October 2, 2008, Matthew Cochrane, A Serious Look at Sarah Palin, Part 1: The Conservative Perspective
A few short months ago all looked lost for the Republican Party. Conservatives were being trounced in polls from the national level on down and all signs pointed to another Democrat rout, a la 2006, come November. Palin changed all that. Her nomination had a very real and profound impact on the enthusiasm level of conservatives everywhere, charging the Republican Party with passion, money and volunteers – the three common elements to all successful campaigns. I call this the “Karen Effect” – after my wife.
My wife, Karen, is a loyal Republican voter. She believes in conservative principles and consistently votes for Republicans in the voting booth unless another candidate gives her compelling reasons not to. While a loyal Republican who understands the importance of politics, she doesn’t follow the political landscape and the campaigns closely like I do. She doesn’t listen to talk radio and cares little for the daily bickering between the campaigns. It’s rare for a political story to excite or enrapture her, so I use her as my gauge for whether a story is truly big or if the media is simply making another mountain out of a molehill because there is not enough news to go around to support multiple 24-hour news channels.
The day McCain announced his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, Karen and I were busy packing boxes in our old apartment preparing to move into our new house. When I woke up late in the morning (I work nights), Karen had already heard McCain’s selection – and she was as giddy as a kid on Christmas morning. Her excitement could hardly be overstated. Throughout that day I saw the “Karen Effect” in action on several conservative friends and family members. People who rarely talk to me about politics were calling me up out of the blue wanting to know what I thought of Palin. My dad reported similar observations. Within minutes of the Palin announcement I was excitedly talking to him on the phone about the announcement. Within seconds after getting off another friend was already calling him wanting to express his pleasure at the Palin pick.
All this to say, there is something real to the powerful emotions that the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate brings up out of conservatives and liberals alike. Palin has become an amazingly powerful and polarizing political figure in a remarkably short amount of time. To conservatives, she represents a resurrection of their movement. The excitement Palin conjures within conservatives is palpable. As Patrick Buchanan recently wrote, “Rarely has this writer encountered such an outburst of enthusiasm on the right.”
To liberals, she represents a threat. Her nomination and rise to prominence are akin to the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, ready to swing down and decapitate the liberal resurgence before it even begins to take hold. And thus, recognizing the threat, they have attacked her with a vengeance; clearly understanding their movement’s viability is at stake. Now that the dust has settled after the initial shock of her nomination by McCain, I will attempt to explain why conservatives love her and why the liberals hate (and fear) her.
Why We Love Her
First and foremost, before we talk about her strong pro-life positions or her small town roots and values, Palin is a tenacious reformer and fighter. Her famous line about pit bulls and lipstick wasn’t just a good one-liner; it was the truth. Palin took on the rampant Republican corruption and cronyism in her home state and won. Single-handedly, she championed her state’s interests and opened a can-of-you-know-what on Big Oil interests and the good ol’ boy network, all run by the Republican establishment in Alaska. The
Wall Street Journal tells
the story:
Every state has its share of crony capitalism, but Big Oil and the GOP political machine have taken that term to new heights in Alaska. The oil industry, which provides 85% of state revenues, has strived to own the government. Alaska's politicians—in particular ruling Republicans—roll in oil campaign money, lavish oil revenue on pet projects, then retire to lucrative oil jobs where they lobby for sweetheart oil deals. You can love the free market and not love this.
Alaskans have long resented this dysfunction, which has led to embarrassing corruption scandals. It has also led to a uniform belief that the political class, in hock to the oil class, fails to competently oversee Alaska's vast oil and gas wealth, the majority of which belongs to the state—or rather, Alaskan citizens.
And so it came as no surprise in 2004 when former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski made clear he'd be working exclusively with three North Slope producers—ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP—to build a $25 billion pipeline to move natural gas to the lower 48. The trio had informed their political vassals that they alone would build this project (they weren't selling their gas to outsiders) and that they expected the state to reward them. Mr. Murkowski disappeared into smoky backrooms to work out the details. He refused to release information on the negotiations. When Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin suggested terms of the contract were illegal, he was fired.
What Mr. Murkowski did do publicly was instruct his statehouse to change the oil and gas tax structure (taxes being a primary way Alaskans realize their oil revenue). Later, citizens would discover this was groundwork for Mr. Murkowski's pipeline contract—which would lock in that oil-requested tax package for up to 40 years, provide a $4 billion state investment, and relinquish most oversight.
Enter Mrs. Palin. The former mayor of Wasilla had been appointed by Mr. Murkowski in 2003 to the state oil and gas regulatory agency. She'd had the temerity to blow the whistle on fellow GOP Commissioner Randy Ruedrich for refusing to disclose energy dealings. Mr. Murkowski and GOP Attorney General Gregg Renkes closed ranks around Mr. Ruedrich—who also chaired the state GOP. Mrs. Palin resigned. Having thus offended the entire old boy network, she challenged the governor for his seat.
Mrs. Palin ran against the secret deal, and vowed to put the pipeline back out for competitive, transparent, bidding. She railed against cozy politics. Mr. Murkowski ran on his unpopular pipeline deal. The oil industry warned the state would never get its project without his leadership. Mrs. Palin walloped him in the primary and won office in late 2006. Around this time, news broke of a federal probe that would show oil executives had bribed lawmakers to support the Murkowski tax changes.
Among Mrs. Palin's first acts was to reinstate Mr. Irwin. By February 2007 she'd released her requirements for pipeline bidding. They were stricter, and included only a $500 million state incentive. By May a cowed state house—reeling from scandal—passed her legislation.
Few know this story, even now. If a Democrat had been selected from obscurity with a story like this it would have been front-page news for months. Palin’s championing of her state interests over her own political party looks even better, though, when compared to Obama’s cowardly complicity with his own party. Rising from the ruthless Daley Democratic political machine in Chicago, Obama failed to cross party lines even once during his meteoric rise. As
the L.A. Times points out:
Besides, on paper, Obama doesn't stand up very well against Palin. All of the mythic themes of Obama's political narrative -- the ethics reformer, the bipartisan, the new kind of politician -- all look like press-release material next to Palin's accomplishments. Obama voted the Democratic Party line more often (97%) than McCain voted in accord with President Bush (90%). In Washington, Obama's supposedly "sweeping" ethics reform -- which forces congressmen to eat lobbyist-provided meals standing up instead of sitting down -- and his feckless reforms in Illinois make him look the Bambi to Palin's Godzilla.
Obama's idea of ethics reform is to mandate clean sheets in the brothel. Palin's is to tear it down.
We also love Palin because she’s a feminist – a true feminist. Far from being a Gloria Steinem clone, she understands what family women have always understood – that just because some women put their family first, and value life more than selfish personal choice, doesn’t make them any less of a woman. She innately understands that women can be strong
and feminine too; that the choice is not mutually exclusive. As Fred Barnes writes in
the Weekly Standard:
It also helps that Palin is ambitious and driven and very tough. And to invoke the latest cliché in political parlance, she has a great "narrative." It's this: Small town girl makes good and challenges the corrupt special interests and defeats the big boys. And she does it while tending to a lovely family with five kids and a devoted husband and still finding time to hunt. Hard to beat that story.
Palin is also unashamedly pro-life – in her personal and professional life. While more than 80% of all babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted – a statistic that should send chills down the spines of the most ardent pro-choice advocates – Todd and Sarah Palin decided to have their baby, Trig, even though they already had four other healthy children and many would see him as a burden to her professional career. There is something to be said for authenticity. Many of my favorite conservative public personas have personal lives that seem to contradict their public stances on social and cultural issues. Not McCain. And not Palin. It’s nice to have two Republicans on the ticket without a trace of private indecency or scandal, whose personal lives seem to reinforce their political views, not the other way around.
Finally, in an age of unprecedented government spending under the direction of a Democratic congress and Republican president, Palin is an old-fashioned fiscal conservative, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in Washington since 1988. Senator Jim Demint recently compared Obama’s and Palin’s fiscal records in the
Wall Street Journal.
Demint writes:
Mrs. Palin used her veto pen to slash more local projects than any other governor in the state's history. She cut nearly 10% of Alaska's budget this year, saving state residents $268 million. This included vetoing a $30,000 van for Campfire USA and $200,000 for a tennis court irrigation system. She succinctly justified these cuts by saying they were "not a state responsibility."
Meanwhile in Washington, Mr. Obama voted for numerous wasteful earmarks last year, including: $12 million for bicycle paths, $450,000 for the International Peace Museum, $500,000 for a baseball stadium and $392,000 for a visitor's center in Louisiana.
Mrs. Palin cut Alaska's federal earmark requests in half last year, one of the strongest moves against earmarks by any governor. It took real leadership to buck Alaska's decades-long earmark addiction.
Mr. Obama delivered over $100 million in earmarks to Illinois last year and has requested nearly a billion dollars in pet projects since 2005. His running mate, Joe Biden, is still indulging in earmarks, securing over $90 million worth this year.
Mrs. Palin also killed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in her own state. Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation's budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions. Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.
When the Senate had its chance to stop the Bridge to Nowhere and transfer the money to Katrina rebuilding, Messrs. Obama and Biden voted for the $223 million earmark, siding with the old boys' club in the Senate. And to date, they still have not publicly renounced their support for the infamous earmark.
Mrs. Palin has proven courageous by taking on big spenders in her own party. In March of this year, the Anchorage Daily News reported that, "Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is aggravated about what he sees as Gov. Sarah Palin's antagonism toward the earmarks he uses to steer federal money to the state."
For all these reasons and more we love Sarah Palin. She represents a return to the ideals and values America needs to succeed in the coming years. Next time we will look at the absurd, hysterical and patently false attacks of the left – proof positive that the liberals hate (and fear) her. As well they should.
Happy debate watching tonight...
