[Vision2020] The Cowardly Character Assassination of Sarah Palin

[Dan Carscallen]

Perhaps some of our own on the Vizzz could take it down a notch as well,
eh?  

DC
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The Cowardly Character Assassination Of Sarah Palin 
By Michelle Malkin
November 7, 2008

Sunken ships loosen bitter lips. The failed McCain campaign, for all its
high-minded talk of honor, duty and courage, is now teeming with
unscrupulous gossipmongers. Seems the dishy staffers forgot to crack
open their copies of Sen. McCain's bestseller, "Character Is Destiny:
Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should
Remember." 

Rest assured: Their cowardly character assassination of Sarah Palin
won't be forgotten.

The finks turned to Newsweek and Fox News to spread petty rumors about
Palin's intellect and character. The magazine peddled anecdotes from
sources horrified that Palin greeted top advisers at her hotel room --
gasp! -- "wearing nothing but a towel" and "wet hair." Fox News reporter
Carl Cameron breathlessly reported that his unnamed McCain sources told
him Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running
mate" because, they claimed, she didn't know which countries were
parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement and "didn't
understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country
just in itself."

Let's assume for a moment that the McCain rumormongers are telling the
truth about Palin (and I don't believe they are). Who would it damn
more: Palin, or McCain and his vetters, who greenlighted her for the
vice presidential nomination? Don't need a fancy Ivy League degree to
figure that one out.

In introducing her to America, McCain praised her independence and
backbone: She "stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone
tell her to sit down." The inside snipers are now roasting her for that
very attribute -- redefined as "going rogue" -- because she had the
nerve to try to schedule media interviews on her own. The nerve of her!
Palin's response to the campaign fragging? At a late Wednesday night
airport press conference in Anchorage, immediately upon landing home
after the election defeat, she smiled cheerfully. The Alaska governor
shrugged off the "foolish things" said by the McCain saboteurs, and
simply said, "It's politics. ... It's rough and tumble and you've got to
have a thick skin just like I've got." 

Hollywood savaged Palin. Journalists mocked her. Liberal blogs slimed
her. Opponents cursed her, Photoshopped her, hacked her e-mail, hanged
her in effigy, called her bigot, Bible-thumper and bimbo, and attacked
her husband and children. But nothing Palin endured during the election
season compares to the treatment she's receiving from these backstabbing
blabbermouths who worked on the same campaign she poured herself into
over the last three months.

Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized tens of thousands to
come out when they would have otherwise stayed home. She touched
countless families. I didn't agree with everything she said on the
campaign trail. But she vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the
sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated
conservative aristocracy. And she did it all with a tirelessness and an
infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by
elites in both parties to bring her and her family down.

Liberty needs a virtuous people to survive; self-governance requires
virtuous leaders. "Knowledgeability" is a necessary trait in political
life, but it is not sufficient. The elitist critics of Palin, so blindly
enamored of Barack Obama's ability to hold forth for hours on theologian
Reinhold Niebuhr, ignored the Founding Fathers' counsel: Character
counts. In times of adversity and crisis, it counts more than IQ points,
instant trivia recall and bloviation skills.

"The most important thing I have learned, from my parents, from
teachers, from my faith, from many good people I have been blessed to
know, and from the lives of people whose stories we have included in
this book," John McCain wrote in "Character Is Destiny," "is to want
what they had, integrity, and to feel the sting of my conscience when I
have risked it for some selfish reason."

John McCain not only failed to make that message stick with the
electorate, he apparently couldn't persuade his own staff to heed his
advice and practice what he preached.