You can find these articles already posted up at C4P, but I wanted to post my favorite parts here, for my own archives.
First up, the
Daily Caller:
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I don’t doubt that people of that moral caliber exist. That integrity, that sense of loyalty to one’s ethics, that “say what you mean and mean what you say” fabric runs through so many of the people who email me every day. Maybe some of them will choose to run for office and shake up the establishment a bit. Regardless, that fabric I admire is a human one. It may be scarce—and I believe that it is—but it’s alive and well....
My readers have asked me to answer one simple question:
‘Do you think she’s just like the rest of them?’ My answer is no.
In my gut, I don’t think Sarah Palin is “just like the rest of them.” I can’t predict the future and I don’t know her personally. But I’ve listened to her speeches and her commentary. I’ve researched her record. And I’ve read her book. I spent hours interviewing many of her fans who were lined up outside her Rochester book signing. I hoped to get a sense of the Sarah Palin they believed made a night of sleeping in portable tents on concrete worthwhile.
I also had the chance to speak with Palin briefly and tell her why I was there. I saw the gratitude in her eyes for what I had done. I could tell right away that those people who slept outside were valuable to her. Not because they could likely add up to future votes or hefty PAC donations, but because they believe in her. I have no doubt that she believes in them.
I grew up in New York City. I’ve spent most of my adult days in Manhattan, including graduate school in my early 20s at Columbia University. It’s a great place to discover yourself, but let’s just say I’m no stranger to fancy discourse, intellectual doublespeak, overpriced anything and everything, and people trying to talk you into this or that on an hourly basis. I don’t quite have the naiveté that I often admire so much in others.
What I have instead is a profound appreciation for what’s real. My gut and my research tell me Palin’s not a fake.
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Next up, the
American Thinker:
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The Democrats and the jogging canines of mainstream journalism never miss an opportunity to miss the obvious.
Allow me, then, to explain the reason -- the real reason -- why the aforementioned devote the enormous amounts of time, effort, ink, and pixels to attack one woman, Sarah Palin.
Palin is a private citizen, who does nothing but give speeches, sell books, post Facebook messages, and is a "Fox News contributor" whose only substantive "contributions" so far, from what I can see, have been to Fox News' bottom line and to her own bank account.
After all, we never saw the left direct this level of vitriol -- no, let's call it what it is,
hatred -- against the likes of Ron Paul, Steve Forbes, Ross Perot, and others whose names, for good reason, I cannot recall. And, unlike Sarah Palin, these were all declared candidates, actively-campaigning for the presidency in an election year....After all, it's not like Sarah Palin could actually be elected President of the United States or anything.
Or could she?
Of course, she could, or at least the people attacking her think so. That is not to say that she will be elected or even nominated, but she could and that's clearly one reason why the left is so viciously attacking her and her alone.
This has to be a sweet irony if you're Sarah Palin:
Your enemies are screaming to the rafters that you can't be elected precisely because, in their heart of hearts and brain of brains, they know that you can. The New York Times' editorial board doth protest too much.
But even that is only one factor that explains, the ferocity, the hateful, the sheer derangement of the left's anti-Palin barrage and
it's not the main factor, which is this: They are powerless to stop her. And they know it.
For Democrats, it is, literally, the Fear That Dare Note Speak Its Name,
the fear that Sarah Palin could indeed be elected president and that there is nothing they can do about it....Whoever the Republicans nominate in 2012 becomes president in 2013. And that's the key word: "Republicans." Whoever the Republicans nominate....
If you're a liberal Democrat facing this prospect, you're probably thinking: "The Messiah's a goner, but if we're to have a Republican president, please, God, please, anyone but Sarah Palin. Anyone but an attractive, charismatic, principled, conservative, pro-life woman...."
Throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at her. Blast her with every crack, every criticism, every accusation, no matter how absurd, how hysterical, how rabid and irrational, and hope something sticks. Sully her good name; taint her so badly in the public's eyes that Republicans won't dare nominate her.
Either that, or turn on the TV at noon, January 20, 2013 to see Barack Obama, out after one soon-to-be-forgotten term, standing on a platform in front of the White House -- and the entire world puts her left hand on the Bible, raises her right, and repeating after Chief Justice Roberts (or reading from her palm) says:
I, Sarah Louise Palin, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States...Is it any wonder the Dems are going bonkers?
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And last, but not least,
Big Hollywood:
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Perhaps never before in American history have two individuals so captured the hearts, minds and imaginations of such a wide proportion of the citizenry as have Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Both are charismatic, charming in their own ways, in dramatic, stand-above-the-crowd fashion. Both have written best-selling autobiographies, which have mesmerized large swaths of the American public.
There, however, the similarities end.
One has been adored by the leftist-activist media brigade, which gleefully tossed away its fabled “objectivity” in order to get the candidate with whom it was both in love and in sync elected. The other has been veritably loathed by the same Ivy League-centric mandarin class which long ago forsook its working-class roots and is now actively ashamed of them.
One represents academic elitism. The other comes from a standard state university background....
One is the darling of Hollywood; the other is the butt of crass celebrity jokes....
What we have here are two philosophies fighting to the death for the soul of America, each represented by one phenomenal public figure.
Barack Obama, in keeping with international socialists throughout the last century, has proclaimed himself loudly-and-clearly a “citizen of the world.” He conducted his entire campaign as a lecture to greedy, over-consuming Americans on the necessity of propping up the lagging third world and the inherent goodness of his redistributive plans for government....
To Obama, America is the problem to the world, not the solution. He hammered away consistently at his intention to divvy up the American “pie” in international-socialist fashion, even while disingenuously peppering his talk with Reaganite calls for lowering taxes on the middle-class....Thronged by ogling, drooling, chanting Europeans on a celebrity campaign tour, Obama took great pains to paint himself as post-American....
Which brings us to Sarah Palin, his arch-foe in the public psyche.
No, Mrs. Palin holds no public office. She wields no genuine power in terms of armies or bureaucracies. She is merely a private citizen.
But Sarah Palin has arisen from the ashes of electoral defeat as the embodiment of archetypal American values, beliefs, hopes and dreams.
At present, with a “post-American” president at the helm, Sarah Palin carries the torch of liberty and American exceptionalism in the palm of her lovely hand. She is the surviving embodiment of the spirit of 1776 and the Reagan reformation....
Whichever side one is on, the stakes are clear. Nothing less than the soul of America is on the line.
Will we give up forever on the American dream and become nothing more than footnotes in the annals of failed international socialism? Or will we see an American reformation that reestablishes individual liberty and ingenuity as moral imperatives worth fighting for and preserving for our progeny?
The stakes could not be higher. And the archetypes, Palin and Obama, could not be clearer....
Two opposing world views are colliding.
And only one side can prevail.
In the Wall Street Journal:
