PrintJuly 14, 2009
Bon Voyage: Sarah's Departure Viewed From Alaska
Sarah Palin added to Alaska's celebration of the Fourth with what is surely a political bombshell. It was either a clever stunt or it was an error of the first magnitude, depending on the talking head to whom one is listening.
My first reaction was, "Good for you, girl." I've been rooting for Sarah since she first ran in the governor's primary. She's certainly no orator in the Chruchillian stratosphere, but she always made plain good sense and did what she promised -- a refreshing combination in politics.
But for some months I have increasingly felt personal and human anguish for her and her family due to the intensity of attacks of all kinds visited upon her. It's the nature of the attacks that engendered these feelings.
Considering Her Reasons
It definitely wasn't politics as usual for Sarah. It was something very new. In our long history we've not seen any political organization rise even close to the level of outrageous distortion and personal venom that the Democrats and their media allies heaped upon Sarah. I think it was criminal.
The Democrat viciousness began with a tactic they've been using in Alaska for awhile now. The idea is to organize the piling of ethics complaints onto the office of a politician they oppose. From the time Sarah made the error of agreeing to help John McCain and his political clown-car, Democrats filed an ethics complaint against her in the office of governor around once every two weeks.
All have been frivolous. One was even for her wearing, at a public event, a jacket emblazoned with the brand of snow machine Sarah rides. They complained she was using the office of governor to promote a business. It was dismissed because most Alaskans wear jackets with the name of their boat or snow machine manufacturers displayed. Ours say Yamaha.
You get the picture. If enough ethics complaints are filed -- notwithstanding merit -- then they can get news features claiming that Sarah has been, "plagued with ethics complaints." In today's environment of uneducated Americans, a volume of accusations is as good as a conviction.
One facet of this tactic is that the cost to Alaska was becoming a serious problem. Discovery and investigation expenses passed $2 million and growing. For Alaskans that's a lot of money. We are a state a fifth the size of the lower 48 in land area with only about seven thousand miles of paved roads. Two million dollars can pave roads and educate children in a state with a very small budget. Outside Alaska the amount is pooh-poohed, but we Alaskans consider it real money.
Then there are the ad hominem attacks. With these the Democrats and the media set records which for two reasons will be hard to break. The primary reason is, of course, the attacks on the children -- a tactic previously proscribed by all sides. The second is the Big Lie. The media regularly repeated the largest imaginable volume of outrageous lies about her and her record. The Big Lie is a totalitarian tactic first notably used to good effect by Joseph Goebbels who famously remarked that if you repeat a big lie often enough, it will be believed to be true. Democrats like this tactic a lot.
It was the assault on the children that was breaking my heart. As a father, I wondered how Sarah would explain to her fourteen year old daughter why she was the brunt of a joke on national television about her most intimate person. I pondered how she would council another daughter whose dual mistakes of getting pregnant out of wedlock and being a Christian were transmogrified into nationally-ridiculed hypocrisy.
Those involving Trig, Sarah's Down syndrome baby, were astonishing. How does one explain the hateful and evil mentality underlying these attacks on him -- and on her for daring to bear him? How does Sarah explain to her children the nature of people who rail through the media that the child they clearly love should never have been allowed to be born? Sarah's decision not to abort that baby, my friends, is what I believe to be the basis of most of the Democrat hatred of her.
Watch The View on TV or read anything from the Washington Post to the Huffington Post. You will see the media bubbling over with hatred of the woman who would dare not to kill her afflicted baby and then dare further to flaunt him in public as a blessing. Recently the Huff-Po proposed that Sarah run in 2012 on a "More Retardation platform." Good Lord.
Sure they label her as ‘trailer trash' and make fun of her manner of speech, but that's an old tactic for the Liberal Elite. It worked well on all of Clinton's bimbos and it worked on Bush because he had a country accent. But it is that she's an evangelical Christian and didn't abort Trig that makes these Elites crazy.
The absence of shame in the promulgation of such base evil is stunning. As if that weren't enough, after her announcement these Elites now have the audacity to howl, "She can't take the heat. She hasn't the strength to be President." What scurrilous villains these people are!
Sarah has ample reason to make this move. I can't imagine how she has borne up under the assault for as long as she has. It is a tragedy also that the Democrats will have an existence proof to themselves that these reprehensible methods can work.
Good for Alaska
Sarah Palin's resignation can be good for Alaska. She is not abandoning the state, as some would have you believe. Heck, if McCain had won she would have been long gone anyway. And Alaskans easily accept Sean Parnell as governor. He's a good man and he is on board with all the legislative progress for which Sarah is popular. An added advantage is that the money drain the Democrats caused should stop.
Another thing that should stop is the legislative gridlock we've experienced. Since Sarah's nomination for VP, the national Democrat organization has given a great deal of money and support to locally-elected Democrats so they will raise opposition to anything she proposes to do. I actually saw a group of them enthusing about it on local TV during the election. They determined to disallow any Sarah Palin progress. Blocking her achievements was another tactic to forestall her future candidacy, but it also stalled progress for Alaskans.
Good for Sarah
Adding to the personal and family agony these people have inflicted on her, they've driven the family deeply into debt. Frivolous ethics complaints required personal legal services for defense. Sarah has accumulated over $500,000 in legal debts -- all a consequence of her accepting the nomination. This was intentional on the part of Democrats. It is abundantly clear they are determined to break her in every conceivable way.
Now Sarah is free from future ethics complaints and their costs. She is free to write her book and go on speaking engagements without being deluged with complaints of abandoning Alaska - a complaint never heard when Obama immediately abandoned his new Senate seat to run for president. Sarah can return her financial house to order.
The only way she can avoid a continuation of the assault on her family is to vanish from public life. I think Sarah is too courageous for that. At least now, she can respond if she chooses and as she chooses without the constraint of representing the state.
Good for America
There is lots of speculation about her intentions. Personally, I might seriously consider hiding my family away in a place the media couldn't find. Wouldn't you? I don't think that's in the cards for Sarah.
Only a small miracle would provide her any chance of running for office through 2012. The weight of the media's destruction derby is just too great to overcome. But there's another service she can perform that may actually be of greater value.
Consider the Tea Parties, comprised of millions of ordinary Americans who are motivated to halt this Obama madness. One of the policies of their organization appears to be that candidates for office don't speak at the rallies. My children and grandchildren have been to several. They point out that the attendees cross party, social and ethnic lines. It doesn't take anything but sanity to feel outrage about this administration's efforts to destroy the America we love.
Well, it actually does take one thing. It takes a leader who can speak out and get the attention these serious protestations require. Many have noticed that wherever Sarah goes the crowds follow. Sarah has recently drawn crowds of thousands during the same time period Joe Biden had trouble getting a gaggle.
For days now her resignation has been on the front page of every paper from Der Spiegel to the Washington Post. It even eclipsed much of the cloying Michael Jackson coverage on news networks. Now that takes star power.
The political opposition to Obama's policies sorely needs a spokesperson. Elected Republicans are embarrassingly timid and unelected ones can't draw media attention. Sarah is neither timid nor without attention. She can use her ‘bully pulpit' to assert, on its behalf, a growing majority's opposition to Obama's destructive policies and legislation. Rasmussen reports that the number of Americans who strongly disapprove of Obama now exceeds the number who strongly approve.
There is opportunity there. What Sarah should do is craft a set of speeches covering each of four or five major issues at stake. Sarah understands our issues.
Then she can draw and motivate big crowds to champion our cause. The media will attend in order to seek more fodder with which to attack her -- because they still fear her potential candidacy. But in doing so, they will also call attention to the opposition and the crowd sizes.
Additionally, she can stump for candidates who will oppose the Obama madness. Sarah can do a great deal of good for America without running for any office at all.
I hope she takes this tack for the next couple of years. But if she decides to protect her family and hunker down, most Alaskans will very much understand.
Sarah Palin is a good person who is being attacked for her beliefs rather than her acts. So far as I know she has done nothing wrong. I despair that America has become so publicly mean and vile. We need fresh moral leadership.
Maybe Sarah. Maybe not.
Bill Adams is a retired computer industry executive and an historian who has lived in Homer, Alaska for twenty years.
