[Vision2020] The Cowardly Character Assassination of Sarah Palin

[Sue Hovey]

Sending out an opinion piece such as this one is not, to my way of thinking, 
any incentive for folks to "tone it down a notch."

Sue H.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Carscallen" <areaman at moscow.com>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 8:09 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] The Cowardly Character Assassination of Sarah Palin


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