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"It was one of those great, only-in-America Judeo-Christian moments"

"You've got to believe you are here for a reason," Senator Joe Lieberman told Sarah Palin back in the fall of 2008 when she was losing her bearings in the tense, over-scripted days leading up to her vice presidential debate with Senator Joe Biden.

"It was one of those great, only-in-America Judeo-Christian moments," Senator Joe Lieberman told a delighted American Enterprise Institute audience yesterday evening, retelling the tale of a fateful meeting between him and Sarah Palin on the eve of her vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden October 2, 2008:

So I'm supporting my dear friend John McCain in 2008, and it's the fall, it's about a week before the vice-presidential debate … Governor Palin was in a hotel in Philadelphia practicing for the debate … The McCain campaign was in a panic. She just wasn't registering, wasn't doing well.

Then Steve Schmidt, who was John's campaign manager, said to me, "Do me a favor. You've got something in common with her that the rest of us don't have … You're both religious. So go in and talk to her. Maybe pray with her" … 

So I went in, and she opened right up: "I'm off today. It's a bad day." Without washing dirty laundry in public, she was not happy with the McCain campaign: "They're not handling me right."

"You've got to believe you're here for a reason," Lieberman told her:

And she laughed and said there must be a reason. It's so unbelievable that I'm here running for vice president.

Lieberman cited the Book of Esther:

…  that part where her uncle [cousin?] Mordechai tells her to go to the king to ask him to save the Jewish people from the evil prime minister, and then this sentence, when she's reluctant, perhaps this is the reason you were brought to the king's palace: If you don't do it, somebody else will come along, and she said "Oh, that's great."

We'd never heard the story before, but a little googling reveals it was used for a bit of proto Palin's-an-idiot spin at the time:

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman thinks that in order for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to beat her Democratic rival, Sen. Joe Biden, in tonight’s debate, she needs to keep it from turning into an “IQ test.”

What Lieberman was getting at was not at all that Sarah was dumb:

“What she needs to do tonight is get this public consideration of her back to who she is and her strong points and, frankly, get it away from being a, kind of, IQ test — she's plenty smart — getting it away from being a, sort of, final college exam,” Lieberman said on MSNBC …

“Whether she can answer every detailed question, I don't think that ultimately matters to the American people,” the Connecticut senator added. “She doesn't know every detail, all the questions senators deal with, but, frankly, that's her strength.”

“I think the point is, who is she as a person? I think that's what people are ultimately looking for,” Lieberman said.

Everything happens for a reason? We're hard-wired to see patterns. Palin/Lieberman 2012?

Update from CT4Palin on Twitter:

Lieberman will be Palin's Ambassador to Israel. :)

And John Bolton for Palin's Secretary of State.

Update II: Bill Quick of Daily Pundit links:

Well, she keeps saying it’s going to be an “unconventional” campaign. Of course, Lieberman is an “independent …”

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Greta Van Susteren takes Tucker Carlson to the woodshed

"A mother does the same, c. 1897," Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

"The public shaming of Tucker Carlson. Cybervillage disapprobation of "elders" like @gretawire [Greta Van Susteren's twitter handle] shape moral behavior," we twittered as the smoke began to settle this morning in the aftermath of a fiery flame war that had erupted in the blogosphere and twitterspere in response to "Mike Tyson: Sarah Palin met ‘the wombshifter,’" a gratuitously coarse Jeff Poor journalistic effort published by Carlson's The Daily Caller Friday evening. At issue were Tyson's foul-mouthed comments spun off from spurious allegations made by author Joe McGinnis in his hit piece, The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, to the effect that a young Sarah Palin had had a one-night stand with basketball star Glen Rice back when she was a sports announcer on Anchorage TV station KTUU. Greta takes no prisoners:

I really don’t understand my friend Tucker Carlson. He owns the website The Daily Caller and it currently has on its front page the most vile story — referring to a sex act with Governor Sarah Palin as a “womb shifter.” It is even the headline. Do you know what that means? Figure it out. It is really vile. It is not just smut … this is violence against women.

Tucker should have used  judgment, a sense of decency and not promoted this denigration — a good journalist, a responsible journalist uses judgment. Tucker did not …

I don’t like it when I see that my friends do disgraceful things — but we need to start calling out even our friends to stop this. Tucker has daughters and a wife, and I would think he in particular would not want to be a purveyer of smut (and this is actually more, this is violence against women) and allow this to be posted on his website …

I keep asking myself, why would Tucker allow this to be posted on his website?  I am suspicous his website is not doing well and this is one quick last breath to create buzz to keep it afloat.

Ouch, squared. Moral education in the venerable Judeo-Christian principles that guided our Founding Fathers in fashioning the Shining City may have fallen out of favor amongst the establishment elites of our nation's mainstream institutions, but we old-fashioned Country Class types are firing at will, disintermediating the powers that be through the new media. As Jedediah Bila, herself a writer for Carlson's publication, twittered this afternoon:

I stand with gretawire. As a freelance opinion contributor to The Daily Caller, I'm very disappointed re editorial judgment.

And to her fellow Daily Caller writer Matt Lewis Jedediah affirmed:

I have publicly praised The DC many times for giving me the freedom to speak my mind in my columns & not censoring me.

I call it like I see it. If I go to bed at night knowing I stood up for what I think is right, I consider it a good day's work.

And a final word from Tammy Bruce, who salutes the man in the trenches who fired the first shot over Tucker Carlson's bow* early Saturday morning:

In Palin Report I mistakenly credit the excellent Gateway Pundit for 1st calling out DC. It was in fact the magnificent Dan Riehl.

Update: Twitter friend and filmmaker extraordinaire Ladd Ehlinger goes for the jugular. Don't get on his wrong side!

Update II: DaTechGuyblog links:

Tucker Carlson vs Dan Riehl? No contest.

Update III: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update IV: Dan Riehl,  Stacy McCain and Nice Deb link.

Update V: Love this from Cybrludite in the comments:

*Should that have been "a shot fired over his bow... tie"?

Sarah Palin: The Tea Party is real winner of the debate

"I was very pleased with this debate, and, you know, very excited about the validation of the Tea Party movement," Sarah Palin told Greta Van Susteren last night in a meaty analysis of the CNN/TeaPartyExpress debate that echoed our own take and set our woman-up, fight-like-a-girl heart on fire. Listen to full interview here.

While some of our favorite bloggers and columnists and talking heads debated the winners and losers of last night's CNN/TeaPartyExpress GOP primary debate, a shoot-to-where-it's-going, not-to-where-it's-been Sarah Palin disintermediated the usual premise of judging these contests. As she explained to Greta Van Susteren in a landmark "On the record" post-debate interview last night:

Here they hook up with a major news network, CNN — and more power to CNN for allowing that validation — of this grassroots Tea Party movement.

Participants from all over the nation being able, as a voice of "We the people," asking questions of these potential presidents …

The winner in this really, I believe, was the Tea Party movement.

"Greta, this is one of the reasons that many of us really love your show because you have been one on top of this issue from day one, talking about the fraud, the waste and the crony capitalism." From opposite ends of the political spectrum, the two women seem to have forged a sisterly bond through their shared mission to fight corruption wherever they may find it.

Palin and Van Susteren — the conservative Mama Grizzly and the liberal Fox News show host — may seem an odd pairing. A tough questioner, Van Susteren earned Palin's trust early on by giving her a fair hearing where others, even Fox libertarian Judge Napolitano, were buying — and promulgating — the "lamestream media's" Palin-is-Stupid narrative spin. Fortunately the Judge finally came to his senses.

 

"I'm not gonna let the media dictate when a drop-dead date should be," Palin answered Van Susteren's inevitable will-she-or-won't-she question:

In the meantime, I'm getting kind of a kick out of this, and I have to be honest with you. Getting a kick out of getting out there, giving a speech, making some statements about things that must be discussed, and then the very next day watching some of the candidates get out there and discuss what it was that we just talked about, like the corruption, the crony capitalism, the waste, the fraud … That perhaps is my role right now, is to get people talking about the issues that the American people deserve to hear discussed … I'm gonna keep doing that!

Mark America at US for Palin develops the theme in his must-read "Only One Republican is Shaping the Debate":

While it is true to say the Tea Party won the debate, it’s likewise clear that the themes Governor Palin has been discussing since 2008 are really the foundation of the ongoing Republican discussion.

See also Dana Loesch's insider's analysis "CNN Shows MSNBC How a Debate is Done."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Rick Perry: "Galileo got outvoted for a spell"

 

As a Palinista from day one, we're still  "undecided," but we loved this from Texas Governor Rick Perry (above) at last night's GOP primary debate: "Galileo got outvoted for a spell … Find out what the science truly is before you start putting the American economy in jeapordy." This morning irony-challenged MSNBC talking heads joked about whether Perry saw himself as Galileo, unaware that it is they themselves, our friends on the left side of the aisle, who are the Roman Inquisitors of our day.

"You yourself have said the party is in danger of becoming anti-science. Who on this stage is anti-science?" MSNBC whatshisname taunted flat-earther Jon Huntsman at last night's Republican primary debate. Darwinian libertarian that we are, we've been horrified for some time at the left's conflation of the science of evolution that we embrace with the mumbo-jumbo secular religion of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. We've been on the left's AGW case for two decades, at least, since Andrea Mitchell (God bless her now in her time of genuine sorrow) acknowledged her lack of objectivity way back when:

Clearly the networks have made the decision now, where you'd have to call it advocacy.

Now, when up-till-now AGW proseletizer Nature Journal of Science is finally acknowledging they got it wrong — Can you say cosmic rays and the sun? — our friends on the left side of the aisle continue to bury their heads in the sand. As we've said for a zillion blogyears, it's the importance of being noticed — aka tribalism — stupid.

Crossposted at Riehl World View.

Anti-Palin tempest in a teapot? "Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell"

"This has been a long tease with Sarah Palin, and at some point that tease has just got to go away. What's going to happen next," snickered Laura Ingraham (above left) to guest Ann Coulter last night as the two blonde bombshells shared what struck us as a covenly caterwaul over the Mama Grizzly's disintermediating GOP primary tactics. Twitter buddy Charles @repub9989 thinks it's a jealous-woman thing, but then there's Red State's Erick Erickson's complaint. See below for more, and click here for The Right Scoop's video.

"Fog of war describes Twitter in a nutshell," twittered Moe Lane this afternoon in response to our attempt to defuse a friendly-fire incident over our blogfriend's preference for announced Lone-Star candidate Scott Rick Perry (thanks to chickelit in the comments for the correction) vs our own first love, unannounced shoot-to-where-it's-going Sarah Palin:

Oh. Didn't realize you were a Perry supporter. Just retweeting a tweet that made sense to me. Reminds me of the fog of war.

We were but two hand-to-hand combatants in an army of cyberwarriors locked in a fiery internecine battle that erupted this morning between Palinistas and everyone else on our side of the aisle in the wake of a dishy catfest last night between mischief-maker Ann Coulter and host Laura Ingraham, subbing for O'Reilly:

Coulter: Most Americans don't want Sarah Palin for President, but she's become sort of the Obama of the Tea Party. She's just "The One" to a certain segment of right wingers, and the tiniest criticism of her — I think many of your viewers may not know this — no conservative on TV will criticize Palin because they don't want to deal with the hate mail.

Ingraham: People like Palin to show up at these events and whip up the crowd. There's a place for that, and I think we need that. but people, when I talk to them, they seem to be desperate and hungry more that ever for real substance, beyond kind of the sloganeering and the bumper sticker stuff.

Bring on the smelling salts. Then there was Red State's Erick Erickson, "all wee weed up over Palin," as Dan Riehl so memorably puts it. We particularly liked Rants for Reasonable People's PolitiJim's open letter to Erickson:

Did you forget it was PALIN who helped galvanize and garner the conservative movement in 2008? Have you not read the citations of those of us who started with Santelli and were empowered with Palin who comment how many ended up as 'the tea party?'  When the 'big government' republicans and pretenders forced us onto McCain - Palin was a sign of hope.

Update: Memeorandum links Erick Erickson's "Enough."

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.

Palin Undefeated: It's the crony capitalism, stupid!

This weekend Steve Bannon's Palin documentary ‘The Undefeated’ will be available On Demand and Pay-Per-View from a major cable or satellite company near you. We wrote about the movie — sight unseen — last June in "Palin Undefeated: 'A story of empowerment for modern women and their daughters.'" Now we can put our money where our mouth was, in the comfort of our own home. Above, sugar-and-spice Sarah (center) with her siblings.

Funny how incurious the "intellectually curious" hive mind of the left can be when it comes to all things Sarah Palin. The latest is a classic blinders-on, Journolist-talking-points-in-hand "review" of Steve Bannon's Palin Documentery "The Undefeated." (h/t Tim Graham of News Busters). Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday is the mouthpiece of this particular outpouring of Palin envy. A few excerpts and then our take:

Based on her modest demeanor and record of budget, energy and ethics reform in Alaska, it’s easy to see her appeal to McCain, who called Palin while she was at the Alaska State Fair to ask her to run for veep. What "The Undefeated" doesn’t explain — in addition to the title "Undefeated" when Palin was, actually, defeated in 2008 — is how a woman whose early career had been dedicated to transcending partisan politics became such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump. Instead, Bannon sets Palin up as a victim — of liberals, of establishment conservatives and of the "lamestream media" that his subject has become so skilled at manipulating (a talent the filmmaker strangely neglects to mention).

About that title, "The Undefeated." Ever heard of wordplay, Ms. Hornaday? Sarah Palin may have lost an election, but she fights like a girl! Disintermediating the powers that be, she picked herself up and got back in the race. The words of Sun Tzu come to mind:

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

Then there's Hornaday's fixation with "trascending partisan politics." You see a lot of that from the left, presumably hoping to catch the eye — and poll-tested votes — of the mushy middle. How could a "non-partisan" Palin who rooted out corruption in her OWN PARTY become "such a ferocious political warrior while on the stump"? It's the crony capitalism, stupid. Real Clear Politics has the scoop:

In her speech at the bucolic National Balloon Classic field in Indianola [tomorrow], Palin will lean on loaded phrases like “crony capitalism” and “permanent political class” in laying out her view of the U.S. political system’s deep-rooted ills, according to a source close to Palin and familiar with the content of the speech.

And this from National Review:

“She will also talk, more broadly, about how she is not enamored of the political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who do not deserve to be elected if they only continue the status quo,” the source continues. “She will discuss corporate lobbyists, White House operatives, and others who enable the vested interests.” Many of the themes from her recent Facebook post, “Conquering the Storm,” will be mentioned.

Will she or won't she? Dan Riehl says "yes" on Twitter:

Overseas trip had to be Palin's last check box. She's getting in.

Disintermediate at will:

The former Alaska Governor is scheduled to attend the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, where she will speak alongside global economic leaders like Larry Summers and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The conference begins Oct. 11, the same day as the GOP primary debate hosted by Bloomberg in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Update: Doug Ross Larwyn's Lynx link.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Cloven Not Crested.