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Sure she is! She is a representative of all that the Republican Party believes in. Hate,bigotry,ignorance? All that Sarah Palin is comes by way of the GOP. Now that same party would like for this woman to shut up and just go away,which is not going to happen. The Republicans created this female Frankenstein monster,and I do think that they will be regretting it when 2012 elections come around.
Why we can't say goodbye to Sarah Palin
by Kaili Joy Gray Sun Jan 23, 2011
In a perfect world, we would not know her name. Her political ambitions would take her no further than the City Hall of her state's meth capital. Her hyperpartisanship would be limited to smearing the mayor for being insufficiently Christian and asking "rhetorical" questions of the local librarian about banning books she doesn't like.
But in this imperfect world, Sarah Palin is a household name, and her every utterance, no matter how petty or nonsensical or just plain wrong, commands widespread media coverage. Some have suggested that if we ignore her, she will go away. In December, New York Times columnist Charles Blow vowed not to write about Palin "until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency." Ross Douthat recently urged the media to stop covering Palin, but even he could not resist writing about her again, only days later.
On Friday, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called upon members of the media to join him in his pledge not to speak or write about Palin for the entire month of February.
Palin clearly isn't going away: "I am not going to sit down. I'm not going to shut up," she told Hannity on Monday. But if we treat her a little less like a major political figure and a little more like Ann Coulter -- a calculating individual who says shocking things to attract media attention -- it won't matter.
This, of course, is the real problem. It isn't how many times her name is mentioned on cable news or in the columns of Very Serious People like Milbank. The problem is how those Very Serious People cover her every nonsensical utterance as if it were a legitimately debatable point within our political discourse, as if her accusation that the president wants to establish "death panels" to kill grandmothers is a valid counterpoint to healthcare reform. The problem isn't how many times Blow or Milbank or Douthat have written about her, or how many times Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity have mentioned her name on TV. The problem is the media's addiction to false equivalence, to balance every point with a contrary one, regardless of its validity.
It isn't surprising that many Republicans want the media to ignore her. Last week, former Bush speechwriter David Frum said, "She should stop talking — now." William Kristol, who has been one of her staunchest supporters, was critical of how she has responded to the Tucson shooting, and advised her to instead "deal with things that are at a sort of presidential level." She even managed to earn the criticism of another of her staunchest supporters, Jonah Goldberg, when she declared herself a victim of blood libel, although the next day, he "decided to ratchet down" his criticism of her.
Palin is an embarrassment to the Republican Party, but it is not an embarrassment Republicans should be allowed to outrun or to forget. This is a party that has proudly embraced ignorance, bigotry, corporatism, and empty slogans, and Palin is the result of their efforts to appeal to the ugliest fears and instincts of their base. The Republican Party created Palin; she is the perfect and pure representation of its policies.
What is surprising is those on the left who would so gladly participate in the cover-up of the Republican Party's dirtiest laundry. As painful as it is to listen to her speak or to read article after article about her incoherence and ugliness, ignoring Palin is the last thing the left should do. As Josh Marshall correctly wrote, in defending his blog's coverage of Palin:
This is actually a real blind spot for liberals in general -- the idea that things that are crazy or tawdry or just outrageous are really best ignored. Don't give them more attention. You're just giving them what they want. Or maybe it's not so practical and utilitarian. Maybe, they say, it's just beneath us. Focus on the important stuff.
Ignoring the ugliness doesn't make it go away. Just ask President Senator John Kerry, who believed that responding to the Swift Boat accusations was beneath the dignity of a presidential campaign, until it was too late. The smears had been repeated so often, and his silence had become so deafening, that the lies became fact.
Palin is no different. To ignore her is to give her free range of our political discourse, to allow her virulent hyperbole and lies to go unchecked. It is a mistake to think that the blogosphere, or one or two columnists from the New York Times and the Washington Post, have the power to make her go away by simply ignoring her. As she has made clear since 2008, she isn't going anywhere.
Last September, she was the keynote speaker at the Iowa Republican's annual fundraiser -- the Ronald Reagan Dinner, of course -- a move widely interpreted as a "a shot across the bow for the increasing number of people who are said to be considering their own bid for the Republican nomination in 2012." That was the same day she said, when asked in an Fox News interview whether she might run for president, "of course I would give it a shot."
RealClearPolitics recently reported that Palin's aides have been "quietly gauging her level of support for a potential presidential campaign" and that "her political action committee has indeed been taking discreet steps in Iowa that would help her build a credible campaign here if she decided to launch one."
It matters not that poll after poll shows she cannot win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency. Since 2008, Palin's "unfavorable" numbers have skyrocketed 46 points. For two years, headline after headline after headline has declared that her numbers have reached an all-time low. In just the two months since the midterms, the percentage of Americans who view her unfavorably has increased by seven points. Among women -- the very constituency to whom she was supposed to appeal -- her numbers are even worse. Ever increasing numbers of Americans, including Republicans, think she is unqualified and unlikeable. It is not a stretch to say that nearly every time she opens her mouth, more Americans decide they don't like her. That is something for the left to encourage, not ignore.
No matter what we think of her, no matter what the polls say, no matter how many Republicans plead with her to fade away from the public spotlight, she isn't going anywhere. Nor should we on the left want to ignore her. She is a monster created by the Republican Party and the rancid, failed policies and values it has been trying to sell to the American people for the past three decades. Instead of hoping she will go away, we should seize every opportunity she presents to remind the country of what exactly the Republican Party believes: that all of our economic problems can be solved with tax cuts for the rich; that the best way to ensure energy independence is to drill, baby, drill; that criticizing an unjust war is unpatriotic, but chanting "nigger, nigger, nigger" on the radio is a First Amendment right; that the government should regulate uteruses, but stay out of the private lives of corporations. These are the Republican Party's values, and she is the perfect and pure embodiment of those values.
We cannot ignore Sarah Palin any more than we can ignore the Republican Party.
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