The Problem With Palin

Sarah Palin continues to enjoy - or suffer? - intense media scrutiny.  Of course, I’m talking about her bus tour that may or may not be a run-up to an announcement of her candidacy.  Whether it’s the media complaining that Palin is not accommodating the needs and comforts of the reporters who have been dispatched to document her every move, or bloggers seizing on her every word to unveil a “gotcha” moment, we are inundated with stories about Palin, and stories about stories about Palin.  

Why is it that the media is foisting it’s obsession with Palin on us?  The left dissects every statement she makes to try to drive home the point that Palin is dumb, or inarticulate, and certainly could not be a serious candidate (if she were to ever decide to become one).  I think that there are two reasons that drive the Palin narrative.

First is to try to de-legitimize the Republican party.  Some polls suggest that Palin would be the Republican candidate most likely to emerge as the nominee.  If the left can paint Palin as foolish and a poor candidate, then Obama ostensibly looks like a better candidate in comparison.  Further, the Republican party looks foolish for having supported such a candidate.  

the second reason is the media is working on a great misdirection of news.  The blogs on the left salivated over the Paul Revere issue (with the result that everyone is now questioning their own grasp of history).  Goodness, did Palin mangle the well-known story of Paul Revere’s midnight ride in an off-the-cuff statement, or did she kind of get it right, or is the gist of it somewhat on target, or should we even care that a non-candidate got it wrong, or not-fully-right?  Is it as big a deal when a Senator who holds a JD from Harvard mis-states the law and history on the Senate floor?  Well, the beauty is that we all get to decide for ourselves who to forgive.  The point is that the left is pushing the conversation to Palin in the hopes of capitalizing on her gaffes (and they’ll invent gaffes, if need be), instead of focusing on major issues that this country is facing, particularly the issues that should be laid at Obama’s feet.  Unemployment; spending; Libya; Israel; Syria; the list goes on.  None of these are deemed worthy of conversation, but the snarky left always goes back to the Palin Well (as an aside, between Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and Seth Myers, I didn’t think there was any left-over snark to be applied to the news, but Wonkette is on the scene to add 1-tenth the humor and none of the creativity of The Onion.).  

The left knows its candidate is terrible, and has a poor track record to boot.  It’s only strategy is to make Obama look better by comparison and to direct the conversation away from the poor policies and execution that are the hallmark of this administration.  That the best they can do is to try to seize upon a non-candidate indicates sheer desperation.