PALIN

One liberal commentator, licking his chops the other day, remarked that, "To steal an adage of former Secty of State James Baker, putting Sarah Palin into a debate with Joe Biden is like throwing Howdy Doody into a knife fight." "I have to admit," noted Palin last week, when considering her Oct/2 opponent, "he is a great debater and looks pretty doggone confident, like he’s sure he’s gonna win. But then again, this is the same Senator Biden who said the other day that the Univ of Delaware would trounce the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wrong!"

Hah! How refreshing. One recalls the night of her convention speech: with sass and wit, sarcasm and sincerity, courage and strength, she showed us a new model of female politician, not strident and shrill like so many are when on the attack, but funny and irreverent, showing the joy of combat that was a pleasure to watch.

Palin isn’t a lawyer; she didn’t go to Yale; she isn’t rich. She does reflect however - intelligence, scrappiness, integrity, and a deep-seated faith. She started as a PTA mom, ran her own fishing fleet (ran a business!) and worked her way to the governorship of Alaska (experience as an executive!). She has succeeded in each of her objectives. And in a time when people are sick of the corruption and waste of Washington, Palin’s reputation is for slashing wasteful spending and taking on corruption - even that within her own party.

She managed her state’s department responsible for oil and gas exploration, negotiating a deal involving big corporate players, the US, Canada’s national government, Canadian provincial governments and, native tribes; the result was a multi-billion $ deal to launch a long-delayed natural gas pipeline to the lower 48, increasing the amount of domestic energy available to all of us, an accomplishment that makes the charge of having "no international experience" especially absurd.

During a period that Russia seeks to re-ignite the cold war she has encouraged and monitored the best of our defenses, seeing that the F-22 Raptor squadron be stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage. While Obama has zero foreign policy experience, Palin runs a state that is home to missile, anti-missile and air defense bases; she commands the Alaska National Guard; she has a son heading to Iraq.

Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking. This scares the living daylights out of the left in general, the media, and the feminists in particular. As Doug Giles pondered the other day, "Hey, I thought you feminists dug accomplished women. Why the hatred ladies? Do you like only the girls who are nasty, man-hating, anti-American, pro-abortion lesbians who loath this nation and that for which it stands?" All right Doug!

So Palin knew from the get go the left would come after her. Hell, these troglodytes devour their own kind, chewing up one of their perpetual darlings - Hillary - when she stood in the way of a group hug. An Air American host called her a "big f...... whore," one MSNBC host accused her of "pimping out her daughter," another called her a "she-devil" and a fourth suggested that she be taken into a backroom and beaten senseless to convince her to drop out of the race. A CBS news anchor asked Clinton if she recalled being called "Miss Frigidaire" in school. Too much.

Americans are told every day that to be conservative, or Christian, or old-fashioned is bad form. In this respect Palin can become an inspirational figure. The left senses this which is why they want to discredit her quickly. And so the Obama campaign first jumped on Palin as "inexperienced" until they noted she had actually managed something, actually looked to the bottom line, actually demonstrated executive responsibility, something entirely missing in their candidate.

Next they tried to create a "Troopergate," then had a hard time explaining why it would be wrong to want a four-time married and divorced law enforcement officer kept on the job when he had tassered his 11 yr old stepson, illegally shot a moose, drank beer in his partrol car and told others his father-in-law would "eat a fxxxing lead bullet" if he helped his daughter with the divorce. Corruption is not a handy topic for the likes of BHO, Chicago pol and pal of Syrian national/convicted felon Antonin Rezko.

Next was the "bridge to nowhere" romp. Sen Tom Coburn, chief foe of this deal said, "Governor Palin deserves credit for killing the project, which became the symbol of pork barrel spending. The bridge didn’t get built because Sarah Palin had the guts to say it wasn’t going to get built." So again for the media (and our lefty pals in Marin) that deal went nowhere.

From San Joaquin Valley Democrat and neighbor Vic Hansen, "There is something ignoble about the elite, affluent, and well-connected observers in smug fashion savaging Palin, when — especially in the case of the sneering power-women — we should all at least grant that Palin is intrinsically bright, energetic, savvy, and independent to have come this far at all, given the slanted and insider rules of the game she’s in. When we consider, in contrast, the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, ...or Hillary Clinton (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished....is nothing short of remarkable."

In tomorrow’s debate Biden will look to portray Palin as an adolescent in foreign and domestic policy. As for what Biden’s in for tomorrow, there’s nothing worse than having a woman hand you your own testicles in a fight.

Robert Craven