Palin Takes the Muffs Off

posted at 2:35 am on May 14, 2009 by CK MacLeod
[ Politicians ]    printer-friendly

Maybe it’s the late Alaska Spring that’s got into Sarah Palin, or maybe it’s a combination of events:  book deal done, bogus ethics complaints dropped, recovery from the legislative session, daughter Bristol coming home from her first foray into political activism, husband Todd from attending the White House Correspondents Association dinner in her place…  Just a few days ago, Bill Bennett gratuitously read Palin out of the Republican future on CNN.  Yet just yesterday we heard one canny-sounding observer claiming with certainty that Palin is preparing a 2012 presidential run.

Or maybe the spectacle of a fellow beauty pageant contestant and Christian woman getting slandered and assaulted on all channels and sites finally pushed Mrs. Palin to her feet… with a bit of a snarl.

I don’t claim to know the truth of the presidential matter, or even to have a strong feeling about it, but I do know that the Carrie Prejean affair seems to have brought something new to the fore:  A sharper, angrier, more openly politicized Sarah Palin than we’ve yet seen – a Palin who seems to have finally had enough of it. The following statement (h/t carbon_footprint) has appeared on the SarahPAC site:

Governor Palin Statement on attacks against Carrie Prejean

May 13, 2009

The liberal onslaught of malicious attacks against Carrie Prejean for expressing her opinion is despicable.

Carrie and I spoke soon after the attacks started; I can relate as a liberal target myself. What I find so remarkable is that these politically-motivated attacks fail to show that what Carrie and I believe is also what President Obama and Secretary Clinton believe – marriage is between a man and a woman.

I applaud Donald Trump for standing with Carrie during this time. And I respect Carrie for standing strong and staying true to herself, and for not letting those who disagree with her deny her protection under the nation’s First Amendment Rights.

Our Constitution protects us all – not just those who agree with the far left.

Governor Sarah Palin

I’ve been trying to keep fairly close track of Sarah Palin ever since she first started getting mentioned by the great mentioners (Bill Kristol was I believe the first I heard use her name).  I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing a statement from her like the one above.

The second word is “liberal.”  The last two are “far” and “left.”  And she uses the first l-word a second time when she describes herself, both plaintively and aggressively in the same breath, as a “liberal target.”  To state the obvious, it’s heavily politicized language – the harsh shorthand of label-fixing.  (Can anyone think of anything else she’s said or written that compares?)  To my knowledge the closest she’s come to such strong rhetoric since the ’08 campaign was when she spoke of her state being “enslaved to the federal government” in the context of the Stimulus Bill debate last month, but, even then, she eschewed open political line-drawing of this type.  Even as nominee/attack dog, she never growled like this.  Nor has she since the campaign chosen to address new national issues with no direct connection to herself or to Alaska.

Mrs. Palin seems to think she smells blood – or at least a chance to put herself on the winning side of a high profile, highly charged, widely accessible issue that, as the feminists might once have said, is both political and personal.  The move could be risky, but, though it won’t receive the approval of the can’t-we-all-get-along? types who’ve never seemed interested in getting along with her and her supporters, it lands her on a cultural-political battlefield that she may view as tipped in her favor – for a confrontation that enables her to define “liberal” and “far left” as political forces on the other side of Constitutional freedoms and of those standing up for them, of  people like Carrie Prejean, people like Donald Trump, people like herself.

In short, she seems confident that the majority of Americans, if forced to choose between Prejean and Perez Hilton, wouldn’t have too hard a time reaching the same decision she has – with the unspoken endorsement “even” of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, despite their in this context problematic associations and commitments.  Whether the statement is merely a test or an isolated incident, or in fact a starting point promising a new direction, we can at least say in Palin’s favor that, if you’re going out of your way to draw a sharp political line, it’s good to have most of the country on your side of it.

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