Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Sarahphobia: Fear the Teddy!”

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September 3, 2008

Sarahphobia: Fear the Teddy!

Hatched by Dafydd

First, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted about a Peggy Noonan column in which she noted that John S. McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, "could become a transformative political presence;" Noonan goes on to say, "So they [the feminist Left] are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick."

In response, Paul Mirengoff demurred:

Noonan notwithstanding, the Democrats I know don't see Palin as a "real and present danger to the American left."

Alas, I believe that Paul is out of touch with the today's mainstream Democratic activist.

The response among lefties to Palin's selection has been so over the top, so bizarre, so disturbing, that I now fully understand the genius of Charles Krauthammer in "diagnosing" a new delusional thinking called Bush Derangement Syndrome. These are the people that Noonan is talking about. They are the New Left in full squeal. (They don't call themselves that; most think they're centrists, but only because they define the "center" as running right through their own belly buttons.)

They do not of course overtly say that Sarah Palin is "a real and present danger to the American left;" but their viperous attacks upon her sink to levels far worse than what they say about McCain -- which itself is far worse than anything they said about Bush (hence the term "progressives;" their attacks grow progressively viler) -- belie their overt claims that Sarah Palin will "sink the fascist ticket."

If they really thought that, they would applaud her selection and encourage her to speak out at every opportunity. Instead, they lament the stupidity of the Jesus freaks they think will elect her for no reason other than theocratic yearnings.

Over two days, for example, there were more than a hundred posts on a bulletin board I read, in several threads, exploring how the campaign would be affected by the "fact" that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy in order to shield her daughter Bristol; they finally concluded that such deviousness clearly proved that Palin was "unfit to serve," and should immediately be dropped from McCain's ticket.

But when the actual facts emerged, when they finally realized the biological impossibility of a pregnancy that began a month before the first one ended, they finally, grudgingly, let go the absurdist allegation about the faked pregnancy.

...And then promptly concluded that the real facts -- that Bristol and Levi had gotten pregnant, had decided to keep the baby, and decided to get married -- was even stronger evidence that Sarah Palin was "unfit to serve." She was obviously a horrible mother; her fanatical "abstinence-only" program clearly was a disaster; and in fact, Bristol's pregnancy showed the moral bankruptcy of the entire population of religious people in America -- for which population the New Left has various colorful epithets.

Paul knows too nice and rational a group of Democrats. Even having been a leftist activist himself 35-40 years ago -- I know John was, and I think I recall Paul was as well -- I don't believe Paul understands the depth of insanity of today's D-activists.

Honestly, it's worse than in the 60s-early 70s: We have our own version of Weather Underground in ALF and ELF and the various Palestinian and militant Islamist groups embraced by the Left; but the madness extends much farther today than it did during the Vietnam war, stretching right up into the Democratic leadership in Congress and the Democratic nominee for president.

Even George McGovern was not as loopy in 1972 as Barack Obama is today; for one thing, McGovern was a war hero (B-24 bomber pilot in WWII), and a true, if misguided, patriot; if a preacher had said "God damn America" in McGovern's presence, he would have hauled his family out of that church and never set foot in it again. I don't recall McGovern ever trying to justify the 9/11 attacks by pointing to America's own putative perfidies.

In 1973, the Democrats in Congress legislated defeat in the Vietnam war; they attempted to do it again during this war -- and this time, they didn't even have the fig leaf of a corrupt, lying president. They had to manufacture one by calling every mistake or policy difference a "lie" that amounted to a "crime against humanity." Taking a page from William Randolph Hearst, they more or less told their dirty-tricksters, "you supply the protests, we'll supply the lies."

And lie they did and still do today, bearing false witness against John McCain -- e.g., fabricating the charge that McCain had said he wanted us to fight the Iraq war for a hundred years (lefties, including those in Congress, started calling Iraq the "Hundred Years war"). And just yesterday, Mark Bubriski, an official spokesman for the Barack H. Obama campaign, falsely asserted that Sarah Palin was a Pat Buchanan supporter -- and then even more falsely asserted that Buchanan was a "Nazi sympathizer," making Palin a "Nazi sympathizer" as well.

The Left is even madder, even more reckless of the truth, and even more prone to lying in their teeth today than back when they were doing the bidding of their Stalinist and post-Stalinist masters in Moscow. Back in the Vietnam era, the New Left were the footsoldiers; but the Old (Soviet-inspired) Left were in charge... and the latter kept the former in check -- most of the time. When they failed, when the tools broke out of the toolbox and began smashing up the joint, it was a rare enough event that it was memorable -- the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, for instance.

But today, when "anti-violence" protesters hurl bags of sand and cement down onto buses from a highway overpass and attack a schoolbus full of Cub Scouts, rocking it back and forth and terrifying the children inside, it doesn't even warrant an editorial -- let alone a call for restraint.

Today, the New Left inmates are thoroughly in charge of the asylum, and they recognize no limits beyond which they shall not go. Sarah and Bristol Palin are starting to find that out, as is John McCain, e.g., in the claims that the torture inflicted upon McCain -- by the erstwhile Vietnamese allies of the forbears of today's Left... "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh!" -- that the torture McCain experienced itself renders him "unfit for service," because it must surely have emotionally unbalanced him!

Oh, yes; they fear Sarah Palin. They fear her for three reasons:

They're so mired in identity politics themselves, they cannot imagine that the rest of us are not; thus, many on the left believe that even Democratic women for whom abortion is a sacrament will vote for McCain because he has a woman on his ticket. (Which may well be true of women on the left, but the rest of them will vote for the person they consider best for the presidency.)

More generally, they fear any strong woman who rejects what Noonan calls "Abstract Theory feminis[m]," just as they fear Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly far more than they fear Antonin Scalia or Gary Bauer: Apostates who leave the liberal reservation represent a much greater threat than outsiders, because they can become trailblazers.

Finally, I believe Dave Ross is right: Democrats fear Palin because she exposes their own inadequacy, their own cowardice... because she's more of a man than they are.

The attacks on Palin are not simply overblown, they're overwrought, hysterical, desperate. They are of a completely different character than the partisan savaging of McCain and the ideological hatred of Bush. If I had to characterize the Palin attacks, I would say they exhibit the wild, out of control rage of a man lashing out at the female friend who caught him cheating on his wife: Equal parts guilt projected as anger, fear of the consequences if she talks, and a deliberate warning (threat) that she had better keep her mouth shut if she wants to stay healthy.

Don't be deceived by the innate desire to see everyone as more or less rational; Democrats and especially leftists deeply fear the teddy, Sarah Barracuda. It has become a sick fear, driving them to stop her by any means necessary.

We have already seen Bush Derangement Syndrome; now we have to deal with Sarahphobia. Can't someone please get the Democrats the help they so urgently need?

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 3, 2008, at the time of 5:28 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: boffo

I just saw a great political cartoon about this:

I'm not sure if posting images works here, so here's a link.

The above hissed in response by: boffo at September 3, 2008 7:30 PM

The following hissed in response by: GW

I agree with you. In my entire life, I have not seen such intense and frothing vitriol as that directed - and I am sure yet to be directed - at Sarah Palin. A new verb needs to be invented for this. 'Borking' does not come close to doing it justice. PDS is almost too mild a description for what we are witnessing.

The very thought of a woman rising to the top who does not embrace her victimhood is not merely anathema to the left, it is a direct challenge to their world paradigm. It is also a challenge to the left's ability to impose their paradigm on the rest of society. Quite literally, I do not think the left can stop themselves from attacking Palin in an all out effort to destroy her. Palin poses an existential challenge.

I wrote in a post a few days ago that, if Middle America likes Gov. Palin and comes to believe that she is competent, the backlash against these tactics will be severe indeed. We will see in November - and thereafter in the bottom line of the MSM outlets providing the medium for many of these attacks.

The above hissed in response by: GW at September 4, 2008 12:13 AM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

They see their desire being plucked right out of their hands.
They have plans to severely radicalize and damage America. And they know that Obama is their agent to do this to the nation.
McCain was supposed to be Bob Dole v2.0. He is not playing to script.
They know if they do not take this election and inflict the worst President since Carter on us now, they may not be able to for generations to come.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at September 4, 2008 5:38 AM

The following hissed in response by: kate0

Double-standard does not come even close to describing the disjunct between the left's alleged principles and their actual agenda. I rejected both NOW and the ACLU in the seventies for being one-sided in their "protests". Extremists of both sides do not accept that just because some of my goals intersect with some of theirs, that doesn't necessitate a union of our interests or methods.
The danger, to both Parties, is that of each group talking only among itself and thus never understanding how, or why, the other side wins.

The above hissed in response by: kate0 at September 4, 2008 9:19 AM

The following hissed in response by: kate0

The above hissed in response by: kate0 at September 4, 2008 9:39 AM

The following hissed in response by: David M

The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 09/04/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.

The above hissed in response by: David M at September 4, 2008 9:51 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dick E

Women on the left worried that Sarah Palin can’t do the job because she has five kids, including a special needs baby?

Delicious.

The above hissed in response by: Dick E at September 4, 2008 5:28 PM