Pardon the slow loading of the page. My little hosting company got overwhelmed by the Instalanche and Hot Air explosion.

Do you want to know why the race card—or at least the 21st century manifestation of it—is the most powerful, most effective political weapon in America?

There is no response possible. There is no answer to an African-American’s charge that what you are saying, or hinting, or thinking, or wishing, or unconsciously dreaming is racist.

Any attempt to defend yourself gives credence to the charge. Ignoring the smear is tantamount to an acknowledgement of guilt.

One may ask why all of a sudden Obama himself, his campaign, his surrogates, and his sycophants in the press are throwing the race card around with such abandon? Why the speeches, statements, editorials, op-eds, columns, and blog posts taking McCain to task for “allowing” or “enabling” or “causing” or “encouraging” racism to rear its ugly head at political rallies?

The answer is simple; use it or lose it when it comes to the race card. Short on specific charges of mass hate being whipped up at McCain political events while long on scurrilous, baseless, smears, Black legislators, columnists, and luminaries have taken up the tactics of the Night Rider in order to terrorize people into keeping their mouths shut while casting nauseating aspersions on the GOP candidate for president and his supporters.

Yeah, I know exactly what I’m saying. And the people I’m saying it to royally deserve it. I am fully aware of the history involved. I am using the term “Night Rider” deliberately and for full, unmitigated effect. For if we cannot call out these besmirches of the democratic process and put them in their place (another loaded phrase that I am fully cognizant of its history and meaning and am using deliberately), then they will have been allowed to get away with a smear so calumnious in its form and implication that the very nature of American elections will be altered and free speech as we know it and understand it will be gone.

I am not going to let that happen without a fight. And if I have to throw political correctness to the winds and compare the tactics of African Americans who play the race card with those of their mortal enemies, then so be it.

Congressman John Lewis – perhaps at the behest of Obama himself – donned the white robes and hood in order to let loose this, the most vicious and unprincipled attack on an American politician I have seen in quite a while:

“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights,” said Lewis, who is black. “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”

At bottom, it is not credible to believe that John Lewis thinks for one second that John McCain’s tactics ape those of George Wallace and could lead to the deaths of innocents. If he does, then he makes himself out to be an idiot. And John Lewis is no fool. He is not only a man who fought for civil rights (and has the physical scars to prove it) but he was a savvy enough pol to advance the cause in the face of the most stringent and violent opposition.

Since Lewis can no more believe that McCain is using the tactics of Wallace than I believe in a flat earth, that makes his “critique” of the McCain campaign a lie – a deliberate, careful, decision by Lewis to bear false witness. And he has done it knowing full well the effect it will have on decent people everywhere.

Even Obama found Lewis’s lies too much and distanced himself – slightly- from the implication that McCain was the reincarnation of Wallace. In effect, Obama embraced Lewis’s lie while separating himself from the Wallace implication. He did it by agreeing with Lewis’s critique but piously giving McCain the benefit of the doubt that he was not possessed by the spirit of George Wallace.

“Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies,” said the campaign statement.”

“John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night.”

Right? Wrong? Which is it Obama? It certainly appears that Obama wants the benefits accrued by Lewis smearing McCain and his supporters without the baggage associated with its more problematic implications.

Lewis himself backtracked slightly from his original statement but still lied through his teeth:

“My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior,” he said. “I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation.”

I guess there’s “toxic language” and then there’s the race card. No double standard there, Congressman.

If it were only Lewis advancing this meme of McCain and his supporters being racist pigs, one might conclude that the Congressman was some kind of loose cannon, firing off on his own accord and not part of any concerted effort to outrageously brand the Democrat’s political opponents as Kluxers.

Ah, but the sheets that terrorize need not only be hiding white faces. Here’s Adam Sewrer writing in The American Prospect, equating calling Obama a “socialist” with racism:

The hysterical accusations of socialism from conservatives echo similar accusations leveled at black leaders in the past, as though the quest for racial parity were simply a left-wing plot. Obama may not actually be a socialist or communist, but his election would strike another powerful blow to the informal racial hierarchy that has existed in America since the 1960s, when it ceased being enforced by law. This hierarchy, which holds that whiteness is synonymous with American-ness, is one conservatives are now instinctively trying to preserve. Like black civil-rights activists of the 1960s, Obama symbolizes the destruction of a social order they see as fundamentally American, which is why terms like “socialism” are used to describe the threat.

This phenomenon extends beyond Obama’s candidacy. The conservative explanation for the mortgage crisis falls neatly into this narrative, too; the country is at risk because Democrats allowed minorities to disrupt the natural social order by becoming homeowners. Never mind that this defies all data, logic, and history, the narrative resonates because it allows Obama, a living symbol of black folks rising above “their station,” to become a focus for conservative economic anxieties.

At least this guy comes by his blithering ignorance honestly. Unlike Lewis whose calculated smear was meant to damage the McCain campaign with moderates and more conservative Democrats, Sewrer’s twisted, tortured analysis starts from the bogus premise that “hysterical” accusations of socialism against Obama are rooted in a historical narrative that has white people denigrating “the otherness” of Blacks who dare to seek power and influence and that when the crowds shout “socialist” they really mean “n***er!”

I have made it clear that I do not believe Obama is a socialist. Others, either because they don’t understand the term or because they see Obama’s far left redistributive ideas and efforts at reform as “creeping socialism” disagree with me.

Whatever epithets hurled at Malcolm X or Dr. King in the past—however people viewed their problematic associations with individuals who were committed to overthrowing the government of the United States—have nothing to do with Republicans today trying to keep America “white.” It is a baseless, thoughtless, ignorant charge made by someone so intellectually besotted with identity politics that history itself gets turned on its head in service to this false and capricious theme. Did Mr. Sewrer ever dream for one moment that people might actually be sincere in their belief that Obama’s stated policies (not to mention his past and present associations with true radicals and communists) are a indicative of a form of “stealth socialism?”

People of good faith – an animal rare indeed in this race – can argue the merits of such a position. But Sewrer isn’t interested in good faith, he is interested in advancing his racialist worldview where nothing else matters save a reading of history and our present politics through the broken kaleidoscope of his own black bigotry. It is probably emotionally satisfying but as a talisman of truth, it hardly stands up to rigorous scrutiny.

The thought that there are some people who might actually believe Obama is a socialist never crossed his mind because in his narrow, intellectual construct there is race, and then there is race, and if you run out of those, you always have race to fall back on. There is no history, only race. There is no American narrative that doesn’t place race front and center. This is where our obsession with identity politics has led us: A skewing of history and politics so profound that playing the race card becomes an easy shortcut to silencing one’s opponents no matter what argument they advance.

If you can’t beat ‘em, gag ‘em.

So when Mr. Sewrer plays the race card – as he does in his article – he does it with a clear conscience. Put simply, the fool doesn’t know any better. But there are fools, and then there are coldly calculating bigots who take more pleasure than people like Lewis in throwing race in our faces (Lewis, after all, was only playing dirty politics) while gleefully setting crosses afire all across the political landscape.

There is no other way to describe this Les Payne column in Newsday except political terrorism:

Palin’s bland ferocity lends itself easily to vitriol of the type that inflames half-wits. A bald-pated Florida sheriff, one Mike Scott, got carried away under the swoon last week in Estero, Fla., in introducing Palin. Stressing Obama’s middle name, Sheriff Scott paced the stage, in violation of police rules, while inciting the crowd in his full uniform adorned with colorful patches, stars and medals befitting a grand wizard of some mystic order of white knights.

At Clearwater, Gov. Palin lathered up the crowd herself. “You’re going to have to hang on to your hats,” Palin told the rally, according to The Washington Post, “because from now until Election Day it may get kind of rough.” Linking Sen. Obama to a reformed radical of the ‘60s, Palin shrieked her signature smut line, “he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

“Kill him!” a man in the crowd reportedly responded to Palin’s rabble-rousing. Her related attacks on the media had already whipped a frenzy among the crowd of about 3,000. Tempers rose to a boil when she blamed Katie Couric’s questions for tripping her up as a seeming dimwit. The Post wrote, “Palin supporters turned on reporters … waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. ... One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

I have written twice about the incredibly exaggerated reports of “rage” at McCain campaign events. Payne goes a step further by equating a sheriff uttering the sacrilege of Obama’s middle name with a Kluxer.

Who’s the ignoramus here? A sheriff (who was fully within his rights to be at a political rally dressed as he was despite what Payne infers) who dared mention The Messiah’s middle name while introducing Palin to the crowd? I’ve seen the video of this event and the use of “Hussein” got a roar from those assembled. But was it because he used the candidate’s middle name or was it because of the context he used it in?

After saying that “there were three kinds of people in the world; those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happen, Sheriff Scott threw the crowd a piece of raw meat when he said “On election day, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened.”

Was the crowd roaring because of the use of “Hussein” or was it due to the punchline – a pretty damned effective one if you ask me.? Only your psychic knows for sure. If the crowd roared because of Scott’s allusion to victory on election day, it destroys Payne’s entire narrative of the event – including Scott as another Republican closet Kluxer. (What an extraordinary personal smear by Payne).

No matter. Never stop a bigot when they’re on a roll. Scott’s use of “Hussein” was out of line because John McCain believes that saying Obama’s real name is wrong. I agree.

But the implication is that he is Muslim not that he is black so how Payne and his racialist cohorts can twist what is clearly a tweak at Obama’s father and the idea that Obama is a closet Muslim is a mystery. Except that when you are playing the race card, even giving a weather report can be construed as racist.

I think it a smear to use Obama’s middle name and I wish Scott and other McCain supporters would realize it and stop it. It is questionable hardball politics not racial bigotry. And Payne mindlessly repeats the false notion that the crowd at the event and other McCain/Palin rallies was “angry” or hateful. Payne was obviously too lazy to watch the videos himself. They were happy. They were excited. And for people like Payne to take out of context the mouthings of one or two idiots at a rally attended by thousands is absolute lunacy.

I see absolutely no difference at Obama rallies when he or Biden tosses the rhetorical red meat out into the crowd. The roar becomes deafening. People are laughing and whooping it up. When Bush or McCain is mentioned, they are booed. This is politics. And anyone who would deliberately construe malice or unreasonable emotions by referring to Bush/Palin gatherings as “angry mobs” or intimate anything unusual at all is a liar – or a simple minded fool.

These hooded riders of the night might obscure their false, misleading, and vile calumnious rhetoric with pious words designed to horrify decent Americans and equate voting for John McCain with voting for a racist. But they are trying to terrorize voters into supporting Obama by smearing his opponent with the most nauseating, the stickiest label one can slap on to a candidate in American politics.

Take off your hoods and look in the mirror, those of you – all of you – who are shamelessly and so easily playing the race card. It is all of you who are playing with fire, not McCain. By your words, you are stifling free expression by trying to intimidate people you disagree with through a false and wholly misleading narrative.

And I submit that this is infinitely more dangerous than your fantasies and lies about McCain whipping up a racist mob.

My jaw hit the floor when I heard Biden say this:

Here’s what the president said when we said no. He insisted on elections on the West Bank, when I said, and others said, and Barack Obama said, “Big mistake. Hamas will win. You’ll legitimize them.” What happened? Hamas won. When we kicked—along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know—if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”
Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.

Wha? Who? Kicked Hezb’allah out of where? Urged we send who into what? This is really an incredible gaffe – far more serious than anything Sarah Palin has ever said anywhere.

Let’s allow a “Foreign Policy Insider” quoted at The Corner, to try and untangle this web of lies, misstatements, and downright loony contentions:

Well, Hezbollah’s been there since the early 1980’s of course, blossoming throughout the 1990’s to become now over a third of the population of Lebanon with 2 cabinet members, a host of parliamentarians, and schools, clinics, and basically an entirely separate governance infrastructure in all of southern Lebanon and elsewhere. I suppose the throwing out of Hezbollah was the dismal and failed Israeli campaign of 2006 which dislodged nothing? Or was it Israeli’s occupation of Southern Lebanon from 1982 – 1999? Don’t remember an Obama position on NATO replacing Israeli occupation then. As for NATO going in after the 2006 debacle, well, I’m the one who rounded up 8,000 French and Italians and a few thousand other Euros to go into Southern Lebanon along with an assortment of others in August 2006 and while working that issue for about 40 straight days I don’t remember a peep from Biden or Obama about NATO - which wouldn’t be budged despite our intense pressure in Mons. So, we went straight to Rome and Paris. Que sera, sera.

In any case, he was all bluff and bluster and too bad she didn’t have time during debate prep to get his very mixed record on foreign policy stuff, he’s as good as he is bad at foreign policy and that is just a comment on his mastery, not on his policy positions…which have been more bad than good.

Allow me to add a few things. First, Hezb’allah may have only two cabinet ministers but they control the entire opposition bloc of 11 ministers in the 30 seat government. They currently control 62 of the 128 member Lebanese Parliament. Now for the meat of Biden’s claims.

Of course, no one “threw Hezb’allah out of Lebanon.” They have been there all along as the expert above notes. The Lebanese people threw the Syrians out of Lebanon, with no help from liberal Democrats like Biden and Obama, but with a great big behind the scenes lift from France and the US. It was we who put the bug in King Abdullah’s ear to lobby the Syrians to get while the going was good as the French worked directly on Baby Assad. The combination worked wonderfully and the Syrians left in a hurry – after a couple of million Lebanese took to the streets in a breathtaking show of defiance to tyranny and love of freedom.

Joe Biden – or any rational human being on this planet anyway – never recommended that NATO be dispatched to “fill the vacuum.” It is a lie. If it had been proposed. Colin Powell would have been laughed out of the room – something we should do to Biden at this point because he compounded his gaffe by evidently believing that not having NATO as a buffer between Israel and Hezb’allah – an absolute impossibility mind you – led to the ascension of Hezb’allah in Lebanon as a political power.

Where has Biden been for the last 20 years – at least since the Taif Accords were signed in 1989 which gave Hezb’allah a free hand in the southern part of the country and then pressuring the Lebanese government to formally designate them as “the resistance” to Israel? Hezb’allah’s rise is directly related to Iran’s funding of their proxy to the tune of around $250 million a year.

It is unbelievable to me that no one – not one single story in the press that I’ve read about the debate last night (I haven’t read them all so there may be some analysis I’ve missed) – has seen fit to mention this monumental gaffe, this horible misstatement of history, misreading of the situation in Lebanon, and the out and out lie that he and Obama recommended NATO troops move in after Syria was kicked out. This gaffe should be the headline that comes out of the debate; “Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a Buffoon.” Instead, it slides by and Palin is called out for mispronouncing the name of our commanding general in Afghanistan.

Unbelievable.

UPDATE

Michael Totten – who has been to Lebanon several times and knows the people and politics as well as any journalist in America – writes in Commentary this morning:

What on Earth is he talking about? The United States and France may have kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon in an alternate universe, but nothing even remotely like that ever happened in this one.
Nobody – nobody – has ever kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Not the United States. Not France. Not Israel. And not the Lebanese. Nobody.
Joe Biden has literally no idea what he’s talking about.
It’s too bad debate moderator Gwen Ifill didn’t catch him and ask a follow up question: When did the United States and France kick Hezbollah out of Lebanon?
The answer? Never. And did Biden and Senator Barack Obama really say NATO troops should be sent into Lebanon? When did they say that? Why would they say that? They certainly didn’t say it because NATO needed to prevent Hezbollah from returning-since Hezbollah never went anywhere.
I tried to chalk this one up as just the latest of Biden’s colorful gaffes. Did he mean to say “we kicked Syria out of Lebanon?” But that wouldn’t make any more sense. First of all, the Lebanese kicked Syria out of Lebanon. Not the United States, and not France. But he clearly meant to say Hezbollah, not Syria, because he correctly notes just a few sentences later that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s government. He wasn’t talking about Syria. He was talking about Hezbollah all the way through, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of his outlandish assertion.

Taking a second look at it, Michael may be right – that Biden is so clueless he actually meant Hezb’allah and not Syria. This coupled with his rather strange answer on Pakistan’s stability, that it is somehow within the power of the US president to affect what is happening on the ground in Pakistan beyond doing what the Bush Administration has been doing since 2001, calls into question the depth of Biden’s knowledge about any foreign policy issue.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

This blog post originally appeared in The American Thinker

No, she’s not smoother than Joe Biden. She was not the better debater (she lost badly on points). She doesn’t have the depth of knowledge, the experience, the ease with “Washington speak” that Biden demonstrated – especially in foreign policy.

But Sarah Palin has something Joe Biden and every other politician in America would give their right eye to possess – the innate ability to look a camera straight in the lens and make a connection with the hearts of ordinary Americans.

Palin proved the one thing she had to prove; she belongs on The Big Stage. She might not be the brightest star in the firmament intellectually. But when she spoke, there was authority and confidence behind the words that belied every nasty thing written and spoken about her over the last few weeks. In fact, her performance made the McCain campaign handlers look like idiots. What the hell have they been doing hiding this woman for all this time? Are they nuts? I’m not the only one who underestimated this woman. The McCain people have as well. And at least I have an excuse – I’m ignorant. They’re supposed to know her, know her strengths and weaknesses.

There was a point with about 20 minutes to go in the debate where something happened that I never thought remotely possible; she took over the stage and dominated it with her personality. I believe they were talking about education and as the words poured out in that Midwestern twang, her eyes twinkled and that 100,000 watt smile lit up the hall, she turned on the charm and sincerity, and the stage suddenly shrank while Biden appeared a mere appendage to the broadcast.

She was totally at ease, referring some of her remarks to the moderator Gwen Ifill (who I thought bent over backwards to be fair – no doubt a consequence of her becoming a target after it was revealed she was writing a book partially about the Obama campaign) and nodding and looking at Biden on occasion. She did it effortlessly and without art or artifice. Biden sensed what was happening but couldn’t do anything. She was in charge, period. It was at that point, that I thought she might not be ready to be president from day one but that someday, she will be on a similar stage as a nominee for president of the Republican party.

The left is screaming tonight, trying to make believe that nothing has changed, that Palin is still a dunce, still out of her league. I would suggest they rerun the last hour and half and watch with a little more of an objective mind. She stood toe to toe with Biden (sometimes – other times she avoided direct combat) and bloodied him but good a couple of times. A boxing analogy would be the heavyweight champion boxing a middleweight. The lighter fighter might be getting pounded here and there but when getting in close, scores repeatedly with good body punches.

And, of course, the crowd is always with the underdog. Despite Biden’s competent performance, Palin will probably be narrowly declared the winner in tomorrow’s polls. Even her bitterest foes must acknowledge her ability to connect with ordinary people. That is a gift that any liberal only dreams of being able to do. For the left, it is not about connecting to average Americans. It is about average Americans acknowledging the liberal’s superior intellect and judgement and letting them run our lives. Unfortunately, in such times as these, that appears to be what the people are about to do.

I must confess that before the debate I was prepared for Mrs. Stumblebum – a female Gerald Ford tripping over her words and embarrassing herself on foreign policy questions. What I got was a composed, collected candidate who may have been deficient in the depth of her answers but nevertheless demonstrated a basic knowledge and familiarity with the issues. The nuances of instability in Pakistan might escape her (something an American president can do little about at this point anyway). But she had absolutely no trouble identifying why Ahmadinejad is an enemy of anyone who loves civilization and why it is of paramount importance that he not get his hands on nuclear weapons.

So I was wrong about her as far as how badly she would do. Not the first time I’ve been wrong on this blog and it won’t be the last. The question of the hour is does this change the race in any way? Will it kick start the McCain campaign and start a much needed comeback?

My sense is that it has stopped the bleeding but that the way back for McCain will not be through anything that Sarah Palin can do. She may have stopped the exodus of independents and women from the McCain camp but as far as winning any of them back I am just not convinced that a Vice Presidential candidate – no matter how well she performs in a debate or how she connects with ordinary voters – is up to that challenge.

For McCain to get back in the race, he must do it himself. Many Republicans are urging McCain to throw the kitchen sink at Obama – Ayers, Wright, Rezko, the Chicago Machine – the whole shebang of radicals, shady characters, and questionable associations. Obama can easily brush that kind of attack aside as an act of desperation by McCain. What he can’t brush aside is his record, or rather his lack thereof. McCain needs to go hard after Obama on the question of experience. It’s his best shot and he can bloody him at the remaining debates if he consistently hits that note. McCain must show that electing Obama is a risk. And in these uncertain times, that’s one thing the United States cannot afford.

I would have thought by now that the Obama campaign would have figured out how to effectively attack Sarah Palin and bring her down a peg or two. But it appears that rather than take a studied, reflective approach to determining their best strategy for assaulting her, they have continued to flail about wildly, throwing everything against the wall and watching to see if anything sticks.

So far, no dice. They tried the old “smear and fear” approach but only ended up getting so many facts wrong while appearing mean and stupid that Palin skated merrily away, garnering sympathy for having to endure the baseless, outrageous lies and falsehoods about her family from the press and liberal blogs.

Their efforts to paint Palin as an extremist were even less successful. Even FactCheck.org referred to the charges that she cut funds for special needs children, banned books, endorsed Pat Buchanan, and belonged to the secession-minded Alaskan Independence Party as “sliming” Palin. She also does not support teaching creationism in public schools although she’s one of those “let’s allow the kids to debate evolution and creationism” folks that makes me want to throw my copy of Origin of the Species through the wall. And her pastor apparently believes that gay people can be “cured” – of what, I’m not sure except he might want to pray for himself so that God allows him to move forward in time so that he can live in the 19th century.

No word on whether Palin believes the same thing and until someone asks her, we won’t know. But don’t you find it a touch ironic that GOP efforts to tie Obama to his kooky preacher are met with cries of “guilt by association” by the left while it is apparently perfectly alright to make Palin’s preacher and his views fair game?

No matter. The Democrats seem to have realized the backlash created by their smears and have now tried a few other tacks – at least one of which has backfired almost as badly as the smears against her family.

I’m talking about “Troopergate” where Palin apparently pressured the Public Safety Commissioner to fire her state trooper ex-brother in law. The press tried to paint the entire matter as Palin improperly interfering in an internal police matter because she was being vindictive. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the truth came out about her sister’s ex drinking on the job, tasering his 12 year old stepson, and finally threatening her father’s life.

Funny how those details were included in stories about “Troopergate” as insignificant asides – or not included at all. At any rate, Palin may indeed be censured because technically, it appears she exercised influence where she shouldn’t have. The Democrat’s problem is that no one blames her for doing so because of the threats and the beastly behavior of the ex.

I note on Memeorandum that stories of “Troopergate” have disappeared entirely. They have been replaced by articles about how Sarah Palin is lying when she says she fought the “Bridge to Nowhere” which actually was a “Bridge to Somewhere” – specifically an island with 7,500 inhabitants. Palin says wants to use state funds to build it but a couple of years ago, she was singing a different tune:

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge,” Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, “and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” The bridge would have linked Ketchikan to the airport on Gravina Island. Travelers from Ketchikan (pop. 7,500) now rely on ferries.

Apparently, she eventually did kick the residents of Southeast Alaska under the bus and oppose the bridge – but only after conservative bloggers had made it a cause celebre.

OMIGOD STOP THE PRESSES! A politician is exaggerating! Maybe even lying. I would find this a cause for concern if liberal bloggers and the media were one tenth – make that one one hundredth – as interested in Obama’s whoppers and exaggerations as they are Palin’s.

Face it guys. Politicians are liars. They lie for a living. They lie at the drop of a hat and will continue lying because it works. To suddenly acquire religion and decry politicians lying is an absurdity I didn’t think even the left was capable.

Only 12 year old children and liberals believe politicians like Obama which is why they can become so disillusioned with politics. When their heroes are shown to have feet of clay, they don’t blame their own naivete and child like belief in those who seek great power but rather they blame the “system” or they become even more infantile and blame their hero’s opponent for making him something less than what he purports to be. I’ve seen it for nearly 40 years and it never ceases to amaze me.

So the Plain fib about opposing the Bridge to Nowhere is getting them exactly that – nowhere. Josh Marshall is hopeful.

We’ve now had a week of blaring headlines and one-liners about Sarah Palin as the mavericky, pork-busting reformer from Alaska. But we seem to be witnessing the first stirrings of a backlash and a dawning realization that the ‘Sarah Palin’ we’ve heard so much about over the last few days is a fraud of truly comical dimensions.

The McCain camp has made her signature issue shutting down the Bridge to Nowhere. But as The New Republic put it today that’s just “a naked lie.” And pretty much the same thing has been written today in Newsweek, the Washington Post, the AP, the Wall Street Journal. Yesterday even Fox’s Chris Wallace called out Rick Davis on it. (Do send more examples when you find them.)

On earmarks she’s an even bigger crock. On the trail with McCain they’re telling everyone that she’s some kind of earmark slayer when actually, when she was mayor and governor, in both offices, she requested and got more earmarks than virtually any city or state in the country.

As you can tell, Josh has been using the Hadron Collider to split hairs about what constitutes Palin “fraud” and what is revealed as lefty hyperbole. Exaggerating accomplishments and diminishing negatives is a part of politics. Grow up Josh. Or better yet, be a journalist and start listing Obama lies and whoppers on your site. I won’t hold my breath for that.

Nor will I waste my time waiting for Marshall to list our “Change and Hope” candidate’s hundreds of millions in earmarks – some of which went to his political cronies and his wife’s employer. This doesn’t include using his influence while state senator to enrich his patrone, convicted felon Tony Rezko. These items seem to disappear into the ether between Marshall’s claim to be a “journalist” and the rank partisan stench that emanates from his blog.

But Josh has a weird habit of thinking that whatever people inside the beltway believe about an issue or a candidate that the rest of the country shares those attitudes. I daresay he will be greatly disappointed if he thinks that Palin’s convenient dodge about the BTN will resonate with anyone save his fellow lefties.

So far, nothing appears to be sticking to Palin that would destroy her or even lessen her popularity. And despite efforts to paint her otherwise, she appears to be a genuine reformer. And it is an historical fact that she ran against the establishment Republicans and won. The parsing of words, the effort to blow up the most insignificant appearance of impropriety into a major scandal, and the still whispered smears against her and her family have all failed to make a dent in Palin’s shining armor much less throw her off her white charger.

With “Palinmania” continuing to grow at every stop on the campaign trail, John McCain and his advisors are suddenly faced with a most unique and troubling problem; his Vice Presidential pick is much more popular than he and will almost certainly draw bigger crowds than the presumptive presidential nominee once she goes out and campaigns on her own. This will no doubt be pointed out by the press and the Obama campaign (is there a difference at this point?) and might serve to underscore McCain’s relative weakness and the tepid level of enthusiasm he generates even among party faithful.

The campaign is vamping a bit, extending the scheduled 3 day joint tour of the two for a few days, no doubt to both take advantage of Palin’s extraordinary popularity and to try and come up with a solution – or at least a decent response – to questions that will arise about McCain’s drawing power. Frankly, I’m not sure there is anything they can do. The press is going to be counting noses at the separate events for the two and will try to spin the difference as detrimental to McCain no matter what the campaign does or says about it. It is probably best that McCain simply ride the wave of Palin’s celebrity as far as it will take him. And if she gets millions to the polls who might have stayed home otherwise, it may give him the presidency.

Sarah Palin is something new in conservative politics; a figure actually adored by millions of ordinary Americans, many of whom are not Republicans. To say that this turns the idea of celebrity on its head is an understatement. Conservatives are not supposed to be pop culture icons in that traditionalists are what popular culture seeks to rebel against. But many of the same mothers who take their daughters to Miley Cyrus concerts (and probably took their older sisters to Britney Spears events) would have no trouble taking both to an appearance by Palin.

That’s because Palin has transcended what she stands for as a politician and is admired for who she is; a mother of 5 kids, a wife of 20 years to a working class hero kind of guy, and a woman with a career who tries to balance it all while looking like a million dollars. She is what millions of middle class women aspire to be and recognize as a kindred spirit.

I have a feeling that the women quoted here are representative of a new group of swing voter;

“She’s a real woman, she’s a real feminist but she’s not strident — she’s like us,” said Hauswirth, a middle-aged mother who didn’t offer her age. “She’s strong, powerful and opinionated, all the things a women should be, while still retaining her femininity, her womanhood.”

[ . . . ]

But for the many who showed up to see the newly minted Republican team, it wasn’t any issue or political posture that had brought them out.

It was just a woman that they saw a lot of themselves in. Or, as one homemade sign put it, “Pro-Life Hockey Moms 4 Palin.”

“She’s got a real family with real troubles, just like the rest of us,” said Melody Halstrom, a middle-aged women from River Hills, Wis., who came over to the Cedarburg rally. “You know, she’s got teenagers,” Halstrom said, alluding to without actually bringing up the well-publicized pregnancy of Palin’s unwed 17-year-old daughter.

(HT: Right Wing Prof)

These are traditional women playing non-traditional roles who see the 44 year old Alaskan governor through the prism of their own life experiences and can identify with her choices. Her struggles are their struggles. Her crisis are theirs.

How many of them are out there? I am not speaking of the millions of GOP partisans who admire Palin for her stand on abortion or any of the social wedge issues. The women of whom I am thinking more than likely voted for Hillary Clinton or are independents who would have supported her in the general election. There may be enough of them in Ohio to secure that state for McCain. And they might even help McCain in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan if this Palin boom continues through the election.

Unfortunately, this may not occur simply because it is unthinkable that the campaign will allow the nominee’s running mate to upstage him from now through November 4. It is a situation unique in American politics even though there has been a woman on a major party ticket prior to Palin’s ascension. Geraldine Ferraro may have been the first woman nominated as Vice President on either the Republican or Democratic slate. But it is safe to say that despite being a smart, capable person, Ferraro never generated even half the excitement Palin is creating out on the hustings.

The easy answer to that is that Ferraro was a dyed in the wool feminist and a liberal to boot. But that ignores the more important cultural ramifications of Palin’s candidacy. Ferraro, I’m sure, was a good mother and loving wife but there was never a sense of the modern balancing act women with careers have to perform on a daily basis with kids, and hockey practice, and family problems, and the whole slew of issues middle class women have to deal with in order to keep the family happy and close knit.

Most women work because they have to in order to make ends meet or give the family those vital little extras not to mention the fulfillment many women get from the feeling of independence and pride that having a job brings. Politicians have tried for years to address these women directly with varying degrees of success. Democrats have offered child care, family leave, job protections for pregnant women, and the child health insurance program S-CHIP among other programs. Republicans haven’t ignored these women but have not offered much government assistance, preferring tax credits to ease the financial burden on the family.

Palin is the first Republican politician with which these women can truly identify. She speaks their language. She sounds like them. Her family looks like their family. And when she speaks of the mixing of her career and family, she can look directly at the camera and give them a knowing smile of solidarity – as if they were neighbors casually talking over the backyard fence.

It is true many of these white, working women are socially much more liberal than Palin. But one might note that in their appearances together, McCain and Palin eschew the normal panders to the right wing social conservatives and talk about issues of national concern instead. I find this highly significant because one of the ostensible reasons McCain chose Palin was as a sop to the evangelicals. And yet I note in both their acceptance speeches, abortion and gay marriage were never mentioned (Palin referred elliptically to her “choice” of having a child with Downs Syndrome).

I celebrate that change from past conventions because it welcomes into the Republican party millions of women who are marginally pro-choice but who are troubled by the moral implications of unlimited and unfettered abortion. Say what you will about the Clinton’s but they triangulated the issue of abortion beautifully by supporting choice but saying that we should work to make abortion the least performed operation in the country. Not that McCain-Palin would ever go so far as that but the idea of dialing down the rhetoric and pushing abortion down the list of agenda items for a GOP administration can only help with independent voters.

With Palin set to steal the show from McCain in the coming weeks, the campaign will no doubt let the press and the Democrats draw their own conclusions. And why not? The immense assistance that the press has already given to Palin’s popularity by going after her so viciously may be augmented by trying to paint John McCain as a mere appendage of Palin’s celebrity. Every time the press tries to belittle Palin, the Republican base rallies to her and independent women resent the attacks.

It must be driving some of them stark, raving mad to realize their smears are having the exact opposite effect that they intend.