The Daily Palin

Suddenly Sarah Palin is the darling of neoconservatives and liberal Republicans everywhere. I am breathless. This is astounding news. Our Sarah has finally united the right and the, er … not so right but in the general vicinity of the right.

The good news came upon the announcement by Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller that Governor Palin now supports gay marriage, gay adoption, and coming out parties at Elaine’s, or something to that effect. No word at this hour whether Tucker still wants Michael Vick executed.

Of course Palin didn’t say any of that, any more than she said she supported GOProud joining CPAC. What she said was that she doesn’t care. Which is really, really close to announcing the scientific discovery of a homosexuality gene.

The media have been on a relentless campaign for the last week to nail Palin to the floor on what someone like Diane Sawyer I’m sure thinks of as a no-win question: Does Sarah Palin condone the practice of homosexuality or not?

Because, of course, anyone with half a brain knows that Governor Palin, being a born-again Christian, is a whack job who couldn’t find her ass with a road map. This is a big story in network television and mainstream e-print news. Almost as big a scoop as Rick Santorum declaring that Governor Palin is probably too busy to attend CPAC. That is, it would be, if most conservatives actually knew who Rick Santorum is.

Honestly, you would think that the left-stream media would wake up and realize that they raise Palin’s stock every time they open their traps about her. Last week it was the cooked up contest between the Governor and Ron Reagan Jr., and now this. (It should be noted here that matching off Sarah Palin with Ron Reagan Jr. is like pitting a pit bull against a Pekinese).

But they keep on keeping on.

Not speaking for Governor Palin here, but conservatives as a whole simply don’t believe in identity politics. Liberals have things like Congressional Black Caucuses and the NAACP. Conservatives believe in the advancement of everybody, whether gay or straight, black or white or something in between, or 60 as the new 40 for that matter.

Now we understand that in someone like Alan Combs’ world not being for gay marriage is roughly the equivalent of holding gay beatings at Wednesday night prayer meeting. But why does The Daily Caller get caught up in this silliness?

Sarah Palin has been clever in not allowing herself to be baited by the left this week and the media’s underestimation of her political skills has served her well.

We really like The Daily Caller and Tucker Carlson, but you’d think they’d be running with Mubarak in Egypt instead of this poorly cooked tripe.

Charlie Crist’s Ambitions and The Not So Kinder Gentler IRS

Barack Obama and Florida Governor Charlie Crist

There is an interesting article in the American Spectator today entitled, “Charlie’s Revenge,” about Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s call for a federal investigation of Republican Party of Florida finances.

A week or so ago I posted what now seems to me a rather lackluster essay on the 2010 Census in which I must have seemed to come down somewhere in the middle. I am not in the middle on the Census or anything else an Obama administration controls. The Census is insanely over the top. But the GOP may suffer serious damage if House seats are lost because we don’t fill it out. That, and, face it, the government will get this information eventually.

A case in point is this over-tanned politician in Florida who has just given Obama carte blanche to investigate not only his opponent, Marco Rubio, but also every other Republican in the state. These suspected financial wrongdoings, real or contrived by a governor who views his opponent as an interloper on his plans, will be investigated in part, by the new and growing larger as we speak, Obama IRS.

What I know about Florida politics couldn’t fill a thimble. I like Marco Rubio for as much as I know about him, but that is very little. He may be guilty of the malfeasance Crist is suggesting in his campaign ads, and then again he may not. That is for you Floridians to work out.

What does concern me is the IRS and the FBI, whom it now appears Obama can unleash on anyone he sees as a threat to his political designs after the 2010 midterms.

The smallness of Crist will go down, no doubt, in Florida and possibly American history, especially if the IRS is able to beg, barrow or steal a scandal over a $133 rent-a-car expenditure on Rubio’s RPOF credit card. Because that’s what we are talking here. Anyone who has ever witnessed a federal prosecutor at work on a mark hasn’t seen anything compared to IRS latitude to wreak havoc on someone’s professional and personal life.

What we know historically is that original government mandates mean nothing when it comes to establishing bureaucracies. Social Security, Medicare, Department of Energy, and, yes, the IRS have all vastly exceeded their initial mandates.

I suspect—although I cannot know for certain—that the administration’s plan for the IRS, beyond its obvious usefulness in regulating the population’s new health care buying experience, is far greater than anyone might have imagined only a year ago. Obama will almost without question use it as a policing arm of his administration, beyond its mandated roll in collecting taxes. And Florida is an excellent crash test dummy.

Any number of things could happen as the result of Crist’s pulling the trigger on an investigation that should have been handled within the party. First, Marco Rubio could go down in flames for financial malfeasance, or even the impression of wrongdoing. Something tells me that will not be the case but it could happen.

What is more likely to happen – and it already seems to be heading this way – is that the feds will launch an investigation into the RPOF and even Crist’s conduct. The investigation so far has been centered on his appointee to the top RPOF financial post. In that case, the whole thing could end up destroying Charlie Crist, not only politically, but literally.

At the end of the day, however, the far bigger issue is Obama’s desire to regulate everything we do by expanding government and strangling personal freedoms.

REPUBLICANS WHO HATE PALIN SHOULD READ THIS

Paul Starobin wrote an interesting op-ed for the National Journal last Friday. “Palin Is No Puppet” is one of the most insightful and unbiased takes on Sarah Palin we’ve seen to date, and every elitist Republican – both in and out of the Beltway – should read it.

While Republicans trample each other running for the door at the very mention of the possibility of a Palin presidential run in 2012, Starobin points out that Republican nature has always been to distance – if not outright kick to the curb – some of their best leaders.

These types of Republicans, by way of introduction, are the Joe Scarboroughs, who thinks of himself as positively too hip for the room, and the Peggy Noonans, whose main claim to fame is having once written a couple speeches for Reagan (which Ronnie rewrote). Well, we all know them when we see them.

Writes Starobin:

Even within Republican circles in Washington, there is a school of thought that Palin is a “blank page,” a tempting device for would-be handlers, as a former Bush staffer told a British journalist. This impression is fed, if inadvertently, by supporters who labor too hard to vouch for her intellectual credentials. Thus, in a blog posting, the veteran GOP hand Fred Malek offered this description of Palin’s performance at an Alfalfa Club dinner of Washington VIPs to which he had invited her: “It was great to see her in deep conversations with people like Alan Greenspan, Madeleine Albright, Walter Isaacson, and Mitch McConnell. For sure, nothing shallow about this lady.”

Madeleine Albright? And Alan Greenspan et al. And not one mention as to whether Palin used the right fork!

The impetus of Starobin’s essay is that some of America’s greatest leaders have not been intellectual powerhouses, and that it is a mistake to count Palin out based on intellectual snobbery. Ronald Reagan was long believed by elitists in both camps to be an amiable dolt until his writings saw the light of day after his presidency.

Starobin also implies – as we have also said – that much of Palin’s folksy quality is a calculated political technique. The governor is comfortable being underestimated, it has been the case throughout her political career, and the cheap shots only serve to strengthen her base. Through it all, she has managed to remain in the front tier of candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

While Starobin doesn’t attempt to place Palin with the likes of Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich in intellectual prowess, he does point out the historical mistake of discounting her out of hand. Of the insinuations that she is a GOP puppet, he points to Washington, McKinley, and Eisenhower, as others who fielded the same criticism.

He goes on to make the case that leadership abilities are as often honed by experience as education, and that deep, centered convictions can be just as valuable as a Harvard degree.

For Palin (and this is a personal comment), more important than the ethereal musings of the Founding Fathers while drafting the cornerstone documents of our democracy – something most politicians are wont to do – is the defending of a democratic republic under attack, here and now.

Starobin accurately portrays Palin as a free trader and an American exceptionalist, characteristics she shares with Ronald Reagan. He also cites her grasp of foreign affairs, much maligned by both parties, and goes to her tenure as governor of a state that derives much of its income from world trade for support. He deals with her stance on the Middle East crisis as well.

What Starobin didn’t say, but we must, is that Barack Obama, on the other hand, organized welfare schemes in Chicago. How’s that suit you for a global resume? It certainly shows.

Starobin sums it up:

Palin’s critics would be wise to marshal the best assault they can on the basis of her convictions — on the substance of her vision of America and her policies for fulfilling that vision. This is unimpeachable ground for an inquest. So what if she scribbles crib notes on the palm of her hand: She’s doing the scribbling, and the only really interesting question concerns what she is writing down.

So, if you hate Palin, read this article. You might be surprised.