The “concern” over soon-to-be-VP Candidate Sarah Palin, the Republican Governor of Alaska, by the Left (including their helpful minions in the MSM) has them once again stepping into territory that they’ve (a) never fully understood and (b) nearly always gotten themselves lost trying to negotiate.
An example of this is the bold initiative by the Co-Presidents Clinton in 1993 that attempted to transform this nation’s healthcare system into a bureaucratic entitlement replete with far more restrictions and culs-de-sac than ever (they claimed) the private health insurance system had perpetrated.
They believed their own press releases (released by their own press, in fact), reflecting the Left’s conventional wisdom that Ma and Pa America were at wit’s end trying to figure out how to take care of the health needs of their family. The Co-Presidents Clinton fully expected a grateful Ma and Pa A. to fall at their feet in abject gratitude.
What they got was something else again.
In the present case, the Left really believes its own disingenuous intonings that Republican Palin is “hypocritical” about what they (and only they, remember, ever use this term) call “family values.” To the Left, conservatives (which they consider all Republicans to be) are locked into this undeviating belief in personal behavior that admits of no error and allows for no human frailty.
To the Left, of course, this makes every Christian, or even observant Jew, instantly hypocritical because they think that religious don’t believe in human nature. To the Left, in fact, “human nature” is defined as behavior that can only be moderated by legislation. The Left sees no political advantage in personal freedom that doesn’t benefit their traditional consituencies (freedom to abort, freedom to engage in homosexual acts, freedom to express politically correct opinions, for example), so expression of human nature outside of their “permitted” list is subject to government control - and that’s what they think conservatives believe.
They simply think conservatives work from a different list.
The result is that they think that the foibles of conservatives are always covered up, just as they do their own. But conservatives have a greater potential to fall, so the Left thinks, because of their impossibly high standards. The next time a Leftist tells me that pro-lifers “regularly pay for abortions for their own daughters while telling everyone else that abortion is wrong” will be about the zillionth.
Governor Palin didn’t abort her own child, Trig, even when tests confirmed the near-certainty that he had Down Syndrome. And from all indications there was never any discussion of having the Palin’s daughter, Bristol, abort her own unborn child, conceived out of wedlock.
But the Left doesn’t see that. They have to work very hard to do it, but they manage to bend the light around the reality right in front of them and distort into various representations that support their distorted understanding of conservatives and what they believe.
In this case, it is “hypocrisy,” they say, because:
- Gov. Palin doesn’t believe in sex education (DISTORTION OF THE FACT THAT: sex education of any kind doesn’t prevent preganancy when a young man and a woman engage in sexual intercourse. A secondary fact is that the state of Alaska actually mandates so-called “comprehensive sex education.” It is not plausible that Bristol Palin’s pregancy resulted from her ignorance of the birds and the bees).
- The Palin family is supposed to be evangelical and evangelicals don’t believe in sex before marriage (DISTORTION OF THE FACT THAT: Christianity and nearly every other religious faith preaches abstinence before marriage, as well as repentance and penitance when sin is committed).
- Gov. Palin - and every other conservative Christian - believes in government enforcement of her religious ideals, so she should be able to practice them in her own family (DISTORTION OF THE FACTS THAT: in the first place, every person who runs for public office has a set of beliefs and values that will certainly influence him or her in the way they govern. Only the Left thinks theirs are exempt from criticism because they’re “not religious” - at least not the way they define the word. In the second place, conservatives typically believe in leading by example not by government fiat. Ronald Reagan was the best most recent example of this, using his presidential pulpit to preach his own values. The Left doesn’t believe that works. They don’t believe in governing, they believe in ruling. This is one of the primary reason the Left loves dictators like Castro and Chavez. But it never occurs to the Left that one can preach a sermon without introducing binding legislation).
- The Palin pregnancy flap was an “oopsie” that will cause McCain to “accept her offer to step down” from the VP slot (DISTORTION OF THE FACT THAT: first of all, the McCain campaign likely knew about it, and understands that “real Americans” don’t consider this to be a relevant issue in the political campaign; and also, that anyone without a political axe to grind realizes the tempest surrounding this “astounding news” is totally media-contrived and without legs).
So, there you have it. Once again, the Left will be left wondering why their political GPS isn’t working as they try to navigate in this strange land of “real America.” They expect this to be a deal-breaker, likely because they don’t realize that most Americans - yes, even religious conservatives - have regrettably had to deal with an unwanted pregancy without a single moment’s consideration given to abortion.
This is the real problem for the Left. They don’t have children. They don’t really like families that are “normal,” the kind that don’t need to come to government agencies for aid and support. They don’t understand anyone punishing themselves with a baby when they don’t have to.
They simply don’t understand their political opponents at all. And an unalterable rule of warfare, political or otherwise, is to attempt to understand your enemy to the greatest extent possible.
This is why the Dems continue to lose Presidential elections. They make one misstep after another based on underestimating the experience and understanding of the general public, which doesn’t count on Democrat political support as their own bound constituencies do.