The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right!

Posted on | July 3, 2013 | 237 Comments

Last week, a Breitbart News article highlighted Sarah Palin’s criticism of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, and on Sunday, she wrote a Facebook post excoriating this “bipartisan” sellout:

Great job, GOP establishment. You’ve just abandoned the Reagan Democrats with this amnesty bill, and we needed them to “enlarge that tent” of which you so often speak. It’s depressing to consider that the House of Representatives is threatening to pass some version of this nonsensical bill in the coming weeks.

Palin went on to say that many Americans, herself included, “are barely hanging on to our enlistment papers in any political party,” denouncing both parties as “dysfunctional political machines.”

Hear! Hear! Attagirl, Sarah! You tell ’em!

Then, in response to my friend Josh Painter, Governor Palin said she liked his suggestion of joining forces with Mark Levin to create a new “Freedom Party” if the GOP continues its drift toward abandoning a commitment to core American values. This comment was picked up by the Daily Caller’s Jeff Poor (who has always hated Sarah Palin with a blind fury) and was in turn seized on by a Red State diarist who, in order to illustrate his post, used a Photoshopped image to mock Palin.

By a strange chain of events — having missed the build-up of the brewing controversy — I learned of this via Stacy Drake, who slammed the dishonesty of the Red State attack. Quite frankly, a lot of Palin supporters have been bitter toward Red State since 2011, when Erick Erickson went out of his way to mock them. But let us lay aside these ancient quarrels to ask: Is Sarah Palin right?

Not only is she right to oppose this amnesty sellout, but the resentment toward GOP leadership she expresses touches on key aspects of a criticism that the most astute minds in the conservative movement have been making for many, many years. Readers already acquainted with this critique will excuse me for taking time here to explain to new readers the historical and philosophical background.

The perennial problem of the Republican Party is that they are a party of ideas, whereas Democrats are a party of people. That is to say, the GOP since the era of Reagan has been devoted to a philosophy of conservatism — an ideology — while by contrast, the Democrats sit around identifying specific voter groups (labor union members, women, blacks, gays, etc.), telling them that the Republicans are their mortal enemies, and then pitching them with promises: “We’re on your side. We’re your friends. Vote for us and we’ll give you X, Y and Z.”

Republicans succeed when they are led by spokesmen who can clearly articulate a conservative philosophy, and who consistently point out the Democrats’ history of dishonesty and failure: Even if you could trust Democrats to do what they say they’re going to do (which by the way, you can’t) their policies don’t work, have never worked and never will work. People who vote Democrat in the belief that Democrats will fix their problems always end up with worse problems.

Want to see what Democrats do for their “friends”? Go to Detroit.

Republicans fail when they lack confidence in their own beliefs and instead offer voters a “Me, Too” agenda of Democrat Lite. This has been a GOP problem since the era of Herbert Hoover, at least, and was a basic reason why William F. Buckley Jr. and a number of other like-minded people organized what we now know as Movement Conservatism during the 1950s. It is a sad fact that many of those who today claim to be conservatives have never really studied the development of this movement. Too much of this history has either been forgotten or twisted by liberal authors (e.g., Sam Tanenhaus) so as to be unrecognizable to those familiar with the actual facts.

Many of my friends of the libertarian or traditionalist persuasion (“Old Whigs,” so to speak) scorn Movement Conservatism as weak tea, a pragmatic compromise with electoral politics that lacks the radicalism of a fighting creed which can inspire a true revival. As one of my late acquaintances liked to say, the conservative movement is an oxymoron; it conserves nothing and doesn’t move anywhere.

Well, “steady licks kill the Devil,” as they say. We have seen in the past half-century that, if properly organized and properly led, the conservative movement can make real changes. But personnel is policy, and too often the ambitions of individuals — careerists seeking to make politics the vehicle of their own personal success — have put the wrong kind of people in key roles, enabling them to prevent success (and then, of course, to scapegoat others for the failure).

Ability and ambition are not always accompanied by virtue and wisdom. Quite commonly in political life, we encounter selfish people who cleverly present themselves as principled idealists, zealous for The Cause, while enriching themselves and enhancing their own influence behind the convenient camouflage of political purity.

Al Regnery once summarized this problem by saying that the success of conservatism had created opportunities for opportunists.

In other words, back when “conservative” was an unpopular label and a misunderstood idea, people could not get rich or build careers for themselves by parading beneath the banner of conservatism. But the success of the conservative movement during the Reagan era and beyond made it a popular thing — both for Republican office-seekers and for various sorts of political functionaries — to identify themselves as “conservatives,” to claim to speak for conservatism, and to assert that their particular ideas were True Conservatism.

This influx of opportunists has not only confused the public as to what “conservative” means, but it has erected an organizational infrastructure of the movement staffed by careerists more interested in their own advancement within this hierarchy — “The Ziggurat of Ambition,” as I’ve called it — than in conservatism itself.

Sarah Palin’s career on the national stage has involved some misfortunes, which the Red State diarist imperfectly summarizes:

I’ll admit, for a brief moment in 2008, I thought John McCain might actually have a chance at winning the White House. That moment was at the end of Sarah Palin’s RNC convention speech during which she took a mere 45 minutes to eviscerate the 18 months of image building that was Barack Obama’s campaign.
In 2008, to me, Sarah Palin was the “hope” and “change” the GOP could have used. Palin seemed to be more the ‘maverick’ than McCain ever was or could hope to be.
However, shortly after her convention speech, the McCain campaign took over, the Left attacked, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now, after four years of being the quasi-professional bomb-throwing GOP outsider, Palin is tossing the idea out there that she’s open to supporting a third party.

This certainly summarizes a perception of Palin that many people might agree with, if they haven’t bothered to study Palin’s biography and to assess the fundamental problem: What happens when a successful but relatively obscure Republican with no previous exposure to high-stakes national politics is suddenly thrust into the spotlight — and finds herself surrounded by the sort of vicious backstabbing crapweasels who were running John McCain’s campaign?

Seriously: If Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace are the future of the Republican Party, we are doomed beyond all hope of redemption.

Criticize Palin however you will — say she was “not ready for primetime,” call her a “bomb thrower,” accuse her of greed or excessive vanity, impugn her temperament, whatever — but you must understand this: Sarah Palin is not what’s wrong with the Republican Party.

And while I do not mean to endorse a third-party effort in 2016, Governor Palin has put her finger directly on a key problem for conservatives, namely that such leaders of the Republican Party as have joined The Gang of Eight Liars are betraying the people who elected them with the belief that those voters have no alternative.

Controlling the party apparatus and able to hire plenty of “conservative intellectuals” to endorse their betrayal as essential to the future success of the GOP, these Republicans proceed on the assumption that conservative voters are so lacking in devotion to principle that they will always vote Republican no matter what.

Governor Palin can’t say this, but I can: F–k you, “Republican leaders.”

And while we’re at it, f–k anybody who says we should roll over and accept this kind of phony “conservative” bulls–t as inevitable.

No, by God, I say we fight these bastards with everything we’ve got.

Fight them until Hell freezes over, and then fight them on the ice.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, a fine occasion to declare our independence from these vicious backstabbing crapweasels.

If Governor Palin is willing to help lead this fight — inside the GOP so long as there is hope, but outside the GOP if we must — then I say, “Patriots! We must conquer here or die! Rally on the Alaskan!”
 

WOLVERINES!

 


Category: Immigration, Sarah Palin, Vicious Backstabbing Crapweasels

Comments

237 Responses to “By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right!”

  1. Independence Thursday | Palin4America
    July 4th, 2013 @ 6:17 am

    […] this post so much […]

  2. Shawn Gillogly
    July 4th, 2013 @ 6:53 am

    If a candidate wins a primary, and thus has earned the lion’s share of support for the candidate in the state, he shouldn’t ‘have’ to resort to Parliamentary tricks to squelch the minority. Doubly so when the Establishment controls the party apparatus.

    Which brings us back to the ‘real’ issue. Why does the GOP Establishment despise it’s own base? Maybe if we didn’t have a ruling class in the party so out-of-touch with the rank and file, Rule 12 wouldn’t be seen by them as necessary. But the problem isn’t the backroom manipulators, it’s the base, right?

  3. Kelsonus
    July 4th, 2013 @ 7:46 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/ujSlCVOLUv

  4. craigbardo
    July 4th, 2013 @ 7:49 am

    Amen!!! MT “@DanRiehl: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/KI4GLSXFCj”

  5. greymagus
    July 4th, 2013 @ 8:20 am

    RT @DanRiehl: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/vDq0g5vmE5

  6. Michael Bowler
    July 4th, 2013 @ 8:23 am

    Yep!

  7. Professor_Why
    July 4th, 2013 @ 8:58 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/xLwPrX69cy

  8. tnovak7
    July 4th, 2013 @ 9:31 am

    RT @MrLTavern: RS McCain: Sarah Palin is not what’s wrong w/ the GOP. She can’t say this, but I can: F–k you, “Republican leaders.” http://…

  9. preheat_2_420
    July 4th, 2013 @ 9:50 am

    RT @MrLTavern: RS McCain: Sarah Palin is not what’s wrong w/ the GOP. She can’t say this, but I can: F–k you, “Republican leaders.” http://…

  10. ImaLindatoo
    July 4th, 2013 @ 9:51 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/wHvmljj4Mz #tcot #ccot #teaparty

  11. Emilio_Crosby
    July 4th, 2013 @ 9:54 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/wwK9GHZ8RO

  12. PW4SP
    July 4th, 2013 @ 10:00 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/RoyoFONqqU #Palin

  13. DclareDiane
    July 4th, 2013 @ 10:22 am

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right!

    http://t.co/bpQiijflZr

  14. wedjim
    July 4th, 2013 @ 10:50 am

    RT @DclareDiane: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right!

    http://t.co/bpQiijflZr

  15. motownmutt
    July 4th, 2013 @ 11:52 am

    RT @DanRiehl: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/vDq0g5vmE5

  16. freeinaz
    July 4th, 2013 @ 12:25 pm

    Man are you right. Even the mention of this RINO/ progressives name makes my blood boil.

  17. smokinjoe101
    July 4th, 2013 @ 12:47 pm

    RT @rsmccain: “Governor Palin can’t say this, but I can: F–k you, ‘Republican leaders.’” http://t.co/Ws5u1gDquK

  18. mamawagsx2
    July 4th, 2013 @ 2:04 pm

    RT @RuBegonia: Quite frankly, a lot of Palin supporters have been bitter toward Red State since 2011, when …http://t.co/sJgoxcsUbR

  19. ImaLindatoo
    July 4th, 2013 @ 8:37 pm

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/9jj4FtsLn6 #tcot #ccot #teaparty

  20. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 4th, 2013 @ 10:07 pm

    It is an amnesty bill and a steaming pile of crap!

  21. Mike Burke
    July 5th, 2013 @ 12:04 am

    Here Here !!!!!!!!! My skin crawls when I see our so called Republican leaders like Nicole Wallace nodding in agreement with Joe Scarborough as they bash and belittle conservatives day after day…, and we let them repeat the same mistakes with Romney in 2012 and the establishment Republicans will recycle them again in 2016. They’ll be there…mark my words.
    These pinheads like Erickson, Wallace, Scarbourough, the WSJ Editorial board, Jeff Poor and a cast of thousands seem perfectly able and willing to ignore the fact that Palin helped the Republicans win the House in the 2010 mid terms and fundmentally stoppped Obama’s legislative ajenda cold. Erickson and Wallace and their ilk should reflect on where our nation would be with a Speaker Pelosi, but with their go along to get along philosphy,and their willingness to feast on the table scraps liberals feed them, that might be more agreeable to them and all their cries for “compromise”. As Ann Coulter said…..”Screw Them”

  22. LeatherPenguin
    July 5th, 2013 @ 6:53 am

    By God! @rsmccain has gone •inefabbly brutal• again…. http://t.co/ryE5JMJoGI

  23. rsmccain
    July 5th, 2013 @ 7:52 am

    RT @LeatherPenguin: By God! @rsmccain has gone •inefabbly brutal• again…. http://t.co/ryE5JMJoGI

  24. jones4440
    July 5th, 2013 @ 10:10 am

    RT @LeatherPenguin: By God! @rsmccain has gone •inefabbly brutal• again…. http://t.co/ryE5JMJoGI

  25. RS McCain: By God, Sarah Palin is Right! AND So Is McCain. Here’s Why BOTH Are, and Why That’s So Important! | A Time For Choosing
    July 5th, 2013 @ 6:21 pm

    […] Others, like Stacy McCain, not only came out and defended Governor Palin, Stacy always stands with those who defend Liberty and Freedom, he went further, and defended her position that that BOTH political parties have screwed over the American people, and that the GOP should be put on notice, with a wonderful article of his own! […]

  26. Robert W. Franson
    July 6th, 2013 @ 10:59 am

    Superb.

  27. aclay777
    July 6th, 2013 @ 6:26 pm

    SHE’S GREAT AND GREAT FOR THIS COUNTRY. . . She needs to state at the beginning of every speech about welfare, it’s origin (not democrats ) and all parties has “and will” continue to support it, each speech. some mythical thought has been spun by the main stream media that republicans are against welfare and them, when it’s the democrats that have historically been. Educate and have them asking the question when and what party took it away. . . neither, there would simply be more money in the government to handle this issue that isn’t going away “ever” under a Palin type government. The people need to know, that their kids have a better chance of a better life under a Palin type government, because there would be more money for growth. NEVER under this democrat regime.

  28. aclay777
    July 6th, 2013 @ 7:02 pm

    true the GOP is really the play-actors for the democratic party esp, when Rubio and Paul done what they done on immigration

  29. aclay777
    July 6th, 2013 @ 7:07 pm

    The freedom party needs to announce, or we do, it’s existence today, fresh ideas and show the alignment of the GOP with the liberals and what harm it causes daily.

  30. RS McCain: By God, Sarah Palin is Right! AND So Is McCain. Here’s Why BOTH Are, and Why That’s So Important! | askmarion
    July 7th, 2013 @ 5:09 am

    […] Others, like Stacy McCain, not only came out and defended Governor Palin, Stacy always stands with those who defend Liberty and Freedom, he went further, and defended her position that that BOTH political parties have screwed over the American people, and that the GOP should be put on notice, with a wonderful article of his own! […]

  31. thebaldtruth
    July 7th, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

    I like Red State, but this was embarrassing. RT @rsmccain: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/GGpCV8iWUg

  32. RobertWilesUSA
    July 7th, 2013 @ 2:04 pm

    RT @thebaldtruth: I like Red State, but this was embarrassing. RT @rsmccain: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/GGpCV8iWUg

  33. EmfingerSScout
    July 7th, 2013 @ 2:15 pm

    RT @thebaldtruth: I like Red State, but this was embarrassing. RT @rsmccain: By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/GGpCV8iWUg

  34. Reepiceep
    July 7th, 2013 @ 2:24 pm

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/xrNCMGwt5w
    WOLVERINES!

  35. suelynn7735
    July 7th, 2013 @ 7:12 pm

    By God, @SarahPalinUSA Is Right! http://t.co/mmx45yLmOa

  36. Robert W. Franson
    July 7th, 2013 @ 8:27 pm

    Robert W. Franson liked this on Facebook.

  37. Alexander Smith
    July 8th, 2013 @ 10:49 pm

    We need to take away their benefits, healthcare, pensions. Then kick them to the curb.