A tear for Sarah Palin

The Divine Sarah cannot catch a break, can she? Not with the media around to trash her for every little thing she says. Not the mainstream media, of course. They’ve more or less lost track of her. It’s the conservative media that’s pissing all over her. Listen to what that mean Byron York at the Washington Examiner had to say about Sarah’ recent speech at the “Freedom Summit” in Des Moines:

“[M]ore than a few GOP loyalists came away shaking their heads at the performance of a party star, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose long, rambling, and at times barely coherent speech left some wondering what role she should play in Republican politics as the 2016 race begins in earnest.”

Well, if I were a raving, left-wing pinko, which I’m probably not, I’d say that the GOP has very often made use of long, rambling, and at times barely coherent speeches, but, well, let’s leave the insults to the Republicans, shall we? According to conservative Iowa dude Sam Clovis, quoted in Byron’s piece, “Palin was a sad story Saturday. With every speech she gives, she gets worse and worse. If one were playing a political cliche drinking game, no one would have been sober after the first 15 minutes of an interminable ramble. It was really painful.”

York, like the other conservative writers whose comments on Palin’s Des Moines disaster I’ve considered (all two of them), is careful to express sympathy for Palin as the right-wing Lady of Sorrows: “conservatives still empathize with her over the beating she took from the media in 2008.” Well, I’m not going to resist the temptation to chuckle at that one. If you can remember all the way back to 2008, you might remember that, before the world economy collapsed in the summer of that year, oil prices were skyrocketing. Palin was originally billed as the straight-talking tough lady who stood up to the oil bosses—by slapping a heavy severance tax on them,¹ the proceeds of which she handed out to Alaska’s citizens. Tax the rich! Give to the poor! Yeah!

That meme disappeared quickly, of course, but it was the real foundation of Palin’s popularity in Alaska. Other details that disappeared down the memory hole were the fact that Palin eschewed living in the governor’s mansion in Juneau, staying instead in her own home and commuting to a satellite office. As a result, she charged the state per diem while living in her own home. And then there was the wonderful irony when our moose-skinnin’ gal took the Republicans’ mad money and raced out to buy designer outfits for herself and her family at Saks, along with those awful interviews with that awful Katie Curic, aka “the Barracuda,” who was so rude as to ask Sarah questions she couldn’t answer, like “what are your views on foreign affairs?”

Let’s not forget that Palin was one of the very few governors who has ever resigned, doing so (obviously) because she could make a lot more money with a lot less effort as a media star. Let’s not forget that she has endlessly charged President Obama with being an effeminate sissy who has sold us out to the terrorists, a man who won’t man up because he has nothing to man up with. Sarah’s act is now so threadbare that even Republicans can see through it. The fact that it’s only taken them seven years to do so is encouraging.