To liberals like the Beltway-Big Apple pundit elites, the idea that anyone would, could or should live a life not centered on the government-Ivy League-media capital corridor is simply an idea that is not on their radar. They just cannot process it. This is key to understand. That Sarah Palin did not have such a life, and was not interested in such a life, was, by definition, a disqualification in their minds. With this template, there was never a chance that the media pundit class would ever understand Palin’s resignation.
Moreover, that she was not willing to do anything to curry their favor was simply not forgivable. They are so used to the John McCains of the world capitulating to their every whim. The only possible reason, in their minds, that Palin would not bow down was that she must be too stupid to realize that all wisdom worth having is contained within this rather closed circle of geographies, people and philosophies.
And this closed circle, or bubble, involves like-minded people sitting around between Washington and Manhattan and talking only to other bubble dwellers. There is no reality in this bubble.
Sarah Palin did not fit. Neither you nor I would, either. To the liberal elitist, what good is being able to hunt and prepare your own food, when any decent speed dial will get you the maître d’ at the Four Seasons? Why learn to run a business and turn a profit when real wisdom is running a deficit and taxing those who turn a profit to make up the difference? I mean, there is wisdom and then there is wisdom. There is Washington—and then there is the real world.
The bubble, including Washington and Manhattan and some other outposts like San Francisco, tends to be about a 90% liberal environment. The real world, as defined by all non-bubble areas, tends to be about a 60% conservative environment.
That’s why a study of Palin and the media is so instructive for how they view everything and everybody. The bubble-focused pundits remain totally incapable of properly analyzing what Palin is all about, even to this day. They cannot properly analyze much of America, either, for the same reason: Total unfamiliarity. They continue to filter Palin’s resignation decision through purely Beltway parameters. They filter everything through purely Beltway parameters.
To wit, Beltway pundits view the world through the template that everything in life is a calculated PR stunt with an eye on the next election, because politics and government are everything. This is one of the profound liberal-conservative disconnects, by the way, and it explains much. Another is the default template that no one from a state university in Idaho could possibly play in a world dominated by Ivy League insiders. When you realize these two foundational templates about liberals, analyzing their every thought and utterance becomes much easier.
So to have some fun, let’s examine how these two liberal foundations play out. Take Ivy League-educated and connected Jamie Gorelick. Harvard B.A., magna cum laude, Harvard Law School, cum laude. This is a resume the pundits have immense respect for. Especially the liberal pundits.
Ms. Gorelick took the position of Assistant Attorney General under Bill Clinton. That is not a misprint. Yes, her name is spelled Gore-lick. And yes, she did serve under Clinton. There is no way I could make that up.
From the position of Assistant Attorney General, just another highly paid powerful job for which she had no qualifications, she authored the infamous “wall” that kept the CIA and FBI from comparing notes on some particular Middle Eastern men. Those particular guys ended up steering jet planes into buildings on 9-11.
After that misadventure, she managed to make tens of millions of dollars while a Vice President at Fannie Mae. Never mind that she had no background in real estate or mortgages. She was an Ivy Leaguer with connections. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Policies enacted by her and Franklin Raines (another Ivy Leaguer with connections and no experience) greatly contributed to the crash of not only Fannie Mae, but the entire housing segment. Meanwhile, she and Raines got filthy stinking rich for their efforts and were praised by that noted economic authority Maxine Waters in a Congressional hearing.
Come to think of it, maybe the pundits are right. No one from the University of Idaho could possibly screw up that much in one lifetime.
And then there are the brilliant and respected Republicans like Christopher Buckley and Colin Powell. While these two wizards were among many swooning at the elegant and brilliant Obama back in 2008 and chafing at the plain spoken Palin, they failed to notice that the elegant one was a socialist who was mentored by American hating radicals.
Dumb ole hick Governor Palin was never fooled, of course. Remember that Buckley and Powell chimed in publicly with various degrees of buyer’s remorse after Obama’s election. Palin had no such remorse. Maybe living in a state that is within sight of the Soviet Union does sharpen ones sensitivity to certain statist vibes. I would say that plain Palin was way ahead of these two ‘intellectual giants’ on this score. I bet you were, too.
And let’s not forget that esteemed strategists like Dick Morris and Frank Luntz were warning that Republicans must embrace the moderate platform of the McCains of the party to have any chance of winning. You know, stuff like an obsession with global warming and favoring government nanny state programs for every phase of life and other ‘across the aisle’ McCain favorites.
Uh oh. Backwoods Annie Oakley would try and talk about limited government and drilling for our own oil whenever she could break free from McCain’s handlers. She even had the audacity—as someone who has actually been to ANWR—to differ with the Beltway elites on what ANWR looked like. What nerve!
Then again, what good is actually having been to ANWR when you have some of Al Gore’s Photo-shopped pictures that elites can ignorantly claim is ANWR? Again, in the war of the elite bubble versus hick reality, hick reality is validated.
Of course, we know now that global temperatures have not risen in over ten years and Americans do not want to pay a cent more for gas due to climate concerns. And there are surveys indicating that their number one concern is government spending, too. Oh, and after the election, Morris wrote a book about Obama the socialist. Memo to the bubble: The Killa from Wasilla and other assorted Neanderthals like us were saying this many moons ago.
What Palin has, along with the people known as the conservative base, is a lot of common sense. This is the kind of common sense that is so easy to get while studying at the University of Idaho, hunting moose in sub zero temperatures, or managing a little league hockey team. Substitute South Carolina, crappie fishing and little league baseball—or any other combination of real life non-bubble experiences—and you get the drift.
It seems out of reach for folks who all went to the same pretentious schools kindergarten thru Ivy, and who spend their entire adult life in the D.C./Manhattan corridor, giving each other jobs for which they are not qualified. And these folks worry incessantly about what the press is saying about them.
These Beltway types, who automatically assume that the Gorelicks of the world are superior to the Palins of the world, are a caricature of themselves, much like the overly pretentious Frasier and Niles Crane. Unfortunately, these folks—unlike the brothers Crane—are taken seriously.
This focused pretension is not how Sarah Palin thinks or lives. It is not how the people who made this country great think or live. It is not how you and I live. And folks who are trapped in that mentality are simply not able to figure out someone like Palin, or the millions of folks who were energized by her. Many liberals are so trapped.
It is safe to say now that Palin’s resignation calculations were not those of the pundit class so busily analyzing her. It was just some practical common sense. By stepping, aside she saved the state of Alaska and her own family millions of dollars in unnecessary legal expenses to fight off nuisance lawsuits made possible by a quirk of Alaska State Law. She remained—and remains—a force for conservative causes and candidates. Her Rolodex is stuffed with key contacts and people who owe her favors, should she need them down the road.
A
nd Alaska is back to being Alaska, largely out of sight and out of mind of the lower 48, which is apparently the way they like it.
In other words, Palin made what you and I instantly knew was a wise “business decision,” and not a political one. I would never say that future political considerations never entered her mind. She may run for office again some day. That’s not the point. The point is that government is not her obsession every waking moment. Nor is it ours.
Some folks will never understand this kind of thinking. If you are connected and can get Tony Rezko to buy a portion of your house as a way to launder a contribution, you don’t have to think this way. If you inherited the Kennedy liquor zillions, you don’t have to think this way. If you married a widow sitting on top of the ketchup fortune of a Republican senator, you don’t have to think this way. If you can simply call up some Ivy League connection and get a cushy government job with seven figure bonuses regardless of performance, you don’t have to think this way.
The Palins have to think this way. My family has to think this way. Yours probably does, too. That’s why the Beltway pundits and other Washingtonians will never understand the Palins, or most of us. This is a big part of the tension between conservative and liberals in general.
And the battle is this. Our way of thinking made the country what it is. Their way of thinking will destroy it. They’re off and running, doing just that. The tension between Palin and the pundit class is but one battle on a huge stage in a vital war. And if you take sides with the pundits in this battle, YOU might just be a liberal.
YMBAL’S #29
If you really believe that the former governor of Massachusetts and a millionaire Wall Street investor has gotten away without paying taxes for ten years…
If you think Chick-fil-A and Bucky Balls are more of a national threat than Muslim extremists…
If you have ever followed Mayor Bloomberg’s edict to hide baby formula by stashing it behind some pro-choice posters…
If you’ve ever worn a Louis Farrakahn or Malcom X tee shirt and cap to a LGBT rally…
If you think Chick Fil-A must be kept out of town because their CEO is against gay marriage but welcome anti-gay Louis Farrakahn to town the very same day…
If you spend time on a boating or hunting or gun message board, and find yourself fighting with all the other members…
If you have ever written a check at a political fundraiser organized by a gay porn kingpin…48
If you refer to cutting funds to Planned Parenthood as “an attack on women’s healthcare”…
If you believe that criminals actually honor “gun free” zones…
If you think the word “empower” is synonymous with being on the receiving end of “government funding”…
If you have total faith in an administration loaded with people who have never run anything telling businesses what to do, lenders how to lend, and the military how to fight…
If you are an ABC News ‘chief investigative reporter’ and you think you have investigated Tea Party ties to the Aurora shooting by putting Holmes+Tea+Party in Google and clicking…
If you have ever referred to prostitution as “consensual sex work” in a UN report…
If you want to link all American gun owners to the actions of James Holmes and Jared Loughner but you refuse to link Islam with the actions of Nidal Hasan and the Time Square Bomber…
If you look at your job as “fighting inequality, poverty and racism” regardless of what it is that you do for a living…
If you think “our political discourse” has ever walked into a crowded parking lot or theater and gunned down innocent people…
If you think Mitt Romney’s tax returns cost you your job, your mortgage, or your 401K…
If you are in favor of TSA type searches in movie theatres as a result of the Aurora killings…
...you might be a liberal. (YMBAL)
“Coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, it’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world.”
—Harry Reid, who represents the City of Las Vegas as Senator from Nevada
“It’s no secret that throughout America, including the very wealthy state of Alaska, we find a storehouse of natural resources that God so benevolently dumped underfoot, just waiting to be tapped. ANWR, for example, is screaming to be used to help bring prosperity and national security to America. Indeed, there is an inherent link between energy and prosperity and energy and security.”
—Sarah Palin
30: JEREMIAH WRIGHT, OBAMA AND BLACK STREET CRED
If you believed all the nonsense about racial healing through the election of Obama…
Perhaps the biggest intellectual train wreck resulting from the election of Obama was the fanciful notion that electing this clean, articulate black guy—in the words of that great philosopher Joe Biden of Amtrak Car 16—would bring about all kinds of racial healing and new politics. Nothing has been further from the truth, as evidenced by any number of polls on race, including one from Gallup released in late 2011. This poll demonstrates that right after Obama’s election, there was a short blip of vaporous hopey-changey optimism that has now been obliterated, and a couple of key metrics are worse than they’ve been in years. Fewer Americans think issues of race will “eventually get worked out,” and more assume it will “always be a problem,” than at any time since the early 2000’s.
I guess we can call this the “right track/wrong track” of racial sentiments.
Of course, we didn’t need that poll to tell us what we already instinctively knew. For four years, we have seen the very folks who assured us Obama’s election would bring about racial healing scream “racists” at every bit of opposition to him. Somehow, millions of the same white people who voted for Obama in 2008 are now mystically and magically virtual Klan members. When conservatives call Obama a Marxist or socialist, two ideologies represented by a bunch of dead white guys, we are called racists. That’s even when we play along, and insist we only have a problem with Obama’s white half!
This was all predictable. And frankly, only people who suspended their intellects actually believed any of it in the first place. To me that would include all liberals by definition. It also includes a lot of moderates and independents who were caught up in the vaporous promises of hope and change.
Of course, it will take the election of a black conservative, not a black liberal, to really bring about lasting positive change on this front. And that’s because race is just one of those issues—perhaps the only issue—that automatically gets worse every time you focus on it, and only it improves when you just go about your life and never make it a consideration. Thus anyone who makes it a focus will make it worse, by definition. Liberals focus on it all the time. In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder focuses on the fact that not enough of us focus on it enough.
Liberal racism, or racial liberalism, is all about getting even. It is all about grievance and about guilt, and it is based on the assumption that all conservatives are racist and that America is an evil nation founded by evil people. This is the default template for many liberal African American leaders. Thus, racial healing through the election of a black liberal was/is simply not possible. Racial healing is not the goal of folks who fit this description. To ignore this baseline principle, not to mention specifics about Obama himself, is to be foolish.
Those fooled would include certain faux conservative elitists like David Brooks and Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley. This was predictable, and some folks in the pundit class are just as much a target of this book as are unobservant Occupy Wall Street protestors who live with one per cent parents on the East Side by night and claim to be 99 per centers by day.
But back to the so-called conservative pundits in the Big Apple. These particular pundits are a class of folks who sometimes seem to be nothing more than ‘tokens’ for the liberal plantations from whom they derive income and status. They are intellectual eunuchs earning their stripes by disagreeing as often as they can with t
he very population they are supposed to be tokens for. They are elitists, but not intellectually elite. There’s a huge difference. I’ll call this dynamic the soft socialism of cocktail expectations. And to earn their cocktail circuit bona fides, most of this class drank the Obama Kool Aid in 2008. Ironically, these are the same people who tell us that squishy moderates like John McCain are the answer to the GOP’s problem and yet with their dream candidate on the ticket, they chose the Democrat anyway. Go figure.
Many other folks who are normally not given to liberal or elitist notions bought into this racial healing thing, too. Wishful thinking perhaps. And yet, any cursory study of who Obama is, and who influenced him specifically, would have shown that racial healing is the last thing that has animated him and his cronies. Getting even with white folks is what much of Obama’s life has been about. This is true of many white liberals, as a way to attract minority support, by the way.
Getting even animated many Obama appointments. Remember, Obama is the man who made sure that folks like Van Jones and Eric Holder hold positions of great authority over us. Jones and Holder are all about getting even. Jones admits to being a radical communist, while Holder merely looks the other way when militant Black Panthers stand guard over polling places.
You Might Be a Liberal Page 23