Why I love Sarah Palin

A week ago tonight I was contemplating getting up really early on Monday morning, say, about 4 a.m., and traveling to Mall of America so I could stand in line and wait to get my copy of Going Rogue signed by Sarah Palin. Eventually I decided that was a little too early, and the lines would likely be too long, and I decided not to go.

As it turned out, it was a pretty orderly process, more books were signed than were expected, and I wish I would have gone, although I expect I'll have other opportunities in the future to get the book signed.

I'm a big fan though, and I've read a good chunk of the book already. I was at the Republican National Convention in 2008 when she spoke, and the atmosphere in the Xcel Energy Center was absolutely electric that night. I can say that it was like having a rock star in the building, because I have been in that building many times with actual rock stars, like Paul McCartney, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Elton John, and others, and there has never been an atmosphere like that night. Everyone wanted to see this relatively unknown Governor of Alaska, and she didn't disappoint. She gave a knockout speech and had the crowd - and much of the nation -in the palm of her hand.

Since that night, my appreciation of her has only grown, for two reasons:

1) She destroyed liberal feminism. Ever since high school, I've had to listen to my liberal friends talk about: a) The importance of electing more women to office, and b) How feminism was all about "expanding opportunities" and "respecting choices." I was sympathetic to both points of view. From an electoral standpoint, a gender that is more than 50% of the population maybe SHOULD have 50% of elective offices. And if a woman happens to have an aptitude for anything in particular - math, science, engineering, whatever - there's no reason she should be denied an opportunity to pursue those interests because of gender stereotyping.

Given that philosophy, Palin should have been a feminist's dream. Here is a bright, talented woman who had won high political office and was seeking an even higher office. Early in her career she broke into a male-dominated field - television sportscasting - and she could hold her own hunting moose and racing snowmobiles, two other areas usually left to the men. Juggling a challenging family and a rising career, Palin should be considered the very embodiment of female empowerment.

But no! Turns out that ever liberal feminist I know immediately - and I mean within 72 hours of Palin being introduced - already hated her. Turns out that some of the choices Palin made in her life weren't the choices liberal feminists would make. Like being pro-life. Like choosing to give birth to a Down syndrome child. Like supporting the military. Like believing in American exceptionalism.

All of these things were utterly unacceptable to the left. And in those same 72 hours, I realized that the feminists had been lying to me for 40 years. They didn't care about electing women, they only cared about electing liberals. Gender was just a tool to hide behind, and to use for leverage. There are no "sisters" in feminism, there are only fellow liberals, who are required to march in line and follow orders from the feminist elites.

When I realized that a "feminist" could love Ted Kennedy - a misogynist, serial abuser of women - and despise Sarah Palin, I realized the feminist ideology had nothing to do with benefitting women, and that the ideology was dead.

(Fun thing to do: Next time someone starts ranting about how unfair the world is to women, just say, "You must have been really disappointed that Sarah Palin didn't win." Shuts them up like a mute.)

2) I love the fact that she makes liberals NUTS. She drives them absolutely crazy. Any sense of fairness or decency goes right out the window when they discuss Palin. They'll call her names, spread vicious lies, tell barbaric jokes about her children, cut-and-paste her face on pornographic pictures. Nothing is too low for a Palin-hater.

There are a million hateful quotes out there, but one of my personal favorites is this one, from someone named Wendy Doniger, a religion professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, who wrote for the Washington Post that "Her (Palin's) greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." Imagine that coming from someone whose job is to instruct
future teachers of Christianity.

(Here are Palin and Doniger. You can decide for yourself which one is really a woman.)


Criticize Hillary Clinton's position on the Middle East, and the lefties will call you a sexist, fascist, woman-hating, neanderthal pig and maybe charge you with a hate crime. But say that Palin looks like a "slutty flight attendant" and you're simply "talking about the issues."

Palin has turned large portions of the political left into absolute moonbats, simply by being herself. And I love it when the left goes nuts like this, because when they get this way, they do really stupid things.

George W. Bush did the same thing to them. They hated him - just absolutely HATED him - so much that they were willing to do whatever they could to defeat him. And when they lost twice to him, their hatred made them so nuts that they ran out and grabbed a naive, inexperienced, not-too-bright guy to be their presidential nominee, simply because they could leverage his skin color into the election win they so desperately wanted.

Their hatred of Bush led them to Obama, and Obama is going to set them back 20 years, just like Jimmy Carter did.

Will Sarah Palin ever be president? I doubt it, for a variety of reasons, but she doesn't have to be president to have performed a valuable service to the nation. The thousands and thousands of people that are turning out for her book signings are evidence that there is a great untapped reserve of political energy in this country that will be the scourge of liberals for the next generation, and we'll have Palin to thank for it.