – The Young Turks

97. Tracy Van Slyke – The Media Consortium

98. Dave Weigel – Washington Post, MSNBC, The Washington Independent

99. Moira Whelan – National Security Network

100. Scott Winship – Pew Economic Mobility Project

101. Kai Wright – The Root

102. Holly Yeager – Columbia Journalism Review

103. Rich Yeselson – Change to Win

104. Matthew Yglesias – Center for American Progress, The Atlantic Monthly

105. Jonathan Zasloff – UCLA

106. Julian Zelizer – Princeton professor and CNN contributor

107. Avi Zenilman – POLITICO

Sarah Palin, the former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, has been hit by lurid allegations that she had a fling with a basketball player just before she got married and took cocaine while out snowmobiling.

Thus burbles ace reporter Nick Allen, the UK Daily Telegraph’s Los Angeles correspondent.

But then we get a clue about how much shoe leather the intrepid Mr Allen expended in his quest for the truth

According to reports in the United States the claims will be contained in a highly critical book by author Joe McGinniss which is due to be published next week.

“According to reports” – in other words Nick had a few spare minutes over breakfast, trawled Google News then regurgitated stuff he picked up from a publisher’s PR blurb and a hit piece from the New York Daily News.

Lurid allegations by a serious author….please Mr Allen…I think you might have been snorting something white and powdery yourself. The “serious author” has concocted his “book” from a collection of quotes from anonymous sources garnered via conversations with a group of rumour mongers and liars from the fringe left blogosphere in Alaska, most of whom began to spew forth this rubbish after she was nominated for VP in August 2008….coincidence? Ask Pete Rouse at Team Obama.

For a better informed viewpoint on this heap of garbage go to the New York Times, a paper that could never be in a million years described as friendly to Palin. The author has not only read the book but has also done a little research into Alaskan politics. Suffice to say even the liberal NYT reviewer suggests the rubbish bin as the appropriate destination for the McGinniss epic.

Mr. McGinniss explains that he was shocked, just shocked, at the angry response his presence in Wasilla provoked. But “The Rogue” makes the Palins’ widely publicized anger understandable, even to readers who might have defended his right to set up shop in their neighborhood and soak up the local color. Although most of “The Rogue” is dated, petty and easily available to anyone with Internet access, Mr. McGinniss used his time in Alaska to chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources like “one resident” and “a friend.”

Come to think of it there would probably be room in the bin for the Daily Telegraph as well. It used to be an informed and serious paper until taken over by the secretive Barclay twins who proceeded to fire all the experienced staff in order to replace them with malleable hacks like Mr Allen who are quite happy to scribble PR puffs for the Barclays masquerading as news reports.

You know, methinks Joe McGinniss would fit into the Barclaygraph rather well…..especially after reading this from Robert Stacy McCain and this from Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection.

A “reasonable rant” from PolitiJim

Who appointed Erick Erickson as Conservative Electioneering Sheriff?

Or even Anne Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Charles Dickens or The Incredible Shrinking Man for that matter….but then I don’t think Charles Dickens ever let his publishers change the ending of one of his novels…can’t really say about TISM…

First it was the Jamie Radtke thing. By virtue of his admitted betrayal to her campaign on behalf of his employers (i think he wrote he would ‘gladly’ accommodate their request to pull back on his support to her) and the obvious contrary evidence by RS attendees of his portrayal of her – Erickson is quickly loosing credibility.
Now Erick has decided that he decides who should run, and when. If they don’t do it when it is convenient for him – to hell with them. Or her.”At some point, I decided Sarah Palin could not defeat Barack Obama”

It’s not that Jim dislikes Erickson (or Coulter) but he’s beginning to wonder if they are not morphing into something similar to those figures of the GOP elite they have often mocked and derided who think they are “smarter than regular people” (echoes of Orwell’s “Animal Farm”?)

So, for Erick, a reminder…

And this whole idea that Palin HAS TO get in now. That somehow she “owes it” to the GOP movement …………………….. I’d say you owe her much more than she owes you. Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who….ended up as ‘the tea party?’ When the ‘big government’ republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain – Palin was a sign of hope. And she also continued the attack during her own withering assault against Obama, no thanks to you.

She has done far more for the conservative movement than RedState or Erick Erickson could possibly think.

…and, just in case his message remains a little unclear. this self declared non Palinista suggests a post it note that should be attached to the keyboard, microphone or teleprompter of every self proclaimed “conservative” pundit/pontificator/consultant/strategist in the USA.

For what Sarah Palin has done, and continues to do, she has a right to do WHATEVER she wants and still receive the thanks from conservatives – nay, AMERICANS – everywhere.

Read the rest here – it’s interesting stuff.

Cross posted at C4P

h/t from my ever nuanced twitter friend Sissy Willis

Six weeks.

That’s the length of an election campaign here on the other side of the pond – and even that’s too long for some people.

Furthermore we do not have zillions of professional “consultants” and “strategists” pimping themselves for campaign employment. Because there are quite strict UK laws governing electoral expenditure almost all our campaigning is done by amateur volunteer activists often working out of their own homes (a bit like O4P, perhaps….)

So the reports coming to us out of Hot Air and other political media (“Perrypalooza”) fifteen months before the actual election give us the impression of a nation in a state of stretched out permanent political hyperventilation. Ed and Allahpundit, bless their little hearts, descend in a frenzy upon every opinion poll and analyse each cross tab with the zeal of an augur in Ancient Rome examining a bunch of chicken livers.

They then present the findings as if they are tablets of stone from Mount Sinai itself.

But a few days ago Pollinsider provided a refreshing dash of ice cold water to dissipate the heat generated by the Bachmann/Perry feeding frenzy and the speculation about Governor Palin.

Believe it or not, in their quests (or probable quest in Palin’s case) for the GOP nomination both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney are working under the same premise: No one is paying attention right now. Sure, some people are paying attention. But that “some” is probably you and me and maybe 5% of the rest of the voting population.

See his point? Only political junkies are paying attention at this moment in time. However much the media play it up (and after all they have columns and screens to fill) he hazards a guess that Ames/Iowa had very little impact on the consciousness of most Americans.

As Palin has said, most people are not interested in the primary process right now, most people are worried about their families, their jobs, their kids, and what to make for dinner tonight. She is right. Being the most politically interested of my family and friends, I nevertheless have many friends and family who fall into the 96% group. These are people who know and follow politics to a degree, but are not uber-involved in the process and what is going on.

The media especially gets all wound up over who is where and what he/she said. They are constantly searching for new angles….

All of these candidates announced at different times. All of them had a short time frame when they were the “it” candidate. The Media Flavor of the Month. Right now, Perry is the flavor of the month. Why? Because 96% of the population is not paying attention. Everything they know comes from passing, a brief blip on the tv or radio, or by word of mouth. And these are the people who are polled, and this is why the race changes so dramatically so often, with so many new and frequent “frontrunners” challenging Romney.

Read the rest here then just unclench those muscles and relax for a few moments. The circus is in town but it could be that most people are probably not paying too much attention.

Am I wrong or am I wrong?

BTW…maybe Sarah Palin has been reading these words from one of the greatest poems ever written

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting….

After all there might well be a definite need for adult supervision later……

Who are they, these Palinistas?

Some, of course claim to know them.

Palinbots, wingnuts, cultists….the list could go on and on – and that is just from some of the comments critical of Palin and her supporters at Hot Air, a leading conservative internet hang out.

From the left, of course, a more nuanced critique of the Palinistas from Chris Matthews

“I don’t think she is a thoughtful politician. I think she’s talking to people who don’t read newspapers, don’t pay attention to serious television broadcasts, whether the Lehrer Hour or anything like it or even this program, don’t pay attention to anything that’s even in the middle, who don’t have any effort at all to learn anything.”

Now as a lifelong student of American history and political junkie I have to confess an interest here. In the early hours of a September morning in 2008, with my wife away on a family visit, I watched Sarah Palin’s speech to the GOP convention livestreamed through my laptop.

I was fascinated.

In seventy years of politicking (well, to be truthful, sixty years as my first burst of activism saw me chanting a party slogan in the school playground during the British general election of 1950) I have never seen the like.

I liked her straight-from-the-hip, head-for-the fight style. I liked her authenticity – I find it embarrassing when so many so wealthy/private school/Ivy League US politicos come down from the big house into the fields and act faux folksy. But I am sure we had met Palin when we drove around America. She had been working a check out at Albertsons – or had she taken my breakfast order at Dennys? Maybe she was the high school teacher in Allentown? At my age memory dims but, dammit, we recognised her.

Dan Riehl (who has not been uncritical of her at times) felt the same

Like many, I had no idea if she would deliver, or crash and burn in just one more bit of political miscalculation by the McCain campaign. Yet, instead, she soared! Sarah Palin delivered what many a sincere conservative wanted and needed to become excited about the 2008 race. And she went right on doing it throughout the Fall – and continues to do it, even now, in many ways.

Unlike the vast majority of British media hacks who never look beyond the New York Times or Washington Post after her speech I googled as much as I could about her career in Alaska and liked her story. Come up the ranks not because she was some suit’s wife or born into a silver spoon family or had contacts from an elite university but under her own steam while raising a nestful of lively kids. What’s more she hadn’t made her name by sitting in a legislature making pretty speeches stroking constituency egos or posturing over her own bravery in voting for this or that motion. She had run a town, helped supervise an energy agency and governed a state – and fought against a corrupt network of backscratching power brokers from her own party…

…..and she had never been to one of Tina Brown’s parties.

Which is why the vicious US media firestorm that followed her nomination initially left me puzzled, especially when in the UK it was repeated across the pages of conservative papers like the Telegraph and Mail….”McCain chooses a former beauty queen”

Did they know something that I, as a mere retired teacher with no journalistic “training” had missed? Were there dark secrets and therefore skilled PR operatives spinning obfuscating webs to cover them up?

I began to feel unsure.

But then I came across another narrative, not, of course from the American media and certainly not from the pathetic fumblings and bumblings of the McCain campaign team. I found it, initially in the wild and reckless alleyways of Free Republic and the slightly more genteel corridors of Lucianne. I began to recognise some regulars drawing swords to defend Palin in the threads at Hot Air.

I was witnessing the emergence of the Palinistas – and, through C4P and Palintwibe and hundreds of other websites they have been fighting her corner ever since, through thick and through thin.

John Nolte, unlike many commentators, has grasped the political implications of this phenomenon

Besides a trial by media fire and a growing savvy when it comes to getting her message out, besides a charisma and personal touch no other candidate comes close to, something else Palin uniquely offers is a mammoth base of fervent supporters ready to fight to the death for her –a base as passionate and motivated as President Obama’s in 2008. No other GOP contender has anything close to this army of supporters and volunteers who are not only standing by but pretty well organized through various “Such-and-such State for Palin” communities.

So who are they, these “fervent supporters” and, more significantly, why are they so fervent.

Oddly enough, though many in the media love to wax eloquently about their shortcomings, pace Chris Matthews, very few have made any serious attempt to check them out. Is it because most of the big cheeses of the media elite prefer to operate within the confines of New York or Washington? Do they now not have enough time or money or experience to expend on Stacy McCain style shoe-leather? Surely it cannot relate to political bias within their ranks – can it?

Which is why late last year I flew from London (on my own dime, as Americans might say) to join a hundred of these “fervent supporters” for a weekend in Chicago.

Now I’m a fairly cynical soul about politicians and their supporters and couldn’t help wondering if, when I reached the get together it would be a little like wandering into the world of Badlands

How wrong I was. Every one of those people was very well grounded. They weren’t wingnuts (I can spot one at fifty miles) and most of them were not particularly wealthy – but they had been willing to spend several hundred dollars to attend the event. They were young, old, long, short and from all points of the US compass. About two thirds were women (although we are told by David Frum that women don’t like Palin) and many were religious but not in the snake handling holy roller “you’ll all burn in hell” way that the media elite love to stereotype on screen. We drank beer and ate well and they were very kind and welcoming and extremely tolerant of my quirky British sense of humour.

If these people were mad wild eyed cultists who put Palin on a pedestal and knelt in adoration then they fooled me 100%. They were ordinary straightforward everyday folk like the people who shop at my local supermarket. But what was interesting was that a substantial number of the attendees at this political event had never been particularly active in politics before September 2008.

It was Palin who had set them on fire. A woman totally unknown to most of them from a backwater of the USA that hardly ever registers on the richter scale of American culture – until September 3rd 2008.

And they have stayed loyal to her ever since.

“Why?” I asked Heather Hunt, a quietly spoken New Englander who I originally met at the Chicago gathering. She works in business publishing and is as far removed from the Chris Matthews airhead characterisation of the Palin supporter as his own convoluted splutterings are from the eloquence and lyrical enunciation of Alistair Cooke.

She gave it to me straight.

No-nonsense, common sense, constitutional commitment to public service. Clear-headed pragmatism. Ability to find commonalities and unite people to work on mutual interests; even if the parties involved don’t agree on other issues, they can work together on the one issue they do agree on. Track record of prioritizing and focusing on getting a few key items accomplished.

Wait a minute – that is all so practical, so down to earth. Where is the Light Bringer, where is that messianic shining that electrifies all cults?

I asked Heather for three words that encapsulated the essence of Palin. I was looking for those words of worship that sparkled around the halo of Barack Obama in 2008 – words like messiah/brilliant/erudite.

But she wouldn’t play ball

Competitive, loyal, principled

Fine attributes – but not easy to reconcile with her determination to dedicate herself to working flat out for Palin if she declares for 2012. A Tea Party Patriots district organiser in Connecticut (where she was born and bred and where she still lives) Heather is organising for the raising of the banner.

We stand for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets. We have a lot of work to do here in CT to that end; we’re one of the few states who missed the Red Wave election of 2010. But we’re still in the fight. If/when Palin announces her run, I will most likely step down from tea party responsibilities in order to organize both in CT and in New Hampshire, an early primary state a few hours north of CT.

A born again Christian and regular churchgoer her faith is at the very front of her life.

I believe eternal issues are more important than temporal ones. That’s one reason I haven’t been involved politically beyond informed voting. And will never put all my hopes in a temporary political system or politicians.

Apart from standing on a street corner holding a sign for Ross Perot in 1992 Heather, until September 2008 had been a quiet and dutiful citizen, voting in every election, but not involved in any campaign.

The Perot exception provides a clue to the reason why she, and millions of others like her, are drawn to Palin. Codevilla’s book on The Ruling Class articulated her long held suspicion that the political posturing of the two major parties were in many ways a well choreographed piece of play acting to mask the fact that all the levers of American power are controlled by a self perpetuating elite that only recruits outsiders willing to sustain the masquerade in return for a share of the spoils.

But she believes the USA has now reached a tipping point and, like her fellow Tea Partiers, she pins her faith on the Constitution

We need to restore the checks and balances established at our founding, both within the federal government between the three branches, but more importantly, between the people, the Sovereign States, and the federal government. And the structure is that the most power lies with the people, who then give some power to the States, who then give some power to the Feds. Not the other way around, as it is now, when the Feds put unfunded, unsustainable, and most importantly, unconstitutional, mandates on the States. Remember, the People sent representatives from their States to create the federal government. That is still how the power structure must flow.

And this is the key to her support of Sarah Palin, this is where one gets a glimpse of the fire that drives the astonishing levels of commitment and support for this woman who three years ago appeared, to most of them, from nowhere. She knew nothing of her until McCain’s announcement. But over the next few days two things made a deep impression on Heather Hunt. Palin’s record as Governor of Alaska – and the vitriolic reaction, not just of the liberal media but many of the so-called pillars of the Republican establishment.

That vitriol, however, has served only to strengthen her conviction that Palin would be a transformative President by shaking up DC

Starting in the White House with cutting of staff and personal expenses, thus setting an example of smaller, smarter government from the top. I think that will extend to her cabinet, i.e., no czars, and to federal government agencies that have no constitutional authority, such as Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Food and Drug Administration, etc.
However, I expect she’ll prioritize and focus on a few key issues, such as cutting spending, incentivizing energy development, and meeting regularly with members of Congress. IOW, the exact opposite of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama.
Oh. And Priority Number One? Signing the repeal of Obamacare.

Others I spoke with in Chicago echoed all of Heather’s sentiments. They weren’t looking for Joan of Arc but someone who they felt they could trust even when she had to give bad news or things went pear shaped.

Sure they admired Palin for her positions and record. But there was also a feeling that she was a different type of politician in the sense that she appeared to be natural, not artificial or forced, an impression strengthened by the evidence gathered from the recent e mail frenzy which seems to suggest that what you get from Palin is exactly what it says on the tin.

And maybe that is the connection.

As Dan Riehl said in his moving and heartfelt review of “The Undefeated”

Indeed, while Sarah Palin is by far the central character in “The Undefeated”, the film includes insightful, thought provoking commentary from Mark Levin, Tammy Bruce, Andrew Breitbart and a host of others, all undefeated voices of the Right on their own terms. In a sense, they are as much Palin, as she is them, and all of us together comprise, a common sense, genuine, Reagan conservatism.

That reminded me of one of the most compelling moments in the history of film. It’s at the end of “Spartacus” when the Romans have captured the remnants of the rebellious slave army and offer clemency to anyone who betrays Spartacus, the leader of the revolt.
Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) prepares to stand and give himself up when his closest friends rise up at the same moment, each one saying, proudly “I am Spartacus”. Soon hundreds, then thousands of the prisoners do exactly the same – for Spartacus is not just one individual but the eternal idea of man’s fight for freedom.

So it is with Heather Hunt and all the other Palinistas, not just the ones I met in Chicago. They see in Palin a person from a modest background like themselves who has been mocked and demeaned because of that very fact. But, although their attacks drew blood the woman stood her ground and fought back – and every attack, every insult has become an endorsement, a badge of honour.

As someone on a recent Hot Air thread put it

I see this and all I can say is, if those jokers really wanted to get rid of her, they should have just let her go home to Alaska after ’08, finish out her first term, score a second term and stay up there in the wilderness, where she could still be a voice, but little more. But that’s not what they did.
They held her in the flames and stoked them, thinking she would melt and burn, but instead, she became steel. Worse for them, they gave a woman who was already a quick study a full on crash doctorate in the game of national electoral politics.
For their desired purposes they would have been better off if they’d just left her alone. For our sake, I’m glad they didn’t.
Game on.

I would wager that it is the support of the thousands, maybe millions of Heather Hunts who have stood by Palin through this fire that has given her the heart and spirit to fight on as they rise alongside her and say

She regularly digs a very large hole, lures the media truck to it and it always falls in

You might think, being highly trained professional journalists. they would have learned their lesson.

Or even, as Dan Riehl suggested, done a highly trained google…

Note the presence of the UK Guardian down the hole. You would think the Guardianistas had enough problems of their own without going lemming.

On the other hand there is always a delicious whiff of schadenfreude when someone from the great and the good loses his trousers….

H/T Ben Franklin

New media methods!!!

What a bunch of hypocritical snake oil salesmen.

New techniques?

It’s called RESEARCH you doughnuts, what Robert Stacy McCain calls shoe-leather. You start out with no pre conceived ideas for that will colour your judgement. You spend hours, days, weeks interviewing people, looking up documents, cross checking sources, getting a “feel” for the story.

You go forensic.

Then you spend time fitting all the pieces together to see if it makes sense.

Then you run it past your grizzled, cynical editor who regards anybody under 35 as a wet behind the ears naïve teenage airhead.

In other words you become an anteater, shoving your snout deep into the earth until you uncover a few tasty morsels.
But that takes time, money, experience and no hidden agenda.

That’s journalism.

What all these NYT/WaPo/Guardian/Mother Jones hacks did was to act like lemmings, heading towards what they thought was the sword in the stone that would finally slay the Palin dragon.

Instead they fell off the cliff and lost all credibility.

That’s journolism.

One letter makes a big difference.

And they wonder why so many Americans are reading the UK Daily Mail…

Having read DB’s post at Biased BBC and the frenetic overture to the Palin e mails saga trumpeted on the BBC website a few days ago

Critics say the e-mails may damage Palin’s presidential chances

I thought I would check out the Beeb’s reaction to the general consensus in the US media that the much vaunted NYT/WaPo “investigation” had spectacularly backfired.

Even plodding Politico hack Molly Ball at Politico (probably through gritted teeth) had to admit

She was hands-on and averse to partisan politics. She championed openness in government and had normal relations with the media. She was a little starstruck by her interactions with national politicians but unafraid to do battle with the chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies.

though, being Molly, she had to inject a some squirts of bitchiness a few lines later.

Her colleague Andy Barr, no admirer of Palin, was more generous, as was CNN’s Drew Griffin. In the Daily Telegraph, after the usual set of ill informed bleats from the master of cut and paste “journalism” Alex Spillius, Toby Harnden took Molly Ball’s words and juggled them around to give a semblance of originality.

Even blogging nonentity Ryan Streeter at ConservativeHomeUSA (thought by many to be financed by Lord Ashcroft) who thinks Palin’s role in the GOP should be to strut her stuff as a pretty cheerleader twirling her baton for Superwonk Paul Ryan thought the e mail colonoscopy had proved a damp squib (though, par for the course, he was more mealy mouthed than even Molly Ball.

But from the BBC – zilch, zero, a big fat nothing……I wonder why?

Fortunately, Cornell’s Professor Jacobson, managed to capture the video….

cross posted at Biased BBC

Kathleen Parker dumps on C4P over Romney as flip-flopper.

The mere mention of a human role (vs., presumably, a divine plan) was enough to bestir the guardians of scientific inquiry at Conservatives4Palin, who averred that Romney is “simpatico” with Obama and that he “totally bought into the man-made global warming hoax.”

Construe it as a badge of honour.

Plus a heart warming bonus – Parker finds C4P irritating.

That is even better news because a lot of people have been finding Parker as annoying as nettlerash, not just since September 2008 but also when, angered by the sweaty multitudes of the Tea Party she launched her own Arugula Party.

What she hasn’t grasped, of course, is that nobody is saying that politicians should never alter their stance on a particular issue. In many ways an admission that their mind has been changed by a persuasive argument reflects well upon a person’s honesty and integrity.

However suspicions are aroused if the motive for the change of mind is more to please a constituency than a genuine conversion. When, as in Romney’s case, these shifts of position become legion then the mantle of flip floppery surely becomes deserved.

Or, as Auric Goldfinger once told James bond

‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.”

cross posted at C4P