It's a real pleasure to see the McCain campaign surging, and to see the Senator consistently talking like a conservative. He's said enough about the issues that matter - judges, border security, taxes, etc. - that conservatives feel they can hold him accountable if he strays from promises. And the environmental issues are likely to disappear - they are being overshadowed, and a consensus is starting to build that the Earth is entering a cooling period, and that we can do little about climate change in any event, absent complete cooperation from burgeoning China and India. McCain can point to economic uncertainty and the real lack of significant consensus on climate change as reasons to put off action in favor of further study.
None of us doubt that America will always be first in McCain's heart, and his desire to see government contained appears to be real, as does his zest for new energy production. In short, even without Palin, McCain is looking like the kind of candidate we could have stomached in any case. Had he picked Romney, given the current meltdown in the credit markets, conservatives would have found other reasons to be energized. Outside the party, there is another source of energy that ought to make the party react like it's been slapped - Obama's apparent Marxist leanings and racialist thinking.

But with Sarah Palin in tow, McCain's swelling campaign has become a tidal wave. In addition to the party loving her, she connects with normal people, and contrasts sharply in nearly every regard to the charlatans on the other side.  Mrs. Palin appears to be so fundamentally decent that she serves as something of a sanity check: If you find yourself hating this woman, there is good reason to believe that you suffer from some kind of mental illness. You may find yourself surrounded with people who agree with you, who likewise hate her. They, too, are likely suffering from mental illness.
Consider: Biden is a foreign policy 'expert' who voted for the war, against the surge, and wanted to break Iraq into three permanently warring pieces. He opposes missile defense, going back to the beginning. He's scary on foreign policy, and a giant liberal on other issues. He's got lots of experience sitting in the senate, but very little experience making sound decisions there. He would make a lousy VP or President. But we don't hate him. I haven't heard a hateful word spoken about him on talk radio, and I listen to about 10 hours/day. In contrast, many on the left have a pulsing, visceral hatred for Sarah Palin. They want to see her destroyed and humiliated. Those people should seek therapy. Har har - No, I'm not kidding. If the idea of Sarah Palin fills your heart with anger and hatred, you are in need of help.

Back to luck. Yes, Palin represents an incredible bit of luck for the GOP. The energy issue likely killed Obama before Palin even came along. That, her, his gaffes, and his increasingly shrill and strident approach have cooked him for good. But it took Palin - a stroke of luck, exactly the right person at the right time and in the right context - to drive the nails into the coffin. With any further luck and good fortune, President McCain and VP Palin will actually do something significant and improve the brand of the GOP. If they can't, we're probably cooked. This is the third election in a row in which we got lucky.

In 2000, had Gore not shown himself in the debates to be an insufferable blowhard, he'd probably have won. Had he not insisted on a selective recount, he'd have lost with great honor and probably won in 2004. Had the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth not come along with their book, showing what a phony preening jackass John Kerry is, and had he not been such a flaming liberal, Kerry would have won. The Democrats have yet to nominate a moderate. The GOP has yet to craft a message that is widely appealing to Hispanics. If they ever do, leftists will form a human chain on the border to keep any more of them out. As things stand, our demographic advantages are diminishing. It's true that conservatives breed more than liberals, but their kids then get run through the leftist-dominated culture and consciousness-forming institutions.

In short, our luck will run out some day unless something fundamental changes. Perhaps the conservative/reform branding by McCain/Palin will stick. Something has to change, we can't count on luck forever.

TOTA

(End the debate, Senator Kerry - show us your scars.)

Here is a link to a letter from a Palin detractor in Wasilla: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130532
This has gotten some play, so let's look at it.

1. The writer has personal problems with Sarah and her authenticity. Consider this statement:
"...by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their
major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything
like that of native Alaskans."
The next statement?
"Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters."

And her husband is a snowmobile racer. So in what regard is their life not like native Alaskans? This betrays a deeper animus - Kilkenny loves Alaska, and she considers Palin to be an outsider, inauthentic. How can this not color everything else she says?

2. The writer is a political activist. She worked for ten years with "student voting". That's probably a politically palatable synonym for something leftist. And her position problems with Palin all come from the left side. The polar bear is not endangered by any measure, this lady wants to keep it on the list so that the frozen tundra can remain undisturbed. She's in a tizzy because Palin doesn't swallow the 'global warming' bilge. I would bet a limb that she's a radical pro-abortion feminist. Any takers?

3. Palin's greatest reform victory, putting the energy companies in their place, gets about twenty words. This woman doesn't even qualify the success, she just states that Sarah did it. Does that mean it actually happened? Historians - wake up! The lady has spoken. We can officially give Gov. Palin credit for something significant. If you have any other questions of Ms. Kilkenny, Alaska's chief historian, she can be reached at 1-800-DUM-MUTT. 
If you can't reach her, there's plenty of Sarah fodder on her list. The world-threatening disaster of __________ (fill in the blank with some petty BS that this vindictive, angry harpy has on her list) is much worse than a state-wide change that improved the prospects for every Alaskan family. Let's be sure to keep all of this in perspective. 

4. The writer thinks her fellow residents are low-grade morons, and apparently they are. How else can we explain Palin's 80+% job approval rating, and widespread popularity in Wasilla? According to this lady, virtually every public action Palin has ever made has been an unmitigated disaster. How can the people of Alaska be so blind and stupid? If you didn't believe it already, this is proof that the writer is a big fat liberal.

5. Anyone can find a list of mistakes made by a public official. This wacko-nutjob finds fault with everything Palin did. She says Palin is not a fiscal conservative because she initiated a sales tax, even on food! Wait a minute - Wasilla had no sales tax? Gee, it's infrastructure must have been wonderful. And I would bet a dime to a dollar that the sales tax on food applies as it normally does - on prepared food, not on groceries. Did the writer know this and simply fail to mention it? And for the writer's edification: fiscal conservatism doesn't always mean spending less. It means spending wisely. Was the sports complex a bad idea? Perhaps, no one is perfect, except of course Ms. Kilkenny - perfectly vindictive.

6. Jealous. Jealous of Palin's many positive attributes, and jealous of her success. This lady is politically active - she's carried a bleeding grudge against Sarah into the national campaign. Why didn't she run for mayor? My guess is that we'll find out why when we talk to the other citizens of Wasilla. There's a good chance that this lady is considered bright, but nasty, and perhaps mental. Decidedly not leadership material. But you may have launched yourself into liberal prominence, Ms. Kilkenny - the left will love you for it.

7. The writer also shows her radical liberalism over the 'censorship' issue. We know that the list being circulated of "books Sarah wants to ban" is a fake - some of the books on the list were published years after the event. So let me ask Ms. Kilkenny - Does the local library subscribe to "The Advocate", the leading homosexual magazine? Why not? Are there no gays in Wasilla, and don't they deserve some support from local government? How about movies, does the library rent movies? Do they have "Greasy Truckers and Double-Wide Asses?" No? Why not? What if someone requests it? How about the series of books on assassination and bomb making? Your small town library already censors its contents, Ms. Kilkenny. You simply have liberal ideas of what pollutants ought to enter our kids' minds. Like all leftists, you laud the worst sewage vomited up as free 'speech' and never consider where it ends up Nor do you consider whether the founders ever intended bestiality and CG kiddie porn to be free speech (the left side of the Supreme Court believes they are free speech).

That's enough. This is a bitter, bitter woman. She's a hard-core leftist radical who ran up against a real woman more than a decade ago and hasn't had a good night's sleep since.

TOTA

In his Stephanopolous interview, Obama claimed to have considered military service, he said he reflected on it upon graduation from high school - there was no war on, so what caused him to sit down and give it so much thought was that he signed up for Selective Service.

But he graduated high school in 1979, and the SS was instituted by Carter in 1980.

Obviously the entire story is a contrivance. And he said it with such earnestness. Here's what this episode tells us: He is a natural born liar, and he is surrounded by idiots. No one can keep him on a leash short enough to avoid colossal blunders like this one. Clearly, he's trying to pump up his 'natural security credentials' and his patriotism. So he tells a naked lie. McCain gets his arms broken, and the closest this fake comes to military service is lying about having considered it 30 years ago.

TOTA

It matters not to the left that 80+% of Alaskans approve of Palin's work. Alaska had been considered' in play' in the election, which means it was a relatively moderate state. If it was split 50/50 Dem/Rep, that means that more than 60% of democrats are overlooking party, overlooking her 'archaic' position on abortion, and saying, "I'm man or woman enough to admit that someone from the other party is doing a damn fine job.'

Not the movement left. They are consumed with hatred for Sarah. They see in her a possible resurgence of conservatism, a possible start to turning back the decades of liberal ideas dominating government, the arts, academia, and even the press. If she is nearly as popular with Americans as she is with Alaskans, most people will just turn off the old media if it craps on her. The leftist media will have to give her a fair shake, so her message will get out. And that will be the end of leftism as a political force in America, at least for decades if not generations. Sarah can get away with saying much more, and saying it much more bluntly than a man could. We already know she is a caring person (except for the lunatic left, they think she is either stupid or cruel for birthing her child Trig after she knew about his Down's Syndrome. The people making this argument are numerous, and to a person they are mentally ill).
I've watched hours of interviews with Mrs. Palin, she is sharper than any politician I have ever seen. When she answers questions, she treats opposing arguments with the right tone, puts exactly the right emphasis where it should be, and leaves no necessary argument unvoiced. She is going to do extremely well with this week's ABC interview, and on October 2nd, before upwards of 30 million people, she is going to beat poor Joe Biden like a drum. People will pity him, with good reason. The main thing Sarah needs to worry about is beating him so badly that it evens out due to widespread sympathy for Biden. For this and so many other reasons, not the least of which is her obvious goodness, virtue, and beauty, the movement left HATES her.

HATE

The question is often asked, 'If you could go back in time and murder Hitler before he came to power, would you do so?' You can bet that many on the left view Sarah as similarly monstrous. Yes, that is how deranged they are. Consider: To countless abortion radicals, a country where women are forced to put their babies up for adoption instead of aborting them might as well be a giant concentration camp, the nexus of repressive evil in the modern world. Similarly, some view her as a monster because she would help bring millions of Americans out of dependence and to self-reliance, real pride, without the government carrying them every step of the way. The government can instill pride through educating and preparing people for life - meaningful pride is found in living it well as a free and independent person. That satisfaction is the enemy of the left, people who experience it do not desire to become clients of the state, which is all the left really has to offer, before the country turns to mush and the bombs fall.
Sarah repulses all of their plans, and their reaction is precisely what we would expect.

But these hypocrites cannot force Sarah to do anything. She is a lioness who will eat them - and their lunch. The movement left would love to lock up people like her, put them behind barbed wire. Incredibly, a sitting congressman, Dick Armey, said as much at a CPAC conference in the 1990s. He's right - this is what the left is fond of doing whenever they take uncontested power. They lock up those who would stir up dissent against the government (them), or they simply murder them.
It happened to at least 95 million individuals in the 20th century, almost all killed by leftist governments*. The pattern is always the same: Shut down alternate media, take away the guns, and start rounding up undesirables and those whose lives are 'not worth living'. It's happened so many times that the pattern is set. Leftist utopia is dystopia, and not everyone wants to cooperate, so the gutters run with blood.
Consider how closely the fondest desires of the left in recent years coincide with the pattern: For years they were eager to ban and/or register guns, registration being key to later confiscation. Then people realized that this was insanity so the left reluctantly withdrew into the shadows. Now they desire more than anything to punish their political opposition, the Bush administration, and also to silence the opposition of the new media. It's no surprise that accompanying advocacy of the 'Fairness Doctrine' crusade, already, is the concession that blogs and internet content will have to be regulated as well, to insure fairness.
We're in the early stages of their long campaign. If it's not derailed, the end is predictable.

Sarah gives us hope and drives us to work for the movement, even if only through giving our labor through direct contributions. That is another thing the left must crush, our hope.
You can be certain that this is a fact: Destroying the individual named "Sarah Palin" is now the primary and most urgent object of the left. Our lioness may require our assistance, be ready.

TOTA

*From the tome, "The Black Book of Communism", written by French leftists. They estimate 95-200 million people, so I have quoted the low figure. But what's 105 million individuals, give or take? They were standing in the way of the utopia that the brilliant governing leftists sought to create. As Lenin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

Last week, O'Reilley helped try to steal the thunder from McCain by allowing the dishonorable Barack Obama to grab some of the spotlight on the night of McCain's big speech. Less known is the degree to which OR has apparently bought into the power of the old media and the radical leftist new media.

Discussing the attacks on Sarah Palin and her family early last week, OR rightly concluded that they were way over the top, and further proof that the media is in the tank for Obama. Then, incredibly, he repeatedly argued that if Palin where hit with one more scandal she would probably have to bow out of the race. Sir, if the attacks are scurrilous, why should it matter how numerous they are or how fast them come?
Forcing Sarah out is exactly what the left wants. Her authenticity has them wetting their pants. So they are pooping in the kitchen sink and then throwing it at Sarah. And O'Reilley is there cheering them on: Keep it up and I'll have to start talking about how she needs to drop out.
Then the narrative becomes, 'Why isn't stubborn Sarah Palin seeing what everyone in the know sees? She needs to exit the national stage! Too scandalous, tsk tsk.' These people are out to obliterate Sarah; they are attempting to destroy her as a person and as a political force (the first woudl have to precede the second). They want her to be a laughing stock, another Harriet Myers, but smeared with mud and worse, broken and bowing to ongoing disgrace.

Don't give these hateful people any help, Bill.

TOTA

ASSORTED LEFTISTS:

Republicans have a lioness, you have a 'widdle putty tat', and it's driving you crazy.

Those of you with no scruples are feeling the thrill of letting your true nature show through. You others that sound like you've gone off the deep end are simply temporarily deranged by the sudden change of tide.
Both groups know that the election lynch-pin is Palin. If you can pull that pin, or damage it, you might possibly win in November. If Palin shines as she always has, you lot have ZERO hope. Zilch, zippo, nada. ZEEERO. That's one zero, followed by nothing. And things will go much better for republicans in the congress and state houses than anyone now predicts if Palin holds up. Oh - and you don't have to worry about us being this nasty about one of your pro-abortion hysterical feminists when you finally put another woman up for a top job - it's not our nature to be this nasty. That's why you fail in talk radio - your nastiness comes through and most people find it tedious and/or repulsive.

No matter how bad things are, you haven't changed the structure and makeup of the country enough for voters to put this strange and untested man into the seat of world power. McCain probably could have picked anyone and won.
Most people see in Palin a strong, smart, and courageous woman. The left is so blinded by political ambition that you no longer recognize virtue when you see it, or you are incapable of acknowledging it. The more your attacks on her are at variance with what the rest of the population sees in her, the more lunatic you seem to the normal people.

The left in general does not understand America. Only about 20% of the voting population thinks like they do, and another 15-20% are so dependent upon government that they support your people out of self interest. That's your hard core support, 35-40%. The rest of the population is relatively self-reliant, and only susceptible to the kind of blatant demagoguery peddled by Obama when things are very uncertain. ("we are the ones we've been waiting for" - this is pure, un-distilled Marxist activist tripe.)
Notice that Obama hit his highs when the credit crisis was blowing up, oil prices were at their highest, and it wasn't clear that real progress had been made in Iraq. All of these issues are beyond his touch now; his positions are either gone or unsustainable in a general election. It matters not a whit what you leftists think of his ideas, the country at large is not going to swallow, no matter how loudly the left screams "racism". Most of the rest of us think his ideas stink, because they always fail wherever and whenever they're tried. It takes the hubris of thinking you are smarter than everyone else to even peddle his snake oil.

Most of what he had to 'offer' middle American voters is gone. He now sounds to more and more people like a typical leftist peddling favors for votes. And his favors come with strings - his 'tax cuts' are largely credits doled out for government-approved behavior only. Every instinct the man has is to look for systemic unfairness, racism, 'warmongering', or free market excess as the root of every problem, and government and soft power as the answers. Europe shows you what government and soft power get you. America is not buying.


After this election the country will be more divided than ever. Unfortunately for the left, your best spokesman will probably be irretrievably discredited as at least a closet racist and capitaphobe. When the economy improves, it will be another election under the country's belt during which the left said things were worse than at any time since the great depression - and that only radical leftist change could save us. You don't have too many tries left with this line of rhetoric before it gets so shopworn that even you are afraid to use it, for fear of revealing your idiocy. Add the likely turnaround in Europe due to free market reforms, and your utopian dreams will have to wait another generation or two to gain any traction. By then, we'll have amended the constitution to finally keep you permanently in check. If you want to dominate a population and control every aspect of their lives, you'll have to move to Canada.

TOTA

PJ O'Rourke (paraphrasing): "To liberals, freedom essentially means being able to run around with your pants down."

Obama's latest verbal blunder came at the opulent NJ home of aging rocker Jon Bon Jovi. Obama told the $30,000/plate(!) diners that he didn't believe in coming in second, and he "won't be bullied". The blunder is that the latest hammering he's taken has been at the hands of Sarah Palin. It makes one want to ask, "Iz da big bad wady hurting Bawack's wittle feewings?" Pathetic. It would not be beneath these _hyper-sensitive_ cry-babies to try to neuter Palin in the press by painting her as a bully.
But the public gets it - she's tough and direct, not a bully. Almost as many people watched her speak as watched Obama speak. This amounted to an invaluable 40 minute end run around the old media. From him, the viewers heard a lot of whining and complaining, the same old tripe we always hear from these people, and more government is always the solution. From her we heard genuine compassion, and hope. Hope always sells better than bitterness unless the population is in dire straits - and they are not. Remember how the economy, according to Kerry, was the worst it had been since the depression? Similarly in 1988 and 1992. It doesn't matter that it wasn't true, it fed bitterness and angst about inequality. Our message sells when we have an effective spokesman or woman - and we have one now. Obama is a good salesman, but the people won't trust him enough to trust him with the country's future.

TOTA