I have referred to ‘boxing the compass’ as Obama’s approach of assailing Sarah Palin from all possible directions and from various quarters. BTC refers to the naming the 32 points of a compass in clockwise order. With that in mind here are IMHO the 32 approaches that Obama and Axelrod (borrowed also by Palin’s GOP opponents) and their allies in the MSM, the nutroots, amongst media pundits, in academia, and the entertainment industry will relentlessly employ to torpedo Sarah Palin’s potential Presidential run in 2012. They are listed in no particular order of importance or priority:

1)The use of ankle-biters and left-wing bloggers in their attempt to first rattle her and then unnerve her

The more time that Sarah has to devote to a legal defense fund and to deal with matters extraneous to campaigning or getting her message out the hope is the less focused she will become.

2)To frustrate and exasperate her intentions and agenda

This deals directly with her agenda in Alaska and the desire to undermine her at every opportunity. Witness what has happened in the past two months in Juneau. The goal is to dishearten Sarah and to point out to her that the task of trying to become POTUS in 2012 may be too arduous and the obstacles standing in her way insurmountable, that there are too many forces lined up against her for her to gain enough traction.

3)To bait Sarah into an unforced error

The goal is rile Sarah up so much that she decides to strike back and says something that becomes permanently politically damaging or that can be construed as permanently damaging

4)To frighten or terrorize Sarah

Remember Obama and his cohorts stem from and thrive in a thug culture that has strong ties to the principles outlined in Rules For Radicals by Alinsky. I’ll let the reader interpret what I mean.

5)To pigeonhole or classify her politically speaking

The Left wants to portray Sarah as a ‘fire and brimstone’ pro-life intolerant bogeyman out of the mainstream and pre-empt her from establishing her libertarian credentials and ties to independents and and enhancing her ties to the PUMA’s.

6)To mischaracterize her personality, intelligence, capabilities, talents etc so as to badly reflect on how she is perceived by voters and brand her as eternally unqualified to be POTUS.

Quite simply, the first prerequisite to decide whether to vote for someone or not should be to determine whether he or she can do the job or not.

7)If #6 doesn’t work at least relegate Sarah to a candidate who the ‘jury is still out on’ or the category of a ’second stringer’

In other words, should you stay with a proven commodity, Obama, or do you want to turn your country over to someone who you are still dubious about?

8) Marginalizing Sarah by diminishing her credibility

For those in Rio Linda, this means driving Sarah’s supporters, potential backers and money away from her by implying that Sarah is not a major player, that she has no chance of being the GOP standardbearer in 2012, or that she has absolutely no chance of defeating Obama in 2012.

9) along with #8 the use of statistics, graphs, polls, political history to demonstrate why Sarah is ‘unelectable’

This is the specious use of ’supposed facts’ to prove an opinion.

10)by demonizing Sarah to make her appear evil or to have evil intentions

Obamatrons already regard Sarah as evil. However there are a number of disaffected Obama voters who might consider voting for Sarah in 2012 if they felt Sarah was innocuous, gracious or non-threatening.

11)Assassinate her character and crucify her

This is part of #10 but goes a lot further delving into every aspect of her political and personal life in regards to decisions she has made and calling into question her judgment and motives at the time and being very petty and malicious while doing so.

12)Draining the swamp

Mao Tse-Tung coined this phrase to asset his belief that if the enemy was not allowed call upon the comfort or support of sympathizers it would be easier to defeat. Obama’s goal is to deny Sarah support and to isolate her from agencies that might come to her aid and assist her. I’ll leave it up to the reader how Obama and his allies would try to accomplish this.

13)erect a ’straw man’ that can be easily refuted and make Sarah appear misguided

For example Obama could claim that Sarah believes in a capitalist system where there is no regulation whatsoever and then slam the GOP and Sarah for Bush’s incompetence that led to the financial meltdown.

There are a countless number of straw men that can be conjured up. This is why Sarah needs a team around her who understands the potential damage in this area and who can refute every single false claim as they are brought up in the arena of ideas.

14)Exploit the inconsistency and expose the hypocrisy

When you utter thousands of words in speeches you are bound to contradict yourself eventually. What the Left will endeavor to do is to convert these apparent contradictions into episodes of lies, flip-flops and damning examples of personal hypocrisy.

For example many on the Left wanted to seize on the thought that because Sarah, for a fleeting moment considered ‘making Trig go away’ that this automatically made her a hypocrite.

15)Cite the establishment of a legal defense fund as proof of wrongdoing by Sarah

Why do you need a legal defense fund if you have not done anything wrong?

16)Attribute McCain’s words to her or cite her positions in the campaign that run counter to ‘Reagan conservative’ philosophy

Of course, the Left will never cite the primary axiom of Presidential politics for VP candidates is that they must support the message of the ticket, regardless of how he or she personally or ideologically feels.

17)Consistently repeating moments on TV or radio which were less than flattering to Sarah

The ‘turkey’ episode and ‘I don’t know what I read’ episode will be repeated thousands of tumes in 2012 to make Sarah appear foolish.

18)along with #17 to consistently mock and caricature Sarah amongst late-night comedians and SNL.

This is to convince apolitical types or younger voters who only get their news from this source to discount or write off Sarah as a worthy candidate and label her as a bimbo or a moron.

19)to discredit Sarah through the choice of who is advising her

As we still don’t know yet who that will be it would be hard for me now to tell you what Obama’s plans are but suffice it to say he will develop some.

20)to honeycomb Sarah’s organization with spies or fifth columnists to undermine its efficiency or effectiveness

This is self-explanatory.

21)To accuse Sarah from being out of step with the ‘new world order’

This is a deliberate attempt for the Left to hang on to the eastern elitists who still call themselves Republicans and who are ’soft’ on the Founding documents, American rugged individualism, cowboy diplomacy, and American exceptionalism.

22)To build up Sarah’s potential GOP Presidential opponents to the detriment of Sarah

Nothing could be sweeter for Obama and his merry men and women than to bleed some of Sarah’s conservative support away from her into Huckabee’s, Romney’s or Sanford’s camp during the primary season.

23)The use of tabloid rumors about Sarah, Todd, or her family

These stories are not only meant to titillate but are also an attempt to subtly accuse Sarah of having skeletons in the closet and thus question her honesty and sincerity.

Of course, the Messiah doesn’t have any himself, does he?

24)The use and distortion of the English language to depict Sarah in the worst possible light or to cause her to retract what she had said

During the 2008 campaign the Left tried to accuse Sarah of racism because of her focus on and sarcasm directed to community organizers.

25)Disinformation and propaganda

This is of the same magnitude as exhibited by Goebbels in Nazi Germany. It is completely orchestrated, always has a set purpose in mind and targeted on a 24/7 basis towards diminishing and destroying Sarah.

26)The insinuation that Sarah cannot do her job as POTUS and take care of children at the same time–that you cannot mix kids with business or bring your kids to work with you.

Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, recently tried these tactics.

27)Consistently convince GOP turncoats or fifth columnists to sell Sarah out on TV and why Sarah is not who the GOP wants to represent them

Meghan McCain appears to be the gift for Obama that just keeps on giving.

John Feehery and Mike Murphy are tied for second.

28)have academics and media pundits continually trash Sarah for supposed political miscalculations or being a lightweight

David Gergen, Ed Rollins, Jeffrey Toobinm, Katrina van der Heuvel, Margaret Carlson, and Gloria borger all have Sarah’s best interests at heart, don’t they?

29)Deny Sarah the recognition or credibility that she deserves or is entitled to

Taiwan has been a viable entity since 1949, but since 1971 when Red China entered the UN it has not been allowed re-entry. Much of the world acts like Taiwan does not exist.

And Obama’s goal is to deny Sarah legitimization. That was the main reason Obama stopped Hillary Clinton from appearing with Sarah in front of the UN at the end of September 2008 to protest Iran and Ahmadinejad’s presence at the UN.

Obama wants to make it appear that he doesn’t recognize Sarah’s existence, while all the dirty work is being done sub rosa or perpetrated by his nefarious allies to destroy her.

30)Accuse Sarah’s supporters of being alighned to white, racist militia groups or being right-wing extremists.

By inference, the attempt is to portray Sarah as a right-wing unhinged lunatic herself as well and anti-American.

31)Accuse or imply Sarah wants to impose a Christian theocracy on America and throw women who abortions and doctors who perform them in jail

This is a traditional tactic used by the Left to scare the bejesus out of young women voters and to keep them in the fold.

32)Saturation bombing

This is part and parcel of the first 31 strategies but overall a strategy to destroy the victim regardless of collateral damage.

Obama is not into taking prisoners or giving a sucker an even break. What he is all about is pre-emptive strikes, unrelenting pressure, the insidious erosion of an opponent’s credibility, and administering the knockout punch while the opponent has both hands tied behind his/her back or defenseless.

There are probably more than 32 strategies that Obama and Axelrod will employ but to those unfamiliar with the inner workings of politics I think this is a good starting point.

technopeasant on May 4, 2009 at 4:21 PM