The outrageous and frequently sexist attacks and sneers directed at Sarah Palin by many in the MSM have opened a second front in Campaign 2008. Although the Beltway-Manhattan media elite have long been pulling for Obama, the naked partisanship and transparent attacks on Governor Palin have fueled a pro-Palin surge that will continue for some weeks.
"I think is that millions of Americans are simply tired of being lectured at by smug elites," wrote Victor Davis Hanson. "If she can beat off the frothing Newsweek/MSNBC/New York Times inbred rabid wolves, and do it with the grace she has shown so far, she will fill a deep yearning among Americans for someone like her." (HT: RobinsonandLong.com).
Political and media elites are a pretty arrogant bunch, especially when running in packs as they do at conventions where their connections with normal people are all but severed. Ten hours in the convention confines means a few hundred conversations with people who are addicted to snark, and who are very ready to (1)demean conservatives, (2)mock rural or small town people, and (3)discount any possibility of intellectual heft that isn't backed up by a long list of publications, degrees or a giant bank account. The worst offenders in the media elite are also fully enrolled in the cult of Obama, unwilling to even notice that yesterday he compared his campaign-management credentials favorably to Sarah Palin's varied experiences but omitted noticing her time supervising a15,000-strong workforce and an $11 billion dollar budget. He's cocooned, and so are his media shock troops. The MSM echo chamber isn't letting him know that he is sounding very small and defensive, because they don't know that they are sounding as off-puttingly arrogant as they ever have.
Millions of Americans are deeply ticked off at the assault on Sarah Palin launched by people who have never done anything but talked for a living and who wouldn't know how to turn on a snowmobile, a jet ski or an RV to save their lives, much less how to negotiate an oil lease. Millions of Americans who have never received a government check are shocked at the dismissiveness of Palin's background especially in contrast to the worship of the government-backed lifetime careers of Obama and Biden. And millions of American women are especially outraged that the feminist elite in the broadcast booths and newsrooms have joined the blogger mob in peddling smears about a wonderful mother and wife who also happens to have been an extremely successful professional in a variety of settings. Why, they wonder, has Obama gotten a year-long pass on his entire life including Ayers, the Annenberg Challenge, Rezko and Wright while Palin is put on the big media rack on made-up charges? Because she's a woman?
Fred Thompson gave some voice to this anger last night, but hardly enough. More will be on display at the podium today, but it is already widely felt and deeply motivating, and not just among conservatives.
The MSM and the Obama camp --real, one and the same-- have telegraphed women of all ages and backgrounds that the feminist movement is really only for a very small number of women who pursue careers in media and Democratic politics.
The MSM and the Obama camp have clearly communicated their contempt not just for rural and small town America, but for every part of the country that isn't a major coastal city.
And the MSM and the Obama camp have communicated their indifference to every family that has ever struggled to overcome a difficulty: If it is to their advatange to exploit your pain rather than feel it, count on being cut deeper.
Millions of Americans, to quote Hanson again, "are eager to see a rare politican who is unapologetic about America's past achievements (cf. Obama's "tragic history" and need for more "oppression studies"), and who reminds us with pride that a muscular world of action, not community organizing, creates the bounty that others use and take for granted but so often sneer at the methods of its acquisition."
"Right now," Hanson concludes, "there are millions rooting for her in a way not true of Biden—and many who are criticizing her don't have a clue why that it is so."
Expect two more days of dismissiveness of Sarah Palin by the ancors and anchorettes of modest intellectual reach and the moonbats with mics. It doesn't matter. McCain and Palin went over to the offensive on Friday, and though the echo chamber doesn't have a clue, they are winning.
UPDATE: I have been publishing only e-mails from women, but this is from Seve, an ex-pat in Spain. I don't know if he is a dad, but I suspect that many men who are fathers or who may be some day are outraged at the treatment of Sarah Palin and her family by the MSM, wondering what it portends for their daughters if they ever get on the wrong side of the media elite destruction machine:
My meager vocabulary does not permit me to adequately express my level of rage and disgust at the actions of the majority of the media and much of the left since the Palin announcement Friday. While I understand that National politics is a contact sport the levels to which the discourse has sunk has shocked me. Using a 17 year old girl and her boyfriend as political footballs is only exceeded in depravity by the absurd and offensively defensive attempts to justify doing so.
The only bright spot in all of this is the knowledge that millions of people will be every bit as offended as I am. The outrage from Bill Bennett on CNN and Bill Kristol on Fox were examples of what I believe most people feel, hopefully independent of political affiliation.
I have sent contributions to McCain and a range of candidates for Senate and Congress promoted by your show and Club for Growth over the last several months. I would appreciate your recommendation(s) as to where we can most effectively contribute now that the public finance window is closing. I had not intended to donate further but I can not permit people that have shown this level of depravity, dishonesty and complete lack of acceptable objectivity to win through their truly disgusting efforts.
I rarely get angry as I generally view anger as counter productive. I am angry in a way that is not going to go away. I will neither forgive nor forget the despicable treatment I have witnessed from various pundits, media personalities and media companies.
See also Pete Wehner's excellent analysis at Contentions.
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