Published: September 23, 2008 05:28 pm            

Tar Heel Dispatch – Palin stock soars

Let it never be said I’ve never admitted I was wrong. Two weeks ago I said that the Saddleback forum was the turning point in this election cycle. Today, it looks like I was wrong.

It appears that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be the real game changer in this election. Now, in my defense, I did write at the time that Sarah Palin was a brilliant choice. I just didn’t know how true those words would become.

Sarah Palin has given McCain’s campaign a new dimension that no one ever thought it would have. She brings life and excitement to the ticket, energizing a base that until now has been lukewarm toward McCain’s candidacy. Her timely and historic selection stunted Obama’s post convention bump in the polls.

She’s smart, spunky and attractive. She’s got executive experience, and conservative bona fides that have the Republican faithful grinning from ear to ear.

Michael Reagan, son of the late president, has consistently said people should stop looking for the next Ronald Reagan, because there never would be another.

That is, Michael says, until he heard Sarah Palin speak at the Republican National Convention.

Palin has Democrats scared, and wondering why they chose Joe Biden instead of Hillary Clinton for VP. Democrats are scared because this is a recurring nightmare for them.

Once again, Democrats have what they think is a great candidate, a good political atmosphere for electing a Democrat, and the election is within sight.

Then something goes wrong, the candidate drops the ball, Republicans pull out some dirty trick (like picking a woman VP) and the Democrat implodes, handing the election to the GOP.

Obama’s poll numbers have dropped dramatically since Palin’s selection. He got no bump from his convention. Now, some polls have McCain with a 10-point advantage nationally.

McCain’s gains have taken Florida’s electoral votes from “toss up” to “leaning” his way. North Carolina has gone from “toss up” to “solid” McCain within a few days. McCain has caught Obama in “solid” or “leaning” electoral votes with 216 to Obama’s 217. 270 are needed to win, and 105 remain “toss ups.”

The Democrats don’t know what to do with Palin. At first Obama’s campaign tried to ignore her. But then her popularity started to steal post convention news airtime from Obama.

So they tried a different tactic: attempt to ruin Palin’s reputation with rumor and innuendo. I find the same liberal friends of mine who accuse Republicans of spreading “Obama is a Muslim” rumors are now sending me the same type of garbage about Sarah Palin.

The rumors started on the Daily Kos, the radical leftwing blog, which initially posted a story claiming that Sarah Palin, mother of five, was actually the grandmother of her youngest child, Trig.

It was said he was the baby of her daughter, and she had been pretending to be the mother, presumably to protect her daughter or her own image.

The level of attacks and rumors hurled at Palin is unprecedented. The Democrats are hurling the proverbial spaghetti against the wall, just to see what sticks. No one put Joe Biden through the ringer like this.

But the mainstream media (not just nut ball emails or Daily Kos Web sites), seizing on controversy, is all too happy to do Obama’s bidding.

Here are a few examples:

Myth: Palin is a book burner because she fired a librarian while mayor of Wasilla.

Reality: She actually asked for all city officials’ resignations and ended up rehiring the librarian and others.

Myth: She was for the “bridge to nowhere” before she was against it.

Reality: The bridge to nowhere was a pork barrel earmark of indicted Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens. Obama and Biden both voted for the bridge to nowhere. Palin had no part in the decision to allocate the money to her state. When it finally reached her state, there was no statutory requirement that the money be used for the bridge, so she vetoed it when it mattered most.

Myth: She faked a pregnancy.

Reality: It turns out her daughter was pregnant after all and still is, proving the fake pregnancy a lie. Her daughter plans to marry the father and keep the child.

Now we have an ironic situation where Democrats are criticizing premarital sex, invading the privacy of a 17-year-old girl, and taking cheap shots at a woman attempting to become the first woman to break the glass ceiling of all glass ceilings.

Myth: Court documents from her husband’s business partner’s divorce prove she had an affair with the business partner.

Reality: Court documents never mention her name.

Myth: Palin, whose baby Trig is a Downs Syndrome baby, cut special needs education 62 percent.

Reality: She actually raised special education funding over 70 percent.

The list of myths, lies and rumors is long, but short on facts. Now, Obama says Sarah Palin is just lipstick on a pig. McCain’s campaign asserts this is a sexist reference to Palin’s acceptance speech “lipstick on a bulldog” line.

Obama was going to end the politics of destruction. He was going to bring us together. He was going to heal the land and push back the waters. Instead he’s sitting on the monkey bars shouting “Girls have cooties!”

The more Obama soils himself with dirty politics by attacking Palin, the more her stock rises. Obama is learning a lesson in backlash.

His attacks have given her a ton of free press and the more regular folks learn about Palin, the more they like her.

Can we say the same about Obama?



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a first-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at younts@email.unc.edu

        

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