Published in Shotgun News<\/p>\n
As this is written, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has recently named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the bi-coastal socialist press is going after her like the final frenzied holdouts on some Japanese-occupied Pacific atoll, shrieking \u201cBanzai!\u201d as they level their bayonets and charge the machine guns in their loincloths.<\/p>\n
None of this matches what the Democrats actually say, which is that the choice of the \u201cinexperienced\u201d Western governor is such a poor one that the election is now essentially over; John McCain might as well fold his tents and go home.<\/p>\n
If that were true, the national big-city chorus of tax-hikers, gun-grabbers and surrender monkeys would currently be patting the little lady on the head and saying, \u201cOh, how cute.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s really going on?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already lost count of the ways the ululating harridans have attacked Alaska\u2019s successful anti-corruption reformer. She can\u2019t be president because she bore a child with Down\u2019s Syndrome instead of aborting him. Because a woman with young children shouldn\u2019t put them through the strain of a campaign for high office. (Would the Democrats apply that rule only to women?)<\/p>\n
Her husband reportedly wants Alaska\u2019s federal land turned over to the state (oh, the horror!) and had a DUI some decades back, before they were even married. (I don\u2019t believe the Democrats actually used the phrase \u201cdrunken Indian\u201d — the snowmobile champion and union steelworker Sarah Palin married, referred to by Alaskans as the \u201cFirst Dude,\u201d is one-quarter Yup\u2019ik Eskimo. They also stopped short of actually say a woman still of child-bearing age can\u2019t be president because she might be irritable during \u201cthat time of the month,\u201d though they sure went right up to the line. My, how thin is their veneer of Political Correctness.)<\/p>\n
Although her daughter plans to keep her baby and marry the father, we\u2019re told Gov. Palin isn\u2019t qualified to run for high office because her teen-age daughter is pregnant. (This from the DEMOCRATS, mind you, who see no problem making it our national policy to subsidize repeat unwed births with your and my tax dollars whether we approve or not.)<\/p>\n
Why the desperation?<\/p>\n
Because Vice President Sarah Palin would mean Americans could actually end up electing a woman president without tapping a manipulative, soulless, stay-married-just-to-stay-in-power socialist.<\/p>\n
How DARE the Republicans threaten to do that? Only the \u201cprogressive\u201d party is supposed to be allowed to put the first articulate woman in line for the White House! Why, it\u2019s just like when the Republicans dared to put a CONSERVATIVE black man on the Supreme Court. It\u2019s so WRONG!<\/p>\n
Sarah Palin is a gun owner, a Westerner who seems to still understand the core American notions of Freedom and the Frontier, a woman who vetoed a half billion dollars in proposed state spending and \u201cput the government of our state back on the side of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
What these screeching attacks on Sarah Palin are really all about is not a pregnant daughter or a 20-year-old DUI. And the \u201cno foreign policy experience\u201d red herring would have barred Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as well as Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
What this is really about is that she is the first everyday American in generations, the first person who is not an Ivy League attorney, not a career Washington insider, not vetted by the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations and the CIA and Ellen Goodman, a person who works her husband\u2019s fishing boat in the summer and drives her own car to work and buys her own groceries, to be given a shot at leading this nation.<\/p>\n
And that appears to have a certain element of the political power structure terrified.<\/p>\n
Why do you suppose that is?<\/p>\n
In a sample letter-to-the-editor which MoveOn.org urged members to forward to their local newspapers Sept. 4, the group lists among Gov. Palin\u2019s \u201cextreme\u201d positions:<\/p>\n
“Palin doesn’t believe that humans contribute to global warming. Soeaking about climate change, she said, ‘I’m not one though who would attirbute it to being man-made.”<\/p>\n
Wow. You mean these tiny temperature shifts might be, like, cyclical? How \u201cextreme.”<\/p>\n
Environmental groups also complain that Gov. Palin opposed a measure that would have blocked development of the proposed Pebble gold mine, which they fear could endanger water purity in salmon-rich Bristol Bay. (Can they name any place anyone has ever wanted to site a mine that wasn\u2019t \u201cenvironmentally sensitive\u201d?)<\/p>\n
Gov. Palin expressed confidence that existing regulations will protect water quality. Alaska voters rejected the \u201cwater quality\u201d measure this summer, 57-43, calling it a \u201cmining shutdown\u201d that could not just block the Pebble Mine but paralyze Alaskan mining in general.<\/p>\n
Sarah Palin wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. She encourages logging, mining, drilling, and fishing. She plans to sue the U.S. government to stop listing the polar bear as endangered.<\/p>\n
Democrats, running for office, get their pictures taken in an orange vest and cap, holding a shotgun after someone shows them which end is up. Sarah Palin, described by Newsweek as \u201ca lifelong hunter and strong proponent of Second Amendment rights; a longtime member of the National Rifle Association,\u201d told USA Today in 2006 \u201cWe hunt as much as we can, and I\u2019m proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska.\u201d Her favorite food? \u201cMoose stew after a day of snowmachining.”<\/p>\n
Her father — famous for a bumper sticker which defined \u201cVegetarian\u201d as an \u201cold Indian word for a really bad hunter\u201d — shot the grizzly bear whose pelt is now draped over the sofa in her office. Gov. Palin this summer lauded the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s landmark decision upholding the right of Americans to own guns for self-defense, striking down the District of Columbia\u2019s 32-year-old ban on handguns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision is a victory for all Alaskans and individual Americans,\u201d Gov. Palin said. \u201cThe right to own guns and use them responsibly is something I and many other Alaskans cherish. I applaud the Court for standing up for the Constitution and the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic nominee Barack Obama also claimed the court\u2019s Heller decision confirmed his own position on this issue. But that wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
My friend John Lott, Jr., author of \u201cFreedomnomics\u201d and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, wrote in the Aug. 29 Washington Times \u201cDespite all the Democratic claims to the contrary, Mr. Obama is undoubtedly the most anti-gun candidate ever nominated by a major party for president. … Mr. Obama personally voiced support for the D.C. ban. … In February … ABC News\u2019 local Washington, D.C. anchor, Leon Harris, asked Mr. Obama: \u2018One other issue that\u2019s of great importance here in the district as well is gun control … but you support the D.C. handgun ban.\u2019 Mr. Obama\u2019s simple response: \u2018Right.\u2019 When Mr. Harris said \u2018And you\u2019ve said that it\u2019s constitutional,\u2019 Mr. Obama again says \u2018right\u2019 and is clearly seen on tape nodding his head \u2018yes.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this is not new,\u201d Mr. Lott explains. \u201cMr. Obama has a long history of supporting city gun bans. The Associated Press described his 2004 vote on a gun control bill: \u2018He also opposed letting people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation.\u2019<\/p>\n
A candidate questionnaire shows that Mr. Obama supported a ban on handguns in 1996, Mr. Lott reports. In 1998, \u201che backed a ban on the sale of all semiautomatic guns (a ban that would encompass the vast majority of guns sold in the U.S.) In 2004, he advocated banning gun sales within five miles of a school or park (essentially a ban on all guns sold in almost all the states). Possibly even more importantly, he served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban groups and research in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Obama campaign \u201cflatly denied\u201d the 1996 statement supporting a ban on handguns, blaming it on a staffer from his state senate race who they said had incorrectly filled out the candidate questionnaire. \u201cBut the Politico obtained a copy of the statement and found Mr. Obama\u2019s own handwritten notes on it indicating that he had personally checked and corrected answers,\u201d Mr. Lott reports.<\/p>\n
The Reuters News Service reports Barack Obama \u201cWants tighter background checks on gun buyers, making gun locks mandatory and holding parents criminally responsible for children who injure someone with a gun found at home. Supports reinstating assault-weapons ban. The National Rifle Association, a leading advocate of the right to bear arms, gives him a failing grade of F for his position on guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican John McCain? \u201cOpposes gun control, calling it \u2018a proven failure in fighting crime,\u2019\u201d Reuters reports. \u201cOpposes waiting periods to buy firearms. Has supported legislation requiring gun makers to include trigger locks with their products. Opposes reinstating assault-weapons ban. Has supported mandating background checks on gun buyers at gun shows. The National Rifle Association gives him an average grade of C for his position on guns but says he has a perfect voting record since 2007 and his grade may be revised.\u201d<\/p>\n
A politician like Gov. Sarah Palin can\u2019t save American all by herself. That\u2019s the underlying absurdity of this near-religious frenzy to pick a new Guy On A White Horse every eight years.<\/p>\n
But an America that could elect Sarah Palin might still save itself.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why the leftist fans of the police-nanny state are foaming at the mouth. Because they know their guy is just another tax-and-spend socialist; they know his already absurd claim to be the best and only available \u201cagent of change\u201d ran out when he tapped graying political plagiarist Joe Biden — and John McCain decided to roll the dice and go the other way.<\/p>\n
Because, with Americans given a chance to vote for a corruption buster who lives gun rights and economic productivity and racial equality in her own life, the chances are now better than even that when gun-grabber Barack Obama awakens on Nov. 5, the song they\u2019ll be playing is \u201cWe used to love him, but it\u2019s all over now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Published in Shotgun News As this is written, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has recently named Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the bi-coastal socialist press is going after her like the final frenzied holdouts on some Japanese-occupied Pacific atoll, shrieking \u201cBanzai!\u201d as they level their bayonets and charge the machine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}