Palin Power

Last week, at the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. I watched as history was being made.

Sarah Palin, the first woman nominated as Vice President of the Republican Party, roared like a lion and changed the entire dynamic of the 2008 Presidential race.

Her speech was more than simply effective. It was a complete paradigm shift. The platform of real America – the platform of the future – now belongs to the McCain/Palin ticket.

Just today I read the USA Today/Gallup poll for 9-5-07 through 9-7-08. The poll showed John McCain up 54% to 44% over Barack Obama. Palin Power has taken the nation by storm.

What is it about this woman that makes her so amazingly influential? I think it is her genuineness and her strength of character. Listen to this segment of Palin’s speech last Wednesday night:

“Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons. And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good. Now, no one expects us to agree on everything, whether in Juneau or in Washington. But we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart.”

When was the last time you heard a politician speak straight from the heart and show such authenticity? When was the last time a politician spoke about a Biblical principle like having a “servant’s heart” with such sincerity? Contrast Palin’s Biblical reference to Nancy Pelosi’s outrageous claim that the Catholic Church has not determined when life begins, and you will see what makes Sarah Palin so refreshing. She is real.

So what do you think the Democratic Party, home of the second-wave feminist movement did after John McCain nominated Sarah Palin as his Vice President? They responded with nothing but pure vitriol. National Organization of Women PAC Chair Kim Gandy had this to say about Palin in a recent press release: “Sadly, she is a woman who opposes women's rights, just like John McCain.”

So because Palin does not buy into the monolithic, liberal-feminist worldview, she opposes women’s rights? It gets worse. Baltimore Sun columnist Susan Reimer, actually mocked Sarah Palin for having a 5-month old child with Down Syndrome:

“You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down Syndrome child.”

Reimer then insults Palin for having once been a beauty queen when she wrote, “She won't be able to hold her own against Joe Biden in a vice presidential debate. But wait until the swimsuit portion of the competition.”

What is it about Sarah Palin that makes the left cringe? She is a pro-life, evangelical Christian woman for one. It is one thing for a male politician to be pro-life. For a female politician to be pro-life is total heresy as far they are concerned.

Just how deeply does Sarah Palin believe in her pro-life convictions? When told her baby would be born with Down Syndrome, Sarah Palin refused an abortion, remarking that God has a plan for her little boy. That is character and integrity in action.

Another issue that causes the left as a whole to despise Palin is that she hunts for big game like Caribou. That’s right, Sarah Palin packs heat and can even fire an M-16 rifle accurately. As an child from a military family and supporter of out troops I say: “HUA!”

Sarah Palin also opposes placing the polar bear on the endangered species list, and is a strong proponent of oil drilling in Alaska. Her husband is a snowmobile champion who once finished a snowmobile race with a broken arm. That is one tough family.

Sarah Palin is also a basketball star that led her high school to the state championship title game and was nicknamed “Sarah Barracuda” by her teammates. A barracuda is exactly what she showed herself to be as she challenged the status quo within her own party, took on the corruption in her state, and brought political reform to Alaska as mayor and Governor.

With such a record of personal and political achievements, you would think someone on the left would at least show Sarah Palin the respect she deserves? Instead of praising Palin for her achievements, the media have reduced themselves to attacking Palin’s 17 year-old daughter Bristol, for being pregnant. Just like her mother before her, Bristol chose life, not abortion. That is character and integrity in action, once again.

It appears that no matter how hard the media attack Sarah Palin and her family, the truth just makes them shine brighter and brighter.

Born of German immigrants, and growing up as a blue-collar kid in a single-parent home, rich in work ethinc and traditional values, I can relate to the Palin family. The vast majority of people in America can relate to the Palin’s too. They live paycheck to paycheck and know what it means to work for a living.

Remember when Obama showed his true elitist colors while speaking to a crowd in San Francisco? He said, “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

This Freudian slip shows that at heart, Obama is the poster child for the Democrat party, whose leadership has been out of touch with the American people for a long time now. Barack Obama is not an agent of change. He is an agent of class warfare.

Sarah Palin on the other hand is real America. I like how Investor’s Business Daily put it,

“Palin is also a straight-talker. As governor of a small-population state, she’s accessible, with a history of working with and listening to people, taking in all sides. She uses plain language and doesn’t fear gaffes. She couldn’t be further from the canned, focus-group-driven politicians who dominate politics. This builds trust. McCain’s and Palin’s similarities present an emerging political coherence and unity of message that should appeal to voters.”

Sarah Palin is a real American woman. Hear her roar.

Triangulation

It appears the Republican brand has become tarnished and stained by the policies and actions of the last several years. Certainly, scandals like the ones involving Mark Foley, Larry Craig and Jack Abramoff come to mind. However, something much deeper than scandals, which have plagued both parties to be honest, has cost the GOP its good name.
Like a wandering nomad searching for a home, the GOP has apparently lost touch with its very soul. How did this all come about?
Let’s think back to the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidential term. During the 1993-1994 legislative calendar years, Clinton attempted to advance some of the most hideous policy initiatives. From a tax hike on every unit of energy we use, known as British Thermal Units (BTU’s), to the socialized medicine plan that came to be known as Hillary-Care, Bill Clinton kept striking out even with a Democrat majority in Congress.
In 1994, the American public was so outraged by Clinton’s liberal activism -- this after pledging to be a new Democrat --they voted to oust the Democrat majority in Congress and replace it with a Republican majority.
Enter Dick Morris. After taking a beating in the 1994 Congressional elections, Bill Clinton reached out to his former advisor and asked him to save his presidency. Morris employed a strategy known as Triangulation to save Bill and it worked.
Triangulation is a strategy where a political candidate adopts positions his or her opponent normally takes, in order to steal the positions and the subsequent voters along with the positions.
Employing Morris’ triangulation tactics, Bill Clinton soon began talking about getting tough on crime, a traditionally Republican issue, as well as family values by advancing such ideas as the v-chip TV technology so parents could have greater control in stopping their children from watching offensive material.
By taking Republican policies away from the GOP, the Republicans had less of a platform to run on and Bill Clinton was easily reelected in 1996. In fact, the GOP lost some seats in Congress that year.
Triangulation worked well for the Democrats but what about the Republicans?
When G.W. Bush took office in 2001, he employed the same Triangulation tactics that Bill Clinton used in the 1990’s. For instance, G.W. Bush reached out to Ted Kennedy and allowed him to write the No Child Left Behind legislation that included a major increase in federal funding and mandates for public education. This was clearly a big government, Democrat style proposal that President Bush championed.
G.W. Bush even used his authority as president to embrace a big labor position by tacking on steel tariffs to foreign steel companies they were “dumping” cheap steel in the USA.
Then came the 9/11 attacks. Bush and the GOP responded by creating a new department called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and awarding it vast amounts of federal funding. They even placed all private airport security screeners under government control by creating the Transportation Security Administration, which is under the DHS umbrella. This was all in the first year of the G.W. Bush administration.
As the years followed, even more Democrat style legislation was passed by the Republican majority in Congress and signed into law by G.W. Bush. From the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan (Part D), to a foreign policy that spread Democracy to the world (a Woodrow Wilson foreign policy ideal), the Republicans kept triangulating, which allowed them to steal issues from the Democrats and steal more Democrat seats in Congress as well.
Then a funny thing happened. In 2006, the American people had enough of budget busting spending and bureaucracy and voted for so-called “conservative” Democrats who took Southern and Midwestern congressional seats away from the Republican Party.
From 2001 to 2006, Congressional Republicans had stolen so many issues from the Democrats they stopped looking like Republicans and started looking like Democrats. When the American people are given the choice of Democrats versus Republicans that act like Democrats, they will always choose Democrats. Part of the reason is that Democrats acting like Democrats is at least genuine and authentic no matter how bad their policies are.
Democrats figured out they could counter-triangulate the Republicans by stealing issues traditionally embraced by the GOP. As such, the Blue-Dog Democrats in Congress have more than doubled their membership since the 2006 elections and have added more to their ranks due to the recent special elections. Never mind that almost all of these freshman Blue-Dog Democrats have broken their promises in some way, shape or form. They are running to the right of the GOP by using triangulation.
The only way for the GOP to win back its credibility and its brand name is to get back to basics and run to the right of the Blue-Dogs on policy, while exposing all of the Blue-Dogs’ broken promises in the process. Let’s face it, triangulation can only work for one party until the other party counter-triangulates.
Let this be a lesson for the GOP. We need to be comfortable in our own skin. The best way to keep from being branded as something else other than a Republican is to simply be a Republican and not waver from that fact.
After all, if Republicans continue to act like Democrats, the people will continue to vote for Democrats, as they will always pass out more entitlement “goodies” than Republicans.