For those of you who are not keeping up with the math, July 29th will mark the day 11 months ago in which a grumpy old man from Arizona made a pretty good decision in his ambitious, yet ill conceived endeavor to win his campaign for the Presidency. In doing so, John McCain and that thing on his cheek propelled Sara Palin and her entire family onto the national stage much in the same way he’s thrown others under the bus.
Deep down, I’m sure there were a lot of conservatives who were less than ecstatic about his maverick mentality to do just about whatever it would take to work with those on the other side of the aisle instead of those in his own party. There’s a maneuver that medical professionals use in order verify whether a non-responsive patient is conscious or not. I don’t know if there’s a technical name for it, however the process involves making a fist and then rolling the knuckles on the sternum of the patient. The idea behind this move is that the pain generated in the process will illicit a reaction from the patient if they are conscious. From the point McCain became the presumptive and eventual nominee of the GOP, most conservatives felt that same pain.
But then, August 29th came along. The DNC’s nominee had already made his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High in front of what I’m sure would be an eventual movie prop. Even worse, the event led the Denver Broncos who play on that field to a lousy 8-8 record for the year. Their continue abysmal showing n the grid iron would lead to the eventual firing of long time coach Mike Shanahan. If America had known at the time that Obama’s mere ability to open his mouth and let words escape had the ability to blaze a trail to a higher unemployment rate, one has to wonder if the electorate would have voted for the Creepy Cult of Personality. Don’t wonder too long though. The minions haven’t come off of their Kool-Aid buzz yet, and nothing in the given landscape at the time would have forced the election the other way.
Over on the GOP side, it was now time for Cheeky Mac to take the spotlight. His first order of business was to name Sara Palin as his running mate. In the process, McCain energized the conservatives in his party to the point they actually felt good about voting for him.
And it scared the living hell out of the DNC, the Obama sycophants in the mainstream media, and liberals in general.
Within weeks of the Palin announcement, we knew more about the Alaskan Governor then one could ever have imagined. We knew more about her family, especially her children, than we had ever known about any other candidate for such an office. Gaggles and hordes of muck raking members of the bar and the press descended upon Alaska to dig up whatever they could on Sara Palin with the express intent on destroying her. We heard wild stories and claims about whether she had given birth to her youngest son. We heard about how she may have unethically used the power of her office to get back at her ex-brother-in-law. Matt Damon, in the culmination of his intellectual prowess went on to talk about how he couldn’t vote for her because she may subscribe to theories about a young Earth. Wasn’t he the one that kept getting punked by a late night comedian? Every piece of mud that was thrown at the new darling of the GOP was just another sign that the collective and properly descended testicles of the opposition was afraid of this woman, and were making every attempt to re-ascend to a safer elevation, with the short and curlies not far behind.
If you don’t believe a Palin presence on the scene scared the gang on the other side, consider what would have happened if McCain would have chosen someone like Lieberman or Romney. Would we know all of the sorted details about their kids? Would the electorate be confused by the comments uttered by those who would play these two potential running mates on Saturday Night Live like they were when Tina Fey played Sara Palin? Face it people. The Dems and the media at large resorted to every tactic in the book to destroy her. They wouldn’t have done so if she wasn’t a threat. They would have ignored her and just let her self-immolate instead.
Eleven months later, we find ourselves living out the dark and dreary divination that every true conservative foreshadowed during the campaign. The GOP continues to look to the middle of the political spectrum for its voice instead of looking back to what practices put the ‘G’ in the GOP. John McCain was returned to his seat in the Senate where we have heard nothing from him since the day the Porkulus Pushing President hosted some bullshit symposium at the White House on the importance of fiscal responsibility.
Sara Palin returned to her job as Governor of Alaska. In the time since her coming out party, we have learned about the break-up of her daughter and fiancé. Don’t forget the birth of their son either. Sadly, the return to that job was not a good one. The reason for that has to do with baseless ethics charges filed against her by surrogates of whatever political enemies she has ever had, or will ever have. The real success of those charges have been at the expense of the public good, and have kept a pretty good Governor from doing what she was elected to do. All in the spirit of devaluing her as a viable candidate for some office in which she has yet to decide whether she will seek out. None the less, the charges have been defeated and Palin has chosen to resign her post so her beloved state can get back to business without having to fend of the flotsam and jetsam of the unjustified attacks.
Will that make her off limits to the media now? I doubt it. Just the other day, another grumpy old man working out of some two-bit joint in Georgia posted a blog pondering whether the news media had been too hard on Palin. I guess members of the mainstream media are starting to feel that tinge of guilt most likely brought on by the urgent need to change out the colostomy bag their journalistic integrity has become by taking sides this last year.
I’ll dispense with the hope they will change their way in time for the next go around. Once you’ve seen the sun come up in the east a couple of times in a row, you just learn to expect it there.
